Gideon58's Reviews

AMERICAN HISTORY X

The futility and often bone-chilling consequences of hate seems to be the underlying theme of 1998's American History X, a blistering and unapologetic look at racial hatred from all sides that projects hate without filter and offers some really uncomfortable conclusions, primarily that this kind of hate is often taught and unlearned.

As this film opens we meet Daniel Vinyard (Edward Furlong) a bitter and angry Venice Beach California high school student whose older brother has just been released from prison after three years the same day Daniel has turned in a term paper based on the book Mein Kampf, which stems from Daniel's white supremacists leanings, which his teacher (Avery Brooks) suggests he explore by writing another paper on the true inspiration for his beliefs: his older brother.

Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) was an angry young man, whose hate of anyone not white and protestant seems to have been triggered by the death of his father, manifesting itself into Derek becoming a number one proponent of white supremacy in Venice Beach, sprouting vicious hate propaganda that reaches a fever pitch when two black men try to break into Derek's truck one night and pay with their lives, right in front of Daniel's eyes.

This film is bold and makes no apologies for David McKenna's uncompromising screenplay that offers a powerful indictment on racism on both sides of the spectrum, taking the humorous view of bigotry and prejudice that Norman Lear explored with All In the Family to a new and disturbing level. What's really disturbing here is that Derek has changed upon his release from prison; however, he is unable to erase the influence his past has had on his brother and his struggle to keep his brother from stumbling down the same dangerous path forms the crux of this really ugly story, even though we are privy a little too late as to what changed Derek, it turns out to be too little too late.

Tony Kaye's powerhouse direction is bold and in your face and he has pulled an Oscar-worthy performance from Edward Norton as Derek and an equally powerful turn from Edward Furlong as Daniel that keep this film sizzling. It's not an easy watch, but if you can handle it, it's bold and angry film making that stays with the viewer long after fade out.

I saw Sophie's Choice many years ago, but the only thing I remember about it is the scene where she has to make the choice. It was so powerful that it still stands out in my mind as if I just watched it yesterday. But sadly, I didn't even remember the rest of the cast, and I remember the movie being a very hard watch, so I've never had a desire to rewatch it.

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OPEN FLOOR.

I loved Now You See Me, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Believe me, I won't be re-watching it anytime soon either...not exactly a popcorn movie.

If you want to see two films that are even more powerful than Sophie's Choice, watch these critically acclaimed movies:

Lilya 4-Ever (2002) and Amour (2012)

ONLY YOU

The champagne of contemporary romantic comedy, 1994's Only You is an intoxicating tale of romantic destiny that conjures simultaneous images of Cinderella and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, but is so undeniably charming that I found myself grinning from ear to ear from start to finish.

Directed by veteran Norman Jewison, this is the story of Faith, a schoolteacher who is ten days away from marry a podiatrist named Dwayne, despite the fact that, when she was 11 years old, a Ouija board and a fortune teller informed her that her soulmate was someone named Damon Bradley. While trying on her wedding gown, Faith receives a phone call from a friend of her fiancee's who says he can't make the wedding because he has to fly to Rome on business...he says his name is Damon Bradley and that's all Faith needs to hear. Faith goes the airport, still dressed in her wedding gown and tries to meet her soulmate but she misses him.

Needless to say, Faith's obsession won't allow her to let this rest so she and her sister-in-law Kate fly to Rome to try and track down Bradley. While at a restaurant where Faith has been led to believe Bradley is having dinner, he escapes from his table before Faith can get to him and before she can catch up to him. she meets and falls instantly in love with Peter Wright, an American shoe salesman who, after hearing Faith's story, initially claims to be Damon Bradley, but when the truth comes out, Faith is determined to pursue her destiny while Peter pursues his.

This is a romantic comedy where everything works, starting with a near brilliant screenplay by Diane Drake that pays homage to great romantic comedies of the past, Roman Holiday, in particular...the film even features an homage to that film's most famous scene, but the story has its own dash of originality that makes the story fresh and worth investing in. The story initially has us wrapped up in Faith's destiny and the hope that she will find it, but once we hear Peter's story, we realize that Faith is his destiny and love watching the lengths he goes to in order to prove it to Faith, including attempting to produce Damon Bradley for her. Another refreshing change here is that our leading lady's sister-in-law, a role usually confined to cracking wise and being the voice of reality, actually finds a little romance herself with a charming hotel concierge.

