The Detective (1968)

Frank Sinatra is a seen-it-all NYC detective on the verge of seeing far more than he ever bargained for when he starts investigating the case of a –- to use James Ellroy’s cruel terms –- homo-cide. The crime starts in a high-end flat with a corpse minus a pecker, but Sinatra’s Joe Leland don’t blink. Yet. The man also has off-job problems, dealing with the collapse of his marriage to a new ager Karen (Lee Remick). These latter scenes are a dud, especially the flashbacks as Joe meets Karen, each sequence intro’d by a twirly camera and goofy “You are getting sleepy!” music that would play better in a Marx Brothers spoof. Scenes involving the gay “lifestyle” are unintentionally hilarious-slash-insulting. Sinatra gives the roll his all, and the mystery is aces, but director (Gordon Douglas) drops balls. Speaking of, dig that perfectly placed fern. Too funny. Film geek alert: Based on a book, Leland got a new name and title in his next novel-to-screen adaptation, “Die Hard.” Yes, John McClane. B

Inside Man (2006)

Spike Lee goes as mainstream (mostly, kind of) in the off-kilter bank-robbery crime drama Inside Man (2006) that dares be honest about all that pent-up hostility we Americans of every stripe, color, language, religion, and tax bracket bury deep. The shit we don’t admit to. Post 9/11. It’s sizzling, like a James Ellroy book on screen, popping with glorious visuals, thank you cameraman Matthew Libatique (“Black Swan”) and music men Terence Blanchard and A.R. Rahman (well before “Slumdog Millionaire”). It’s NYC and Clive Owen has led a group of thieves into a high-end bank to rob it, holding hostages, while NYC dicks Denzel Washington and Chiwetel Ejiofor investigate and keep their careers; see, Denzel’s cop’s nose maybe is unclean. Or maybe it is. The more I watch “Inside,” the more I grove to its trickery and its commentary on America right now. Near 9 years on, it crackles fresh. It is as much a movie within a movie as “The Game.” And who exactly is the title character. Is it even a man? Hello, Jodie Foster. A

Birdman (2014)

When we first see Michael Keaton as a has-been Hollywood actor at the opening of tar-black fable “Birdman,” he is floating in midair as the intimidating voice of his once big-screen superhero alter ego -– see the title -– talks aloud inside his own head. That’s the start of this wondrously warped story. Yes, Keaton, who played comic book hero Batman, plays an actor who played comic book hero Birdman. Meta comedy is promised and delivered. Plot: Keaton’s Riggan Thomas is determined to reset his relevance by staging a Broadway play. The impossible task consumes Riggan: His lead actor is a prickish actor played by infamously prickish actor Edward Norton, and Riggan’s daughter (Emma Stone) teeters on drug relapse. Stone, of course, plays Spider-Man’s girlfriend. Spider-Man appears as a mocking taunt. Brilliant. Questions pop: Mainly, Will Riggan escape Birdman? Director Alejandro G. Inarritu serves a must-rewatch film about a man more scared of obscurity than death and a damning of the Marvel Movie Universe ruling cinemas and then flames his own film as Marvel-like action plays out. More than the art-house deep-thoughts comedy, this strange film is pure wicked fun to watch unspool. A

Broken City (2013)

An ex-cop PI with a dirty past gets marooned in a FUBAR infidelity case among city elites that results in murder and corrupted land deals. Forget it, Jake, this isn’t sharp dagger classic “Chinatown.” It’s dull spoon thriller “Broken City” with Mark Wahlberg as the dick working for a NYC mayor (Russell Crowe) who’s up for reelection. Mayor’s demand: “Find my wife’s lover,” but he has more in play. Money. The plot is threadbare. Jake Gittes worked for his info. Suffered. Wahlberg’s hero *finds* the bad guy’s plans printed on giant poster board with bold font at a Dumpster. Good actors have saved worse, right? Not this. Crowe plays the mayor in a cartoon mashup of 1970s’ Lex Luther and Donald Trump, with spray-on can orange skin and a dippy toupee. Wahlberg? Autopilot. Director Albert Hughes smart, too a tone for Wahlberg, too brave for the sorry studio? C

His Girl Friday (1940)

