Shameless Self Expression

7 year-old Lexy Kolker lives with her father Emile Hirsch, though at the moment it doesn’t look like much of a life. The house is boarded up, and Hirsch refuses to let the girl outside. One day a series of events see the young girl finding her way outside, where she walks up to an ice-cream van driven by an elderly man (Bruce Dern, in probably his best performance in decades). The old man offers her a ride, she accepts. I mean, free ice cream? Who would turn that down? Oh, stranger danger you say? Never mind that, because pretty soon the old man is claiming to be Kolker’s grandfather and is asking her all sorts of weird questions about special powers and people bleeding from the eyes. Turns out Kolker is indeed special, and there are shadowy government-types (led by Grace Park) after ‘freaks’ like her.   A terrific Bruce Dern performance is wasted in this uninteresting and unoriginal sci-fi flick from 2019. Co-writer/co-director team Zach Lipovsky (director of the terribly chea...

Brad Pitt plays the son of an astronaut who headed an expedition to search for extra-terrestrial life on Neptune 27 years ago. Contact ceased 16 years ago, Pitt’s father (played by Tommy Lee Jones) presumed dead. Now an astronaut himself, Pitt is called upon for a new mission. It appears that Jones may in fact still be alive and Pitt is asked to make contact with the man. First he is to travel to the Moon, before launching on a ship for Mars. It’s from there that he is to try to make contact with his father (a man he spent his whole life terrified of) to figure out what happened to the mission and whether it has anything to do with the strange energy surges currently affecting Earth. Donald Sutherland plays an astronaut who knew Pitt’s father very well, Ruth Negga turns up as an administrator on Mars, Liv Tyler is Pitt’s estranged wife, whilst the usual talking head officials are played by the likes of John Finn and Lisa Gay Hamilton.   There’s been quite a few space travel fil...

Bill Paxton and William Sadler are a couple of Arkansas firemen who stumble upon a map leading to hidden loot in a supposedly abandoned building. When they go their, they find the gold alright, but they also realise the building is a meeting place for local gangsters, headed by smooth Ice-T, and seconded by volatile Ice Cube. When the gangsters are alerted to the firemen’s presence, a Mexican standoff begins with our greedy but none-too-bright firemen outmanned and outgunned and with no way out in sight. But then they find themselves a hostage, in Ice-T’s drug-addicted brother (De’voreux White) to use as leverage. Caught in the middle of all this is an elderly squatter (played by Art Evans) whilst the other gangsters are played by the likes of Glenn Plummer, a video camera-obsessed T.E. Russell (rarely showing his face on screen as a result), hulking Tiny Lister, Stoney Jackson, the underrated John Toles-Bey (where is he these days?), and immaculately dressed Bruce A. Young.   ...

Bad girl Brigitte Skay, her boyfriend Benjamin Lev and their no-good hippie friends hatch a plot to rip-off her wealthy, straight-laced father (Umberto Raho), who has remarried to a younger woman (Rosalba Neri). The idea is to stage a kidnapping of Skay, but as often is the case, what seems like a sure-fire scam quickly unravels.   Deathly dull 1974 Italian thriller from writer-director Luigi Batzella (who gave us the cult classic “Nude for Satan” as well as “The Devil’s Wedding Night” ) wastes the talents (and everything else) of Brigitte Skay and especially and dreadfully underused Rosalba Neri. You’d expect some good saucy, crazy fun from the guy behind “Nude for Satan” , but alas even the near constant nudity from Brigitte Skay isn’t enough to make up for all the thumb-twiddling you’re going to be doing waiting for it to go anywhere. For a film running less than 80 minutes, it feels like an eternity to get to not much of anything at all. It’s also more crime flick than hor...

William Petersen stars as haunted, burnt-out FBI agent Will Graham, called back from retirement by his boss/friend Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) to help track down a serial killer dubbed ‘The Tooth Fairy’, real-name Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan). An expert in serial killer profiling, Graham has been resting up on the Florida beach with his wife (Kim Greist), after getting a psychological pummelling by cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lektor (Brian Cox). Unfortunately for Graham, he’s gonna need the very same past acquaintance (currently jailed) to assist him in tracking down Dollarhyde, who has formed a peculiar bond with a blind co-worker (Joan Allen) whose life may be in very grave danger. Stephen Lang plays gutter journalist Freddy Lounds.   I don’t think I’d ever seen this 1986 Michael Mann ( “Thief” , “Last of the Mohicans” , “Heat” , “The Insider” ) film in its entirety until now, and now having seen it I’d say it’s on about the same level as “Silence of the Lambs” and ...