Tag Archives: LisaGay Hamilton

I review TRUE CRIME (1999) – starring Clint Eastwood and James Woods!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Here at The Shattered Lens, we’re celebrating Clint Eastwood’s birthday on May 31st. I decided to revisit his 1999 film, TRUE CRIME. 

Clint Eastwood directs and stars as ace journalist, Steve Everett, who also happens to be a bad friend, a terrible dad, and an even worse husband. Literally the only thing that he’s got going for him is his “nose,” his ability to sniff out a story where no one else can. Even that has begun to fail him, mostly due to his recents bouts with alcoholism, which he seems to somewhat have a handle on at the time of this story. When a young, beautiful colleague tragically passes away in an auto accident, Steve is given her previous assignment to cover the execution of convicted murderer Frank Beechum (Isaiah Washington). Not the kind to write a human interest “puff piece” like the Oakland Tribune is wanting, Everett begins digging into the past and pretty soon that nose of his starts telling him that Beechum is a victim of circumstantial evidence. Despite his editor Bob Findley’s (Denis Leary) objections, he’s able to convince his newspaper boss Alan Mann (James Woods) to let him dig deeper into the story. As he tries to juggle his myriad personal problems with his growing belief in Beechum’s innocence, Everett is also facing a clock that is ticking down to the midnight execution. Will he be able to find the crucial piece of evidence that will set Beechum free?

TRUE CRIME appears to be somewhat of a forgotten Clint Eastwood film. I saw it at the theater when it came out in 1999, but it was not financially successful, only bringing in $16 Million at the box office. Regardless of that, I still love the film. It’s certainly not perfect. It’s probably too long, Beechum is probably too angelic after being “born again,” and the resolution may be a little unrealistic, but I still enjoyed every second of it. One of the coolest things about Clint Eastwood is his willingness to play such flawed men on screen, yet we still love him. He’s great in this film! Anyone who’s read much of my work knows that my love of actor James Woods goes back to being in junior high and renting his movies BEST SELLER and COP. It’s such a treat seeing the legendary pair on screen together even if Woods’ role is sort of a glorified cameo. Woods is hilarious in his limited screen time. My last shout out is to Isaiah Washington as the innocent man who’s about to be put to death. After all these years and appeals, he’s accepted his fate, but the scene where he tells Everett his story and Everett tells him that he believes he’s innocent is so powerful. Add to that Washington’s scenes with his wife and daughter, and I was very much emotionally invested in this film. Washington’s performance was key to the film working, and he’s great!

Overall, TRUE CRIME is a film that takes its sweet time, but it ultimately tells a tense, engrossing story that ratchets up the tension to 10 prior to its last second resolution. I consider it very underrated and highly recommend it. I’ve included the trailer below:

Film Review: Jackie Brown (dir by Quentin Tarantino)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It took me a while to really appreciated Jackie Brown.

I was nineteen and in college when I first watched the movie.  A friend rented it and we watched it with the expectation that it would be another Tarantino film that would be full of violence, fast music, and stylish characterizations.  And, of course, Jackie Brown did have all three of those.  But it was also a far more melancholy film than what we were expecting and compared to something like Kill Bill, Jackie Brown definitely moved at its own deliberate pace.  That’s a polite way of saying that, at times, the film seemed slow.  It seemed like it took forever for the story to get going and, even once it became clear that Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) and Max Cherry (Robert Forster) were going to steal from Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), it still felt like an oddly laid back heist.  Robert de Niro, the film’s biggest star, played a guy who seemed to be brain dead.  Bridget Fonda brought an interesting chaotic energy to the film but her character was disposed of in an almost off-hand manner.  The whole thing just felt off.  I appreciated the performances.  I appreciated the music on the soundtrack.  But I felt like it was one of Tarantino’s weaker films.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to better appreciate Jackie Brown.  First released in 1997 and adapted from a novel by Elmore Leonard, Jackie Brown finds Quentin Tarantino at his most contemplative.  Indeed, Tarantino wouldn’t direct anything quite as humanistic until he did Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.  If the heist seemed rather laid back, that’s because Jackie Brown really isn’t a heist film.  It’s a film about aging, starring two icons of 70s exploitation.  Robert Forster was 56 when he played bail bondman Max Cherry while Pam Grier was 48 when she was cast as Jackie Brown, the flight attendant turned smuggler.  Jackie and Max two middle-aged people faced with a world that doesn’t really make much sense to them anymore.  (Obviously, it’s easier for me to understand them now than it was when I was nineteen and I felt like the future was unlimited.)  Max bails people out of jail and it’s obvious that he still has a shred of idealism within him.  He actually does care about the people he gets out of jail and he’s disgusted by Ordell’s callous attitude towards the people who work for him.  Jackie is a flight attendant who, when we first see her, looks like she could have just stepped out of a 1970s airline commercial.  Ripping off Ordell isn’t just something that she’s doing for revenge or to protect herself, though there’s certainly an element of both those motivations in her actions.  This is also her chance to finally have something for her.  Jackie and Max are two lost souls who find each other and wonder where the time is gone.  All of those critics who have wondered, over the years, when Quentin Tarantino would make a mature movie about real people with real problems need to rewatch Jackie Brown.