Jewison has mounted a beautiful looking film, featuring gorgeous Rome locations and gets great performances from a wonderful cast. Marisa Tomei is enchanting as Faith, offering one of her best performances as a contemporary Audrey Hepburn (complete with Audrey's haircut). I don't think I have ever enjoyed Tomei onscreen as much as I did here. She creates undeniable romantic chemistry with Robert Downey Jr., who makes Peter sexy, vulnerable, and completely irresistible. Bonnie Hunt, one of our business' most underrated actresses, brings a richness to the role of Kate that really isn't in the script and creates surprising chemistry with both Joaquim De Almeida as her Roman romance and Fisher Stevens as her slightly scummy husband. A cinematic textbook on how to make the perfect romantic comedy that hits all the right notes and goes all the right places.

MADAGASGAR

Dreamworks came up with another winner in 2005's Madasgar, a winning animated comedy that provides equal doses of hilarity and warmth as animal characters with human sensibilities who we are never allowed to forget are really animals captivate us in another variation on the universal theme with a lot of animation: the power of friendship.

The story opens at the Central Park Zoo, where we meet a restless zebra named Marty (voiced by Chris Rock) who, upon his 10th birthday, is yearning to break away from the confines of the zoo and pursue life in the wild, inspired by a small group of penguins, who are planning to escape the zoo and find passage to Antarctica. Now Marty's best friends, a self-centered lion named Alex (voiced by Ben Stiller), a hyponchondriacal giraffe named Melman (voiced by David Schwimmer), and a hippo named Gloria (voiced by Jada Pinkett Smith) are perfectly happy with their comfortable life in the zoo and try to talk Marty down, but to no avail. Marty somehow escapes the zoo and when his friends come after him, they get a real taste of being animals in a human world when they are drugged and put on a ship to Africa but they fall off the ship and end up on a deserted island paradise occupied by a kingdom of tiny animals who refer to our heroes as the New York Giants.

As they did back in 2001 with Shrek, Dreamworks has come up with an imaginative story revolving around animals, utilizing a lot of familiar pop culture references and familiar music that, also like Shrek, might be a little above the intended demographic for this film, but the screenplay by Mark Burton, Billy Frolick, Eric Darnell, and Tom McGrath provides plenty of laughs for children and adults alike. If I had one tiny complaint regarding the story is that it's kind of hard to determine what kind of animals these are inhabiting the island of Madagasgar, because the kind of animals the central characters are is relevant and I wish the animators had been a little more detail oriented regarding the animals on the island. It's a bit of a cliche, but this really IS a movie that the entire family can sit down and enjoy together and probably more than once.

The voice work here is terrific...loved Stiller as the self-centered Alex and Schwimmer as the neurotic Melman as well as Sasha Baron Cohen as Julien, the leader of Madagasgar, who I think is a squirrel, but don't hold me to that, but if the truth be told, the film is completely stolen by those four little penguins trying to get to Antarctica, led by Skippa (brilliantly voiced by Tom McGrath). A warm and winning animated comedy that was followed by a pair of sequels.

It sounds like you liked Only You even more than I did, and I love the movie. I thought Robert Downey Jr. and Marisa Tomei made a cute couple. I've never been a big fan of Marisa Tomei, but I love her in this movie and in My Cousin Vinny.

It's been a while since I saw Madasgar, but I remember it being a fun movie. I think I may have seen one of the sequels too, but I'm not sure. I guess I'm past due for a rewatch.

BTW, King Julian is a lemur, not a squirrel.

I don't even know what a lemur is, but like I said in the review, I had no idea what any of the animals on the island were.

Get Him to the Greek
Jonah Hill's impeccable comic timing is possibly the one thing that might make a 2010 comedy called Get Him to the Greek worth checking out.

This outrageously expensive and over the top comedy stars Russell Brand as Aldous Snow, a burnt out rock star who was actually introduced to movie audiences two years earlier in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Aldous hasn't cut an album in three years since the release of an album he made called "African Child" which was a commercial and critical disaster. But the tenth anniversary of a legendary concert he did at the Greek Theater is approaching and Hill, playing a record company employee named Aaron, has the idea to do a 10th anniversary concert, preceded by an appearance on The Today Show. Aaron's boss (Sean "Puffy" Combs) sends Aaron to London to persuade Snow to do the concert and then to get him on The Today Show and to the Greek Theater on schedule, which turns out to be a monumental task.

