Every once in a while a movie makes me think, ‘this one’s too good to review, just tell them to see it and they’ll understand.’ John Cusack is a penny-ante small stakes cheat, his girlfriend Annette Bening hooks on the side while seeking a partner for ‘long cons,’ and his mother is an operative for the Mob, placing large bets at the race track to manipulate the odds on select horses. Each worships the ‘left-handed form of human endeavor’ and depends on it to the degree that human trust just can’t be maintained. Paramount’s plain wrap re-issue touts the film’s four Oscar nominations; the Stephen Frears film is the best adaptation yet of a Jim Thompson crime novel.
The Grifters
Blu-ray + Digital
Paramount
1990 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 110 min. / Street Date July 27, 2021 / 13.99
Starring: John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle, J.T. Walsh, Noelle Harling, Charles Napier,...
The Grifters
Blu-ray + Digital
Paramount
1990 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 110 min. / Street Date July 27, 2021 / 13.99
Starring: John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle, J.T. Walsh, Noelle Harling, Charles Napier,...
- 9/7/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Varèse Sarabande Records has released The Buddy Holly Story: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to digital streaming for the first time ever, unveiling a deluxe edition of the soundtrack to the 1978 biopic on Friday.
The deluxe soundtrack contains 11 never-before-heard tracks, expanding the album to 22 songs in total. The additional songs include many of the performances featured in the film, such as “That’ll Be the Day,” “Mockingbird Hill” and “Tennessee Waltz” performed by Gary Busey (as Buddy Holly), “Chantilly Lace” performed by Gailard Sartain (as the Big Bopper), and “You Send Me...
The deluxe soundtrack contains 11 never-before-heard tracks, expanding the album to 22 songs in total. The additional songs include many of the performances featured in the film, such as “That’ll Be the Day,” “Mockingbird Hill” and “Tennessee Waltz” performed by Gary Busey (as Buddy Holly), “Chantilly Lace” performed by Gailard Sartain (as the Big Bopper), and “You Send Me...
- 8/21/2020
- by Claire Shaffer
- Rollingstone.com
Movies about the blacklist aren’t common, probably because as Robert Vaughn wrote, the period produced no happy stories, ‘Only Victims.’ Robert de Niro, Annette Bening and George Wendt give a bite of immediacy to the way the blacklist upset careers and blighted lives. Few of us would like to be publicly branded an Enemy of the People, but doing so seems to be America’s number one spectator sport.
Guilty by Suspicion
DVD
The Warner Archive Collection
1991 / Color / 1:85 enhanced widescreen / 105 min. / Street Date May 12, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 17.99
Starring: Robert De Niro, Annette Bening, George Wendt, Patricia Wettig, Sam Wanamaker, Luke Edwards, Chris Cooper, Ben Piazza, Martin Scorsese, Barry Primus, Gailard Sartain, Robin Gammell, Brad Sullivan, Tom Sizemore, Stuart Margolin, Gene Kirkwood, Illeana Douglas, Adam Baldwin.
Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus
Film Editor: Priscilla Nedd
Original Music: James Newton Howard
Uncredited writer: Abraham Polonsky
Produced by Arnon Milchan
Written and...
Guilty by Suspicion
DVD
The Warner Archive Collection
1991 / Color / 1:85 enhanced widescreen / 105 min. / Street Date May 12, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 17.99
Starring: Robert De Niro, Annette Bening, George Wendt, Patricia Wettig, Sam Wanamaker, Luke Edwards, Chris Cooper, Ben Piazza, Martin Scorsese, Barry Primus, Gailard Sartain, Robin Gammell, Brad Sullivan, Tom Sizemore, Stuart Margolin, Gene Kirkwood, Illeana Douglas, Adam Baldwin.
Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus
Film Editor: Priscilla Nedd
Original Music: James Newton Howard
Uncredited writer: Abraham Polonsky
Produced by Arnon Milchan
Written and...
- 6/19/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
It’s hard to know much exaggeration is used in movies about crazy Suth’un politics, when some of the serious movies resemble Julius Caesar with mint juleps. This true story is about an old-school populist Louisiana governor who falls for a nationally-known stripper, the famous Blaze Starr, and is told from the stripper’s Pov. Paul Newman is at his late-career best, and Lolita Davidovich lights up the screen. The governor can get away with most anything except what he wants to do most — pass some color-blind laws about hiring and voting.
Blaze
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1989 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 120 min. / Street Date April 6, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Paul Newman, Lolita Davidovich, Jerry Hardin, Gailard Sartain, Richard Jenkins, Jeffrey DeMunn, Robert Wuhl, Garland Bunting, Brandon Smith.
Cinematography: Haskell Wexler
Film Editor: Robert Leighton
Original Music: Bennie Wallace
From the book Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey...
Blaze
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1989 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 120 min. / Street Date April 6, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Paul Newman, Lolita Davidovich, Jerry Hardin, Gailard Sartain, Richard Jenkins, Jeffrey DeMunn, Robert Wuhl, Garland Bunting, Brandon Smith.
