Scumbunny Cinema

Dangerous Game. Harvey Keitel plays the troubled director of a low-budget movie about spousal abuse, whose own marriage disintegrates when he chooses the day of his father-in-law's funeral as the ideal moment to tell his wife that he's screwed Madonna--the last thing any woman wants to hear on the day she's burying her father. In short, the central character in Dangerous Game is a likable director of creepy, sadomasochistic films, not totally unlike Abel Ferrara, the director of Dangerous Game.

Eight Men Out. Charlie Sheen, John Cusack, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Rooker and David Strathairn star in John Sayles's 1988 costume drama about the 1919 Chicago White Sox, a bunch of disgruntled baseball players who accepted a bribe from a group of gamblers to take a dive in the World Series, and, by doing so, came very close to destroying America's faith in its national pas-time, the most perfect sport ever devised by mankind. In short, Eight Men Out is a movie about likable crooked athletes.

Geronimo: An American Legend. Although he was known to rape, pillage, rape, mutilate, rape, burn and rape; had a reputation as a person who would kill anything that moved; wasn't much liked even by his own people; and ended his life as a pathetic drunk, this politically correct 1993 film portrays the dreaded Apache renegade as a pretty swell guy, a Lancelot of the arroyos, if you will. In short, Geronimo is a movie about a likable bloodthirsty savage.

The Godfather, Part III. In this star-studded film, Al Pacino plays a congenial mobster who vainly attempts to erase the stigma of his murderous past. Not to be confused with Carlito's Way, a film in which Al Pacino plays a congenial mobster who vainly attempts to erase the stigma of his murderous past.

GoodFellas. In this 1990 film, directed by one of the greatest Italian-American directors ever to come out of NYU's Film School. Ray Liotta plays a charismatic mafioso who agrees to testify against his own con-federates in exchange for a chance to go into the Federal Witness Protection Program. Not to be confused with My Blue Heaven, the 1990 film in which Steve Martin plays a charismatic mafioso who agrees to testify against his own confederates in exchange for a chance to go into the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Hoffa. Danny DeVito's odious paean to the mobbed-up union boss Jimmy Hoffa. now widely believed to reside beneath the goal posts at Giants Stadium in the swamps of northern New Jersey, was not a box-office gusher. The day I saw it, the only other people in the theater were seven fat men in dark suits who all had cellular phones and beepers, and who did not seem to be in the communications business. How to explain the public's dislike of Hoffa? One problem with the film was DeVito's disastrous decision to include a scene where an overly enterprising news-paper editor is sent a package containing a set of male genitals pickled in formaldehyde, ostensibly as a warning to stop being so overly enterprising. After this scene, it was probably very hard for most audience members to empathize with the problems of Jimmy Hoffa, despite a fine performance by Jack Nicholson. Or put it this way: it's a safe bet that 50 percent of the people in the audience felt that this scene cut a bit too close to the bone.

Light Sleeper. This is a movie that must be seen to be believed. Willem Dafoe plays a middle-aged drug dealer who wants to get into another line of work because the pressures from his unorthodox profession are starting to get to him. because they're really isn't much of a future for middle-aged drug dealers and because he hates working nights. Also, his employer, Susan Sarandon, doesn't pay benefits. Most significantly, after decades of dealing downers and ludes--whatever they are--Dafoe starts to feel pangs of conscience about his career.

That most elusive of cultural archetypes--the Drug Dealer Who Cares--Dafoe talks with Sarandon about taking some sound-editing courses and perhaps getting into the music business--the very best place to escape from dangerous drugs--but his dreams are crushed when he ends up murdering a client who pushed his ex-wife, a lapsed cokehead played by Dana Delany, off a balcony.

"I am able to change: I can be a good person." Dafoe confides to his diary at one juncture. His diary doesn't seem to believe him. The crowning moment in this barmy yuckfest is the scene where Dafoe tells Delany--even more convincing as a coke-head than she was as a dominatrix in her recent Exit to Eden incarnation (I was so scared)--that he's changed his way of living and completely cleaned up his act since they'd broken up a few years before. That is, he doesn't do drugs anymore; he merely sells them. In short, Light Sleeper is a movie that invites the audience to sympathize with the plight of a likable drug dealer.

The Lover. In this lugubrious 1992 adaptation of Marguerite Duras's touching autobiography, Tony Leung plays a ne'er-do-well Chinese playboy who pounces on a fetching morsel of French jailbait--Maggie herself, I assume--and gives her the gift that keeps on giving: his unsheathed manhood. In short, this is a movie about a likable statutory rapist.

Mean Streets. The always appealing Harvey Keitel and the ever-so-charming Robert De Niro star as doomed hoods who can't seem to catch a break on the tough streets of Little Italy back in 1973, in part because Keitel has fallen in love with De Niro's epileptic cousin, and rigorous Sicilian-American social mores condemn such liaisons. In short, this film, directed by one of the greatest Italian-American directors ever to come out of NYU's Film School, is a movie about likable mobsters.

Midnight Express. In Alan Parker's harrowing 1978 film, scripted by Oliver Stone, the now deceased Brad Davis plays a twentysomething American suburban punk who is sentenced to no less than 30 years in a Turkish prison after he unwisely attempts to smuggle two kilos of hashish out of the country and into the United States. In short, this is a movie about a likable drug smuggler.

The Pope of Greenwich Village. Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts star as doomed hoods who can't catch a break on the tough streets of Little Italy back in 1984. The movie has one truly rewarding sequence in which Roberts gets his thumb sliced off by a Mob enforcer (in light of his hyperbolic acting style, his tongue would have been a better choice), and also contains an unforgettable moment when Daryl Hannah, playing an aerobically oriented creature of one sort or another, asks Rourke, "Why are you always one inch away from being a good person?" Daryl, as usual, is a bit confused. In short, this is a movie about likable dirtballs.

Pages: 1 2 3