Shameless Self Expression

Tough family matriarch Olympia Dukakis has a fairly major heart attack, and as a result, the husband (Jack Lemmon) she has basically been looking after all these years must get used to looking after himself. The strict Dukakis has basically mapped out Lemmon’s entire day-to-day existence for him. Estranged businessman son Ted Danson comes home briefly to help dad re-adjust, but before long, elderly Lemmon is having a series of health crises of his own. In addition to cancer, the old man appears to be increasingly feeble-minded, reverting to a somewhat fantasy existence, perhaps as a result of the shock of the health problems of both himself and his wife. Doctor Zakes Mokae instructs the family to do their best to cope with this change in Lemmon’s behaviour, but stubborn, shrewish Dukakis is having none of it. Kathy Baker plays Danson’s sister, who had previously been helping look after them, whilst Danson was living his own busy life. Ethan Hawke is Danson’s own estranged son (to h...

Diver duo Chris Carmack and Laura Vandervoort eke out an OK living taking out tourists on diving excursions off the coast of Hawaii, whilst dreaming about finding sunken treasure and quitting to live a rich couple’s life. Enter mysterious British couple David Anders and Marsha Thomason, who say they want to search for lost treasure as well, and need our diving lovebirds to take them out. But we soon learn that what they’re really looking for is two containers. Containers that must hold something awfully important, because if they don’t find those containers, it means grave danger for Anders and Thomason from some very bad people. Carmack and Vandervoort don’t want any trouble, but the promise of 500,000 clams (and the fact that Anders and Thomason have already name-dropped them to the baddies) has them coming around to their way of thinking, and away we go. Amanda Kimmel and the aptly named Parvati Shallow appear as bimbo beach volleyball girls for a scene or two. If you enjo...

Troubled, alcoholic, widowed, and possibly racist (and possibly borderline stupid) LA cop Keanu Reeves has his somewhat destructive (or self-destructive) behaviour constantly protected by his bombastic boss Forest Whitaker. Whitaker has a team of law-bending officers to be judge, jury, and executioner. The end- saving the day, killing the baddies- supposedly justifying the means. When he hears that former partner Terry Crews has been talking to Infernal Affairs (chiefly the aggressively nosy Hugh Laurie, who doesn’t much like Reeves or his cohorts), he follows the guy to a convenience store to scare him into shutting up. But just as Reeves (who isn’t exactly a dirty cop, so much as a violent, vigilante-style cop) is about to act, a couple of masked burglars storm into the store, and blast away at Crews with machine guns, every convenience store robbers weapon of choice. At one point, Reeves accidentally hits Crews with one of his bullets amidst the chaos. Sensing a shit-storm with ...

James Bond, agent 007 (Sean Connery) is assigned the task of investigating suspected gold smuggler Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe). He eventually uncovers a dastardly plan to break into the famed Fort Knox to detonate a bomb so destructive it destroys the gold reserve in the US to make people more reliant on his own gold. Honor Blackman plays Pussy Galore, Goldfinger’s personal pilot who is seemingly immune to Bond’s charms. Harold Sakata plays Oddjob, Goldfinger’s hulking chief henchman. Shirley Eaton appears briefly as Jill Masterson, an ill-fated person in Goldfinger’s employ. The two films most people cite as the pinnacle of the 007 franchise are “From Russia With Love” and this subsequent 1964 film from director Guy Hamilton ( “Diamonds Are Forever” and the underrated “Live and Let Die” ). Personally, I prefer “Russia” , and place several other Bond films above even that fine film ( “Dr. No” being my favourite), and certainly ahead of this overrated entry. I like it wel...

Lauren Cohan stars as September Jones, a bitchy TV reporter and disgraced former Miss Universe who is inspired to create a new TV show after seeing a prison riot at a prison aptly named Terminal Island (Don’t get it? Look it up on the IMDb). Given that the network she works for is owned by the same Weyland Corporation (hmmm, that sounds familiar too) that owns Terminal Island, she comes up with the genius idea of forcing prison inmates to compete in televised fights for a PPV crowd. She even thinks she has a bonafide champion in Carl Lucas (Luke Goss), who got himself arrested and incarcerated after accepting a getaway driver gig in a bank robbery masterminded by his good friend and mobster Markus Kane (Sean Bean), that went askew thanks to his numbskull fellow would-be robbers. After a while, Miss September (see what I did there?) decides the fights just aren’t enough, and comes up with a new, four-wheeled outlet to satiate audiences’ bloodlust and reap the ratings rewards in the ...