Author Archives: Dennis

The Boondock Saints [1999]

Director: Troy Duffy
Actor: Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, Willem Dafoe, David Della Rocco, Billy Connolly

This is a fantastic, but unpolished gem of a film about two Irish brothers, Murphy and Connor, living in Boston, attending church as much as they can, and working out of a meatpacking plant, drinking at the local pub, yet being fluently multi-lingual (English, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, German.) One particular St. Paddy’s day, they’re having a drink at their local pub, with all of their friends, when the local Vory thug decides to throw his weight around. What ensues is a bar-fight in which the twins and their friends kick the asses of the Vory and his men. The men find the boys in their condemned apartment building the following morning and decides to teach them a lesson. This sets off a long chain of events in which the two, together with their low-life mafia friend Rocco, decide to kill all the scum that’s running the streets in true vigilante style. Meanwhile, Smecker (Dafoe), an FBI agent who is in town to investigate the murders of all these mobsters, has a crisis of conscience about whether or not he should persecute these men, or join them.

The opening scenes are fantastic, especially the one during the sermon at church. Truly awesome. Yet, even with that scene, the directing and cinematography is a bit sloppy. And not in that Resevoir Dogs sort of way, where it just adds that much more to the depth of the film, no, it’s truly sloppy. The film remains fantastic, yet flawed, and perhaps it was always meant to be that way. Perhaps it could never be better than it is now.

Simple, straight-forward, with a few thin patches in the otherwise solid storyline. Very funny. Lots of gratuitous violence and sexy slow-motion shots, which eventually got the film from getting an actual cinematic release in the U.S. because at the time of its release, Columbine had just happened, and President Clinton was doing the Hollywood rounds trying to appeal to the good senses of filmmakers regarding violence in the media. It opened in five theatres for only one week, which is why this movie is probably the first example of large-scale viral communication by way of the Internet and Word of Mouth.

Black Snake Moan [2006]

Director: Craig Brewer
Actor: Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake, John Cothran, Jr.

What a great little gem of a film. I didn’t really know much about it going in, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The acting is pretty solid on all fronts, but Sam L. does an especially good job playing the elderly, god-fearing, blues-singer-turned-farmer who is lost his wife to his younger brother. Ricci does a fantastic job of playing the very beautiful, but damaged Rae, who, due to early childhood abuse, has become a nymphomaniac in the clinical sense of the word. (She compulsively engages in sex without any real desire to do so, and without actually enjoying it.) Timberlake plays Ronnie, a kid who joins the national guard in order to better the life of himself and his girlfriend Rae, but he finds that he suffers from anxiety attacks whenever his stress-levels go up, and so is kicked out of the army. A great performance for Timberlake, who had a lot of balls to play the man who gets cheated on, and is in essence a weak man who means well but falls up short.

Anyway, the story is as followed; Rae sees her boyfriend Ronnie leave for the army, even though she begs him not to go. Rae decides to party away her sadness, and ends up partying a little bit to hard. She gets beaten and left alongside the road in front of Lazarus’ house, a man who’s an avid blues fanatic, but has just been left by his wife. He decides to take in and rehabilitate Rae, even going so far as chaining her up so that she can’t escape until he has excercised her deamons. It turns out that Lazarus and Rae are eachother’s help through their hard times. They are exactly what one another needs.

A great film with solid acting, a refreshing story and fantastic blues performances by Samuel L. Jackson. Well worth it.