Movie Review: Oppenheimer (2023)

Genre: Biographical Drama  

Director: Christopher Nolan  

Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh  

Running Time: 180 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1942, theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is recruited by the US Army's General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) to lead a team of scientists in developing a nuclear weapon that could end World War Two. Along with their families, the scientists are based at the purpose-built town of Los Alamos in New Mexico. Previously, Oppenheimer's pre-war education allowed him to meet Europe's top physicists. Once established at Berkeley, he mingled with communists including his lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), before marrying ex-communist Katherine (Emily Blunt). 

After the war, the US is gripped by anti-communist fever and Oppenheimer is subjected to a secretive interrogation to determine if he should retain his security clearance. In the 1950s, retired Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), formerly a high-ranking member of the Atomic Energy Commission, is offered a cabinet post in the Eisenhower administration. His previous interactions with Oppenheimer become a pivotal topic at his senate confirmation hearing.

What Works Well: This epic and stylish biography covers Oppenheimer's scientific, personal, and career milestones with bravado. Director and writer Christopher Nolan adapts the book American Prometheus (by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin) into a gorgeous-looking, fast-moving, cross-cutting story of scientific theory and war reality colliding into a victory imperative. Against a backdrop of shifting global alliances, the drama packs the moral dilemmas, self-doubt, state secrets, and personal rivalries inherent in the development of technology capable of annihilating the planet. The three hours of running time fly by, aided by excellent performances from a stellar cast, with Cillian Murphy brilliantly portraying Oppenheimer as an intriguing combination of accessible and arrogant. 

What Does Not Work As Well: At times, the avalanche of names and characters is overwhelming. While the science is respected, the theory and practical challenges of developing the atomic bomb could have been addressed in more depth.

Conclusion: Explosively enriched entertainment.

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Movie Review: Only You (1994)

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Director: Norman Jewison

Starring: Marisa Tomei, Robert Downey Jr., Bonnie Hunt

Running Time: 109 minutes

Synopsis: Since she was a child, Faith (Marisa Tomei) has believed her destiny is to meet and marry a man called Damon Bradley. Instead she is 10 days away from marrying boring podiatrist Dwayne. When she receives a chance phone call from someone called Damon Bradley who is traveling to Venice, Faith immediately sets off to Italy accompanied by her best friend and sister-in-law Kate (Bonnie Hunt), who has her own marriage problems. In Rome Faith bumps into an American (Robert Downey Jr.) who may just be the man of her dreams, while Kate is pursued by suave Italian shop owner Giovanni (Joaquim de Almeida).

What Works Well: Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr. are an attractive couple and share an effortless chemistry. Director Norman Jewison surrounds them with scenic Italian locations, including Venice, Rome, and the picturesque seaside village of Positano. Some of Tomei's gowns are stellar, while Bonnie Hunt injects the typical sidekick role with more-than-usual substance.

What Does Not Work As Well: The premise is ridiculous, even for a rom-com, resulting in Faith acting like a nitwit. But Robert Downey Jr.'s character is an unreliable serial liar, so maybe they are a perfect match. 

Conclusion: The alluring stars and Mediterranean backdrops are easy to enjoy, just as the entire movie is easy to forget.



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Movie Review: U.S. Marshals (1998)

An action-packed thriller, U.S. Marshals is a fast-paced chase adventure with a rich plot and no shortage of over-the-top moments.

Chicago tow truck driver Mark Warren (Wesley Snipes) is arrested for allegedly killing two Department of Diplomatic Security (DDS) agents at a shootout in the United Nations building parkade. On a prisoners' flight to New York, Warren narrowly escapes an assassination attempt, but in the ensuing melee, the plane crashes. Also on board is US Marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones). He helps rescue most of the flight's passengers, but Warren escapes and is deemed a fugitive.

Gerard assembles his team and gives chase, with DDS officials inserting their agent John Royce (Robert Downey Jr.) into Gerard's crew. Warren is really Mark Sheridan, an ex-government agent caught in a web of betrayal and deception involving state espionage and a Chinese embassy assassin. Sheridan seeks help from his girlfriend Marie Bineaux (Irène Jacob) and makes his way to New York to try and clear his name, with Gerard hot on his trail.

