The Escapist (Rupert Wyatt, 2008)

Joseph Fiennes, Brian Cox, Liam Cunningham, and Seu Jorge in The Escapist

Cast: Brian Cox, Damian Lewis, Joseph Fiennes, Seu Jorge, Liam Cunningham, Dominic Cooper, Steven Mackintosh. Screenplay: Rupert Wyatt, Daniel Hardy. Cinematography: Philipp Blaubach. Production design: Jim Furlong. Film editing: Joe Walker. Music: Benjamin Wallfisch. 

Prison break movies tend to fall into three types: the moral fable like A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956), the technical thriller like Escape From Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 1979) and Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960), and the sentimental melodrama like The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994). The Escapist tries to be all three, which results in something of a muddle. Director and co-writer Rupert Wyatt intercuts the drama leading up to the escape with scenes from the escape itself, which challenges the viewer to keep track of time and place. This scrambling of the narrative serves a purpose which is revealed at the end of the film, at the risk of alienating the viewer. Fortunately, he has an ensemble of fine actors, headed by Brian Cox, who make things watchable even amid the confusion and occasional implausibility.  

Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980)

Nora Aunor and Phillip Salvador in Bona

Cast: Nora Aunor, Phillip Salvador, Marissa Delgado, Raquel Monteza, Venchito Galvez, Rustica Carpio, Nanding Josef, Spanky Manikan. Screenplay: Cenen Ramones. Cinematography: Conrado Baltazar. Art direction: Joey Luna. Film editing: Augusto Salvador. Music: Max Jocson, Lutgardo Labad.

Nora Aunor, who was a superstar in the Philippines, gives a fine performance in the title role of Bona, Lino Brocka's portrait of toxic masculinity. Hanging out on the fringes of a location shoot for an action movie, Bona develops a crush on Gardo (Phillip Salvador), a good-looking bit player who has aspirations to stardom. Gardo notices her and starts letting her run errands for him, but when she neglects her duties in her large working class household, her irascible father (Venchito Galvez), beats her with his belt. Bona moves into Gardo's shack in the Manila slums, serving as his housekeeper. He's a drunk and a layabout with a succession of girlfriends, but he's not as given to violence as Bona's father -- or, as we will see, her older brother. Their relationship gradually disintegrates until, expelled from her family and threatened with abandonment by Gardo, Bona finally takes revenge. It's a solid domestic melodrama given bite and purpose by Brocka's characteristic attention to the actuality of life on the fringes of Philippine society. 

The Seventh Continent (Michael Haneke, 1989)

Cast: Birgit Doll, Dieter Berner, Leni Tanzer, Udo Samel, Silvia Fenz, Elisabeth Rath, Georg Friedrich. Screenplay: Michael Haneke, Johanna Teicht. Cinematography: Anton Peschke. Production design: Rudolf Czettel. Film editing: Marie Homolkova. 

In The Seventh Continent, Michael Haneke reveals himself as a mannerist filmmaker, relying more on camera and editing technique than on conventional narrative and characterization. He knows precisely how to manipulate the audience, realizing that they're likely to have a visceral reaction to images of tropical fish flopping in their death throes, money being flushed down a toilet, or perfectly good clothing and furniture being ripped to shreds and smashed wantonly, and that their reaction has a greater emotional immediacy than the fate of his human characters. He only trusts that the audience will realize the enormity of their reactions afterward. The problem, I think, is that his mannerisms become almost comic, allowing viewers to distance themselves from whatever Haneke may be trying to say about existential ennui or whatever else motivates the ordinary family in his film to do the terrible thing they do. 

Near Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1971)

Cast: Caroline Cartier, Danièle Croisy, Françoise Guégan, Patrick Verde, Bernard Menez. Screenplay: Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: Colin Mounier. Film editing: Odile Faillot, Jacques Rozier. Music: Daevid Allen, Gong, Gilli Smyth.

