The Eric Roberts Collection: Border Blues (dir by Rodion Nahapetov)

Posted on April 18, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2004’s Border Blues features Gary Busey as a wild-haired LAPD police chief who has psychic visions that enable him to track down a mad bomber.

Wow, that sounds great!

Well, believe it or not, that’s really only a minor subplot in this film. The majority of the film is about Andrei Samurov (Rodion Nahapetov), who was the greatest detective in Moscow before he immigrated to the United States. Now, he works in a restaurant and dreams of being the greatest detective in the LAPD. During a trip to Mexico, Andrei meets Larry (Eric Roberts), an American who now helps people sneak across the border. Larry is helping a Russian woman (Anna Nakhapetova) and her daughter make their way across the desert. Larry seems to take a special interest in the woman’s daughter. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Larry’s own daughter died under tragic circumstances.

Oh, and Erik Estrada’s in this too! He plays a Mexican cop named Morales and he yells a lot.

Gary Busey, Erik Estrada, and Eric Roberts!? How could this go wrong? Well, you could stick them all in a film that doesn’t make much sense and which has a plot that is next to impossible to follow. This is one of those movies where you get the feeling that the names were cast first and then a story was built around them. On the plus side, Eric Roberts actually gets a good deal of screentime and turns Larry into a rather interesting character. Larry is menacing but, there are times when he’s almost sympathetic. Roberts gives a good performance but, unfortunately, the majority of the film is focused on Rodion Nahapetov’s unconvincing turn as the greatest detective in the world. Nahapetov both directed and starred in this film and the end result is a vanity project that doesn’t seem to lead to anywhere in particular.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: 69 Parts (dir by Ari Taub)

Posted on April 18, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m going to guess that there’s quite a backstory to the production of the film …. well, I’m really not even sure what to call the film.

The version that I just watched on Tubi was called 69 parts and it clocked in at a little over 90 minutes. It’s the story of gangsters, cops, and one hapless law student in 1979 New York. Jack (Ryan O’Callaghan) needs money to go to law school. His best friend, gambling addict Gino (Johnny Solo), arranges for Jack to get a loan from his uncle, Dennis (Aidan Redmond). However, Gino swears that he can double the loan if Jack goes with him to the tracks. Unfortunately, Gino’s hot tip turns out to be a bust so now Jack is broke and can’t pay back the money. So, Dennis forced Jack to marry Dennis’s mistress so that she can get her green card but then Dennis gets jealous and decides to kill Jack but then he discovers that Jack is the son of an imprisoned criminal associate (Eric Roberts). It’s all a bit too complicated for its own good and the use of multiple narrators, many of whom sound exactly alike, doesn’t make the film any easier to follow.

Tubi claims that 69 Parts was released in 2022. However, on the IMDb, there’s a film called 79 Parts, which is listed as being a few minutes shorter than 69 Parts but it has the exact same cast and the exact same plot. This version was released in 2016, six years before 69 Parts. And then there’s 79 Parts: The Directors Cut, which clocks in at over two hours and which was released in 2019. In short, there appears to be multiple versions of this film and really, I have to be a little bit impressed by the determination necessary to keep re-editing, re-titling, and re-releasing the film.

As for the film itself, the version I saw was a bit too busy and difficult to follow but I appreciated the work that went into recreating the 70s. That obviously take some effort. Aidan Redmond was properly avuncular and menacing as Dennis but Jack was such a wimpy character that it was difficult to really care about him. As for Eric Roberts, he appears for about five minutes and is even less impressed with Jack than I was. Maybe Eric gets to do more in the director’s cut.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special 1982 Edition

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we pay tribute to the year 1982 with….

4 Shots From 4 1982 Films

Fitzcarraldo (1982, dir by Werner Herzog, DP: Thomas Mauch)

Poltergeist (1982, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Matthew Leonetti)

Cat People (1982, dir by Paul Schrader, DP: John Bailey)

King of Comedy (1982, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Fred Schuler)

Scenes That I Love: The Diner Scene from Thief

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Seeing as how I raved about this film and James Caan’s performance earlier this week, it only seems appropriate that today’s scene that I love should come from 1981’s Thief. Here is the famous diner scene, featuring Caan and Tuesday Weld. Caan later said that he considered this to be the best acting he had ever done.

FREEDOM!!!