The perfect romantic screwball. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are NYC journalists with the love they have for getting the latest story surpassed only by their love for each other. Odd then that they -– Grant is editor Walter Burns, Russell is reporter Hildy Johnson -– cannot stand each other and were quite recently married. Not enough room in a marriage when the third and fourth partners are outsize egos. The plot is beside the point against dialogue that demands instant replay as every rounded machine-gunned line pops one after the other and on top of one another, leaving the viewer spellbound. But here goes: Hildy returns to the newsroom that is her church and busts in on Burns’ office, declaring her intent to quit and marry an insurance salesman from Albany (Ralph Bellamy), which in newspeak equals marrying a scarecrow from Kansas. Burns has one ace up his sleeve: A sizzling murder trail he knows Johnson won’t refuse. The rest is marvelous. The puns and name drops (“Archie Leech!”) crash the fourth wall, a shout to the audience that no matter how much fun they’re having watching, the actors had more fun playing it. A+

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

Ethan and Joel Coen again trade up genres with “Inside Llewyn Davis,” a morbid, often hilarious musical biopic unlike those about Johnny Cash or Ray Charles. See, Llewyn Davis –- played by Oscar Issac in an Oscar-worthy performance –- does not strike it rich, land the girl, and get a celebrity to play him in a big movie. This is the guy who doesn’t make it. He’s among the hundreds of crooners whose records sit unpurchased, him on a street corner playing between car horns. Davis is a folk singer in 1961 New York who pisses on success and press coverage, yet rues his laughable inability to gain a foothold to be heard. The character is indeed fictional, but his story rings more true than that of Bob Dylan (who can be heard at the finale). Some critics dumped on “Davis” because they see the Coens as torturing their hero for sick laughs. Wrong. They love this guy despite all his incredible blundering errors. They just cut the bullshit and remind us in our “American Idol” instant-celebrity era, that no, not everyone gets that happy ending. They get punched. Issac is fantastic, as an actor and musician. And good to see John Goodman again. A-

American Hustle (2013)

Director David O. Russell (“Silver Linings Playbook”) opens his great 1970s-set conman comedy/drama “American Hustle” with the tagline, “Some of this actually happened,” which means we’re in for a blast of hellacious fun. Screw the facts. Entertain us. We open on a fat, slouching Christian Bale as he plasters a comb-over job atop his head until –- in his eyes -- he’s the suave lady-killer of his youth. It’s a laugh riot, a self-con from a sad sack unaware he’s done. Bale is Irving Rosenfeld, a NYC loan shark suffocating inside a mafia-heavy squeeze alongside his con-artist partner/mistress (Amy Adams), his metal-in-the-microwave wife (Jennifer Lawrence), a loon FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) with a bad perm, and a Jersey mayor (Jeremy Renner) who’s far too trusting and nice. That’s the gist. “Hustle” is too much a blast to spill more. Channeling early Scorsese with a wink-wink gleam, Russell nails the Me Decade with its big clothes, jewelry, and cars, with everyone wanting the gold ring promised to them by TV, and constantly checking their hair, even after a beat down. The acting is bonkers good, with Louis C.K. stealing thunder as an FBI boss obsessing a childhood ice fishing story. That man amazes. A

Hanna Arendt (2013)

The banality of evil. The very notion that anyone can commit unspeakable evil under the oh-so-wrong “right” condition is something of a cliché now. But back in the early 1960s as philosopher/teacher/writer Hanna Arendt coined the phrase while covering the Eichmann trial for the New Yorker, she was met with a crushing ethical/academic flame war. As played by Barbara Sukowa, this European art-house take of “Hanna Arendt” has the Holocaust survivor and NYC resident shunned here and in Israel after she not only wrote that Eichmann was just a boring mediocre shit with no brains, but some Jewish leaders helped open the door of Nazi extermination through contrition. It’s relatively accepted now. Not then. Not when wounds and memories were so raw. The move is at its best at these moments of personal drama and inner torment. Yet, often I feel left cold by these New York intellectual dramas as they seem to take anyone not in the “know” to task for not being a member of the party. I look at these square-heads here and think, “Why be friends with them?” My tweed jacket diet only goes so far. B

