Here are some movies you never heard of but should have.

"The Unseen Films of Tucker's World"
With Friends Like These…(1998)

This movie will appeal to anyone who watches or reads about as many movies as I do. The movie centers on a tight group of friends who make their living as character actors. However, Martin Scorsese comes wants to cast an unknown character actor in his next picture about Al Capone.

Most of these actors are used to playing minor parts in mob movies, and their familes have become close. However most of their work didn’t play well and they are the bottom feeders of the acting industry. So naturally the lead in a Scorsese film will lead them to a better life and larger tax cuts.

Bill Murray plays the weasel-like talent agent who comes to town, and everyone wants to impress. Easily Murray’s funniest bit part since Tootsie. Adam Arkin, Robert Costanzo and David Straithairn are all character actors who fit right in with the plot line of the film. I had to look up all their names, but you will likely recognize their faces. After the part becomes up for grabs, can all the friends remain civil to each other or give in to the cutthroat nature of the industry?

The movie doesn’t go out of it’s way for laughs, but serves as nice inside joke about the movie industry. It also doubles as a easy going slice of life comedy.

Cold-Blooded
Cast:
Jason Priestly, Kimberly Williams, Robert Loggia, and Janeane Graofalo


Yes, I am listing a Jason Priestly movie. Priestly plays an emotionless young man with no real ambitions or desire for close relationships. (Think Duke). He rents out the basement of an apartment, and the closest thing he has to a relationship is the hooker who comes by once a week. He rarely even has sex with her.

Priestly makes his living taking bets on sporting events for the mob. However, a whacking leads him to a promotion. The higher ups feel his ice-cold personality make him the right man to fill an opening for a hit man. He is hesitant at first, because he doesn’t want to kill people for a living. However, he is not given much choice and when a top hit man takes him under his wing he discovers he extremely talented at shooting stuff.

Before long, he is in training, and goes along for a whacking. This scene sums up this deliciously dark film. In this scene he gets instructions on how to scare the victim and when the right time to smash him in the face with a gun, and where to stand to get minimal blood on you. The two men realize they know each other from when Priestly took bets. It makes for a funny, and akward exchange.

“I always pictured you with a mustache” –man
“N0,no I never had a mustache” Priestly (dryly)

As he raises the ranks he starts to kill more and more important people. He starts really enjoying his work, despite the guilt of killing people who may no have deserved it. To get rid of extra stress he starts a yoga class and than falls for his instructor who is the girlfriend of a big jerk (Josh Charles). Can a relationship be an honest one if you go around whacking people all the time?

Like in all mob movies the lead raises in the ranks had comes to a cross roads to weather or not bite the hand that feeds him. This movie is often times compared to Panic, and despite Panic being superior in production quality, visually Cold-Blooded is a more enjoyable watching experience. A good example of a dark comedy that can actually generate laughs, all though some might find the high body count (and the particular offing of an 80s icon in a cameo) depressing.



Eight Men Out (1988)

Cast: John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, John Mahoney
It’s never ever listed when people talk about baseball flicks. It also sounds dirty if you say it fast. The film talks about the White Sox scandal of 1919.

The film is full of old time baseball nostalgia with an almost constant jazz like, and 20’s era music pumping through it. Perhaps the reason why this movie didn’t go down in history is because the movie doesn’t wonder from the actual story for laughs and you would be hard pressed to find a marketable element of the film that tried to be true to the baseball when it was game. For example Charlie Sheen’s part is quite small and at the time of the films release he was hot property (Around the time Wallstreet, and Major League were out). Sheen a fairly decent ball player in his own right, likely contributed to the film due to his love of the game.

The movie doesn’t completely let you know who actually threw the games and who didn’t. However Cuscack plays Shoeless Joe the one who tries desperately tries to clear his name after the stuff hits the fan.

John Mahoney gives his best big screen performance that I ever seen. I would even put it above Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything, which also start Cusack.

Baseball usually makes a good backdrop for movies, but in this case it’s about the baseball, not about the human elements as much, but about a period of time in the game itself. Sure there are emotional parts in the court room and towards the of the film, but the film never caters to pull emotions from the audience.

The “Say It Ain’t So” scene is played very nicely.


Arizona Dreams (1993)
Cast: Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis.

Yes Johnny Deep and Jerry Lewis made a movie together. Yes it’s a impressionist move that I actually liked. Usually it frustrates me for mere style and mood over storyline. However I am a sucker for this one. Any movie that starts and ends with a flying fish, has a an ambulance symbolically lift into the sky, includes Lewis drop the F-bomb and is as visually hypnotic as this film deserves at look.

The movies’ basic plot revolves around the aloof Depp coming to his uncle(Lewis) get married. However its simply a ploy to get Depp to quit his menial job and join his uncle’s business. I haven’t actually seen the movie in years, because I accidentally taped over it (oops), but I recall giving up on following the narrative completely some time in between the multiple recurring turtle scenes and the blantant but bizarre North by Northwest reference. Depp becomes torn between two girls, and a bunch of other random stuff happen and if I recall the flying fish returns. Something about someone trying to kill themselves with a Yo-YO comes to mind.

What you get from watching this film, is some laughs and deep emotions and an over abundance of visually stunning images. The scene with Lewis walking along before he meets up with Deep is still firmly enriched in my mind, despite having no way of seeing the film in about 3 or 4 years. It’s a rare find on VHS and not yet on DVD.

This movie with a warped narrative is the kind of film that Hollywood does not like or want to get made (Despite it being distributed by Warner Brothers). The director wants to share his vision of the world through. Its nice to see a film that thumbs their nose at the sheepish by the number movie scripts that flood the market these days. Although this types of films can come off as self-absorbed and idiotic and I usually pan them, this one works. It kind of stays with you and makes you wonder about after seeing it. Sort of like, well a dream.

“Back for the Fourth of July”


Just in time for the forth of July my good friend Price is back for a month. My friend who oddly enough is a war veteran now. I was considered about him for months while he was at war, because I knew he was pretty deep in Iraq. This made his return a lot different than his countless other visits to South Jersey a lot more meaningful.

I can still recall the night when Price gathered us at Starview Diner to tell us he had enlisted. I guess I was being naïve because I didn’t think he would ever see any serious action. That of course was before September 11th. Ironically that same day almost two years ago now, Price was on his way home for sometime off, and was just outside DC when the attack on the Pentagon occurred.

He spent a lot of time back last summer, and we all got the impression based on his experience and what seemed pretty clear we were going to attack Iraq. We all figured he was going to war in Iraq. Price made it through some serious ordeals thank God.

He was did open up over the course of the night and told us what War was like. It wasn’t like watching an Oliver Stone movie or anything, it was much more real. I was hearing it from a person I grew up with. Needless to say most of the crew were dead silent when he told these stories.

This war has been debated over and over again (just read TERMINUS) and I still don’t if I was lied to about the war or not. I still wonder if the WMD were moved out during the whole time we were gunning for Saddam or if it was just a boldfaced lie.

Well this year on the 4th of July maybe my readers can just take a moment to reflect upon all the men and women that served (and many cases gave their lives) for our country. Why we sit on our Asses and watch tv they are out there with their lives on the line. Some time in between gulping down a burger, plunging in a pool, or gazing at fireworks think about these people. If you go to a parade or come across some veterans simply thank them.

Oh if you go to the shore via the Garden State Parkway this hoilday weekend, beware the trolls.