Shameless Self Expression

When her husband (Billy Green Bush) is killed in a car accident, aspiring singer Ellen Burstyn struggles to make ends meet for her and weirdo son Alfred Lutter. She ends up working as a waitress, and meeting a gruff farmer (Kris Kristofferson) who takes a liking to her. Diane Ladd is the trash-mouthed veteran waitress whom Burstyn butts heads with (for reasons completely unbeknownst to me, I thought Burstyn was just a grade-A bitch to her), Vic Tayback plays the cook, a role he later reprised for the TV series this film inspired, “Alice” . Harvey Keitel plays an obviously nasty charmer Burstyn gets involved with at one point, and a young, tomboyish Jodie Foster plays Lutter’s buddy in a totally superfluous role. Look for a young Laura Dern (AKA daughter of Diane Ladd) at the diner counter at one point.   Frankly overrated and dated 1974 Martin Scorsese ( “Taxi Driver” , “Goodfellas” , “Mean Streets” ) comedy-drama was apparently Scorsese’s attempt at a ‘studio picture’. It real...

Set in 1600s France, with the four musketeers somewhat divided over D’Artagnan’s (Gabriel Byrne) devotion to a selfish and cruel King Louis XIV (Leonardo Di Caprio). Louis earns the eternal hatred of vengeful Athos (John Malkovich) when he cruelly sends Athos’ son Peter Sarsgaard to battle just so he can move in on Sarsgaard’s fiancé. Athos, full of thoughts of revenge is joined by fellow musketeers Jeremy Irons (as the religiously-minded Aramis) and Gerard Depardieu (as the good-naturedly indulgent Porthos) in a plan to rescue France from its ruler. Somehow this involves the imprisoned and masked man whom the vile Louis has had hidden away for years. Who is he and why is this man such a threat to Louis? Where exactly does he fit into the Musketeers plans? Meanwhile, D’Artagnan is conflicted by loyalties to his friends and to his King, no matter the ruler’s (many) flaws.   Terrific supporting cast and a still enthralling story make you forget that Di Caprio was a not-ready-for-...

Emma Stone plays Olive, a smart and pretty, but socially invisible girl at school, whose status suddenly changes when she lies to her best friend (Aly Michalka) about having lost her virginity. An ‘innocent lie’ overheard by bitchy Marianne (Amanda Bynes), an uber-zealot of the Fundamentalist religious kind, Olive’s faux sexual escapade soon becomes the talk of the school. Then a gay friend (Dan Byrd) asks Olive to help him out by lying about having sex with him so everyone will think he’s straight and stop picking on him. And that’s when things start to get out of control, when just about every loser and geek in the school wants to employ Olive’s fake services, and Olive starts to get a reputation. Eventually, she just embraces it, adorning a big letter ‘A’ on her clothing as some way of aligning herself with the heroine of “The Scarlet Letter” , a book she’s studying in class. Penn Badgley plays a former childhood friend who re-enters Olive’s life as a possible suitor. Thomas Haden-C...

Jodie Foster, recently divorced from wealthy ex-husband Patrick Bauchau, moves into an expensive, spacious Manhattan home with her daughter Kristen Stewart (who originally I thought was a boy!). The house comes equipped with one eccentric special feature added by its paranoid former owner- the ‘safe’ haven of the film’s title, intended as a hiding place from unwanted intruders. The panic room is steel-protected, and practically impossible to break into, as well as having its own ventilation system and a phone line not connected to the house’s main line. On their first night in their new home, wouldn’t you know it? Three men (Financially struggling security guy Forest Whitaker, ‘man with the plan’ Jared Leto, and unpredictable goon Dwight Yoakam) break into the house and unfortunately for Foster and Stewart, hiding in the panic room is the worst thing they could do. What these guys want, is in that room! Worse still, Whitaker’s line of work is in the installation of such security measur...

Cop Jet Li’s family are killed in a bomb on a bus planted by a terrorist called the Doctor (Kelvin Wong, dubbed here to sound like John Lithgow doing a really bad Tim Curry impersonation), and two years later he’s stunt man for lily-livered slapstick-y movie star Jacky Cheung (essentially playing...well, you work it out). But when a black-tie shindig the duo attend is interrupted by Wong and his terrorist goons (who plan on stealing priceless jewels located in the same hotel that the party is being held), it’s up to Li to get back into badass cop mode and save the day. Caught in all of this is an annoying reporter played by the sexy Chingmy Yau.   Also known as “High Risk” , this is a badly dubbed 1995 film mixes “The Hard Way” and “Die Hard” , but with some martial arts thrown in between the gunfire, crashing helicopters and explosions. It comes directed by Wong Jing, the prolific scriptwriter of the excellent “The Seventh Curse” , writer-director of the entertaining “The Las...