Shameless Self Expression

A stripper named Destiny (Constance Wu) is interviewed by an investigative journalist (the perennially underused Julia Stiles) about the events that led to her and her fellow strippers drugging and stealing money from wealthy clients. Jennifer Lopez plays veteran stripper Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), who takes Destiny under her wings. Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, and Cardi B play other strippers.   Supposedly based on true events outlined in a magazine article by Jessica Pressler, this 2019 film from writer-director Lorene Scafaria likely wasn’t aimed at me, but I’m gonna go ahead and state my opinion about it nonetheless. It was on TV, I had nothing better to do at the time, so I watched it and hoped for the best. “Showgirls” crossed with “Goodfellas” made by women, with a female gaze. In theory that might sound clever and worthy of telling. The execution however, is horribly botched with this extremely unconvincing, poorly scripted wannabe. Feminism, the female gaze, and #MeToo ...

An odd couple is formed when circumstances force gruff cop Vic (Dave Bautista) to take an Uber driven by nerdy Stu (Kumail Nanjiani) in order to track down the killer (Iko Uwais) of his partner (a thankfully brief Karen Gillan). All Stu wants is to get the hell over to his drunk and frankly not very nice crush’s (Betty Gilpin) place to have sex, and now he’s stuck playing chauffeur on a police operation. Mira Sorvino plays Vic’s senior officer, whilst Natalie Morales is Vic’s daughter. Jimmy Tatro plays an obnoxious ‘dude bro’ co-worker at Stu’s day job at a sporting goods store.   One of the better buddy cop/odd couple action comedies of late (faint praise?), this 2019 film from director Michael Dowse (the OK sports comedy “Goon” ) and screenwriter Tripper Clancy (co-writer of a couple of German films with Til Schweiger) gets a lot of help from the likeable and funny Kumail Nanjiani. Proving that he can at least eek out two films using his basic awkward milquetoast schtick af...

Set in 1840s London, Boris Karloff plays a kindly and well-meaning surgeon who loathes the pain his surgeries cause patients in the pre-anaesthesia era. He starts to experiment on himself with an early attempt at anaesthesia, with disastrous results. Karloff gets addicted to the chemicals he’s using, and falls in with dastardly slum denizens Black Ben (Francis De Wolff) and the murderous Resurrection Joe (Christopher Lee). This fiendish and greedy duo are in the business of killing and selling corpses and need someone in the medical profession to be able to sign the death certificates to profit from their victims (though the deadly Resurrection Joe also seems to just enjoy killing people for the sake of it). So they blackmail poor Karloff. Betta St. John and Francis Matthews play the requisite young lovers, the latter playing Karloff’s concerned son. Desmond Llewellyn can briefly be seen observing one of Karloff’s painful surgeries.   Perhaps if I’d seen this 1958 variation on ...

Set in the 1930s, Laurence Fishburne is ambitious African-American gangster Ellsworth ‘Bumpy’ Johnson, whose control of the Harlem numbers racket is being threatened by white mobster Dutch Schultz (Tim Roth), and he’s utterly ruthless in that pursuit. This is in somewhat contrast to Lucky Luciano (Andy Garcia), a more business-like crime boss who doesn’t much care for Schultz. Cicely Tyson plays a powerful gangster monikered ‘Queen’, who was once Bumpy’s employer. Vanessa Williams is the nice girl Francine, who falls for Bumpy, despite his criminal misdeeds, whilst Chi McBride plays Bumpy’s loyal cousin and best friend. William Atherton turns up as DA Thomas Dewey.   Laurence Fishburne played gangster ‘Bumpy’ Johnson in Francis Ford Coppola’s rather dull “The Cotton Club” back in 1984. Here he was playing the role once again in this 1997 film from director Bill Duke (Best known by me as an actor in 80s action films like “Commando” and “Predator” ). Scripted by Chris Brancato ...