Film Review: Go (dir by Doug Liman)

Posted on September 28, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“What is rock and roll?” — Fire Up The Shoeshaw by Lionrick

In 1999’s Go, Sarah Polley plays Ronna, a supermarket cashier who is on the verge of getting kicked out of her apartment because she can’t pay the rent. (As Julianne Moore put it in Boogie Nights, “My landlord is a real jerk.”) When Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr) approach her and ask if she can hook them up with twenty ecstasy pills, Ronna agrees. Her co-worker, Simon (Desmond Askew), is a low-level dealer and he’s gone to Las Vegas for the weekend. Ronna decides to get the pills from Simon’s connection, Todd Gaines (Timothy Olyphant). Because Ronna doesn’t have enough money to pay Todd, she agrees to leave her friend Claire (Katie Holmes) behind as collateral.

Meanwhile, Simon goes to Vegas with Marcus (Taye Diggs), Singh (James Duval), and Tiny (Breckin Meyer). While Singh and Tiny deal with the consequences of eating too much shrimp and Marcus deals with people assuming that he must work at the casino, Simon nearly burns down the hotel and then manages to piss off both a bouncer (Jimmy Shubert) and his father (J.E. Freeman).

Finally, in the film’s third storyline, Adam and Zack are revealed to be two soap opera actors who are secretly dating and who were busted by a bizarre cop named Burke Halverson (William Fichtner). Halverson wants Adam and Zack to help him set up Todd Gaines. However, beyond that, Halverson really wants Adam and Zack to have Christmas dinner with him and his wife (Jane Krakowski). Adam and Zack suspect that Halverson has ulterior motives and he does. However, it turns out that neither one of them could have guessed what Halverson really wants them to do.

Go is one of those films that seems like the greatest thing ever made when you’re a teenager and you’re watching it at your friend’s house with the volume turned down super low so that their parents don’t come in the room and ask why William Fichtner is wandering around naked while talking to Jay Mohr about cologne. Under those circumstances, it makes sense that the employees of a grocery store would all look like models and that they would spend their break playing the dead celebrity game. When you’re the right age, it doesn’t matter that Todd Gaines is a homicidal drug addict. All that matters is that Timothy Olyphant has probably never been sexier than he was in this film.

Once you grow up, it becomes a bit more obvious that Ronna, Simon, and even Adam and Zack are basically complete and total idiots and that they really have no one to blame but themselves for the trouble that they get into. When you’re a teenager and you watch Go, you ask yourself, “How could anyone evict someone during the holidays!?” When you’re an adult and you watch Go, you ask yourself, “Why didn’t you just pay your rent, Ronna?”

That said, I still love Go. Yes, it’s basically a rip-off of Pulp Fiction, but it’s still an energetic, well-acted, and surprisingly funny movie and I love the soundtrack. I love the fact that the film actually earns the right to be called Go by giving us a narrative that never stops to catch its breath. It’s a film about being young and being stupid and it perfectly captures why so many of us have nostalgia for the mistakes we made years ago. Go was Doug Liman’s follow-up to Swingers and feels like the type of film that would have been produced by Trent and Sue. It’s derivative, irresponsible, and oddly charming. It’s a mix of Los Angeles and Vegas that encourages us all to never stop moving.

Film Review: Swingers (dir by Doug Liman)

Posted on September 28, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Vegas, baby, Vegas!”

1996‘s Swingers is a very quotable movie. “You’re so money and you don’t even know it,” is one of the more famous lines. Whenever I watch the movie, I always laugh when Mike (Jon Favreau) reacts to Sue (Patrick Von Horn) pulling a gun during an argument in a parking lot by saying, “Haven’t you seen Boyz N Da Hood? Now, one of us is going to get shot!” But for me, my favorite line will always be Trent yelling “Vegas, baby, Vegas!” as he drives Mike to Nevada’s best-known city.

There’s a sincerity to the way Trent yells it, one that you might miss on your first viewing. Trent is the aspiring actor who is confident and who always seems to know the right thing to say and who manages to keep his cool no matter how potentially embarrassing the situation. He’s a bit immature and a little bit loud but he’s the type of friend that every group needs. Mike is a comedian who moved from New York to Los Angeles. He hosts a night at a comedy club. He also asks for an application when he goes to Starbucks. He’s just been dumped by his girlfriend and he’s struggling to get over her. He’s still in that stage where all he can talk about is his former relationship. He’s the sweet guy who makes you go “Awww!” and little else.