Ghostbusters (1984)

I love “Ghostbusters” more now than when I was 10 and bowled over by special effects, action, and dirty jokes meant for adults. Sure, this is still a kid’s flick, but it’s brilliantly written and peppered with wicked satire. The plot relies on digs at the EPA and IRBs! Name another Hollywood movie that trusting of the audience to get the jokes? Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Bill Murray are the heroes, fired academics who take to hunting the ghosts that plague New York City. And why not, it’s New York. Heaven for hell. And if they get laid along the way, go for it. Their proton pack arrival is perfectly timed as a Manhattan apartment high-rise with Sigourney Weaver as a tenant has just popped open a portal to a demonic realm. From the start in a library with book cards tossed all crazy right up to the finale with a white puffy giant ghoul with a grin, “Ghostbusters” rocks with never-better New York “F” the system eternal cool. Those days are gone. Conformity reigns now. Dig Murray riffing strong improve on the street, or Rick Moranis’ apartment geek king, and that dangling cigarette trick Aykroyd beautifully pulls… Classic! A+

House of Wax (1953) and House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Vincent Price, with his abyss of a voice and those dead-stare eyes that play like daggers, remains the King of Horror Movies in my book. He has no successor. Two of his earliest flicks are “House of Wax” and “House on Haunted Hill,” with Price as an oddball NYC artist driven to sinister deeds after his wax museum is torched and he builds anew with a shocking sicko canvas, and then as a rich mystery host to a party at a haunted California mansion that promises $10,000 to any guest who survives a creepy lock-in. “Wax” -– itself a remake remade many times -– is classic with its ghoulish madman taking bodies, alive and not, and how the camera just sits on wax faces as they melt in fire. The then-new 3-D gimmicks may once have dazzled but now only seem silly, but never mind that. Imagine 1950s kids screaming horror at this nasty fun tale. “House” is too wink-wink meta, from its dumb opening to the nudge-nudge fourth-wall-busting asides. Sure it has several scares, and Price struts around deflating every other man within range, but even for corn, it’s all quite lame and forgetful. Not “Wax.” Wax: A- House: B-

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Roman Polanski’s gothic “Rosemary’s Baby” is the greatest paranoid horror film, wildly spinning on marriage and expectant mommy-hood with a massive dash of brimstone, and satanic milkshakes. It sets a scene inside a telephone booth in which nothing happens but a phone call and still drives the panic needle to 666. That’s insanely genius filmmaking, from God and/or hell. Based on Ira Levin’s novel and Polanski’s American writing/directing debut, “Baby” follows waif/ housewife Rosemary (Mia Farrow, perfect) as she moves into a castle-like NYC apartment with fledgling actor hubby (John Cassevettes, just slightly creepy). The couple instantly befriends the eccentric old folks (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) next door. Soon Guy is a hit and Rosemary is pregnant. Enter, Satan. Polanski is a shit, but he knows heart-crashing shock is found in the mundane -– the daffy, smiling old lady serving a tasty homemade snack. Best WTF-just-happened-? cliffhanger ending ever. The neighbors terrify me no end: My Philly childhood eccentric, elderly neighbors fed me odd concoctions and drinks 24/7. I sweat bullets now, “All of them witches!?!” Who the hell will ever know, eh? One of my Top 25. A+

Freelancers (2012)

Former-drug-dealer-turned-rapper-turned-film-actor 50 Cent aka Curtis Jackson III puts the last of those multi-hyphenates to regrettable use in the awful “Freelancers,” a cops-gone-bad drama that thudded into cinemas and rolled over for dead on DVD within one month. Upfront mystery: How did Robert De Niro and Forrest Whitaker get wrangled into playing depraved NYPD detectives who trade in drugs, murders, and whores on an hourly basis? Jackson plays Malo, ex-crook turned policeman thrown into a corruption ring by his mentor/father figure (De Niro), the former partner of Malo’s real pop, another officer killed years ago. Not a single plot thread or revelation makes remote sense as Malo plays a ridiculous game between police and mafia while balancing several women on the side. Entire sections of this story seem cleaved out to fit a 90-minute running time as we dead end at a finale that has Malo crowing on top of a shit pile not only wholly implausible, but an insulting F.U. lobbed at all law enforcement. I can’t speak of his music, but as an actor here, Jackson has a blank stare reserved for album covers, punctuated by line readings so dull, he seems barely coherent. D-