The basic plot of this film actually resembles a comedy from 1982 called My Favorite Year, but instead of 1950's live television, sex, drugs, and rock and roll are the now the canvas for this story. The progression of events are pretty much the same though...Aaron has to get Aldous away from the clubs, drugs, and women long enough to get him on a plane back to the states, complicated by Snow's messed up marriage to a trampy rock star named Jackie Q (Rose Byrne) and Aaron's girlfriend (Elisabeth Moss), a serious-minded doctor who wants Aaron to quit his job and move to Seattle with her where she wants to do her residency.

Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, the creative team behind The Five Year Engagement have apparently been given an unlimited budget for this film because there is money all over the place here...the film features expensive on location filming in London, Las Vegas, and Manhattan, not to mention a large cast of well-known actors, some in leading roles and some in cameos, but Segel and Stoller seem to have the juice to attract serious talent and budget for their work.

Don't get me wrong, the film definitely provides laughs, but a lot of them are kind of cheap and uninspired...there's this running joke of Jonah Hill's Aaron vomiting throughout the film that gets very old very quickly, but Hill really is the one thing that makes this film worth sitting through. Russell Brand is pretty much Russell Brand in every movie he makes and Sean Combs is annoying, but what I didn't get is why have Brand play a character from another movie, that Hill also appeared in but have Hill play a different character? The film features a plethora of pointless cameos from a lot of stars, including Brand's leading lady in Sarah Marshall, Kristen Bell, but it's all for naught. This film is a hot mess but hardcore Jonah Hill fans might enjoy it.

THE LOVELY BONES
Another of those movies that offers more questions than answers and flash over substance, 2009's The Lovely Bones is a disturbing and stomach churning drama about a tragic murder and how it affects everyone involved...especially the victim.

Susie Salmon is a 14 year old girl from a happy home with a younger brother and sister, parents who adore her, and has finally caught the eye of the boy at school she's been crushing on from a distance. On the way home from the mall one day, Susie runs into a neighbor named George Harvey, who lures Susie into a trap and when Susie won't do what George wants, she tries to escape and it initially appears that she does, but she didn't...only her soul escaped. We then learn that Susie is trapped in some sort of mystical Purgatory where she is torn between longing for justice regarding her murder and watching her family try to move on.

This is a really interesting idea, looking at a murder from the victim's POV; unfortunately, I wish the screenplay had committed a little more fully to the concept and allowed Susie a little more control of her situation. We are given hope when a connection is firmly established between Susie and her father (Mark Wahlberg) through some spooky visual trappings and we wonder if Susie is going to be able to lead her father to her killer, but the exact opposite happens...as the investigation into Susie's death progresses, George is nowhere near the vicinity of the suspect list. There is a completely aggravating scene that takes place 11 months after the murder where the father suggests to the lead detective (Michael Imperioli) that they start thinking outside the box and offers him a list of people he should look at as suspects and George isn't on the list. This movie angers as it appears that George is going to get away with this.

I liked the idea of seeing a victim unable to go to her final rest because of the way that she died, but the screenplay by Fran Walsh, Phillipia Boynes, and director Peter Jackson, based on a novel by Alice Sebold, never really gives Susie the direct power to affect her family's grief or the pursuit of her killer, so what's the point? That's where this movie missteps for me.

Still, Peter Jackson's direction is imaginative and he gets some first rate performances from Wahlberg, Oscar winner Rachel Weicz as Susie's mother, an eye opening turn from Saoirse Ronan as Susie and especially Stanley Tucci, brilliantly unapologetic as George Harvey in a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. The story is a really good idea that doesn't fully commit, but this is another one of those movies, like Gone, Baby, Gone, that will make you want to grab your kids and never let go.

The Judge
Despite a rambling and predictable screenplay, the 2014 film The Judge is worth seeing because of the brilliant lead performances by Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall, doing what they do best...making mediocre material seem a lot better than it really is due to their talent.

Downey Jr. plays Hank Palmer, a hot shot Chicago lawyer going through a divorce who flies to his hometown in Indiana for his mother's funeral and while there, his father, a local judge (Duvall) is accused of murder, running someone down with his car but was apparently drunk and doesn't remember doing it. As expected with such a set-up, it is no surprise that there are a lot of issues between father and son but this doesn't stop Hank from putting his life in Chicago on hold so that he can defend his father, even though his father would rather have any other attorney in the world representing him.