Trent is convinced that a trip to Vegas is what Mike needs. Mike is trying convince himself that Trent is right. It’s a long and a hot drive. When Trent suddenly yells, “Vegas, baby, Vegas!,” it’s not just his way of keeping Mike awake. It’s his way of promising Mike that things are going to get better. To Trent, Vegas is the solution to all of Mike’s L.A. woes. Once they arrive in Vegas, Trent neve stops believing. It doesn’t matter that he and Mike get exiled from the high rollers table at a casino and end up gambling with a bunch of elderly tourists. It doesn’t matter that the waitress (Deena Martin) that Trent picks up lives in a rundown mobile home. And, in the end, it even doesn’t matter that Mike ends up spending the entire night telling the waitress’s roommate about his ex-girlfriend. What matters is that Trent believes that he has the solutions to everyone’s problems. For Mike, that solution is Vegas. For Sue, it’s playing hockey. Everyone has their own personal Vegas.

Swingers is a classic example of American independent film. Jon Favreau wrote the script and based it on his own experiences as a struggling actor. The cast was largely made up by Favreau’s friends. Vince Vaughn has said that Trent was largely based on himself, which is why he asked that there be at least one scene that revealed that Trent really did care about his friends. The story is deliberately loose. Mike tries to get over his ex-girlfriend while receiving largely useless advice from his friends. Rob (Ron Livington) moves to Los Angeles and provides somewhat gentler advice than Trent. Sue pulls a gun on some wannabe white gangstas and talks about how he grew up on the tough streets of Los Angeles. (He actually grew up in Anaheim.) The effortlessly cool Charles (Alex Desert) declares every party that the group goes to to be “dead.” As a group they spend a lot of time talking about movies. They complain about Tarantino stealing from other directors before an extended sequence of them walking in slow motion down a Los Angeles street while the Average White Band plays on the soundtrack.

The heart of Swingers together is the very real friendship between the characters. with Trent holding it all together. Mike and Sue tolerate each other because they both want to hang out with Trent. Even the momentary crisis caused by Sue pulling his gun on the guys in the parking lot is solved by the fact that the guys all want to hang out with Trent as well. Problems in Swingers are not solved by guns or high-speed chases. They’re solved by video games, beer, dancing, and maybe a trip to Vegas. They’re solved by doing your own thing and not worrying about “the rules.” They’re solved by just being in the right place at the right time. They’re solved by Mike dancing with Heather Graham and then hanging up on his ex right when she’s saying, “I love–”

Today, of course, Swingers is very much a period piece. It’s a film from a time when you actually had to get in a car and drive to Vegas if you wanted to gamble. It’s a film from a period where Mike has to ask permission to use someone else’s phone to call his ex and when there was a grace period between leaving a bad message on a machine and having to worry about anyone having heard it. For me, it’s always interesting to see Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, and Ron Livingston back when they were all still so young and, in the case of Vaughn and Favreau, thin. It’s a film that celebrate friendship, love, and being young enough to still feel like anything can happen.

It’s a film that celebrates everyone’s personal Las Vegas.

Music Video of the Day: Keep Hope Alive by The Crystal Method (1998, dir by Doug Liman)

Posted on March 22, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This video was directed by the same Doug Liman who would later go on to direct Go, The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Edge of Tomorrow, and American Made. He also served as executive producer of The O.C., a show that definitely deserves to be revived at some point in the near future.

With its Jesse Jackson vocal samples, the song may be political in theme but the video feels more like a mini-heist film. It’s better than Stephen Soderbergh’s last few heist films.

Enjoy!

Catching Up With The Films of 2017: American Made (dir by Doug Liman)

Posted on January 14, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh, Tom Cruise.

You magnificent and problematic bastard.