Of course, it’s still a Quentin Tarantino film.  And that means we get a lot of scenes of Samuel L. Jackson talking.  This is one of Jackson’s best performances.  Ordell is definitely a bad guy and most viewers will be eager to see him get his comeuppance but, as played by Jackson, he’s also frequently very funny and definitely charismatic.  One can understand how Ordell lures people into his trap.  Jackson loves to watch video tapes of women shooting guns.  He allows De Niro’s Louis to crash at his place and the scene where Ordell realizes that Louis is thoroughly incompetent is brilliantly acted by both men.  And then you have Bridget Fonda, as a force of pure sunny chaos.  Jackson, De Niro, and Fonda are definitely a watchable trio, even if the film rightly belongs to Pam Grier and Robert Forster.

The older I get, the more I appreciate Jackie Brown.  This is the film where Tarantino revealed that there was more to his artistic vision than just movie references and comic book jokes.  This film takes Tarantino’s style and puts it in the real world.  It’s Tarantino at his most human.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life on The Street 1.7 “A Dog and Pony Show”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC!  It  can be viewed on Peacock.

This week, everyone gets something to do!

Episode 1.7 “A Dog and Pony Show”

(Dir by Alan Taylor, originally aired on March 10th, 1993)

Still struggling to accept their failure to get the arraber to confess to the murder of Adena Watson, Bayliss and Pembleton find themselves investigating another mysterious death.  Jake, a healthy and apparently beloved member of the Baltimore police, has been found dead in a park.  No one is sure about the cause of death but Pembleton suspects that Jake may have been poisoned.  When Pembleton asks Jake’s partner (played by Nick Olcott) if Jake had any enemies, he replies, “Maybe just the Pekingese next door.”

Pembleton is determined to solve the mystery of Jake’s death.  Bayliss is less concerned with the case, largely because Jake was a dog.  Of course, as a member of a K-9 unit, Jake was also a member of the force.  Because Jake was a member of law enforcement, the Homicide unit is required to investigate his death.  Bayliss thinks that Pembleton’s interest in the case is just trying to show Bayliss up in front of Giardello but Pembleton claims that his only concer is seeing that justice is done.  Add to that, Pembleton just happens to like dogs.

And Pembleton does solve the case.  It turns out that Jake got loose and was picked up by an overworked animal control officer (Joy Ehrlich) who, back at the pound, mixed Jake up with another dog who was scheduled to be put down.  She only realized her mistake after Jake died.  In a panic, she dumped Jake’s body in the park.  Having solved Jake’s death, Pembleton and Bayliss attend his funeral.  As Jake’s partner dumps Jake’s ashes into a lake, Bayliss suddenly gets emotional.  He explains that he’s thinking about Adena.  Pembleton, for once, shows some sympathy for Bayliss.  It looks like the two are finally starting to bond and become true partners.  All it took was the death of one dog.  (I’m getting teary-eyed just writing that sentence.)

Meanwhile, Bolander continues to stress out about his relationship with Carol, which is a subplot that I find less and less interesting with each episode in which it is featured.  This time, Bolander and Munch take Carol’s teenage son, Danny (Stivi Paskoski), on a ride-along.  Bolander is disturbed at just how excited Danny gets about seeing a dead body.  When Danny says that he’d love to commit a murder and get away with it, Bolander decides that the kid is mentally disturbed.  He also lets Carol know that he thinks Danny is a bit sick in the head.  I get the feeling this relationship is not going to last much longer and that’s fine with me because Bolander’s love life (or lack thereof) is honestly the least interesting part of this show so far.

While all of that is going on, Crosetti tries to comfort the now blind Chris Thormann, who does not react well to the news that his wife (played by Edie Falco) is pregnant.  I’m not really a huge fan of the Thormann storyline, largely because I find it to be almost unbearably depressing.  But I do have to say that Jon Polito, Lee Tergesen, and Edie Falco all really gave great performance in this episode.

