Shameless Self Expression

Woody Harrelson plays Larry Flynt, founder and publisher of Hustler magazine, the racier, cruder counterpart to Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine. The film charts the various legal issues tackled head-on by the volatile, stubborn pornographer who fights for freedom of (offensive) speech. Flynt and his magazine become massive targets for Conservative bigwigs like Charles Keating (a wonderfully humourless James Cromwell) and Rev. Jerry Falwell (a dead-on Richard Paul). Courtney Love plays Flynt’s fiery, drug-addicted wife Althea, Edward Norton is Flynt’s long-suffering but loyal lawyer Alan Isaacman, with Woody’s real-life brother Brett Harrelson playing his on-screen brother here. Jan Triska plays an assassin.   Perhaps not quite as impressive now as it seemed back in 1996, this Milos Forman ( “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” , “Ragtime” ) biopic of the infamous pornographer Larry Flynt is still a pretty enjoyable experience. Much as I’m against censorship and I believe in Larry’...

New York fraud investigator Beau Knapp pisses off the CEO of OmniBank, who sends him on a pissweak errand back in his old home town. There he meets grunt-y ambivalence and contempt from his working man father (Kurt Russell), whose family farm is in financial dire straits. The estranged Knapp also gets outright hostility from his messed up ex-soldier brother (Luke Hemsworth) who resents him for leaving after their mother died 10 years back. While working at the local OmniBank branch, Knapp uncovers some criminality involving the Russian mob, as well as a Bitcoin scam among other sketchy local activity. Jeremie Harris plays Knapp’s old school chum who happens to be a hacker and Bitcoin savant. Alexis Bledel and Malaya Drew work for a local art gallery that seems to be knee-deep in criminal no-goodness. Jill Hennessy plays Knapp’s one ally at OmniBank.   Slow-moving, dull 2019 thriller from director John Stalberg, Jr. (who was a production assistant on “Executive Decision” starri...

A defecting Czech scientist is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by the ‘enemy’ side. American agent Stephen Boyd was to receive vital information from the man who is now unconscious and plagued with a blood clot in the brain. Boyd is taken to a top secret facility where he learns of a completely barmy solution to the problem. He is to join a crew of doctors (Arthur Kennedy, Raquel Welch, Donald Pleasence, and William Redfield among them) and to be miniaturised in a similarly shrunken vessel in order to be injected into the body of the comatose man’s bloodstream. They are to operate on the clot with a laser, which is unable to be performed by more conventional means. They are also on a time limit, as after an hour the miniaturisation process will start to wear off. Also complicating matters is a saboteur on board. Arthur O’Connell and Edmond O’Brien are the functionary characters at the facility.   One of the most enjoyable 60s sci-fi films, this 1966 Richard Fleisc...

We begin with a prologue set in 1617 Japan, where we see the characters of Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Sub-Zero squaring off violently. Cut to modern day, and we learn through text that there are two realms – Outworld and Earthrealm (i.e. Earth), and the former has defeated the latter in nine of the ten tournaments of death fights known as “Mortal Kombat” . One more victory and Earthrealm will be conquered, humans enslaved. In order to make sure of this, evil sorcerer Shang Tsung (Chin Han) sends assassins to Earthrealm to wipe out the competition early. We then meet Cole Young (Lewis Tan), who fights for money in mixed martial arts fights in order to feed his young family. One night he is attacked by the super-powered Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim, of “The Raid” ), and is told by former soldier Jax (Mehcad Brooks) to find a woman named Sonya Blade. Blade (played by Aussie actress Jess McNamee) reveals to Cole that she and Jax have been trying to find out all they can about “Mortal Kombat” ,...