The Last American Virgin (1982)

★
I had a Karen once. Her name was Maria, so I get it. The Last American Virgin has this reputation for being brutally honest about the unfairness of unrequited love and the heartache that follows when the realization settles in that all your best intentions were for naught. Writer and director Boaz Davidson culminates his T&A show with this hard lesson, but he doesn't earn it because of his inability (or unwillingness) to present his characters as anything other than sex-starved teens looking for their next fix. The denouement is there for shock value. It does not serve the purpose its defenders say it does because the characters are shallow, the narrative is scattershot, the sex is sleazy, and the acting is substandard, which prevents us from being truly invested in the story.

Lionheart (1991)

★★½
Growing up, I was a big fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme. He came across as a ripped version of Chuck Norris with the added ability to perform gravity-defying moves along with his signature splits. At the risk of running afoul of Norris, whose accomplishments have been documented in a convenient and inexhaustible list of facts, I would go so far as to declare Van Damme's movies as superior in terms of their variety. Norris always had the no-nonsense approach, while fellow European Arnold Schwarzenegger brought his muscular frame to his action movies. Van Damme was the best of both worlds. He was tough, but could soften up when the situation arose. He also had a magnificent physique. His punches and kicks looked like there was plenty of raw power behind them. His drug habit and waning audience interest in martial arts movies sent his career into the direct-to-video market. For a time, though, his movies were a yearly expectation in theaters, and Lionheart was one of his most polished movies.

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.

Levity (2003)

★★★★
Levity is about a man with a wound so deep that he can't emerge from it and put the past behind him. Twenty-three years prior, Manuel Jordan (Billy Bob Thornton) killed a man in a robbery and spent those years behind bars. He admits that he likes prison, and he doesn't want to leave. He knows that he has done a terrible thing; he feels bad for it and having his life sentence shortened for good behavior was never his wish. As far as he's concerned, he deserves prison, but a review board doesn't agree. Manuel Jordan is a free man.