Posted on April 16, 2025 by Bradley Crain

I’m passionate about movies, but my day job consists of providing high quality tax planning and preparation services for a wide variety of clients in the Central Arkansas area. After a couple of months of 70-90 hour work weeks, April 16th is the day that I can begin to focus a little less on work and a little more on the things I truly love. I can’t wait to continue to share my passion for movies, music, Charles Bronson, Chow Yun-Fat, and so many other things with all of you. I need a few days to get some rest and get my mind straight, but I’ll soon be back to sharing my opinions and my life! Thanks to all of you who read my work! ❤️

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Charlie Chaplin Edition

Posted on April 16, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

136 years ago today, film and comedy pioneer Charlie Chaplin was born. It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Charlie Chaplin Films

A Day’s Pleasure (1919, dir. Charlie Chaplin)

The Gold Rush (1925, dir by Charlie Chaplin)

City Lights (1931, dir by Charlie Chaplin)

Modern Times (1936, dir by Charlie Chaplin)

Film Review: Short Cuts (dir by Robert Altman)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Opening with a swarm of helicopters spaying for medflies and ending with an earthquake, 1993’s Short Cuts is a film about life in Los Angeles.

An ensemble piece, it follows several different characters as they go through their own personal dramas. Some of them are married and some of them are destined to be forever single but they’re all living in varying states of desperation. Occasionally, the actions of one character will effect the actions of another character in a different story but, for the most part, Short Cuts is a portrait of people who are connected only by the fact that they all live in the same city. There are 22 principal characters in Short Cuts and each one thinks that they are the star of the story.

Jerry Kaiser (Chris Penn) cleans the pools of rich people while, at home, his wife, Lois (Jennifer Jason Leigh), takes care of their baby and works as a phone sex operator. Jerry’s best friend is a makeup artist named Bill (Robert Downey, Jr.) who enjoys making his wife, Honey (Lili Taylor), looks like a corpse so that he can take her picture. One of her photographs is seen by a fisherman (Buck Henry) who has already discovered one actual corpse that weekend. He and his buddies, Vern (Huey Lewis) and Stuart (Fred Ward), discovered a dead girl floating in a river and didn’t report it until after they were finished fishing. (The sight of Vern unknowingly pissing on the dead body is one of the strongest in director Robert Altman’s filmography.)

Stuart’s wife, Claire (Anne Archer), is haunted by Stuart’s delay in reporting the dead body. A chance meeting Dr. Ralph Wyman (Matthew Modine) and his wife, artist Marian (Julianne Moore), leads to an awkward dinner between the two couples. Claire works as a professional clown and Ralph ends up wearing her clown makeup while his marriage falls apart.

Earlier, Claire was stopped and hit on by a smarmy policeman named Gene Shepard (Tim Robbins), who just happens to be married to Marian’s sister, Sherri (Madeleine Stowe). Gene is already having an affair with Betty Weathers (Frances McDormand), the wife of a helicopter pilot named Stormy (Peter Gallagher). When Stormy discovers that Betty has been cheating, he takes a creative revenge on her house.

Doreen Pigott (Lily Tomlin) lives in a trailer park with her alcoholic husband, Earl (Tom Waits). Driving home from her waitressing job, Doreen hits a young boy. The boy says he’s okay but when he gets home, he passes out. His parents, news anchorman Howard Finnegan (Bruce Davison) and his wife, Anne (Andie MacDowell), rush him to the hospital, where his doctor is Ralph Wyman. As Howard waits for his son to wake up, he has a revealing conversation with his long-estranged father (Jack Lemmon, showing up for one scene and delivering an amazing monologue). Meanwhile, a baker named Andy (Lyle Lovett) repeatedly calls the Finnegan household, wanting to know when they’re going to pick up their son’s birthday cake.

Based on the short stories of Raymond Carver and directed by Robert Altman, Short Cuts can sometimes feel like a spiritual descendent of Altman’s Nashville. The difference between this film and Nashville is that Short Cuts doesn’t have the previous film’s satiric bite. As good as Nashville is, it’s a film that can be rather snarky towards it character and the town in which it is set. Nashville is used as a metaphor for America coming apart at the seams. Short Cuts, on the other hand, is a far more humanistic film, featuring characters who are flawed but, with a few very notable exceptions, well-intentioned. If Nashville seem to be a portrait of a society on the verge of collapse, Short Cuts is a film about how that society ended up surviving.

