* Movies: Kiss the Girls – starring Morgan Freeman & Ashley Judd

Movies: Kiss the Girls (1997)  Directed by Gary Fleder, starring Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, with a screenplay by David Klass based on the novel Kiss the Girls by James Patterson.  Morgan Freeman is excellent in his portrayal of a police forensic psychologist detective, full of calm, effective determination and Ashley Judd, as a surgeon, is vibrant, complex and very good, indeed.  Unfortunately, Freeman and Judd are the only two positive points in Kiss the Girls, an overly complicated thriller, with clear overtones of The Silence of the Lambs.  With poor acting on the part of the rest of the cast, and a poorly written screenplay with a prominent lack of character development, Kiss the Girls received a largely negative critical reception.  Nevertheless, for fans of Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd, Kiss the Girls may be worth watching, though it leaves one wishing that the film around them was worthy of their participation. (PR)

See our post on the film Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon.

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* Dementia 13 – The first feature film directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Dementia 13 (1963)  Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979), Youth Without Youth (2007)), starring William Campbell (Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)), Luana Anders (Night Tide (1961), That Cold Day in the Park (1969)) and Patrick Magee (A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975)).  Dementia 13, a horror thriller, and the first feature film directed by the immense Francis Ford Coppola, is, at best, at pseudo-quasi-Hitchcockian psychological thriller, with a screenplay, written by Coppola, that is extraordinarily fragmented, if not desperately lost in its loose ends.  Nevertheless, as Coppola’s first feature directorial effort, at the very least, and thanks to some wonderfully moody directing of scenes in an ancient, and haunted, Scottish castle, and a clear feel for the building of psycho-thriller tension, Dementia 13 is a must-see for any fan of Coppola, B-movie psychology, or, in fact, kitsch. Perhaps the promotional film poster says it all. (PR)

See our post on the film Youth Without Youth, written, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

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* The Constant Gardener – Starring Ralph Fiennes & Rachel Weisz

The Constant Gardener (2005) Directed by Fernando Meirelles ( City of God (2002)), starring Ralph Fiennes  (The English Patient (1996)) and  Rachel Weisz (The Lovely Bones (2009), The Bourne Legacy (2012, filming)), with Danny Huston (Children of Men (2006)), Bill Nighy (Love Actually (2003), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)) and others.  This outstanding, award-winning dramatic thriller, a condemnation of corruption in government and the pharmaceutical industry, follows a soft-spoken and sensitive low level British diplomat, Justin Quayle, played to perfection by Ralph Fiennes, as he investigates the circumstances surrounding his wife’s death.  Quayle’s wife, Tessa, a passionate and, at times, overbearing activist, is portrayed by an excellent Rachel Weisz, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her efforts.  Danny Huston, son of legendary director John Huston and half-brother of actress Anjelica Huston, is also very good as Justin Quayle’s (Fiennes) deceitful immediate supervisor, as is Bill Nighy, as the corrupt head of the Africa Desk for the British Foreign Office.  Magnificently filmed, from the vast and spectacular plains of Africa, to the squalor of the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, to the intimacy of a loving couple with an excellent screenplay by Jeffrey Caine based on the eponymous novel by John le Carré, and superb music by Alberto Iglesias, The Constant Gardener is, in both a large scale and personal manner, a critical look at Western liberal conscience, ethical and moral responsibility, personal virtue, courage and devotion, as well as being a finely honed, complex adult thriller.  Definitely a must-see film. (PR)

See our posts of the films Sunshine, starring both Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, and Spider, starring Ralph Fiennes, directed by David Cronenberg.

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In the Electric Mist – Starring Tommy Lee Jones

In the Electric Mist (2009)  Directed by Bertrand Tavernier, starring Tommy Lee Jones, John Goodman, Peter Sarsgaard, Kelly Macdonald, Mary Steenburgen and Levon Helm.  In this crime drama, laced with magical realism, set in the bayou and back country of Louisiana, Tommy Lee Jones, portraying an recovering alcoholic, Vietnam veteran, parish police detective, investigates the murder of a young prostitute.  Though the cast is clearly top notch and the potential to be more is there in the portrayals by all of the major actors; unfortunately, their acting seems, somehow, somewhat uninspired.  The failure to really come together could very well be due to the poor screenwriting, based on the novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke, that fails to create much tension or develop characters, and is otherwise equally ineffectual and splintered.  (PR)

See our posts on the films The Company Men, The Fugitive, starring Tommy Lee Jones and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones.

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15 Minutes – Starring Robert De Niro & Edward Burns

15 Minutes (2001)  Directed by John Herzfeld, starring Robert De Niro (The Deer Hunter (1978), Awakenings (1990), Cape Fear (1991) and many other excellent films) and Edward Burns (Saving Private Ryan (1998), Man on a Ledge (2012)).  This crime thriller, a well-merited condemnation of tabloid, sensationalist journalism features a solid Robert De Niro as a sharp, but sentimental, media-star New York City police detective, a correct Edward Burns as a somewhat naive investigative New York City fire marshal and two media- and money-hungry, brutally violent, frankly insane “eastern European” villains; there is no other word for them.  Perhaps simplistic in premise, 15 Minutes, obviously a reference to Andy Warhol‘s famous sound-bite “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes“, is energetically well-meaning with distinctly fast-paced directing by John Herzfeld, good, strong and subtle acting on the part of De Niro, and ridiculous, yet frighteningly plausible villains portrayed with charm and violent insanity by Karel Roden and Oleg Taktarov.  The best of intentions, however, do not necessarily make for the best of films, unfortunately, and 15 Minutes falls short of its possibilities:  some shallow writing, stereotypical characters, disappointing ending and perhaps an insufficient mastery of the attempted elevated pace of the film, could be its short-comings.  Nevertheless, there are some wonderfully filmed sequences, some interesting premises, and characters, and an always valid denunciation of the motivations and methods of sensationalist journalism. (PR)

See our previous posts on the films Guilty by Suspicion, starring Robert De Niro, and The Good Shepherd, directed by, and with, Robert De Niro.

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