Margaret (2011)

There’s a book yet to be written about the making of “Margaret,” a drama about a Manhattan teen (Anna Paquin) who witnesses, and is undeniably partially responsible for, a NYC bus accident that leaves a woman dead. Seventeen, naïve, and obsessed with all things teen girls are -- clothes, thinking of college, avoiding some boys and chasing others –- the incident throws her world into frantic discord. The more she thinks she’s trying to help, the deeper she sinks, and more conflicted she becomes about morality, adults, the justice system, and what constitutes “fairness.” The film was shot back in 2005 with a 2006 release date penned in, but various woes and legal stops finally landed “Margaret” in a few U.S. cinemas in late 2011. Director/writer Kenneth Longergan has made one hell of a film so wide, big, dark, and brilliant –- as is New York -– multiple viewings are required. It’s a sprawling majestic novel on film, with Paquin again proving her amazing talent from “Piano.” The film runs 2 hours 30 minutes. A longer cut played on one NYC screen in 2012, and I have it on DVD now. I expect it to be on my 2012 Top 10 List. A

GoodFellas (1990) and Heat (1995)

Watching Robert De Niro burn his unparalleled talents in shit such as “Little Fockers” or “Righteous Kill,” it’s unbelievable that just 20 years ago he had two of the best films in his storied career and of the decade under his belt. “GoodFellas” – directed by Martin Scorsese – and “Heat” – directed by Michael Mann – are crime genre classics, eternally re-watchable and endlessly fascinating. The man is a monster in both films, of cinematic talent, and of men’s character. 

“GoodFellas” opens with this line, spoken by Ray Liotta as Henry Hill, a Bronx-born hood who was mobbed up by age 14: “Ever since I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” Wow. This is Hill’s story, from rise to vast rule to ketchup and egg noodles in the Midwest. De Niro is his mid-level mob boss. Joe Pesci costars in an infamously profane and violent performance so shocking, it’s bewildering to know the man he plays was far more dangerous. The film is flawless, so amazing good and detailed (the food alone!), it’s a thrill to behold for a 15^th viewing. My words do not do it justice. 

In “Heat,” De Niro is a master criminal of a high-end gang (Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore co-headline his crew) being chased by an obsessive detective (Al Pacino, also scraping bottom in “Righteous” and “88 Minutes”) in Los Angeles. We also follow the cop’s home life as Mann’s three-hour epic film spreads far and wide, almost too wide – an icky serial killer plot thread goes nowhere. The actions scenes are you-are-there-real and spectacular, including a long finale outside the Los Angeles airport that boomed in a theater.

De Niro is the star of both, the ballast holding each film together, keeping the madness, violence, crazy details, and other actors (Pacino goes “PACINO” a few times) cemented and whole, but let it be known these worlds are the creation of, respectively, Scorsese and Mann, both in unmatched top form. Know this: “GoodFellas” was based on a true story, but “Heat” inspired a criminal duo to pull off a daring bank robbery that eerily mimicked the mid-section scene here.

GoodFellas: A+ Heat: A

Men in Black 3 (2012)

All time travel plots defy logic: If you go back in time to kill Hitler as a child, the absence of an adult Hitler will negate the need to jump back, which means Hitler will rise. But we still love the idea, right? “Men in Black 3” adds a time travel trick hat to its black suits, ties and sunglasses, and the effort further tarnishes the first outing about top secret agents K (Tommy Lee Jones) and J (Will Smith) and a secret police force that patrols alien life on Earth. Here, an old nemesis of K’s jumps back to 1969 to kill him as part of an elaborate revenge tactic. In present day NYC, Agent K is dead 43 years, and only J inexplicably remembers him. So back J goes to save K. Ill-conceived from first frame to last, nothing makes sense, not even on the wide girth of a summer flick about aliens, ray guns, Andy Warhol, and moon prisons. The chemistry between Smith and Jones is shit, derailed by Jones’ pained disinterest. Huge props to Josh Brolin as a young K, nailing a TLJ impression so dead-on it deserves its own film, not this crap sequel. C+