I've seen a lot of movies in the last several months centered around characters with Daddy issues but this is one of the few films where those issues seem to be at the core of what is going on in this film and that's one of the primary problems with Nick Schenck and Bill Dubuque's screenplay...the hostility between this father and son doesn't make sense when we don't know what these issues are and we have to wait until the final third of the film to find out what these issues are and that's a long wait for a film that runs almost two and a half hours.

But we tend to forgive because Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall, two of our industry's finest actors, keep these characters human and likable and evoke sympathy as well as empathy. Duvall is particularly brilliant, a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination, playing a character who, on the surface, is kind of a jerk, but you know when you forget everything you hate about the character and start loving him? The moment when he meets his granddaughter for the first time...it's a lovely moment that makes you forget what a jackass this guy is.

The story also crafts a strong story of sibling resentment with Hank and his two brothers: Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio) has always been the referee between Hank and his dad, usually siding with Dad and mentally challenged Dale (Jeremy Strong) who just wants the family back that he grew up with. The brotherly dynamic these actors create is solid and believable.

Director David Dobkin's direction is solid as is the supporting cast including Vera Farmiga, making the most of an underwritten role, the late Ken Howard, Denis O'Hare, Dax Shepherd, and the fabulous Grace Zabriskie. A movie this predictable shouldn't be this long, but Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall make it worth your time.

TAKEN

Solid action scenes and an unlikely hero combine to make Taken, a riveting nail-biter from 2008 worth watching because of its seamless marriage of action movie with a central character who is not a superhero, but an ordinary guy with a skillset that comes in handy when it has to.

Liam Neeson stars as Bryan Mills, a former CIA agent who goes into father mode when his daughter (Maggie Grace) is kidnapped while vacationing in Paris and ends up being part of a female sex trafficking ring. The story takes on added dimensions when we learn early on that the people who grabbed Bryan's daughter knew exactly whose daughter they were taking.

Director Pierre Morel really hit a bullseye here not only with an intense and unsettling story that actually plays out quite economically, but the presentation of a new kind of action hero in Liam Neeson's Bryan Mills. Bryan is not Superman or Iron Man. He is a former CIA agent whose past might have influenced this crime occurring, but more than anything else he is a father...I love the scene when his daughter is actually grabbed, quite unlike anything I have ever seen before...he is actually on the phone with her when the kidnappers are coming and tells here where to hide, what to do, and calmly informs her what is about to happen to her and that he will find her. The scene is brilliantly directed and performed...the moment when he hears her being taken over the phone and the look on his face is absolutely heartbreaking. I love when he keeps listening to the tape of her abduction over and over again, a constant reminder that this story, though it involves international criminals, is still the story of a father determined to get his daughter back.

And "determined" is a masterpiece of understatement here...Mills does things in the name of getting his daughter back that he probably never had to do when he was still active with the CIA. He uses resources he didn't think he would have to use and has to turn on people he thought he could trust who have betrayed him. Mills tortures people and deliberately hurts innocent bystanders in pursuit of his daughter, but the odds are stacked against him and we understand. It is fascinating watching Mills piece together what happened...I love when he is able to get an ID of the guy who took his daughter and wastes no time finding the guy, even if it is no avail.

Liam Neeson created a new kind of action hero here because the through line of his character is always that of a father, and not of an FBI agent and that's why we forgive some of the unforgivable things he does. We never doubt that this guy is not going to get his daughter back but it doesn't make watching him do it any less exciting. Loved this movie and am looking forward to the sequels.

OLIVER AND COMPANY
The Disney Studios actually went to the classics, specifically the most famous work of Charles Dickens as the inspiration for an entertaining animated diversion called Oliver and Company that takes full advantage of the lack of limitation in legitimate animated storytelling.

The Disney Studios have always had a couple of universal themes at the core of a lot of their most famous work. Either the story is either an animal's point of view in the human world or it involves two different kinds of animals who, in real life, are natural enemies and this film combines both of these themes quite effectively.

Now if you're going to update Dickens for an animated film, where else would you set it but New York City. In the middle of Manhattan we meet Oliver (voiced by Joey Lawrence), who is an orphaned kitten whose brothers and sisters were all adopted who finds himself involved in a scheme with a dog named Dodger (voiced by Billy Joel) to get something to eat. Dodger tries to g keep the food for himself but Oliver follows him where he is introduced to a rag tag group of dog thieves, including a highly intelligent bulldog named Francis (voiced by Roscoe Lee Browne) who likes educational TV, a loud-mouthed chihuahua named Tito (voiced by Cheech Marin), and a sexy Afghan hound named Rita (voiced by Sheryl Lee Ralph) who take turns stealing dinner on a daily basis.

