25 Years Ago This Month: July 1988

The two biggest movies of the month were total counter-programming to one another.

First there was John McTiernan's Die Hard, a fine action thriller that spawned a string of increasingly ludicrous sequels. It solidified Bruce Willis as an action hero, helping him break out of his "Moonlighting" and romantic comedy typecasting, and it introduced Alan Rickman to American audiences as the suave and cunning villain Hans Gruber.

For the ladies there was Tom Cruise in Cocktail later in the month. Believe it or not, I've never actually seen it. I had no interest in it during its cable run in 1989/1990.

Savages Movie Review

Oliver Stone returns to fine form with his latest example of pushing violence to excess in cinema with Savages, the film that Natural Born Killers might have been with a little restraint. Stone exhibits more control of a story that could very easily have run away from itself and of the violence depicted in it.

The Pledge Movie Review

This review was written in January 2001 and is presented here for the first time.

The commercials for The Pledge, a new psychological thriller directed by Sean Penn based on the book by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, suggest that it's a standard detective story. One might expect the hero of the film to hunt a crazed killer, who continues to feed on prey until he leaves enough clues for said hero to catch him. But it's more about the lengths to which this detective (recently retired) will go to stop the killing.

Jack Nicholson plays Detective Jerry Black, who gets involved in one last case three hours before his retirement officially begins. The crime is a gruesome one, in which a seven-year-old girl has been raped and mutilated, then left in the snowy wilderness for a young boy to find. Jerry makes a solemn promise to the parents of the deceased that he will catch the killer. This is the titular vow that motivates his every action throughout the film.

Snatch Movie Review

This review was written in January 2001 and is presented here for the first time.

If you're familiar with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels – the feature film debut of director Guy Ritchie then you'll understand why the plot of his new film Snatch is far too complicated to explain. Besides that, the plots of his two films are not really what's interesting about them. They function more as clotheslines for stringing together myriad characters whose paths cross in unlikely and often hilarious circumstances.

The Wolfman Movie Review

This review is based on the extended cut version.

Can anyone remember the last time Anthony Hopkins made a film that didn’t look like a complete sellout? In the last decade or so he’s probably made one film that’s worth watching – The World’s Fastest Indian. You should seriously give it a look because The Wolfman is anything but worthy of two of hours of your time.

The Wolfman is director Joe Johnston’s attempt at bringing back that old Hollywood monster movie feeling. He’s trying to invoke nostalgia from the appearance of the Universal logo, which is a retooling of the one used in 1941, when Lon Chaney, Jr. donned the wolf makeup and chased Claude Rains around the backlot. It has an opening scene that suggests we might be in for a wonderfully campy ride, with a bombastic and ridiculous musical score, fast cuts of wolf’s claws, growling and snarling on the soundtrack and just enough dripping blood from the victim to be scary without tipping the balance toward gruesome.