Pretty in Pink Movie Review

There’s a real timelessness in John Hughes’ films that center on teenagers that belies the sometimes terribly dated fashions and soundtracks that accompany his stories. The opening montage of Pretty in Pink (written by Hughes, but directed by Howard Deutch) screams 80’s. The blaring saxophone of The Psychedelic Furs’ title song screeches over a scene of Andie (Molly Ringwald) getting ready for school in the morning. She crafts her own clothes, which look a lot like a blend of New Wave and post-punk. Later there’s James Spader as the wealthy yuppie Steff with his linen trousers and blazer, collared shirt unbuttoned halfway down, and his flowing blonde locks. Andie’s childhood friend Duckie Dale (Jon Cryer), who is not so secretly crazy for her, is a pure original fashion statement, but distinctly dated to the period.

Seven Psychopaths Movie Review

What is it with filmmakers who start out with some quirky little movie that gets a lot of recognition for its panache, or great writing, or great storytelling and then they’re given a big budget and bunch of movie stars and things just seem to run away from them? Martin McDonagh started out with In Bruges, which signaled the start of a promising career in the gangster/hitman genre, the kind of talky pictures about wretched individuals who nevertheless epitomize cool made famous by Quentin Tarantino. Seven Psychopaths is his second feature film, an absurd farce of a story about an Irish screenwriter named Marty (autobiographical much?) trying to write a movie called Seven Psychopaths (self-referential much?).

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.