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will_thehighlander
Reviews
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Brilliant, horrific and funny (Spoilers in this review)
I don't normally like writing reviews with spoilers, but this time I can't help it, and if you are planning to watch this film PLEASE don't read any further, this is so crucial it really will ruin the most amazing surprise! However, I see that the tagline for the movie is Vampires, No Interviews. Still, the film starts of conventionally enough, with Clooney and Tarantino in one of his few decent acting roles as brothers on the run from the law. They kidnap Harvey Keital and family, before driving to this Mexican Bar. You start to wonder where this is going, and then all of a sudden - Vampires Appear!! Why!! I mean this is crazy! Where did that come from, it is as if they got together and said, OK, I've got a fairly decent Tarantinoesque crime thriller, lots of violence, Clooney would be great for the role of the sane brother, but I don't have an Act II. Then someone says - I know - lets have Vampires appear led by a sexy sadistic Salma Hayek, and the kidnappers and kidnapped will set aside their differences to fight their undead enemies, and I know, have Juliette Lewis fall in love with George Clooney at the end. I would sincerely love to come into this film completely ignorant again just to watch the moment when they all turn into Vampires, but then again I would also like to go back in time and never go to see Star Wars Episode Franchise I, but we can't have everything can we?!
Reds (1981)
Political insight!!
Reds, a succinct, controversial title totally typical of a major directorial outing by Warren Beatty. We always knew that Beatty was on the left, but a film glamourising a known Communist who defected to the USSR and is buried within the Kremlin. How the studios let him make it is a mystery to me, but I suppose that the name Warren Beatty was enough.
The film is long, and not for the light-hearted. It covers the broad canvas of early 20th Century American socialism. Concentrating first on Reeds efforts to form an American Socialist party, before moving to Russia; Beatty plays Jack Reed, the playboy writer, journalist and socialist. He opposes the war after initially supporting Wilson at the Democratic convention. After the Russian Revolution he becomes enamoured with the newly founded Soviet Union, as does his wife and sparring partner Louise Bryant, marvellously played by Diane Keaton who is excellent as the proto-feminist Bryant. Self-assured and very sexy, and her tragic love triangle between her, Reed and Jack Nicholson's character is brilliant. A number of other actors also crop up, including Paul Sorvino and M. Emmet Walsh.
One of the most important films of its generation, and every movie fan should make this compulsory viewing. Any aspiring left-wing intellectual should also make this compulsory viewing - there were Communists and Socialists in America, and one of them is even buried in the Kremlin. The USSR may be reviled these days, but you cannot deny the hope and utopianism that swept the world in those first few years after the 1917 Revolution. Beatty brings all this marvellously to the screen in Reds.