A spin-off from the The Fugitive, U.S. Marshals provides high quality if also occasionally excessive entertainment. Every highlight rides the line between well-done and over-done, director Stuart Baird generally defaulting to a more-is-more attitude, leading to a relatively mammoth running time of 131 minutes. Despite the length, a high level of continuous exhilaration ensures solid engagement.

With quality production values, sharp editing, and frequent scenery changes to keep the visuals fresh, the spectacular scenes arrive early and often. The brilliant plane crash is an epic exercise in what-else calamity. The manhunt then goes through a swamp, followed by a cemetery shoot-out enlivened by a sniper. A breathless pursuit through a New York building ends with a memorable rooftop stunt. 

A complex but comprehensible plot underpins the action, and the central conspiracy is revealed in traceable steps. Of course the fugitive Mark Warren was never going to remain the antagonist, and co-writers Roy Huggins and John Pogue allow the dynamic between Gerard and Warren to gradually evolve as the Marshal starts to understand the layers of subterfuge surrounding events at the United Nations shoot-out.

The trio of Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes, and Robert Downey Jr. provide ample star power to keep up with all the kinetic energy. Jones is the cerebral centrepiece, with Snipes and Downey Jr. offering worthy opponents and pleasing gravitational pulls. In contrast, Gerard's team of agents (Joe Pantoliano, Daniel Roebuck, Tom Wood, and LaTanya Richardson) generally just make up the numbers. Kate Nelligan appears in a couple of scenes as Gerard's boss.

U.S. Marshals covers mostly familiar ground, but with a sparkling polish.



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Movie Review: Zodiac (2007)

An ambitious crime drama based on real events, Zodiac excels at conveying arduous investigative effort. But the film is overlong and burdened with a determination to cover detailed events over many years.

The setting is California, starting in 1969. A couple is shot by an unknown assailant in a Vallejo lovers' lane parking area. Months later, another couple is stabbed near a lake in Napa County. In both cases the woman dies but the man survives. A few weeks later, a taxi driver is stabbed to death in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Chronicle receives a series of letters with encrypted codes from a person claiming to be the murderer. The codes are broken and the killer is labelled Zodiac. One of his letters threatens an attack on a bus full of school children, throwing San Francisco into panic. The Chronicle's acerbic crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) covers the case, while the newspaper's introverted cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) becomes obsessed with uncovering Zodiac's identity. 

San Francisco's celebrated Police Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and his partner Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) are placed in charge, but despite no shortage of leads and suspects they cannot find enough evidence to charge anyone. Fascination with Zodiac diminishes when his letters start to falsely claim credit for every murder in town. The years pass and the case fades from memory, but Graysmith will not give up on his quest to uncover the man behind the symbol.

Directed by David Fincher and written by James Vanderbilt, Zodiac is not short on aspirational scope, tracing incidents from 1969 to 1991. The period details are carefully recreated, and the intricate dedication to details, including many investigative dead-ends, is admirable. The murder scenes are chilling and adopt the victims' perspectives, adding to the sense of mystery surrounding the assailant's identity.

But after a strong start, this is a story with a long and meandering denouement. The initial bursts of fear and apprehension triggered by the murders, followed by coded letters shoving journalists into the story and detectives jumping onto the case, all create high expectations for a cerebral thriller. But to the detriment of the film's entertainment value, Fincher remains faithful to facts that refuse to adhere to genre conventions. 

The middle third starts to sag as the murders stop and limited progress is made on finding the killer. And the final third is endless: Graysmith becomes the sole focus, his obsession consuming his life over many years and long after everyone else stopped caring. The departures from cinematic expectations are admirable, but as Fincher insists on tracking every false lead (at least it feels like it), the ups and downs of an amateur investigation meld into each other with numerous side-trips to duelling handwriting experts. It's all but impossible to keep track of the muddle of names keeping Graysmith away from his long-suffering wife (Chloë Sevigny) and children.

Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal take turns at centre stage as key characters fade in then out of the investigation. The three stars excel at conveying the grinding emotional and physical toll of an intractable case on different personalities, as all three men get in too deep, becoming personally involved and losing parts of their soul. Downey's too-cool-to-care attitude passes the baton to Ruffalo's celebrity detective crashing against bureaucratic ineptitude. Finally Gyllenhaal runs the last lap, a study in personal fixation.

Zodiac embraces details often ignored. The effort is unique, but also an exception that proves the rule.