Pi (1998)

Darren Aronfsky knows how to work a theme: The artist/lover/addict who drives himself/herself mad or dead with dark passion. “Pi” is his first chapter in his seemingly endless, bottomless Bible of Woe. Made in 1998, filmed in stark black and while and featuring unknowns, our story focus on Max (Sean Gullette), a paranoid math genius obsessed with breaking a hidden code within the Stock Market. Max’s story begins with him already long broken: When he was six, he stared at the sun, and it blinded him for days, and fried his brain. Forever. He fears about every human being (a bad trait in New York City), and ingests meds by the handful to calm his nerves and quiet the metal-grinding sound in his brain. He owns a power drill. When some shady people come looking for Max, to get the coded secrets of Wall Street, his crumbled psyche shatters. This is a rough, messy, amazing film, shot on a shoestring budget, full of razor ends, a work of pure art. The audience has its own code to break: When does Max sink into full madness, a prison as endless as 3.1415926535… A

Tower Heist (2011)

With “Tower Heist,” director Brett Ratner has quite the timely revenge story: Employees at a high-end NYC apartment building (Trump Tower, actually) seek payback when the owner (Alan Alda) turns out to be a Ponzi-pushing Madoff maggot. The plan: Steal $20 million in stolen loot said to be hidden in Money Bags’ penthouse during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Our Mad-as-Hell Occupy heroes are played by Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck, and Gabourey Sidibe, and their tempers are righteous: Why not strike back at the Wall Street pricks who steal from us every day? Yet all piss and blood get lost amid subpar “Ocean’s 11” shenanigans. Problems abound: The one-trick pony is predictable, we’re never sure who’s in on the Robin Hoodery as characters appear and disappear nonsensically, and either bad editing or worse writing (or both) kills scene after scene. Eddie Murphy (who concocted the story years ago with a nastier streak) owns the film as a local spitfire, loose-cannon crook brought in for the job. Too-stiff Ratner foolishly drops Murphy for long periods to focus on Stiller’s “Parents/Fockers” goof. (Remember when Stiller had balls?) Talk about robbery. B-

Shame (2011)

“Shame.” Call me crazy, but it’s all about the liquids inside us. Poison. The bodily fluid liquid Shame in all of us. A weight, a black hole, a soul crusher. The bodily fluids must be purged, at all costs. They. Must. As demons are exorcised, memories are downed in drugs and booze. Liquids purged. This crazy-daring-disturbing-beautiful art flick, from Brit director Steve McQueen (not the dead Hollywood star of the 1960s, but a young black Brit artist) follows Brandon, an Irish-born, American-raised 30-ish man in New York City. Some dub him a sex addict. Maybe. He certainly relentlessly, ceaselessly, and carelessly picks up sex partners where ever he can find them, or pays for the pleasure for quick encounters. And if no woman is available, porn via Web or magazine will do, and he can masturbate out the semen from his body. His rage, his demon. Men will do, too, to help get that liquid anchor out. What past he leads?

Rising star of 2011 Michael Fassbender, quickly becoming a favorite actor, should have landed an Oscar nomination for his Brandon, a tortured, lonely, angry soul, long past dead inside, who – in the long, wordless climax (I mean that many ways) – cannot fathom intimacy or love or a relationship, and during a three-way, looks as tortured as a man undergoing water-boarding. His one shot at intimacy, an actual relationship, is a full disaster, he calls the woman boring and denounces love, and fails in bed, sexually. It’s all about release, nothing more. There is no love in this world. Not here.

Brandon’s cold, hard, life, all the sex and porn, leftover take-out, and relentlessly repeated classical music played as white noise is thrown a devastating loop when his equally mentally unstable sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) shows up in his shower, unexpected. Uninvited. Unwanted. Unbounded. She longs for a connection to Brandon. His openness at her nudity and she at his, hints at a dark, horrible childhood. Never explained. We don’t need to know, and maybe would be too horrified to know the truth. Their first run-in onscreen, I thought she was his ex-wife. I said dark and disturbing, and I meant it. Few films ever go this dark.