Cinematography: Haskell Wexler
Film Editor: Robert Leighton
Original Music: Bennie Wallace
From the book Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey...
- 4/21/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Rank the week of August 23rd’s Blu-ray and DVD new releases against the best films of all-time: New Releases Blitz
(Blu-ray & DVD | Nr | 2011)
Flickchart Ranking: #9439
Win Percentage: 51%
Times Ranked: 215
Top-20 Rankings: 5
Directed By: Elliott Lester
Starring: Jason Statham • Paddy Considine • Aidan Gillen • Zawe Ashton • David Morrissey
Genres: Crime • Crime Thriller • Police Detective Film • Thriller
Rank This Movie
The Beaver
(Blu-ray & DVD | PG13 | 2011)
Flickchart Ranking: #5199
Win Percentage: 52%
Times Ranked: 858
Top-20 Rankings: 6
Directed By: Jodie Foster
Starring: Mel Gibson • Jodie Foster • Anton Yelchin • Jennifer Lawrence • Zachary Booth
Genres: Comedy Drama • Drama • Psychological Drama
Rank This Movie
Win Win
(Blu-ray & DVD | Nr | 2011)
Flickchart Ranking: #2107
Win Percentage: 61%
Times Ranked: 2455
Top-20 Rankings: 6
Directed By: Thomas McCarthy
Starring: Paul Giamatti • Amy Ryan • Bobby Cannavale • Jeffrey Tambor • Burt Young
Genres: Comedy Drama • Drama • Sports Comedy • Sports Drama
Rank This Movie
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
(Blu-ray & DVD | PG13 | 2011)
Flickchart Ranking: #5643
Win Percentage: 49%
Times Ranked: 725
Top-20 Rankings:...
(Blu-ray & DVD | Nr | 2011)
Flickchart Ranking: #9439
Win Percentage: 51%
Times Ranked: 215
Top-20 Rankings: 5
Directed By: Elliott Lester
Starring: Jason Statham • Paddy Considine • Aidan Gillen • Zawe Ashton • David Morrissey
Genres: Crime • Crime Thriller • Police Detective Film • Thriller
Rank This Movie
The Beaver
(Blu-ray & DVD | PG13 | 2011)
Flickchart Ranking: #5199
Win Percentage: 52%
Times Ranked: 858
Top-20 Rankings: 6
Directed By: Jodie Foster
Starring: Mel Gibson • Jodie Foster • Anton Yelchin • Jennifer Lawrence • Zachary Booth
Genres: Comedy Drama • Drama • Psychological Drama
Rank This Movie
Win Win
(Blu-ray & DVD | Nr | 2011)
Flickchart Ranking: #2107
Win Percentage: 61%
Times Ranked: 2455
Top-20 Rankings: 6
Directed By: Thomas McCarthy
Starring: Paul Giamatti • Amy Ryan • Bobby Cannavale • Jeffrey Tambor • Burt Young
Genres: Comedy Drama • Drama • Sports Comedy • Sports Drama
Rank This Movie
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
(Blu-ray & DVD | PG13 | 2011)
Flickchart Ranking: #5643
Win Percentage: 49%
Times Ranked: 725
Top-20 Rankings:...
- 8/23/2011
- by Jonathan Hardesty
- Flickchart
An anecdotal film that settles for being gently sad, sweet and uplifting, ''Fried Green Tomatoes'' plants tantalizing hints around its periphery of subjects amd relationships that are intriguing and touchy. However, it backs off those potential controversies and relies on its talented female cast to save it from the generic routine of blighted Southern blossoms.
They do so often enough that this saga of Alabama womanhood could turn into a satisfactory performer with longlasting boxoffice wind.
The action unfolds as a series of flashbacks narrated to overweight and emotionally cowed housewife Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates) by Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy), an elderly stranger Evelyn accidently meets on a family visit to a nursing home. The lonely Ninny, who insists she's at the home just to look after a friend, immediately sizes up the unhappy Evelyn, and begins telling her tales of her youth in the local countryside back in the '20s and '30s.
These stories focus on the friendship between Idgie Threadgoode Mary Stuart Masterson), a devoted tomboy, and Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker), a classic good girl who is initially presented to Idgie as an example of proper femininity. However, no sooner do they meet than it is Idgie who is transforming Ruth, first bringing out her new friend's assertiveness and eventually rescuing her from an unhappy marriage and going partners with her on a trainstop restaurant, the Whistlestop Cafe (which is where the fried green tomatoes come in).
As Ninny relates these vignettes of independent womanhood, Evelyn is slowly inspired to take more control of her own life. The shy housewife wends her way through a series of trendy self-actualization fads that perturb her corpulent husband Ed (Gailard Sartain) and provide the film with broad comedy, until, by film's end, she is ready to confront life on her own terms.
The Idgie-Ruth portions are both more emotional and much darker, with accidental deaths, domestic violence, retaliatory murder and the like adorning a story of romantic friendship. Just how romantic is not clear, since the relationship between the mannishly dressed Idgie and the excessively feminine Ruth suddenly veers away from a sexual component it seems to be heading for early on.