The dogs have a human leader named Fagin (voiced by Dom De Luise), who owes a lot of money to a slick gangster named Sykes (voiced by Robert Loggia) and decides to use Oliver to get it when Oliver unexpectedly gets adopted by a little rich girl, whose pet poodle named Georgette (voiced by Bette Midler) is not feeling Oliver's presence at all and schemes to get Oliver out of the mansion.

As one might expect, it gets a bit confusing at times to remember which characters are human and which are not, but then again, it's Disney and its animation, so logic just sort of goes out the window and we just let an entertaining story flow over us. The movie features some clever songs including "Once Upon a Time in New York City", "Why Should I Worry", and the showstopping "Perfect Isn't Easy", brilliantly performed by Midler.

The voice work is quite good...can't believe Billy Joel never did anymore voice work after this, but if the truth be told, Bette Midler totally steals the show as Georgette. There was a little air of sadness of this for me as I watched as a lot of people doing the voice work here are no longer with us, but children won't be aware of that and they are the intended demographic here and, on that level, this works.

THE FISHER KING

For those who like movies that are rich with colorful and eccentric characters, touches of comic and dramatic fantasy, and arresting visual images all wrapped inside a moving and vividly human story, you don't have to look any further than 1991's The Fisher King, a moving story about the power of guilt and redemption.

Jeff Bridges turns in a delightfully unhinged performance as Jack Lucas, a radio "shock jock" whose abuse of a fan on the air inadvertently led to a terrible tragedy. Three years later, Jack has quit the radio, is despondent, drinking heavily, and is working in a video store and sleeping with the owner (Mercedes Ruehl). He meets a deranged homeless man named Perry (Robin Williams) who gets Jack out of a serious scrape before Jack learns that Perry was severely affected by the aforementioned tragedy three years before.

Jack decides he might be able to find redemption for his part in the tragedy if he can help this man. The man initially won't take the $70 that Jack offers him so Jack decides to help Perry meet a woman (Amanda Plummer) who he's been stalking all over Manhattan for two years because he claims he's in love with her.

Screenwriter Richard LaGravanese (who also makes a cameo in the film as a mental patient) has given us a complex story all based around the questionable moral compass of Jack Lucas...this guy does a lot of right things for the wrong reasons, but really has no idea that his reasoning his skewed, which makes it hard to fault what he tries to do but it doesn't excuse it and you can see the motivation behind every move he makes with Perry from a mile away. I love that Jack actually thinks he can erase his guilt with $70. The predictability of Jack's actions is in direct conflict with his intentions, whether it's with Perry or with his video store owner girlfriend, who clearly literally scooped Jack up from the gutter and saved him from complete self-destruction and his gratitude appears to be love in her eyes, though it's evident from their first moments onscreen together that Jack doesn't love this woman.

Director Terry Gilliam employs some imaginative camera work and expects the audience to accept a lot. It's never really directly addressed, but I think there are deeper mental health issues with Perry than the tragedy three years ago but a scene inserted in the final act seems to make us want to believe that this is all it is.

Gilliam also manages some strong character reveal through the performances he got from this terrific cast. Bridges owns the flawed and fascinating Jack and Robin Williams' Oscar nominated performance might seem a bit over the top to some, but there wasn't one thing the late actor did in this performance that I didn't buy or wasn't moved by. Ruehl won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her raw and gutsy turn as Jack's girlfriend who has on rose colored glasses regarding her relationship with Jack and Amanda Plummer is delightfully loopy as the object of Perry's affections. The happy ending seems to fall into place a little too quickly, but most of this film is a slightly uncomfortable but very fulfilling journey.

I turned that sucker off when I tried watching it. Bored me. I am so not much of a Terry Gilliam fan (Brazil was actually okay).

This was actually my second attempt at watching it...the first time I tried I turned it off about 20 minutes in...

THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER
Our favorite agents from the Rescue Aid Society are recruited for one more mission in this 1991 sequel to The Rescuers.