If Brandon ejaculated out his pain through sex, masturbation, or any stimulant, Sissy is a cutter. Blood. A long series of scars mark her wrists and arms, and she wants to lose more blood. And she will in the end. Pints. The whole movie is liquids -- blood, semen, music, fast-moving subway cars, and rain, never stopping, spinning in an endless circle, down a bottomless drain. Even the music is liquid. Always moving, flowing.

The final scenes mimic the first scenes. McQueen’s film is epic, and cold and small, and amazing, full of sex and nudity. That climatic three-way starts out explicit and erotic as hell, as porn, and then turns painful as Brandon shows nothing but misery, a cold, hard punch to audience-mandated expectations for such a NC-17 sex film. This is eroticism turned ugly, anti-erotic. If the screenplay, by McQueen and Abi Morgan (who wrote the lesser “Iron Lady”) is slight on details, McQueen’s camera – the cinematography is beautiful, and in ultra-wide screen – tells us so much more. Watch how, when Brandon and Sissy talk, the camera is behind them, their faces, eyes, expressions cut off. Cold. Only when they fight, scream, yell, and he attacks her, him fully naked, do we see their faces. As dark as this film goes, I want a re-watch. STAT.

Fassbender bares it all, literally. The rage inside him is barely contained, and when he stares down a woman, his flirtation by eye, masks something far darker. That’s acting. Art. Beauty, Danger. Sex. And ... bottomless doom. The character of Brandon barely speaks. Mulligan, she of “An Education” and “Drive,” will not not speak, and lays out a tortured version of “New York, New York,” so dark, so long, so painful and hopeless, I’m not certain what we saw on screen was reality within the film, but her singing/talking directly to her hardened, hard-on brother, how the cold, dark, big city -- life itself -- will kill them in the end. Brandon cries at the moment, by his sister’s beauty and pain, and is horrified to see that kind of liquid, a tear, come from inside him. Pulsating rage follows.

Do not trust anyone says this film is dead and cold; it is about death and coldness, and sex, in all its glory, and pain and misery and Shame. And always about liquids, bodily fluids, escaping from the body, and the pain of an unexplained past. Pure fucking genius. Bravo, Mr. McQueen, and Mr. Fassbender.A

Dream House (2011)

I saw an early trailer of “Dream House” that gave nearly the entire film away. What the ad didn’t spoil: This supernatural, “Oh, shit, we moved into a massacre house” film crashes at the one hour mark, leaving even the great Rachel Weisz acting shrill and lost. Pushing ahead spoiler-free: Daniel Craig plays Will Atenton, a book editor ditching NYC for the rural dream house with his wife (Weisz) and daughters. Pfft. Seems “family murdered” was left out of the realty ad. Directed by Jim Sheridan, with a solid cast of names, this not-horrifying “American Horror Story” story should rock and shock. It fails. “Dream” goes dead flat after that one-hour-mark reveal resets the plot, and then drops an endless series of awful gotch’yas. Worst offense, other than the writing and editing: The great Naomi Watts is wasted in a “helpless woman” role beneath her station. PSA hint: If your train-mate on the way to your new house is Elias Koteas, go the hell back to work. Stay there. C

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)

“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a feel-good 9/11 movie. It opens with a body falling pretty-like from the World Trade Center, and ends with a similar motif, intercut with a boy on a swing. It’s made with Oscar in mind with Stephen Daldry (“The Reader”) behind the camera, and Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Viola Davis on screen. The boy is Oskar Schell, a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome (he claims the tests were inconclusive) grieving the death of his beloved father (Hanks). One day Oskar finds a key in his father’s closet and sees it as a last gift from dad, who used scavenger hunts to bring the boy out of his shell. Schell. Get it? So the boy hunts, seeking an answer as to why dad died that Worst Day. The story is intriguing, but halfway I near bolted. Oskar clearly is in desperate need of psychological care – he fears everything and self-tortures his own body -- but the movie treats his illness as a quirky plot device, worsened by clueless, impossible-to-exist adults. As Oskar, newcomer Thomas Horn shines with majestic soul, but that doesn’t make anything here OK. A feel-good 9/11 movie is not quirky, it’s insulting. The grade is for the boy. C-