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DVD Mulholland Falls
Too much surface. Director Lee (The Edge) Tomahori's noir story serves as a McGuffin to its ripe style. Amid secret agendas and unspeakable acts onscreen you stare at the fall of light across old cops' desks. Musing on super-8 footage of naked Jennifer Connelly, your mind wanders. Ah, yes, an allusion to the opening shots of Chinatown. Roman Polanski's grand reinvocation of the dark intuitions of 1940s noir is there, too, in the sumptuous look, the plump list of stars (Nick Nolte, Michael Madsen, Melanie Griffith, John Malkovich), and the swoony, bittersweet soundtrack. The zigzags of the story that bring together two cheating husbands, one pneumatic babe, and (somehow) homosexuality waywardly recall The Big Sleep. The Atomic Energy Commission subplot feels like an homage to Kiss Me Deadly. With so many other movies to please, by the middle of the film it's clear that the story isn't going to thicken, that for all the amperage in Nolte's performance, for all the male rage in Michael Madsen and Chazz Palminteri, the hints of sexual malfeasance aren't going much past Nolte's domestic guilt about his affair with Connelly. And yet there are rich things. Tracing a path from his girlfriend to the head of the Commission (Malkovich), Nolte listens, hat in hand, to a purring existential science lecture about the invisible world of atoms. "Yeah," Nolte growls, "well, I see too much." Would that the filmmakers had let us see more. --Lyall Bush
Full talent casting, perfect story, great direction
This is one of the best movies in his league.
If u like LA Confidential (great movie¡) u'll love MFalls.
Don't mess with Hoover and I dont mean J. edgar
Let's face it. The director was probably overwhelmed by the talent and let control slip. The movie doesn't quite work until about three quarters way through and enjoyment of it will rest a great deal on whether you like the actors. Me? Most of them could read a relephone book and I would be fascinated. Nick Nolte is just brilliant in this and can pack a whallop with a blackjack not seen since the thirties. Not a great movie but a hell of a lot better than most that go under that name. The big car cruising with the hats aboard, terrific music on the soundtrack, an anti hero who does not take banana from anyone, and great costumes also add to the pleasure of this noir.
Fifties Noir, And Close To Being First-Rate
This an almost first-rate noir-like detective mystery that takes place in Los Angeles in the early Fifties. Almost, but not quite. Max Hoover (Nick Nolte) is an L. A. police detective who leads a group of three other detectives. They call themselves the Hat Squad because they always wear hats and dress well. They also dispense vigilante justice with the winking knowledge of department higher-ups. One morning they're called to investigate the death of a young woman (Jennifer Connelly) whose body has been found at a construction site. It's half buried with just about every bone shattered. Hoover recognizes the face; it's a woman he'd had an affair with for six months before breaking it off to stay with his wife (Melanie Griffin). The investigation into the death reveals that the woman had a number of male friends, that one of them was a general, Thomas Timms (John Malkovich) who was key to the development of the atom bomb. The investigation also uncovers that a friend of hers had secretly, without her knowledge, made films of her encounters, including films of her with Hoover and of her with Timms. It also appears that a film she took for fun shows something that really might affect the atomic defense program. Important people want her tape and the tape involving Timms. When Hoover and his men persist in investigating the murder which may lead to Timms, the tape involving him is sent to his wife. Hoover, already a tough cop used to giving out rough justice, is now determined to solve the woman's murder and to wreak vengeance on those who involved his wife.
The good things about the movie are the performances, the look of the film (if you like how Chinatown and L. A. Confidential looked, you'll know what I mean), and the story line involving the murder and the attempted cover-up. Where the movie fails, in my view, is in two areas. First, the relationship between Nolte and Griffin seems drawn out; her distress and his angst slows the movie appreciably. Second, Tamahori seems to confuse drama with melodrama. This is, after all, a murder mystery. Nolte's relationships with his wife and with the Connelly character seem to me to be too much, too overdrawn and too obvious. This is particularly true at the end of the movie, when Hoover and his wife have their closing conversation.
With all that said, however, on balance the movie is one I enjoyed. The DVD looks great, and with DVD there's always the fast forward button.
The Hot Spot is best known to lecherous film buffs for Jennifer Connelly's topless scene, but this sultry southern noir deserves more than prurient interest. It's arguably Dennis Hopper's best directorial effort (OK, so that's not saying much), and Charles Williams's source novel Hell Hath No Fury finds Hopper in a comfortable B-movie milieu, riffing on Double Indemnity with an overripe tale of sex, greed, and blackmail in an unnamed Texan town. Fresh from the final season of Miami Vice, Don Johnson stars as a shifty drifter, conning his way into a salesman job on a used-car lot, where the boss's insatiable wife (Virginia Madsen) offers him sexual favors and a lovely secretary's (Connelly) innocence is threatened by a percolating scandal. Nobody's really... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Don Johnson - Virginia Madsen - Jennifer Connelly Director(s): Dennis Hopper DVD Release Date: Released the 13 June 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Actor-turned-director Keith Gordon has crafted a touching love story that transcends time, political ideology, and even death. The movie opens in 1974 as Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) watches a TV news report announcing the death in Chile of three American activists, including Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly), his one true love. The story flashes back to when they first met, showing how he was always more conservative, with grand political aspirations, but the relationship worked because they both shared dreams of making the world a better place, one from inside the system and the other from outside. The movie also flashes forward to his life in the early '80s, when he gets tapped to run for Congress. He starts having visions of her, but he is never quite sure if she's a hallucination... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Keith Gordon DVD Release Date: Released the 05 November 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A showcase for bright young stars, Inventing the Abbotts aspires to be the kind of 1950s melodrama--like Splendor in the Grass--that was perfected by directors like Elia Kazan and Douglas Sirk. Calling on the strength of his earlier Circle of Friends, Irish director Pat O'Connor brings many of that film's admirable qualities to this similar ensemble piece (set in late-'50s Illinois), but it's held together by looser and weaker threads. And yet this tale of class division and forbidden love is sensitively written and beautifully filmed, highlighted by two young lovers at the center of an interfamilial conflict.
"Alice is the good daughter, Eleanor's the bad one, and I'm the one that just sorta gets off the hook." That's how rich girl Pam Abbott (Liv Tyler)... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Liv Tyler - Joaquin Phoenix - Jennifer Connelly Director(s): Pat O'Connor DVD Release Date: Released the 13 March 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Very prompt transaction. A good seller. This is a very good DVD. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Betty Kaplan DVD Release Date: Released the 08 October 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A love letter to movies (and the French new wave of the 1960s in particular), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers starts with a 1968 riot outside of a Parisian movie palace then burrows into an insular love triangle. Matthew (Michael Pitt, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), an expatriate American student, bonds with a twin brother and sister, Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel), over their mutual love of film--they not only quote lines of dialogue, they act out small bits and challenge each other to name the cinematic source. Matthew suspects the twins of incest, but that doesn't stop him from falling into his own intimacies with Isabelle. As the threesome becomes threatened, Paris succumbs to student riots. The Dreamers aspires to be kinky, but the results are more... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Bernardo Bertolucci DVD Release Date: Released the 13 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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