Director Jon Avnet, who has lingered on an affectionate kiss or a clasped hand, becomes more and more perfunctory with the scenes between the two, waiting until the very end to reveal the two have separate sleeping quarters.
The film's strengths are mostly in its screenplay (by director Avnet and Fannie Flagg, who wrote the source novel) and performances, particularly from Tandy, who provides the film's moral center with soothing effervescence.
Cicely Tyson, as a family employee in the Idgie-Ruth sections, is briefly memorable but shunted to the foreground only when dramatically required, a treatment symptomatic of the film's uncertain handling of its supporting chracters; Big George (Stan Shaw), another important black character, as well as Grady Kilgore (Gary Basarba), a local lout who undergoes a major transformation into a nice-guy sheriff, are relegated to mere plot utility, despite their putative importance.
Cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson has lent the film a nice burnished quality, although someone has decided to make Masterson look like a figure in a shampoo ad every time she comes into range, her golden locks and fresh-scrubbed looks making for a peculiarly well turned-out scamp.
FRIED GREEN TOMATOES
Universal
Director Jon Avnet
Producers Jon Avnet, Jordan Kerner
Screenplay Fannie Flagg, Jon Avnet
Based on the novel ''Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe'' by Fannie Flagg
Director of photography Geoffrey Simpson, A.C.S.
Production designer Barbara Ling
Editor Debra Neil
Music Thomas Newman
Casting David Rubin, C.S.A.
Color/Dolby
Cast:
Evelyn Couch Kathy Bates
Idgie Threadgoode Mary Stuart Masterson
Ruth Jamison Mary-Louise Parker
Ninny Threadgoode Jessica Tandy
Sipsey Cicely Tyson
Big George Stan Shaw
Ed Couch Gailard Sartain
Running time -- 130 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
They do so often enough that this saga of Alabama womanhood could turn into a satisfactory performer with longlasting boxoffice wind.
The action unfolds as a series of flashbacks narrated to overweight and emotionally cowed housewife Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates) by Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy), an elderly stranger Evelyn accidently meets on a family visit to a nursing home. The lonely Ninny, who insists she's at the home just to look after a friend, immediately sizes up the unhappy Evelyn, and begins telling her tales of her youth in the local countryside back in the '20s and '30s.
These stories focus on the friendship between Idgie Threadgoode Mary Stuart Masterson), a devoted tomboy, and Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker), a classic good girl who is initially presented to Idgie as an example of proper femininity. However, no sooner do they meet than it is Idgie who is transforming Ruth, first bringing out her new friend's assertiveness and eventually rescuing her from an unhappy marriage and going partners with her on a trainstop restaurant, the Whistlestop Cafe (which is where the fried green tomatoes come in).
As Ninny relates these vignettes of independent womanhood, Evelyn is slowly inspired to take more control of her own life. The shy housewife wends her way through a series of trendy self-actualization fads that perturb her corpulent husband Ed (Gailard Sartain) and provide the film with broad comedy, until, by film's end, she is ready to confront life on her own terms.
The Idgie-Ruth portions are both more emotional and much darker, with accidental deaths, domestic violence, retaliatory murder and the like adorning a story of romantic friendship. Just how romantic is not clear, since the relationship between the mannishly dressed Idgie and the excessively feminine Ruth suddenly veers away from a sexual component it seems to be heading for early on.
Director Jon Avnet, who has lingered on an affectionate kiss or a clasped hand, becomes more and more perfunctory with the scenes between the two, waiting until the very end to reveal the two have separate sleeping quarters.
The film's strengths are mostly in its screenplay (by director Avnet and Fannie Flagg, who wrote the source novel) and performances, particularly from Tandy, who provides the film's moral center with soothing effervescence.
Cicely Tyson, as a family employee in the Idgie-Ruth sections, is briefly memorable but shunted to the foreground only when dramatically required, a treatment symptomatic of the film's uncertain handling of its supporting chracters; Big George (Stan Shaw), another important black character, as well as Grady Kilgore (Gary Basarba), a local lout who undergoes a major transformation into a nice-guy sheriff, are relegated to mere plot utility, despite their putative importance.
Cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson has lent the film a nice burnished quality, although someone has decided to make Masterson look like a figure in a shampoo ad every time she comes into range, her golden locks and fresh-scrubbed looks making for a peculiarly well turned-out scamp.
FRIED GREEN TOMATOES
Universal
Director Jon Avnet
Producers Jon Avnet, Jordan Kerner
Screenplay Fannie Flagg, Jon Avnet
Based on the novel ''Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe'' by Fannie Flagg
Director of photography Geoffrey Simpson, A.C.S.
Production designer Barbara Ling
Editor Debra Neil
Music Thomas Newman
Casting David Rubin, C.S.A.
Color/Dolby
Cast:
Evelyn Couch Kathy Bates
Idgie Threadgoode Mary Stuart Masterson
Ruth Jamison Mary-Louise Parker
Ninny Threadgoode Jessica Tandy
Sipsey Cicely Tyson
Big George Stan Shaw
Ed Couch Gailard Sartain
Running time -- 130 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
- 12/20/1991
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.