Reservoir Dogs (1992)

There are three reasons not to see this film:

1. a graphic torture scene
2. dialogue that is literally drenched in profanity, as well as racist, sexist and homophobic slurs
3. perhaps unsurprisingly in light of number 2, the characters are almost all reprehensible people

If that doesn't put you off, however, you're in for a pretty good film.  For one thing, the cast is excellent: not a surprise when you feature major roles for Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi; each of whom is reliably capable and entertaining.  The real eye-opened though is Michael Madsen.  It's hard to reconcile the menacing sociopath he presents here with the fumbling, barely coherent performance he offers in Bloodrayne.

The soundtrack is another strength of the film: so many great tracks, and really well used.  You'll never look at "Stuck in the Middle with You" the same way again (no, it's not a sex thing.  Get your minds out of the gutter!).

The other thing that garnered a lot of attention for this tale of a jewelry store heist gone wrong is the script.  Then novice film-maker Quentin Tarantino adopts a non-linear approach to the tale, and omits entirely the actual heist itself.  We only hear, second hand, how things initially went wrong.  It's a bold choice that could have gone horribly wrong, but it works well here.

The script also attracted attention for its dialogue.  It's profane stuff, but it's sometimes very well put together.  Not all of it works - the opening discussion of "Like A Virgin" kinda feels juvenile these days, for instance.  But stuff like Roth's 'commode story' scene?  Really well put together, both in terms of what's being said and how it's being structured.

Not a nice film by any measure, but a good one.

Gangs, Inc (1941)

Perhaps it's just that my standards have been lowered by rot like Gangster's Boy, but I rather enjoyed this film (which is also known by the alternative titles Crime, Inc and - in my opinion, the far superior option - Paper Bullets).

At the outset of the movie, young Rita Adams sees her father, an ex-con, gunned down in front of her.  She grows up in an orphanage, gets a job in a factory, and is more or less making her way okay.  But then her employer starts filling defence orders, and her father's incarceration prevents her from getting the papers she needs to keep working there.

Things go from bad to worse when her good for nothing boyfriend hits a pedestrian while driving drunk and persuades her to take the fall from him.  "They won't send you to jail" he promises.  But of course they do.

Two years later (which the film breezes through in about twenty seconds of screen time), Rita gets released.  She's done playing by the rules, though.  She has a new way of getting by in the world now.  And when papers come into her possession that show her former boyfriend's rich father is crooked, well, those plans get a whole lot bigger.

There's honestly nothing terribly innovative or exceptional about this film, but it's helped immensely by good performances from the leads, and some decent banter.  The script does have a tendency to explain the plot to you, in case you aren't keeping up, but I've certainly seen worse.

The story of Rita's fall, rise, and eventual fall again (because this is the 40s, and criminals aren't allowed to get away with it) made for a pretty decent way to spend an hour, all told.

The Lazarus Syndrome (1978)

This film was made as a stealth pilot for a TV show, and that's probably responsible for a couple of its weaknesses.  The sub-plots that are raised, but then never developed, let alone resolved for instance.  Those were probably intended to be grist for the series.

The basic set-up is that an over-worked, over-stressed middle-aged journalist has a cardiac event and is admitted to hospital.  He proves to be a difficult patient, questioning his doctor's decision that the best treatment is to eat better and exercise more.  Once he accepts that this is the right outcome for him, he becomes more trouble, accusing the head of surgery of being a pill-popper and encouraging a fellow patient - who is in similar circumstances to himself - to request a second opinion when he is told he needs surgery.

Of course, since the journalist is clearly being set up as one of the ongoing leads of the series, there's going to prove to be some truth to his claims.

The journalist and the doctor (who is played by Louis Gossett Jr) have good chemistry together and make their scenes work pretty well, but they can't disguise that the script packs about 40 minutes of action into an 80 minute film, nor that the resolution is entirely too pat and convenient to feel satisfying.  It's definitely a distinctly mediocre affair, and not one I can really recommend.

Oh, and the series this was intended to set-up?  It did happen, but it only lasted five episodes.  Honestly, that's probably five more than this deserved.

King of New York (1990)

Mob boss Frank White walks out of jail and declares war on every other gang in the city.  As you might imagine, this spree of violence upsets the other members of the underworld, as well as the NYPD.

But Frank's onslaught is not merely an attempt to control all vice in the city.  Because while his time in prison did not reform him, it did give him something of an epiphany: he wants to make money from the rich so he can provide better hospitals and schools to the poor boroughs of New York (as well as maintaining his own lavish lifestyle of course; like I said, he's not reformed).

The film doesn't spend a lot of time justifying or explaining Frank's altruistic impulses.  It just establishes that they exist and lets the bullets fly.  It's interesting to see how easy it is to make us root for the man who wants to run the city's narcotics trade.  Even when a group of cops decides to take the law into their own hands and gun Frank down, it's the mob boss and his right hand man (a stellar performance from Lawrence Fishburne) that you root for.

This is a very stylish film.  There's a lot of interesting use of colour; several scenes are drenched in one particular shade, whether it be green or yellow or blue, with only black as a contrast to the dominant hue.  I've only seen one Abel Ferrara film before - the 1993 version of Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, which was quite good - but based on this film I'd certainly be willing to check out more.  The cast is uniformly good.  Fishburne is the stand-out, as mentioned above, but you never go wrong with Walken, and I don't think there's a weak link to be found here among the on-screen talent.