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Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes (2009)

A private detective thriller, Sherlock Holmes questionably thrusts the famous investigator into the world of non-stop CGI-enhanced action with a curiously dreary outcome.

In London of 1890, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and his friend Dr. Watson (Jude Law) apprehend serial murderer and black magic practitioner Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) just before he kills his latest victim. Blackwood is executed by hanging. 

Months later, Holmes is in an emotional funk due to lack of mental stimulation when his ex-lover and notorious swindler Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), working for a mysterious client, reappears and hires him to find a dwarf by the name of Reardon.

Holmes and Watson locate Reardon's murdered body in Backwood's coffin, the Lord having returned from the dead. With London thrown into a panic and Police Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan) useless, Holmes and Watson uncover a massive conspiracy to topple the government, and have to race against time to stop the world from falling under the influence of a maniac.

The recreated London of the late nineteenth century is the star of Sherlock Holmes, director Guy Ritchie using blue-grey palettes to capture the bustling city in its muddy industrial glory. The visual candy and set designs often provide a welcome distraction from an otherwise bland exercise in dumbing down Sherlock Holmes for a mass audience by amping the thrills towards Roger Moore-era James Bond excess.

Ritchie and his three screenwriters do deserve credit for creating a protagonist faithful to Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, with Holmes a dishevelled, often irritated fiddler, obsessed by experimental concoctions and anything else his curious mind steers him towards when not occupied with crime solving. 

But this is also a private detective movie where prolonged and over-the-top brawls, shoot-outs, explosions and narrow escapes have to intrude into every third scene, and at 129 minutes, the film lugs around obvious bloat. The computer-enhanced set-pieces dominate and detract from any cerebral joy, indeed the detective's final analysis and detailed crime explanation a rushed muddle of nonsense.

Robert Downey Jr. interprets Holmes as athletic and resourceful once he overcomes the mental doldrums, but also a social victim of his sharp intuition. The dynamic between him and Jude Law's Watson veers towards excessively spiky, the script skipping past the foundation of their friendship and straight towards needling.

Visually captivating by needlessly busy, this Sherlock Holmes is more boisterously bare-knuckled than brainy.



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Movie Review: Tropic Thunder (2008)

A satire about actors and their rampant self-admiration, Tropic Thunder is vulgar, bloody and hilarious.

Five actors are part of an expensive crew on location to shoot Tropic Thunder, a Vietnam war epic based on the memoirs of veteran Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte).

• Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) is a fading action movie star with one last chance to salvage a career. 
• Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) is a low-brow comedian and heroin addict looking for respect. 
• Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) is an award-winning method actor who has undergone revolutionary skin darkening surgery to play a black soldier. 
• Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) is a rapper and energy drink promoter attempting to launch an acting career.  
• Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) is a relatively new actor, and the only one who has bothered to read the book or the script.

The director is Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), and he has trouble keeping all the egos in check. Cody (Danny McBride) is the explosives expert, and thanks to Cockburn incompetence detonates a massive explosion when the cameras are not rolling. Back in Hollywood, Rick Peck (Matthew McConaughey) is Tugg's agent, keen to ensure his star has what he needs to survive the jungle ordeal, while studio boss Les Grossman (Tom Cruise) is worried about his investment.

To toughen up the actors Cockburn agrees with Tayback's suggestion to drop them deep in the jungle with no support and film with hidden cameras. But the chosen location is in the Golden Triangle, where the vicious Flaming Gang runs a heroine operation. As the actors wander into the danger zone, Tugg still believes they are filming a movie, but Kirk starts to suspect something is very wrong.

An almost miraculous combination of action, comedy, gore and satire, Tropic Thunder grabs a movie-within-a-movie premise and squeezes hard. Director Ben Stiller wrote the screenplay with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, and they take direct aim at directors, producers and agents within their own industry, but skewer actors with particular venom.

And the film is a spectacular spoof made successful thanks to relatively sharp writing and a terrific cast in top form. Robert Downey Jr. stands out and deserves credit for taking a potentially disastrous blackface construct and selling it as the epitome of method acting. His Kirk Lazarus stays in characters no matter what is happening in the jungle, spouting inane lines about performance art and scoring the film's biggest laughs.

The other unforgettable role is Tom Cruise as producer Les Grossman, screaming scatalogical threats down phone lines and then pulling off legendary dance movies while concocting an evil plan to turn a turkey into a monetary windfall.