It’s not a perfect film. There’s an entire storyline featuring Annie Ross and Lori Singer that I didn’t talk about because I just found it to be annoying to waste much time with. (The Ross/Singer storyline was the only one not to be based on a Carver short story.) The conclusion of Chris Penn’s storyline wasn’t quite as shocking as it was obviously meant to be. But, flaws and all, Altman and Carver’s portrait of humanity does hold our attention and it leaves us thinking about connections made and sometimes lost. Seen today, Short Cuts is a portrait of life before social media and iPhones and before humanity started living online. It’s a time capsule of a world that once was.

The TSL Grindhouse: Nomads (dir by John McTiernan)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1986’s Nomads opens with anthropologist Jean-Charles Pommier being rushed into an emergency room, badly beaten and struggling for his life. Despite the best efforts of Dr. Eileen Flax (Lesley-Anne Down), Pommier dies in the ER. Flax is shocked by Pommier’s death and, naturally, she’s upset that she couldn’t save him. But, at the same time, people die in hospitals. It happens to the best of doctors.

Except soon, Flax is seeing flashes of the events that led to Pommier’s death. Pommier has somehow entered her mind and soon, she’s reliving his investigation into the origins of a group of destructive, urban nomads that Pommier witnessed causing havoc throughout Los Angeles. Pommier often felt like he was the only person who was capable of seeing the nomads and he grew to be tortured by his fear that they were specifically stalking him. We soon learn that there was reason for that….

Now, based on his name, you’re probably assuming that Pommier is meant to be French. And he is! He’s from France, though he considers himself to be a citizen of the world. He’s traveled everywhere, taking pictures of different cultural rituals across the globe. However, in Nomads, the very French Jean-Charles Pommier is played by Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan is, needless to say, not French. He’s Irish, even though a lot of people seem to be shocked when they first learn that. Brosnan normally speaks with an accent that could best be described as a mix of posh London and mid-Atlantic American. Everything about him screams the UK. In short, Pierce Brosnan is one of the least convincing French people ever seen on film and he delivers his lines in an accent that sounds like every accent other than the French accent. Watching this film, I found myself thinking about the Monty Python skit where Terry Jones and Carol Cleveland starred in a French movie. (“I see you have a cabbage.” “Oui.”) Brosnan is not a bad actor and it’s entertaining to watch him overact in Nomads. But there’s nothing French about him and every time that someone referred to him as being French, it totally took me out of the movie.

Which is a shame because Nomads may be narratively incoherent but it’s got some memorably surreal visuals and it does a good job of generating a properly ominous atmosphere. Director John McTiernan (who later went on to do Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt For Red October) makes smart use of slow motion and a handheld camera to keep the audience off-balance. At its best, Nomads achieves a dream-like intensity that makes up for the fact that the story doesn’t make the least bit of sense. The nomads themselves are a memorable and creepy. While Adam Ant plays their leader (and the scene where he smiles as Brosnan attempts to throw him off a building is truly disturbing), the most frightening of the nomads is Mary Woronov as Dancing Mary. Seriously, after I watched this film, I checked all the locks in the house. No urban nomads were going to interrupt me in my sleep!

My suggestion to everyone is to do a Nomads/Nomadland double feature. You’ll never get in another van.

Film Review: Into the Wild (dir by Sean Penn)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

He went looking for America but couldn’t find it.

That’s not actually the tag line that was used to advertise 2007’s Into The Wild but perhaps it should have been. Based on the true story of Chris McCandless, a college graduate who gave away all of his money and then roamed the country for two years before starving to death in an abandoned bus in Alaska, Into The Wild seems to be Sean Penn’s attempt to make a modern-day Easy Rider. Just as Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda crossed the country and met several different people over the course of that seminal road film, Into The Wild follows Emile Hirsch’s Chris McCandless as he takes on the identity of Alexander Supertramp and hikes across the continent. Along the way, he meets and befriends hippies (Catherine Keener and Brian H. Dierker), blue collar workers (Vince Vaughn), wayward teenagers (Kristen Stewart), and, most poignantly, a retired man (Hal Holbrook) who sincerely tries to help Chris make peace with his wanderlust.