This is a fairly bleak film, what with it making you root for someone who is still a bad guy, and with the general lack of unblemished morals on either side of the law.  And there's a lot of violence and bad language.  So it won't be to all tastes.  But if you like your films very hard-boiled, it's a good egg.

Deep Rising (1998)

A year before Stephen Sommers helmed monster-smash The Mummy, he wrote and directed this critically reviled box office flop.

Which I adore.

Deep Rising is not a complicated film.  It certainly doesn't live up to the first word in its title, you might say.  But it's easy to see the prototype of Sommers's later hit in this film.  You've got the same basic trifecta of main characters, the same combination of action, humour and horror (though this film has a considerably greater degree of gore).

An aside: Roger Ebert dismissed this film as 'an Alien clone with a fresh paint job', which suggests that he really needs to re-watch Alien.  Part of that film's power is that it never ever goes for a tension-relieving laugh.  Nor does it have lots of guns.  This film has a stack of both.  It's much, much closer in feel to Aliens, except it has far more humour in it.

Actually, that leads me to a good elevator pitch for the film: 'Aliens meets The Mummy.  On a boat'.  Of course it preceded The Mummy, so that couldn't have been the actual pitch.  But it works for our purposes.

Plot: there's a cruise ship full of rich tourists, and a bunch of mercenaries planning to rob it.  Unfortunately for the mercs (and the crew of the boat they hired to get them to their target), the cruise ship receives even less welcome visitors shortly before they arrive.  They, and the handful of survivors, will soon be in for the fight of their lives.

This is total popcorn cinema, but it's salty, buttery popcorn of deliciousness.  Well worth seeing unless you have an issue with gore, late 90s CGI monsters, or fun.

Gangster's Boy (1938)

Jackie Cooper was nominated for a best actor Oscar at the age of 9, but like many child stars he found the transition to more adult roles quite awkward.  He would eventually experience a career renewal, but the late 30s and early 40s were not a good time for him.  Which probably explains why he's in this tedious chore of a film.

Cooper plays Larry, an honour roll student and star athlete.  He's an all round swell guy, for all he doesn't come from the right side of the tracks, and is pretty much an all round straight arrow.  The only thing he misses from his life is his father, who 'travels a lot' for work.

But after 5 long years, dad's back in town!  Of course, this isn't quite as swell as Larry thinks it is, since ol' pop is a former bootlegger, and the revelation of his shady past soon has the previously popular Larry on the outs with most of his peers and their parents.  This despite the fact that he himself is as Dudley Do Right as you can be.

Of course, Larry's very nobility of character will soon land him in further trouble as he takes the fall for a friend who accidentally hits a cyclist while driving.  The friend is the son of a judge, you see, and the accident might harm his reputation and his future.  By now, Larry figures his own prospects can't get any worse.

I bet you can guess who gets appointed to hear Larry's case, and I bet you can guess how everything gets resolved.  And you will do so much quicker than the seemingly interminable 80 minutes of this film.

Don't waste your time.

Treasure of Tayopa (1974)

This is a movie featuring not one but two narrators, which should tell you right from the word go that it's going to be rubbish.  And with one crazy-eyed exception, it is.

Narrator one tells us the legend of the lost treasure of Tayopa, and the fact that many expeditions - all unsuccessful - have all set out to find it.

We then dissolve to the latest such expedition, being organised by Kathryn Delgado.  Ms Delgado has asked her friend Tom to organise the men for this expedition, and old Tom seems to have interpreted that request as 'hire the first couple of guys you find in a bar'.  One of the men seems okay, if not that bright, but the other - the unfortunately named Sally - is clearly a nutjob.  He's also, thanks to the manic intensity of actor Phil Trapani (in what appears to be his only acting credit), the only entertaining thing in the film.

The group heads into Mexico in search of the treasure, Sally kissing his crossbow as they go (yes, really).  While travelling in the badlands, they come under some low level harassment from the locals.  Sally is riled up with this, and wants to head back and see what the Mexicans are up to.  Or so he says, anyway.  Tom initially resists the idea, but soon demonstrates he's as good a leader as recruiter, and gives way.

As Sally heads back, we cut to the Mexicans, who are debating whether to kill the Americans and take Kathryn, or wait for the Americans to die in the wilderness and take Kathryn.  This planning session is cut short by Sally turning up and killing them.

I'm not sure what the movie was going for here.  I mean, the script's made it clear that Sally is a dangerous loon, but on the other hand he was clearly right to think the Mexicans meant harm to his group, so his attack (while unjustified based on what he knew) was actually probably the best way to keep them all safe.  It's odd.

Now as it happens, one Mexican left just before Sally turns up, and he'll now pursue the Americans for the rest of the movie.  Other than stealing their horses though, he won't actually do anything.  It's remarkably random.  (I have actually seen a review online that says this character will ultimately save Kathryn and 'get the girl', but nothing of the sort happens: either there are two versions of the film or that reviewer got so bored they stopped paying attention and just guessed how it ended).

Ultimately, of course, you know Sally's going to explode.  He assaults Kathryn, leaving her for dead, and murders the other two men.  But Kathryn's not done.  She caves in his head with a rock, and then later does the same to a rattlesnake.  I smell symbolism.  She then guts and eats the snake, in a scene I suspect is genuinely a snake being cut open.  It's a little too convincing to be anything else.  Then she gets rescued by a priest.  The end.

Yeah, I just spoiled the whole film.  It's a public service, since now there is absolutely no reason for you to waste your time with it.