Tropic Thunder also features surprisingly effective action scenes, and in classic war movie fashion these are interspersed with character interactions to build up depth. The conversations are often debates as to whether the stranded actors are in a real or make-believe conflict zone, and the surreal topic provides a suitably ridiculous basis to tease out the various personalities, often wracked with deep-seated insecurities or on the verge of full-out panic.

The humour is a combination of lewd, cringy and disgusting with a large dollop of severed body parts, and remarkably, most of it works.

Equal parts obnoxious and fearless, Tropic Thunder is a preposterous explosion.

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Movie Review: Less Than Zero (1987)

A coming-of-age drugs-and-sex morality tales, Less Than Zero oozes style but reeks of plastic music-video superficiality.

Classmates Clay (Andrew McCarthy), his girlfriend Blair (Jami Gertz), and Julian (Robert Downey Jr.) were best friends from wealthy families at their Los Angeles high school. After graduation Clay heads out to college, Blair stays in LA to pursue a modeling career, and Julian dreams of successful business investment ventures using his father's money. At Thanksgiving Clay discovers that Blair and Julian are sleeping together, and at Christmas he returns home for another visit at Blair's request.

Clay finds Julian broke, addicted, and descending into a spiral of hard drugs supplied by slick dealer Rip (James Spader). Julian is still charismatic and dreaming of his next big venture, but running on empty, and owing Rip a lot of money. Clay reconnects with Blair and they rekindle their relationship as they try to help Julian break out of his destructive cycle.

A loose adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' celebrated book about life among LA's decadent teens, Less Than Zero is loud but exceedingly tedious. Self-consciously directed by Marek Kanievska, the film looks sumptuous, with every frame an attempted work of art, Kanievska particularly fond of symmetrical framing and glitzy hyperactive lights puncturing the LA nights. The music, for better or for worse, is the other notable achievement, Less Than Zero featuring a nonstop soundtrack of what passed for cool rock and party tunes in the mid to late 1980s.

Otherwise this is a story about teenagers attending parties and dabbling in unconstrained sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll dreams, but unfortunately the film drops to the vacuous level of its protagonists. Clay and Blair attend party after party, usually looking for Julian as he struggles through his latest drug-induced haze, only to restart the same cycle the next day. Kanievska may have intended the endless succession of parties with throbbing music and stroboscopic lights to meld into one long 98 minutes as a metaphor for lives being wasted on indistinguishable highs, but as a viewing experience, the film dances up a sweat in one place and gets nowhere fast.

Apart from the insatiable appetite for all-night parties featuring flickering mountains of monitors as the decor object of choice, the film struggles to reconcile the main character interactions with their age. Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz, Robert Downey Jr., and James Spader represent core and loose affiliates of the Brat Pack, and here they fail to convince as 19 year olds six months out of high school. The actors range in age from 22 (Gertz) to 27 (Spader), and the dialogue, courtesy of a Harley Peyton script, suggests thirtysomethings rather than spoiled teenagers. McCarthy comes off worst in his perpetual dreamlike state. Downey Jr. and Spader are suitably intense and slimy respectively, while Gertz is adequate.

With plenty of throbbing ostentation, Less Than Zero is not wholly negative, but it is less than meets the eye.

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Movie Review: Iron Man (2008)

A superhero origins story, Iron Man modernizes the comic book hero with a savvy narrative inspired by raging cynicism and a world addicted to weapons.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a genius inventor and weapons builder, and the head of Stark Industries, the world's leading armament manufacturing company. On a trip to war-torn Afghanistan with his main US military liaison James Rhodes (Terrence Howard) Tony is caught up in a firefight, wounded and captured by militants. He is kept alive by fellow prisoner and doctor Yinsen (Shaun Toub). Militia leader Raza (Faran Tahir) demands that Tony build him a sophisticated rocket system, but instead Tony and Yinsen secretly develop a small arc reactor to power a protective weaponized suit of mighty armor.

Tony uses his new invention to escape his captors and return to the United States, and having witnessed the ravages of war he is determined to stop manufacturing tools of death. His mentor and business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) is horrified that Tony could jeopardize the company's profits. Trusting only his personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Tony retreats to his workshop to design and build  a second version of the power suit, determined to develop the capability to put a stop to war.

