Yes, that. One of my favorite b-movies.

Natural Born Killers - Another "not worth the hype" movie. Two huge problems I had with it are oddly small nitpicks, but first off, Micky and Mallory suffer multiple rattlesnake bites, go looking for "snake juice" in a pharmacy, get in a firefight that results in Mallory getting the crap beaten out of her and Micky being tasered (activities which would, I dunno, speed the hell out of your metabolism and make the venom work faster!), only for them to be carted off to jail and it's never mentioned again! And at the time it happens, they make a really big freakin' deal out of those snakes! Extremely stupid, lazy mistake. Second stupid lazy mistake - I'm sure it sounded like a really cool, symbolic, tough-lookin' thing to have Micky shave his head before the big interview...except there's no way in hell he's going to be allowed electric trimmers, or trimmers of any kind, in an isolated confinement cell in a maximum security prison! Ugh. Really obnoxious example of style over substance, which somehow grew into a huge cult flick. No thanks.

What's interesting about NBK - and, I suspect, a partial clue as to just why it doesn't really work - is that, in Tarantino's original script, Mickey and Mallory are in many ways the least important characters; the focus is mainly on Wayne Gale and his efforts to build the duo up into the media event of the century (there's an especially funny bit involving a movie-within-a-movie about the Knoxes). The satirical intent is clearer, funnier and more precise, especially as it's made obvious how banal and boring the Knoxes actually are; the only interesting thing about them is that they kill people, and Tarantino knows that perfectly well.

Unfortunately, I don't think Stone knew that. He falls into the exact same trap of hero-worshipping these two mindless killing machines and their "Grand Passion" that the in-film media does, and as a result the satire angle tends to ring hollow (that said, though, I do think the "I Love Mallory" sequence - which was not a Tarantino contribution - actually works quite well, in no small part due to Rodney Dangerfield's performance).

The International
A taut international thriller ripped from today's uh last decade's headlines! Based directly on a true story, except for all the exciting parts. A must-see viewing experience impossible to pass up... but that part only applies to me, due to the chronic disability I have in the area of leaving Naomi Watts movies unwatched.

What we got here is some generic conspiracy paranoia and gun battles, with acting that ranges from fairly good to TV cop show. In Hollywoodized form, the story is ludicrous -- the bad guys leave such a thick trail of bodies that it becomes totally counterproductive as a way to keep their dealings quiet. Otherwise, the resemblance to a real life case only makes the movie seem superficially way more relevant and important than it actually is. Still, as a thriller it's pretty decent.

On the B side, there is one gun battle that is a real corker. It's so overthetop that they destroy a famous landmark building from ceiling to ground floor, and yet in the moment it feels realistically handled.

On the other hand, Clive Owen makes a surprisingly inept gumshoe.

Across 110th Street
A trio of small-timers rip off the mob and do about as well as you'd expect after that. The joy in this movie is the divisiveness withing the police and the mob. Yaphet Kotto is the lieutenant assigned the case (5 mobsters and 2 cops were killed in the heist), not because he's good but because it happened in Harlem. He has to deal with the intrusions of a white captain who's about to be forced to retire and wants to prove himself. The mobsters send in an older guy on his last chance to prove himself. Both of these white interlopers are scared and under a great deal of pressure in situations that they just can't handle, which makes the tensions in the movie greater than the surface racism. Quite a neat little movie.

Honeydripper
It's 1950, and Danny Glover has one weekend in order to save his roadhouse. What follows is a fantastic study of the power of community and the inevitability of change. Lots of wonderful moments, and an ending that's believable happy.

Across 110th Street: Three crooks kill five mobsters and two cops, and are tracked down before the weekend for hideous reprisals (the goofball played by Antonio Fargas is crucified and castrated; the others don't get off much easier). The black criminals working for the Mob in Harlem turn out to be better investigators than the police, perhaps because they pay very well for information. Everyone's crooked and everybody snitches when they get a chance, either to get a payoff or to stop people from hitting them. The city is presented as a massive strip of flypaper; the aging mobster, the aging cop, the young black cop who is mistrusted by the white police for being too black and the blacks in the city for being too blue, the criminals, their families and everyone else is stuck in a situation they can't get out of. Incredibly gritty, and with a brutal ending that is entirely earned.

Stephen King's Graveyard Shift: Other than the actual story not starting for the first hour of the movie, it's pretty good. An inversion of the "spam in a cabin" plot, the people who get Killed Off Real Good are doing it for money instead of being on vacation and running afoul of the menace. Some entertainingly overreaching matte paintings and an honestly pretty good rat monster puppet enliven things in the final act, but it's a REAL slog getting there. Almost every actor in the movie looks sort of like another actor, with Mark Harmon, Clancy Brown, Jennifer Beals and Clint Howard having sorta-lookalike replicants in the cast. Which makes me wish the movie had used those actors, honestly. Also featuring Brad Dourif as a guy who is the rat-catching equivalent of Quint from the Jaws films, making the first hour bearable through his lunacy alone.

Lagaan - The movie follows the members of a farming village in India in the late 1800s; they're in the middle of a drought, which means they can't grow anything, which means they can't pay their annual tax (the eponymous lagaan) to Captain Russell (Paul Blackthorne, from the Sci-Fi Channel's Dresden Files series). The lagaan had already been waived by the province's rajah last year, and now Russell is forcing the rajah to exact double lagaan this year - a tax that the village, already struggling with the prospect of paying even single lagaan, quite simply cannot afford. When the members of the village go to the rajah to plead with him to cancel the lagaan once again this year, the village's resident Idealistic Young Dreamer, Bhuvan (Aamir Khan), offends Captain Russell by calling the game of cricket "silly and stupid," thus prompting the Captain to make a wager: in three months' time, Bhuvan and the villagers will play a game of cricket against Captain Russell's team. If the villagers win, then lagaan will be canceled not only for this year, but for the next three years - and not just for this village, but for the whole province. But if the villagers lose, then they and the entire province will be forced to pay triple lagaan. Bhuvan agrees, much to the chagrin of the village's elders. Bhuvan argues that cricket is very similar to a game that Indian children play, though once he begins receiving training in the game from Russell's sister, Elizabeth (Rachel Shelley), he soon discovers it's more difficult than he thought.

For a Bollywood movie, the premise is pretty straightforward. It hits the familiar notes of movies of this type, whether they be from India or Hollywood, and yet ends up being completely awesome anyway. It's also almost four hours in length, which is long even by Bollywood standards, but it holds one's attention the whole time. If you've got an afternoon free, definitely check this out.

Burn After Reading
Not a great Coen film, but a good one, and that's a fine thing to be. Great performances enliven the various plot threads that intersect but never really accumulate. I wish it had been more than it was, but I was glad to see the brothers remember how to do comedy again.

A Simple Plan
Three small town guys find 4 million dollars and succumb to their greed, jealousies, and suspicions. A grim story that captures the inescapable bleakness of the original noir films against a background of purity and renewal. Terrific performances from Billy-Bob Thorton and Bill Paxton as utterly opposite brothers really sells the concept.