Tony Scott Dies

This is a shocker if only because it's unusual to hear of suicide stories involving men in the twilight of their lives. Scott was 68 years old and married. He drove his car onto the Vincent Thomas Bridge in L.A., got out, climbed a fence, and jumped off. A suicide note was found in the car. Who knows what was going on in his life that spurred him to call it quits.

In addition to being one of Hollywood's most successful action film directors, he was also a producing partner with his brother Ridley and produced the recent Prometheus.

His list of director credits is a what's what of big dumb action thrillers: Top Gun; Beverly Hills Cop II; Days of Thunder; The Last Boy Scout; The Fan; Enemy of the State; Spy Game; Man on Fire; Domino; Deja Vu; The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3; Unstoppable.

His feature debut was an indie vampire film starring Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie called The Hunger. It might have suggested a career path more like Ridley's until the dollars came calling, I guess.

He also directed True Romance, an early Quentin Tarantino screenplay and Crimson Tide, a pretty taut and well-made submarine thriller starring Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington.

He directed Washington in 5 films, making one of the most successful actor-director partnerships in recent memory.

Unstoppable Movie Review: Denzel Washington is, once again, the Everyman hero

I imagine director Tony Scott making a romantic comedy. There would be truncated establishing scenes with a tense thumping bass-heavy musical score by Harry Gregson-Williams, who has scored all of Scott’s films since Enemy of the State, and each new location would be accompanied by a type-written scrawl in the corner of the frame indicating the place and time: “Female love interest’s house – 8:30pm.” This is how virtually every one of his action films begins, with the typed titles continuing throughout the duration of the film. Why would I have expected anything different from Unstoppable, his latest exercise in loud, clanging, macho action?

Cyrus Movie Review

Jonah Hill and Marisa Tomei have an especially close mother-son bond.

Cyrus is a movie about a war of nerves between two emotionally stunted men. John C. Reilly plays John, a man stilled scarred by a divorce seven years ago, and his foil is Cyrus (Jonah Hill), the son of a woman he thinks he may have a future with. The film is directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, who have a couple of minor features and short films to their credit, but finally struck some luck by getting serious financial backing from Scott Free Productions, the production company owned by Tony and Ridley Scott.

Reilly has almost made an entire career out of playing big lovable lugs who wear their emotional insecurities on their sleeve. John, the character, bears a number of similarities to Reilly’s character in Magnolia, also a divorced man perhaps a little too open with his feelings and looking for the right woman.