You would think that this would be the type of film that would bring out Sean Penn’s worst directorial instincts but Penn actually directs with a very real sensitivity and a willingness to see the good in just about everyone that Chris meets. It is true that, especially at the start of the film, Chris can sometimes be a bit difficult to take. He’s so self-righteous and sure of himself. He mistakes his college diploma for being a badge of experience and occasionally, he can come across as being incredibly condescending. But, as the film progresses, Chris starts to realize that he doesn’t know everything and that he can’t do everything by himself. Sometimes, he does need help, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. The film’s most moving moments feature Chris and Hal Holbrook’s Ron Franz. Ron has the years of experience that Chris lacks and Ron also becomes one of the few people to whom Chris is willing to truly listen. And yet, when Ron offers to adopt Chris and give him a permanent home, Chris’s response is to promise to talk to him about it when Chris returns from Alaska. As Chris leaves, it’s obvious that Ron knows that he’s never going to see Chris again. Dying in Alaska, Chris finally makes some sort of inner peace with the parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden) and the sister (Jena Malone) that he earlier abandoned. It’s an amazingly touching scene. Penn, whose other directorial efforts have been a bit didactic, seems to be willing to grant a certain grace to everyone in the film, even those whose politics or cultural attitudes he might not necessarily share. Penn not only captures the visual beauty of the America wilderness but also the beauty of the people, a beauty that too many other directors chose to downplay.

It’s a strong film and certainly the best of Penn’s directorial efforts. Emile Hirsch is not always likable as Chris but, then again, the heart of the film is found in the people that Hirsch meets and Penn gets excellent performances from his entire supporting cast. Hal Holbrook received a much deserved Oscar nomination. I also liked Vince Vaughn’s performance as guy who teaches Chris about hard work before getting arrested for stealing cable and also Jena Malone as Chris’s sister, the one person who understands him, even if she’s not invited to travel with him.

Into The Wild is a poignant portrayal of both wanderlust and the often-neglected corners of America. Did Chris find a little of something that he was looking for before he died in that bus? One can only hope.

Insomnia File #70: Shortcut to Happiness (dir by Alec Baldwin)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you’re having trouble getting to sleep tonight, you can always jump over to Tubi and watch Shortcut to Happiness, a.k.a. The Devil and Daniel Webster.

When was Shortcut to Happiness released? There’s some debate about that. Though the film’s credited director is Harry Kirkpatrick, it was actually directed by Alec Baldwin. (Please, no Rust jokes.) The film was shot in 2001, in New York City. However, shortly before filming could be completed, the film’s financiers were arrested and charged with bank fraud which led to the film ending up in limbo. A rough cut of the movie appeared at a few film festivals in 2003. By that point, Baldwin had started to distance himself from the film, claiming that he wasn’t given a chance to shoot all of the scenes that he needed to and that the film was taken away from him in post-production. A newly edited version of the film was finally released in 2007, six years after filming began.

Alec Baldwin not only directed the film but starred as Jabez Stone, an aspiring writer who makes a deal with the devil (Jennifer Love Hewitt) to become a successful published author. Stone gets his wish but it comes with a price. In ten years, he will have to give up his soul. Stone becomes rich and successful, writing books that have absolutely no literary merit. He loses all of his friends and, by the time the ten year deadline rolls around, Stone is miserable. Stone sues to keep his soul. He’s defended by Daniel Webster (Anthony Hopkins), a man who Stone thought was just a publisher but who apparently is actually the famed 19th century statesman. (The film is rather vague on this point.) In one of the film’s few funny moments, the jury is revealed to be made up of deceased writers, including Ernest Hemingway and Mario Puzo. The trial plays out and …. well, again, it’s hard to really follow any of the arguments made by either Webster or the Devil. The film is so tonally inconsistent and poorly directed that I was often left wondering if Hopkins and Hewitt had even been on the set at the same time.

Both Hopkins and Hewitt give good performances. The problem is that they both seem to be appearing in different films. Hewitt gives a broadly comedic performance as the Devil, pouting whenever Webster argues with her. Hopkins, meanwhile, seems to be recycling his dignified and very serious performance from Amistad. Meanwhile, Baldwin the director totally miscasts Baldwin the actor. For the film to work, Jabez needs to be young and hungry. Instead, Baldwin comes across as someone who is already old enough to know better than to make a deal with the Devil.

It’s a true mess of a film but worth seeing just because of the story behind it. That said, the 1941 version of The Devil and Daniel Webster remains the one to beat.