Directed by Jon Favreau, Iron Man is a sharp action film benefitting greatly from a coiled Robert Downey Jr. performance enjoying the transformative journey of Tony Stark. The origin of Stark as a callous merchant of death gives the character plenty of distance to travel on his way to superhero status, and Downey makes the ride well worth joining.

Refreshingly the film derives most of its joy from personality rather than mayhem, and a large part of Iron Man is about people rather than machinery. Stark's uninhibited and outspoken sarcasm is a deep-seated character trait. This is a man confident in his own abilities and not afraid to speak his mind whether peddling the latest tool of destruction or announcing his intentions to change the course of his corporation. And this being a more-intelligent-than-most origins story, Favreau has the luxury to measure and space out the action scenes, avoiding the sensory overload that commonly plagues the superhero genre.

When it does come to combat and explosions there is no shortage of villains to dispense with, including heartless Afghan militants and more dangerous foes back home. And with the powered suit still in the development stage, Favreau injects plenty of dry humour as things don't quite work as intended and Stark manoeuvres his new invention into the trouble of unintended consequences.

The supporting cast is talent-rich but relatively static. Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrence Howard are game but not provided with enough material to stretch beyond the obvious limitations of their roles.

Fast paced, fun and barbed, Iron Man is an enjoyable blast.

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Movie Review: Air America (1990)

A Vietnam War serio-comedy, Air America is a lightweight and episodic film about civilian pilots engaged in illicit CIA flights over Laos.

It's the late 1960s, and despite official protestations from President Nixon that there is no meaningful US involvement in Laos, on the ground there is a full scale secret CIA operation to drop supplies to friendly forces willing to fight the Vietcong. To maintain the cloak of deniability, a motley crew of civilian pilots are recruited and employed by the fictitious Air America. Charismatic Gene Ryack (Mel Gibson) is one of the pilots, and he is operating a gun-running side business for personal profit. Young pilot Billy Covington (Robert Downey, Jr.) soon joins him, after encountering licensing problems by flying his traffic helicopter too low over the LA freeways.

The Air America flights are also being used by corrupt local military commander General Soong (Burt Kwouk) for drug trafficking, the CIA in effect facilitating the illegal trade in narcotics. As Covington starts to realize the scale of the operation, the danger posed by anti-aircraft fire from undefined "unfriendlies", and the carefree, fatalistic attitude of the pilots, things are complicated by the arrival of a US Senator (Lane Smith) on a fact-finding mission. Meanwhile, a refugee camp run by Corinne Landreaux (Nancy Travis) is located next to an opium-producing poppy plant field, placing a large group of civilians in danger.

Air America is an underwritten, largely inconsequential film, leaning heavily on Gibson and Downey Jr. for star power, plus a soundtrack of late 1960s music. With no real plot, it is doubtful whether director Roger Spottiswoode ever really knew what kind of film he was making, other than holding on to some vague notion that it may be a good idea to meld the cynical comedy of Good Morning, Vietnam with the counter-culture irreverence of MASH.

The result in Air America is a sputtering film punctuated by visual highlights that barely connect to each other. Downey is dangled from a helicopter for a long ride that is maybe supposed to be hilarious, and Gibson and Downey are trapped in a helicopter that in turn is trapped high up in a tree, nose-down. They unbuckle their seat belts for a stunt-man descent that is maybe supposed to be thrilling. These are the sort of scenes that work well in a 90 second trailer, but in the context of a film searching for a purpose, they are obvious crowd pleasers papering over the almost total absence of substance.

The one scene that does work well has Covington crash landing a stricken large transport plane on a dusty airfield. Spottiswoode prolongs the inelegant crash into an endless, sardonic sequence, the plane lumbering to a slow halt thanks to lazy friction and countless obstacles that get in the way but never with any finality.

A really late, desperate attempt to create a moral dilemma for Ryack, with his guns and Corinne's refugees vying for attention, smacks of a tacked-on drama that lands with a dull thud.

Irrelevant and largely forgettable despite the star charisma, Air America falls many lengths short of a useful runway.

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Movie Review: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

A convoluted neo-noir aiming for a hip comic vibe, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang trips all over its attitude and fails to find a soul in the tale of multiple murders set among the Hollywood set.

