It’s utterly amazing what one small gesture can do to affect another person’s life. “L’Argent” isn’t so much a crime drama, though it does involve a crime, but it’s more a tale about how every choice creates a ripple, that have an important affect. Director Robert Bresson takes the first part of Leo Tolstoy’s posthumously published 1911 novella “The Forged Coupon” and uses it for the basis of a story about the downfall of various people, all the hand of a forged piece of currency.
Tag Archives: Crime
Not My Day (Nicht Mein Tag) (2014)
A mid-30s bank employee bored with his life and how humdrum things have been for him as of late becomes involved with a bank robber as a hostage at first and subsequently as a more and more willing participant.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Director Jon Watts handles the element of Peter Parker’s life that the previous “Spider-Man” iterations didn’t, offering a compelling coming of age high school drama, whose main character is a super powered being trying to live up to impossible standards. When we meet Peter Parker, he’s a typical teenager vlogging his experience in “Civil War” where he brushed up against a slew of heavy hitting superheroes in an effort to help Tony Stark. When the movie begins Peter is returned to Queens to go back to being just a teenager who happens to be Spider-Man. Peter is a young man always trying to do what’s right and noble, he’s the true underdog of the Marvel Universe.
Baywatch (2017)
Like the original series, Seth Gordon’s “Baywatch” is an anomaly. With the original television series, it was a silly, and moronic action drama that most people weren’t sure should be laughed at, or taken seriously. The same can be said for the movie which itself is never sure if it wants to mock the original series, or create an earnest action movie around the frame work of the show. The Baywatch lifeguards work outside of their jurisdiction and seem to work hard to remind audiences that it’s incredibly far fetched for lifeguards to be investigating gang members and drug smugglers, so the film hops back and forth from slapstick satire to straight laced action comedy.
CHiPS (2017)
“CHiPS” was never a masterpiece of a cop show, but it definitely had its merits. It was a fairly mediocre crime show about two high way police officers going on various adventures revolving around highways and roads of all kinds. What Dax Shepherd does is gut the premise to deliver a generic buddy cop comedy that is also one of the worst movies of 2017. I’ve never seen a movie so ashamed of its own source material (despite “Wild, Wild West”), before. “CHiPS” seems to not only work hard to ignore the fact it’s an adaptation, but also seems to punish the audience for investing time in it. Shepherd’s direction is listless and uninspired, his performance and everyone else is phoned in, and the three man penned script is void of anything interesting or remotely comedic.
Spider-Man (1977)
The Nicholas Hammond starring TV movie* “Spider-Man” is also the two hour TV pilot for the cult classic series “The Amazing Spider-Man.” When you consider the decade, and the budget, “Spider-Man” isn’t too bad of a movie. When I was a kid it was about all we had in the realm of live action Spider-Man, and sadly with its budget we never got banner foes like Green Goblin and or Doctor Octopus. We were instead granted a lot of gangsters, and cronies, as well as the occasional ninja or two (and in this instance, three martial arts thugs with wooden sticks). “Spider-Man” the Movie that sets the stage for the series is a solid iteration of Spider-Man that is altogether a mixed bag.
Battle of Memories (Ji yi da shi) (2017) [New York Asian Film Festival 2017]
Following a procedure to store away a part of his memories and changing his mind, he ends up with memories of murders he may or may not have committed.