The General (1998)

John Boorman had been getting more explicitly political for about a decade, but he moves his focus from far-away jungles to close to home, namely his adoptive home of Dublin. Based on a book by Paul Williams, Boorman wrote his script about the brazen and notorious criminal Martin Cahill with a particular emphasis on a…

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Beyond Rangoon

There's something off about this film. It's like there are puzzle pieces that don't fit and aren't even from the same puzzle being shoved together without any effort to actually find some semblance of cohesion. It makes me wonder about the writing process of the film. The credited writers are Alex Lasker and Bill Rubenstein,…

Where the Heart Is

Part of that weird 80s and 90s subgenre of rich people having to interact with the homeless, John Boorman's Where the Heart Is is actually one of the more successful efforts, in the lines of Mel Brooks' Life Stinks. It's more clear-eyed and realistic in its portrayal of the issue while having something to say…

Cool and the Crazy

#8 in my ranking of Ralph Bakshi's filmography. With Cool World being a critical and commercial bust, Ralph Bakshi found his last feature film work making a movie for Showtime based on a script he'd had laying around for more than twenty years. Well, it certainly does feel like the work of a much younger…

Cool World

#7 in my ranking of Ralph Bakshi's filmography. There were production troubles with Cool World, and some of that blame can be placed on Kim Basinger. Reportedly, Basinger approached Ralph Bakshi and the producer, Frank Mancuso, halfway through production saying she wanted to make a film that she could show to sick children in hospitals.…