Harry (Robert Downey Jr) is a petty thief who crashes an audition while escaping the police. He is mistaken for a method actor with talent and ends up at a swanky Los Angeles pool party at the house of retired actor Harlan Dexter (Corbin Bernsen). Harry reconnects with childhood crush Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), and meets private investigator Perry (Val Kilmer), with Perry ostensibly hired to help Harry prepare for an acting role as a detective.

Harry rides along with Perry on a seemingly routine nighttime surveillance assignment that ends with the two of them witnessing a car flying into a lake with the body of dead woman inside. Soon after, Harmony's sister is reported to have committed suicide, but Harmony believes that she may have been murdered. Harmony thinks that Harry is an actual detective and wants him to investigate. Harry and Perry soon find themselves threatened, tortured and embroiled in a sordid familial dispute, as the body-in-the-lake suddenly resurfaces and links emerge between the cases of the two dead women.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang races ahead in search of a cool buzz, but in doing so, the film leaves behind essential elements needed to engage. The characters are introduced in the most cursory manner, and none are anywhere near likeable. To make matters worse, bad things happen to irrelevant people. For the longest time, the dead woman in the lake is an unknown victim. When her identity is revealed, she is no more interesting. And Harmony's sister is dead before she is even introduced. The lack of empathy for any of the characters, dead or alive, becomes a gaping black hole undermining the film's appeal.

Much of the fault lies in the script by Shane Black, best known for penning Lethal Weapon, and here also taking over directing duties for the first time. Black has clear intentions to create a relatively comic film noir packed with irony and irreverence to catch a young audience. It's an admirable goal, but the mix is not quite right. The best moments, such as Harry finding the dead woman's corpse in his bathroom, work more as almost outright comedy, punching holes in any pretense that this could also be a grim drama. Meanwhile, Harry's narration is most unhelpful. Black intentionally aims to make the narrative as complex as possible in a nod to impossible-to-follow classics like The Big Sleep. But Harry's narration, rather than building a sense of cynical frustration, is irritatingly smug.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is left with loads of style devoid of substance, and reasonable performances from a willing cast. Downey Jr. deploys his vaguely puzzled persona to good effect, and is ably supported by a more-engaged-than-usual Val Kilmer. Michelle Monaghan is game but not helped by a character that gets caught in the wide gulf between potential femme fatale and madcap comedienne. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang takes a few shots, mostly misses, and lands with a disappointing clang.

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The Movies Of Robert Downey, Jr.

All movies starring Robert Downey, Jr. and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Less Than Zero (1987)

Air America (1990)

Natural Born Killers (1994)

Only You (1994)

U.S. Marshals (1998)

Bowfinger (1999)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Good Night, And Good Luck (2005)

Zodiac (2007)

Iron Man (2008)

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Chef (2014)

The Judge (2014)

Oppenheimer (2023)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Judge (2014)

A coming home father - son character drama, The Judge achieves impressive heights of emotion and boasts two excellent central performances from Robert Duvall and Robert Downey Jr.. The story ultimately packs itself into too neat a package, but is never less than mesmeric.

When his mother dies, celebrated Chicago defence lawyer Hank Palmer (Downey Jr.) travels home to the small town of Carlinville, Indiana to attend the funeral. Hank has a deeply strained relationship with his father Joseph (Duvall), the long-serving and well respected judge in the community. Joseph is getting on in years and Hank notices that his father is struggling to recall names and events. The evening of the funeral, Joseph's car hits and kills a local ex-convict, and he is arrested for the hit and run murder.

Despite the rift between them, Hank insists on defending his father, and gets reaquainted with his brothers Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Dale (Jeremy Strong). Glen had a promising baseball career truncated by a car crash, while Dale is functional but has a mental impairment. Hank also reconnects with old flame Samantha (Vera Farmiga), who now owns the local restaurant and has a fiery daughter (Leighton Meester). With the prosecution team of Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton) uncovering evidence that appears to prove the judge's intent to kill, Hank has to delve into his painful personal history to try and rescue his father's reputation.

Directed by David Dobkin, The Judge is forceful drama about the present pausing to address unresolved issues from the past. With rich characters, strong emotions and the bubbling stream of family history unexpectedly converging into the headlines of today, the film is an intriguing examination of two men forced to re-examine their relationship. The film creates variety by alternating between the court case and Hank's re-engagement with family, Samantha and his past foibles, providing two narrative streams that nourish each other.

