Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) is a seasoned, respected gambler and occasional con artist. He knows all the tricks, but is getting a little long in the tooth in an increasingly modern world. John (John C. Reilly) is a fool who lost all his money in Vegas trying to win enough to pay for his mother’s funeral. Sydney takes John under his wing to show him where he went wrong.
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This review was originally written as part of my USA Road Trip series at French Toast Sunday.
Terms of Endearment tells the story of a mother and daughter, Aurora and Emma, played by Shirley MacLaine and, from adulthood onwards, Debra Winger. As a young girl, Emma’s father and Aurora’s husband passes away, leaving the two of them alone with one another. Aurora was always an overprotective mother, who also doesn’t seem to leave the house in order to make money, so her daughter is essentially the main focus of her life. Thus when Emma grows up, marries a young Jeff Daniels and has to move away, both her’s and her mother’s lives are forever altered.
Terms of Endearment has a reputation for being a thoroughly depressing story. I knew very little about it, other than it featuring a mother/daughter relationship, so I was expecting an almost constant barrage of one sad thing after another, culminating in literally everyone dying, horribly and slowly. Image It’s A Wonderful Life, but instead of the upbeat ending, James Stewart drowned in an ocean of orphan’s tears. That’s how I imagined Terms of Endearment, so I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this viewing. As it turns out, whilst there is a certain degree of sadness to the story, there’s also plenty of uplifting and even funny parts too. Continue reading
In Korea, 1951, the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital receives two new surgeons in the forms of Captain Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Capatin Duke Forrest (Tom Skerritt). They aren’t what you’d typically expect from army surgeons, preferring to put a large portion of their efforts into relaxing and goofing off instead of actually getting down to work, which doesn’t sit well with the current head surgeon, Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall). Burns, who also shares a tent with the new recruits, is a religious man who abstains from alcohol, so is essentially the polar opposite of the newcomers, so they set about having him removed from the hospital, and he is replaced by the much more fun-loving Captain Trapper McIntyre (Elliott Gould), with whom the guys have many adventures. 
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Will Graham (William Petersen) is a profiler for the FBI who, after getting too close to his previous case, has taken a leave of absence, or possibly even retired, to recuperate and get his head back together with his wife (Kim Greist) and young son. However, his former boss Jack (Dennis Farina) has a case he can’t crack, and must pull Will out of retirement for one last job. A serial killer, dubbed the Tooth Fairy because of the bite marks he leaves behind, has so far massacred two families with several young children each, but he only strikes on the full moon. With the next one a few weeks away, time is running out for the FBI to find the guy, and with no leads to go on it is up to Will to get into the criminal mindset, and to do that he must meet with a former conquest of his, the incarcerated, highly intelligent but ruthlessly vicious mass murdered Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox).
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Bob (Roger Duchesne) is an ageing gangster who, despite being a criminal, is generally a fairly decent guy. He did time for a robbery 20 years ago, but seems to have calmed down in his accelerating years. Paolo (Daniel Cauchy) is his protégé, and Bob has a friend in the police, whose life he saved many years ago. Bob’s one weakness is gambling and, for some time now, he’s been on a horrific losing streak, unable to pick up a single hand. When a situation arises in which Bob needs some money, he, Paolo and a few others concoct a one-last-job scheme to knock over a casino and set them up for life. 
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Marty Piletti (Ernest Borgnine) is 34 years old, works as a butcher’s assistant and lives with his Italian mother (Esther Minciotti) in their family home in New York. All day long his customers tell him he should be ashamed of himself for not being married yet, a sentiment which is compounded by the fact that all five of his brothers and sisters, some of whom are younger than Marty, are married. Every Saturday night has been spent looking for that special someone with his friend Angie (Joe Mantell), and every attempt at finding love ends in failure, so Marty has called time on the game, and given up his search, believing himself too ugly, fat and small to ever attract a girl.
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This review was originally written as part of my USA Road Trip series at French Toast Sunday. I also reviewed the film recently for Blueprint: Review.
Five youths – two couples and the wheelchair-bound brother of one of the couples’ female halves – are travelling through Texas, first checking that their ancestors’ resting places haven’t been disturbed in a recent bout of grave digging, before spending some time at an abandoned house owned by the parents of the brother and sister. However, a creepy hitch-hiker and a very-much-not-abandoned house nearby put something of a damper onto their vacationing plans. Continue reading
Where do I begin with 2001: A Space Odyssey? It’s a film I’ve kind of seen once before, in the background whilst I worked on other things. I’d gleamed a few details from certain scenes, but for the most part I remembered very little, with various podcasts I’d listened to seemingly describing a film I’d clearly not paid anywhere near enough attention to. Thus, I championed it to be the latest Movie of the Month on the Lambcast. It won, I hosted the show (here’s a link to it) and, despite that relatively in depth conversation with Robert, Jess and Nick – all of whom have more experience with this film than I – I’m still a little lost as to how I feel about the film.
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This review was originally written as part of my USA Road Trip series for French Toast Sunday.
If you’re anything like me, before you saw it you knew Brokeback Mountain as just the gay cowboy movie, or that film where Donnie Darko and the Joker get jiggy in a tent. Technically this is true, and it’s the reason the film has such notoriety – it’s not often that such a high profile film centres around a homosexual relationship between two otherwise straight male characters – but there’s a great deal more to this film besides that one aspect. Continue reading
This review was originally written for Blueprint: Review.
John Wintergreen (Blake) dreams of being a detective, but for now is stuck on a motorcycle beat, as his short stature is literally looked down upon by his superiors. However, when he makes a breakthrough, pointing out that an apparent suicide is more likely to be something more suspicious, John is given the opportunity to work alongside brilliant detective Harve Poole (Ryan). Continue reading
Life Vs Film 