Tom Cruise has become so associated with Scientology and all of its creepy excesses that it’s sometimes easy to forget that he’s always been a pretty good actor and he’s actually getting better with age. In the Mission Impossible films, he’s proven that he can be a better James Bond than Daniel Craig. In Edge of Tomorrow, he and Emily Blunt brought real depth to what could have just been another generic action film. Even as bad as The Mummy may have been, the film failed because of a bad script and bad direction. Tom Cruise’s performance was actually one of the few things in that movie that did work.

And then there’s American Made.

Directed by Edge of Tomorrow‘s Doug Liman, American Made is supposedly based on a true story. At least as portrayed in this film, Barry Seal was an airline pilot who, in the late 70s, was recruited by the CIA to fly over Central America and take pictures of communist rebels. An adrenaline junkie who had grown bored with his day job, Barry quickly agreed and even got a thrill out of the rebels shooting at him as he flew over. Barry was then recruited by the Medellin Cartel and soon, he was flying drugs into the United States while still working for the CIA. While the President was declaring war on drugs, Barry was attending secret meetings at the White House. The CIA set Barry up with his own airport in Mena, Arkansas, where he both trained anti-communist guerillas and arranged for the importation of cocaine into the United States. This went on until both the CIA and the Colombians decided that Barry knew too much and was expendable.

It’s a pretty wild story and, at the very least, some of it is true. It is generally acknowledged that Barry Seal worked for both the CIA and the Medellin Cartel and that the little town of Mena, Arkansas was, briefly, the very unlikely center of America’s drug trade. The film places most of the blame on Ronald Reagan and the Bushes. Of course, if you ask any of the older folks in Arkansas, they’ll tell you that Bill Clinton not only knew about the cocaine coming in to Mena but that he also snorted at least half of it up his nose. Director Doug Liman, himsef, has said that American Made was inspired by the life of Barry Seal but that its shouldn’t necessarily be considered a biopic.

Despite a few scenes where the film tries a bit too hard to duplicate the style of American Hustle, American Made is an entertaining film. That’s largely due to Tom Cruise’s performance as Barry. Cruise plays Barry Seal as man who, no matter what the situation, always managed to have a good time and, watching American Made, you can’t help but suspect that Tom Cruise was having an equally good time playing him. Cruise is at his most relaxed and charismatic in American Made, even managing to deliver his lines in a passable Southern accent. (The rest of the cast is less successful, too often sounding quasi-Texan even though they’re playing Arkansans.) Even after his whole operation has fallen apart and Barry knows that his days are numbered, you get the feeling that he wouldn’t change a thing. He just seems like he’s happy to have had the experience.

(For me, Cruise’s best moment comes after Barry crashes his airplane in a suburban neighborhood. Stepping out the wreckage, covered in cocaine, Barry steals a kid’s bike and says, “You didn’t see me!” before triumphantly riding off. It’s potentially cartoonish but Cruise sells the scene and makes it work. I was sad to discover, while researching this review, that this apparently didn’t actually happen.)

I liked American Made. It never quite becomes the savage critique of American foreign policy that it appears to want to be but it’s still an entertaining film and a reminder that, weird religious beliefs aside, Tom Cruise is actually a pretty good actor.

Film Review: The Wall (dir by Doug Liman)

Posted on September 13, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Wall tells a very simple story.

Opening with a title card that informs us that “President Bush has declared victory,” The Wall takes place in Iraq in 2007. Two soldiers — a sniper named Matthews (John Cena) and a spotter named Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) — have responded to a call for help that came from a pipeline construction site. When they arrive, they see only dead contractors. Matthews and Isaac spend a day watching the site, finally determining that it is safe to investigate.

Of course, as soon as Matthews approaches the site, shots ring out as a sniper opens fire on him. Matthews falls while Isaac finds himself trapped behind a crumbling wall, shot in the right knee and slowly bleeding out. As Isaac tends to his wound and tries to determine whether Matthews is alive or dead, his radio comes to life. The voice, on the other end, initially claims to be an American soldier but Isaac eventually figures out that the voice actually belongs to the man who just shot him. The sniper is an Iraqi who calls himself Juba. He may or may not be a legendary and feared sniper that Matthews and Isaac were discussing mere minutes before being attacked.