Despite the prevailing tension both in the personal dynamics and the court proceedings, the script by Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque is also peppered by well placed doses of humour. The strategically deployed light touch flows naturally from Hank's big city life clashing with small town sensibilities, and the merging of the past and present sparking whimsy as well as strain.

The two Roberts deliver dedicated performances. Duvall captures the judge as a rightfully proud man not yet ready to accept the creeping damage of failing health. It's an intense, tightly coiled performance, and Duvall demands full attention whenever he is on the screen. Downey keeps up, conveying the bittersweetness of a big city success story confronting the many ghosts of his small town past.

The Judge does wrap up all its story elements into too neat a package. By the time the court case reaches its climax, the reasons for Hank's estrangement from his father have been anchored into every character and event in their common history, in a case where everything is explained, printed on glossy paper, bound in a shiny cover and tidily placed on the coffee table. It's all just a bit too satisfying and detached from the unresolved loose ends commonly cluttering real life. But despite the impeccably precise resolution, The Judge delivers a fulfilling verdict.

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Movie Review: Natural Born Killers (1994)

An orgy of violence intended as a condemnation of society's glorification of criminals and their crimes, Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers is a brave effort that unfortunately falls short. Despite an eye-dazzling style, the script deteriorates just when the message becomes important, the film losing its nerve and diving deeper into blood bath territory.

Mickey and Mallory Knox (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) are on a murderous crime spree in rural New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. Both abused as children, they fell in love as soon as they set eyes on each other, and Mickey self-administered their marriage after killing Mallory's abusive father (Rodney Dangerfield) and submissive mother. Now running wild and killing for fun, their victims include a woman they held hostage to watch them have sex, a gas station attendant seduced by Mallory, and patrons at an isolated roadhouse. As the murder count clicks up to 52, television show host Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.) leads the media in glamorizing the couple and they garner a cult following while on the run.

The pair get lost in the desert and are rescued by a mystical Navajo Indian (Russell Means) who recognizes a demon within Mickey. For the first time the murderers feel some remorse, and detective Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore), himself prone to extreme violence, catches up with them. Held in a maximum security prison where slimy Warden Dwight McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones) is in charge, Mickey and Mallory are targeted in a duplicitous plan to further the careers of McClusky, Scagnetti and Gale.

Co-written by Stone from an original story by Quentin Tarantino, Natural Born Killers is constructed in a brash and vibrant style, filmed with animated quick edits, lighting stunts, crazy camera angles and black and white shots, often juxtaposed within seconds. Stone's intent is to diffuse the violence with an outlandishly cartoonish ethic, and this part of the film works. Mickey and Mallory inflict a lot of damage, but it's presented at the edge of tongue-in-cheek, Stone daring his audience to be shocked when kids are allowed to watch the carnage of Tom and Jerry as harmless entertainment. The soundtrack uses mini-clips from a large selection of bellicose rock tracks to fuel the murderous onslaught.

The intended focus is therefore not the violence but the public reaction to it, and Natural Born Killers races to show the public falling in love with the romanticism of two wild killers on the loose, and the media machine milking the criminals for all the ratings that they are worth. But Stone can't escape being part of the culture that he is criticizing, since Natural Born Killers presents Mickey and Mallory as the only central characters worth caring about.

Their horrific backgrounds and upbringing are sympathetically presented to justify their antisocial behaviour, and all the secondary characters other than Navajo man are much less appealing. With attractive, vivacious performances from Harrelson and Lewis, the criminals are presented in the best possible light, amplifying all the reasons for cultural obsession with outcasts who leave a mark. Jones, Downey Jr. and Sizemore do their jobs in portraying establishment and media characters as two-faced and corrupt, making it easy to cheer-on Mickey and Mallory as they rage against the machine.

Natural Born Killers ultimately has nowhere to go, and so Stone catapults the climax into outright hysteria. Detective Scagnetti clumsily attempts to seduce Mallory, reporter Wayne Gale loses his grip on reality and gets possessed by the very same violence he pretends to be outraged about, inmates turn into blood-thirsty maniacs, and an entire prison is drenched in blood. The mayhem drowns out any opportunity to make a point, and the killers remain icons of a society that meekly settles for the easiest of grotesque entertainment fixes.

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