A little boy in Australia named Cody (voiced by Adam Ryen) helps a rare bald eagle out of a trap so that she can return to her unhatched eggs. It is revealed that the daddy eagle is already the property of an evil poacher called McLeach (brilliantly voiced by George C. Scott) and now he wants Mama and the eggs and he figures the only way to get to Mama ad the eggs is through the boy so he kidnaps him.

After a very complex telecommunication process which involves multiple tin cans and broken keyboards, it has already been decided that Bernard (voiced by Bob Newhart) and Bianca (voiced by Eva Gabor) will take the case, but they have to be tracked down at a very elegant restaurant where they are sipping champagne and Bernard is preparing to propose.

Of course, our hero and heroine put their own plans on hold to help this little boy. They have new transportation this time with Orville's albatross cousin Wilbur (voiced by John Candy) and find a little extra help upon arrival down under, courtesy of a slick-talking Aussie mouse guide (voiced by Tristan Rogers) who shamelessly flirts with Miss Bianca the second he lays eyes on her, which the insecure Bernard is not too crazy about.

I've heard over the years that this film is better than the first one. I'm not absolutely convinced of that but it is, if anything, just as much fun as the first one. I like that the relationship between Bernard and Bianca had progressed between the first film and this one and the bit of Bernard being interrupted every time he tried to propose was kind of played. I also thought the mama eagle was kind of scary, but Candy and Scott were a lot of fun and I loved McLeach's pet lizard, Joanna...their relationship reminded me a bit of The Grinch and Max in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. All in all, a worthy sequel...if you liked the first one...

TRUE ROMANCE
Quentin Tarantino's brilliant screenplay, some eye-popping violence, and a dazzling all-star cast help make 1993's True Romance appointment movie viewing, a blistering tale of losers and dreamers and movers and shakers that leaves a lot of bodies in the wake but provides a wonderful payoff.

The film stars Christian Slater as Clarence, a movie buff obsessed with Elvis who marries a rookie call girl named Alabama (Patricia Arquette) who, upon confronting her pimp (Gary Oldman) in order to clear the air, ends up with a suitcase of cocaine that said pimp stole from someone else. Clarence and Alabama decide to drive to LA in hopes that an old friend of Clarence's (Michael Rapaport) will help Clarence sell the coke, unbeknownst to Clarence and Alabama, the real owners of the cocaine are also on their way to LA to get their coke back.

This movie envelops the viewer from the beginning, not so much by the story itself, but the way the story is told...Tarantino again proves to be a master storyteller who knows how to let a story unfold slowly, let the viewer not only get to know the characters but to get to care about them so that when they're in the thick of it, we're with Clarence and Alabama because Tarantino took the time to take us inside the relationship from the moment they met, even if it was under suspicious circumstances. A connection was made between these two characters that made us care about them immediately and, more importantly, be frightened for them when they opened that suitcase filled with cocaine.

The rest of what is presented here is window dressing to the story of Clarence and Alabama, thus the title of this film, which I never really got until this most recent viewing...this story features stomach churning violence and a lot of very unpleasant people, but these people are all part of the story of Clarence and Alabama, a contemporary romance that takes a lot of ugly and uncomfortable bumps during the unconventional journey.

Director Tony Scott, a proven artist with action scenes thanks to his work in films like Top Gun, Man on Fire, and Enemy of the State mounts some unprecedented cinematic gore here, which had to be enhanced with the presence of Tarantino on the set and you can't tell me he wasn't, because this film has Tarantino written over it...the whole look of it, the slimey characters, the unapologetic violence (the scene where Alabama gets beat up is very hard to watch), the improbable story detours...I kept having to remind myself that Tarantino didn't direct it as well.

The cast is absolutely terrific...I don't remember exactly when Christian Slater's career went south, but this was the last great performance I remember from him, he lights up the screen here in the tradition of Nicholson and De Niro. Patricia Arquette works very hard in the physically and emotionally demanding role of Alabama, a pathetic creature on the surface who has a surprising strength that she reveals at just the appropriate times. The flawless supporting cast includes Dennis Hopper (wonderful as Clarence's dad) who has a fabulous scene with mafioso Christopher Walken that is one of the film's highlights. James Gandolfini also does a star-making turn as the thug who beats up Alabama and other pertinent players in the romance include Saul Rubinek, Val Kilmer, Christopher Penn, Bronson Pinchot, and a scene stealing cameo by Brad Pitt as Rapaport's perpetually stoned roommate, Floyd. A winner that had me smiling, laughing, holding my breath, and fighting tears, right up to the finale, which will have you cheering.