Police Story (1985)

★★
One of Jackie Chan’s biggest hits, Police Story (1985) is a wildly inventive martial arts movie with lots of action and thrilling chases. Using his signature style of fighting multiple enemies with any prop within reach, Chan is a master choreographer with an endless imagination. Throughout his career, he has staged fights in almost every imaginable scenario, often with a dash of humor throw in to make his movies accessible to all ages. It’s a formula that has served him well for many years and allowed him to gain worldwide recognition. Unfortunately, outside of Chan’s most devoted fanbase, Police Story is not likely to find much approval. The action is all there, and it’s terrific, but the slapstick is bad.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

★★★★
Lieutenant Detective Ed Exley interrogates a man suspected of murdering multiple people in a diner, among them a former cop. Exley has the suspect right where he wants him, or does he? There are two other suspects, and after he sorts through their stories, he realizes that he just uncovered another crime. He shifts his questioning to get answers about the location of a missing girl. This is a small sampling of how L.A. Confidential plays out. It’s a richly layered story taking place in 1950s Los Angeles, a city and era brought to life with Danny DeVito’s opening narration and Curtis Hanson’s brilliant direction. The aforementioned crimes intersect, but even then, it’s half the story. The movie features lots of detours and many characters with different agendas, yet Hanson juggles these elements effectively and it all comes together in a smashing conclusion.

Ambulance (2022)

★★★
Michael Bay is a good director when he just focuses on telling the story and resists his tendency to be in awe of his own vision. He demonstrated that with Pain & Gain and especially 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. He achieves that for the most part in Ambulance. There are times when he can’t help himself, though depending on how much you dislike Bay, that might apply to the whole movie. He was determined to make a tight action picture for little money, yet the final product suggests the studio wrote additional checks to cover Bay’s excesses. Like its titular vehicle, the movie careens wildly and recklessly. Despite the previews, I still wanted to see it. Despite the result, I’m glad I saw it. Whatever Bay’s faults, and there are many, he loves what he does. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, he got antsy and wanted to get out there and make something. While his Hollywood brethren are trolling social media and putting their political illiteracy on full display, Bay just wants to roll up his sleeves and make something entertaining. He can keep on doing it, just as long as he never sits in the director’s seat for the Transformers franchise ever again.

The Other Sister (1999)

★½
Garry Marshall focused his career on making feel-good movies, but with The Other Sister he misfires by failing to deal with the difficult topic of mental impairment. His 1999 release stars Juliette Lewis as Carla Tate, a young woman with an undefined handicap that required her to go to a special school. Her parents and two sisters love her very much, but what should be a challenge for the whole family is reduced to the mother pulling her hair out over what’s best for Carla, creating dispute when none should exist. I’ll admit that I have very little experience working with the handicapped and the commitment involved. I volunteered for a few months in 2001 to provide Saturday morning recreational activities for the mentally disabled in my community, but that’s pretty much it. However, I do recognize when a movie is trying to pit characters against each other to create conflict. Conflict is essential in many movies, but it must arise naturally from characters who are fleshed out so that their dilemma makes sense. Marshall instead creates a playing field much like one of those generic vibrating football board games with plastic players that scamper in all directions.

Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition (1999)

★½
The 30th anniversary edition of Night of the Living Dead will no doubt go down in history as one of filmdom's greatest oddities. In 1968, a group of Pittsburgh filmmakers made one of the scariest horror movies of all time. Night of the Living Dead was groundbreaking, influential and shocking all at once. It went on to continued success on video thanks to a missing copyright notice and eventually spawned two sequels. In 1998, for the film's 30th anniversary, original co-writer John A. Russo wrote and directed new scenes and inserted them into the original narrative. Not since the colorization of old movies have I heard of a more ludicrous form of film rape.

Brother (2001)

★★
Brother made such an insignificant impact on me that only a few hours after seeing it, I have forgotten huge portions of it. This is a movie that will likely slip out from under you like a banana peel. Takeshi Kitano, the writer and director, gives us very little information on the plot. We're supposed to admire his technique, you see. His method here, as in his dull 1997 effort Fireworks, is to pause the action so that we can study the characters, to figure out what they're thinking and to allow the scene to sink in, before he jolts us with sudden and shocking violence. After about a dozen or so scenes like this, I grew impatient.

The Sweetest Thing (2002)

★★½
The Sweetest Thing has an immediate likeability about it. It's kind of sweet, has some funny scenes and the actresses are charming. After giving it some thought, though, I realized that because the movie takes place in the real world, the things that happen in it are far-fetched and included for the sake of shock value. Most of the blame for this can be placed with screenwriter Nancy Pimental. She also writes episodes of South Park, so I can only assume that the extreme sexual nature of The Sweetest Thing can be attributed to that show's influence.

The Chaser (2009)

★★★★
The Chaser starts out as a routine thriller featuring a former cop, now a pimp, who uses his skills to track down a serial killer. It morphs into something more emotional, more raw, and takes twists that are devastating in their impact. The end is an outburst of pure anger, featuring a man driven to rage, gradually realizing the threat in front of him and the extent to which that threat has manifested itself. When it is over, the cop is exhausted, as are we. The story takes a toll on everyone.