Howard and Felton investigate the murder of a drug dealer’s girlfriend.  This storyline was pretty typical of what you’d expect to see on a cop show.  The most interesting thing about it was the presence of Lawrence Gilliard, Jr. as an associate of the suspect.  Years later, Gilliard would play the tragic D’Angelo Barksdale on the first two seasons of The Wire, a show that feels like a direct descendant of Homicide.  (And, indeed, Richard Belzer did have a cameo as John Munch during The Wire‘s final season so the two shows do take place in the same universe, though it should be made clear that Gilliard is not playing D’Angelo in this episode.)

Finally, a retiring shift commander (played by Michael Constantine) warned Giardello that the bosses want to force out all of the veteran commanders so that they can be replaced by younger men.  As usual, Kotto shined in the role of Giardello, playing him as being the ideal boss.  In a police force where almost everyone else seems to be looking out for themselves, Giardello genuinely cares about the people working under him.

After the emotional intensity of the previous episode, A Dog and Pony Show feels a bit more like a traditional crime show.  It’s definitely an ensemble piece, with everyone getting something to do.  (Even Lewis gets to help out Felton and Howard while his usual partner, Crosetti, tends to Thormann.)  Though this episode doesn’t grab the viewer in the same way as the previous few episodes, it still gives the cast a chance to show off their strengths and it still features enough unexpected moments of mordant wit to keep things from getting too bleak.  (It’s hard not to smile at Bayliss and Pembleton bickering over dogs or at Yaphet Kotto’s delivery of the line, “I’m starting to dislike both of you.”)  This episode shows that, even with a somewhat conventional episode, Homicide could still get the job done without sacrificing its own unique identity.

Film Review: Indiscretion (dir by John Stewart Muller)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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Indiscretion is a strange one.

(And by strange, I mean dull and kind of pointless.)

This film premiered on Lifetime last Saturday but, as I watched it, it quickly became obvious that it wasn’t originally produced for Lifetime.

For one thing, the film was shot on location in Louisiana.  Instead of letting Montreal or Toronto stand in for a generic American city, this film was actually shot on the streets of New Orleans.  (Unfortunately, the film also made New Orleans seem kind of boring.)

Secondly, Indiscretion turned out to be one of those films where the soundtrack would suddenly go silent whenever a character said anything stronger than “damn.”  It was odd because you would see a character very obviously saying something like, “Fuck you,” but you wouldn’t be able to hear the voice.  I guess that was to protect the gentle sensibilities of the viewer but what about people who read lips?

And finally, Indiscretion didn’t feature any of the usual Lifetime actors.  Instead, it starred Mira Sorvino as a frustrated wife and Cary Elwes as her politician husband.  Sorvino’s real-life husband, Christoper Backus, played the troubled sculptor who has an affair with Sorvino and then ends up stalking her family.

So, no, Indiscretion was clearly made to, at the very least, be released straight to video.  It was not meant for commercial television.  And yet, somehow, it ended up making a somewhat awkward premiere on Lifetime.

Anyway, Indiscretion starts out well enough.  It doesn’t waste any time arranging for Sorvino and Backus to meet at a fund raiser and for them to end up having a passionate affair.  Sorvino, of course, claims that it was just a weekend fling and that she loves her husband.  Backus refuses to believe her and soon, he’s worming his way into her family.  He befriends her husband and even gets to go on a hunting trip with the governor of Louisiana.  He also ends up having an affair with Sorvino’s teenage daughter.

(Or, at the very least, he takes some pictures of her, which Sorvino later discovers.  It’s a sign of how haphazardly constructed this film is that you’re never quite sure what’s going on with Backus and Sorvino’s daughter.  Backus also uses one of those old Polaroid cameras to take pictures.  Apparently, troubled artists don’t use digital cameras.)

The problem is that, after the first, artfully-shot sex scene, the film itself slows down to an interminable crawl.  It’s as if the film’s director, editor, screenwriter, and producers all forgot that the audience has already seen a hundred movies just like this one.  Nothing surprising happens and, unlike the best Lifetime films, Indiscretion never winks at the audience or indirectly acknowledges the clichéd nature of its narrative.  The whole thing is just painfully dull and no amount of mood lighting is going to change that.  There is a little twist at the end but most viewers will probably be so bored with it all that they probably won’t even notice.  That’s just the type of film this is.

If you want to see an entertainingly over-the-top and pulpy film about people having sex in New Orleans, I would suggest checking to see if Zandalee is still available on YouTube.