And that’s pretty much the entire film right there. For 81 minutes, Isaac tries not to die while Juba alternates between taunting him and demanding to know why he and the American forces have yet to leave Iraq. Isaac claims that America is rebuilding Iraq. Juba claims that the wall that Isaac is hiding behind used to be a part of a school. Isaac tells Juba to fuck off. Juba replies, “We are not so different, you and me,” revealing that, if nothing else, Al Qaeda snipers apparently appreciate a good cliché. If anything, it reminded me a bit of The Shallows, except Blake Lively was now a soldier and the shark refused to stop talking.

I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about The Wall.

On the one hand, it’s a very well-made film. Visually, the film captures the deadly heat of the desert and it makes good use of its limited setting. It’s far more watchable than any movie that exclusively takes place behind a crumbling wall has any right to be. From what I’ve read, it appears that The Wall‘s depiction of both combat and dying is fairly accurate and the film does a good job of putting you in Isaac’s boots, forcing you to try to desperately figure out where Juba could be hiding.

Also, Aaron Taylor-Johnson actually gives a good performance. Since, with a few notable exceptions, Aaron Taylor-Johnon usually bores me to tears, I was shocked to see how good of a performance he gave as the country-accented Isaac. It’s especially impressive since he’s on screen for almost the entire film. It was hard for me to believe that the same actor who was so unbearably dull in Savages was suddenly so watchable in The Wall. However, he definitely was.

And yet, The Wall is also one of the most thoroughly unpleasant films that I’ve ever sat through. Admittedly, that’s probably the way it should be. War films shouldn’t be pleasant and I don’t think anyone could ever accuse The Wall of romanticizing combat. At the same time, the film itself doesn’t seem to be quite sure what it wants to say about war. Juba and Isaac do briefly debate America’s role in the Middle East but their discussion has all the depth of a twitter fight between Bernie Sanders supporter and a Donald Trump voter. Neither Isaac nor Juba are particularly deep thinkers. They’re both fighting and potentially dying for the benefit of others. Maybe that’s the point. The problem is that the film itself doesn’t seem to be quite sure.

The Wall is one of those films where I respect the craftsmanship behind it while, at the same time, having no desire to ever sit through it again.

Arleigh’s Top 9 Films of 2014 (Front End)

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Arleigh

We’re now past the halfway point for the film season of 2014. The year has seen it’s share of hits, bombs and surprises. Many look at the box-office numbers some that these films generate as a sign of their success. Others look at how the critics-at-large have graded these films as a way to determine whether they’ve been successful.

I know some people would list nothing but independent arthouse films as their best. They look at genre and big-budget films as not being worthy of being the best of the year, so far. It’s that sort of thinking that limits one’s appreciation of film, in general.

Does having a 150 million dollar budget mean that a film cannot be one of the best of the year. Past history will suggest that’s not the case. Yet, there are cinephiles out there who will dismiss such films because they consider it as being too Hollywood. The same goes for people who look down upon genre films like horror, scifi, westerns and many others that do not fit their slice-of-life drama study. They’re not existential enough for some.

I’ve come to look at all the films I’ve been fortunate enough to see through the first six months of 2014 and picked 9 of the best (I picked a random odd number since Lisa Marie already does the even numbers thing) no matter their genre, type of film and budget. I’ve picked a couple of scifi films, a documentary, an action-packed blockbuster sequel, a wonderfully made 3-D animated film (itself a sequel), a neo-noir Western, a brutal crime-thriller, an indie horror-thriller and one of the best comedies of the last couple years.

In no special order….

Noah (dir. by Darren Aronofsky)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (dir. by Anthony and Joe Russo)

Cold in July (dir. by Jim Mickle)

How To Train Your Dragon 2 (dir. by Dean DuBois)

Jodorowsky’s Dune (dir. by Frank Pavich)

The Raid 2: Berandal (dir. by Gareth Evans)

Snowpiercer (dir. by Bong Joon-ho)

Grand Piano (dir. by Eugenio Mira)

22 Jump Street (dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller)

My honorable mentions: All Cheerleaders Die, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Joe, Edge of Tomorrow, Lego: The Movie, Blue Ruin, Locke, Under the Skin, Only Lovers Left Alive, The Sacrament