Shameless Self Expression

Based on a short story by sci-fi writer Phillip K. Dick (whose stories have inspired “Blade Runner” and “Total Recall” among others), Matt Damon stars as a promising young New York pollie who loses his Senate bid after a minor past indiscretion (Too minor to be convincing if you ask me). He’s about to give his concession speech when he ducks into the bathroom. There he meets the beautiful Emily Blunt, a dancer who is apparently hiding, after having crashed a wedding. They quickly strike a bond, and when he gives his speech, he finds that this chance meeting has inspired him to be unusually raw and honest. They meet again sometime later, but every time they appear to be getting close to one another, something or someone appears to be working against their union. Then one day he walks into a room and sees something he was never meant to have seen, and it forces The Adjustment Bureau (suit and hat-wearing goons led by John Slattery but ruled by the enigmatic ‘Chairman’) to make themse...

Jack Nicholson, a possibly sane man pretending to be nuts, enters an insane asylum and upon seeing how his fellow inmates are treated by an uncaring system, tries to initiate a rebellion. Louise Fletcher is his main antagonist, the cold and clinical megalomaniac Nurse Ratched. Brad Dourif plays an awkward young man who is dominated by his mother and her ‘friend’ Nurse Ratched to the point where he’s painfully shy and accursed with a diabolical stutter. Christopher Lloyd is a combative, insensitive inmate, Danny De Vito is an adorably sweet-faced inmate, and you’ll also spot the familiar faces of Vincent Schiavelli, Sydney Lassick (as your garden variety ‘slightly reluctant shock therapy’ patient), Michael Berryman, and as silent giant Chief, Will Sampson. Scatman Crothers turns up as a gullible, heavy-drinking night guard. A triumph of the human spirit against the barriers of an unfeeling, robotic institution (and its main disciplinarian/instrument, rigid Nurse Ratched), this 1975...

Fred Williamson takes on police corruption that saw his partner ( “Flash Gordon” himself, Sam J. Jones) killed. Gary Busey is a shady DA, Tony Lo Bianco is an unashamedly sleazy cop, the late Bubba Smith (sporting the worst toupee since George on “Seinfeld” ) is one of the few good guys on the force, the also late Charles Napier is Williamson’s typically angry Captain, and Rod McCary is the police chief (he was the bad guy in Williamson’s subsequent “On the Edge” and the kingpin Luke Perry foolishly crossed on “90210” ). In other roles we get David Carradine plays a shady rich guy (I think…more on that later), Andrew Divoff has a shockingly underwritten role as a henchman, and Randy J. Goodwin plays a green PI named after a particular brand of toothpaste that was probably a very funny in-joke for Americans but useless to anyone else because it’s an American brand. Shockingly bad 2000 vanity project for Fred ‘The Hammer’ Williamson, whose Dakota Smith also turned up in the previ...

Based on a book called “Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman”, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a slick and ambitious drug company salesman and ladies’ man (does that make him cocksure?) who starts selling Viagra (in its infancy) and an anti-depressant called Zoloft. One day he’s trying to schmooze a doctor into prescribing his patients one of his drugs instead of schmuck rival Gabriel Macht, and he meets a young Parkinson’s sufferer, played by Anne Hathaway. At first, Hathaway detests him (Azaria has Gyllenhaal act as his assistant whilst examining Hathaway’s breasts!), but before long they’re having sex. Lots of sex. Without any other complications, which at first is beneficial to both. He’s shallow, she doesn’t want to be anyone’s crutch or charity case. But then feelings, as they inevitably do, emerge and this scares Hathaway in particular. George Segal and the late Jill Clayburgh play Gyllenhaal’s parents, Josh Gad is his sleazy, no-hoper brother, Oliver Platt plays a veteran s...

The story of dedicated D.A. Jim Garrison’s (Kevin Costner) pursuit of the truth behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In a massive cast, the most prominent are Sissy Spacek as Garrison’s worried wife, Gary Oldman as the one and only (or is he?) Lee Harvey Oswald, Joe Pesci as toupee wearing David Ferrie (an apparent associate of Oswald’s, flamboyantly gay man, and possible paedophile), Michael Rooker one of Garrison’s loyal co-workers, and Tommy Lee Jones is the flamboyant businessman Clay Shaw, whom Garrison charges with the President’s murder and who he obsessively pursues. Cameos include Donald Sutherland as ‘X’, Garrison’s ghostly Pentagon source, Kevin Bacon as gay convict Willie O’Keefe (who informs Garrison of the homosexual leanings of Ferrie, Shaw, and Oswald as well as an apparent triangulated assassination plan they hatched), Jack Lemmon plays an investigator (who has met Ferrie on numerous occasions), and Walter Matthau a senator who doesn’t buy the ‘O...

Wonderfully-titled film directed by a noted breast fetishist is said to be John Waters’ favourite film, which tells you pretty much all you need to know. A drive-in classic about a trio of go-go dancers (Tura Satana, her lesbian lover Haji, and blonde Lori Williams) who drive their fast cars around the desert. After fooling around with a nice young couple (and kidnapping Susan Bernard, in real-life the first Jewish Playmate!), they hatch a plan to get a hold of wheelchair-bound patriarch Stuart Lancaster’s large amount of cash. Unfortunately, this randy old bugger turns out to be trouble, whilst he has two sons; one named Veggie (Dennis Busch) is mentally retarded but super-strong, the other is an older and comparatively normal, sensitive guy who takes a liking to Bernard. The best-known and best-regarded of the films made by Godfather of ‘Nudie-Cuties’ Russ Meyer ( “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” , “Supervixens” ), this bizarre, well-shot 1966 film is like an amped-up (and seemi...