Jacques Rozier's Near Orouët is about the summer vacation of three young women on the Atlantic near the village of Orouët, the name of which (pronounced with a final T) seems to set these Parisians into fits of giggles -- but then almost everything does. This is a giddy account of nothing more than their summer of sunning, eating, drinking, sailing, horseback riding, flirting with one young man, and tormenting another. The tormented one is Gilbert (Bernard Menez) who during the rest of the year works in a small office as the supervisor of one of the women, Joëlle (Danièle). Obviously smitten, he shows up uninvited after learning where she is vacationing, but his attempt to ingratiate himself with her and her friends is thwarted by the arrival of a more handsome and self-possessed young man, Patrick (Patrick Verde), who has a sailboat. The film is a trifle, one of those movies that expect you to enjoy getting to know the characters. But it's also two and a half hours long, so by the time it ends you may have become better acquainted with the three young women than you wanted to be. 

Miami Blues (George Armitage, 1990)

Alec Baldwin in Miami Blues

Cast: Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fred Ward, Charles Napier, Nora Dunn, José Pérez, Obba Babatundé, Shirley Stoler. Screenplay: George Armitage, based on a novel by Charles Willeford. Cinematography: Tak Fujimoto. Production design: Maher Ahmad. Film editing: Craig McKay. Music: Gary Chang. 

Miami Blues is one of those movies that just miss. Alec Baldwin's ex-con comes to Miami because it seems like a good place to start over, which he does with some deft larceny (and some incidental manslaughter) at the airport. He checks into a hotel and asks the bellhop to procure him a woman, who turns out to be Jennifer Jason Leigh's sunny, naïve hooker. Meanwhile, he captures the attention of Fred Ward's scruffy cop, and the three of them begin a playful but sometimes brutal interaction. The movie has all the elements: a cast working at top form, a story with some amusing reversals of expectation, a gallery of quirky supporting characters, and a colorful milieu. The three leads are all cheerful caricatures drawn from crime fiction, but reality overlaps the caricature and the tone of the movie goes sour, turning it  darker and heavier than it really wants to be.

Bully (Larry Clark, 2001)

Nick Stahl and Brad Renfro in Bully

Cast: Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner, Nick Stahl, Michael Pitt, Leo Fitzpatrick, Kelli Garner, Daniel Franzese, Natalie Paulding, Jessica Sutta, Ed Amatrudo, Steve Raulerson, Judy Clayton, Alan Lilly, Irene B. Colletti. Screenplay: David McKenna, Roger Pullis, based on a book by Jim Schutze. Cinematography: Steve Gainer. Production design: Linda Burton. Film editing: Andrew Hafitz. 

Is Larry Clark's Bully sleazy exploitation, or is it a dark tragicomedy? That it might be both suggests a failure of the filmmakers to maintain a consistent tone. The first part of the film clearly seems designed to shock and titillate, as we get to know the coterie of teenagers that has formed around Bobby (Nick Stahl) and his so-called best friend, Marty (Brad Renfro), who are locked in a sadomasochistic relationship. Blasting hard-core rap on their radios, they cruise their Florida neighborhoods in search of sex and drugs. They find a lot of both, and the sex is generously depicted on screen. But then the film turns in another direction as Marty's girlfriend, Lisa (Rachel Miner), begins to see Bobby as a threat to her relationship with Marty. She takes the process of eliminating that threat to its extreme: murder. The film then tilts into black comedy, as the inept, drug-addled gang develops a plot to off Bobby. But then it veers back into something like reality when their plot almost accidentally succeeds and the members of the gang sober up enough to be aware of what they've done. I think Bully would have been received more generously if Clark had treated the sex scenes more discreetly, giving some in the audience an excuse to dismiss it as semi-pornographic. But the film, which is based on an actual case, still has the power to disturb. 

China Moon (John Bailey, 1994)

Ed Harris and Madeleine Stowe in China Moon

Cast: Ed Harris, Madeleine Stowe, Benicio Del Toro, Charles Dance, Patricia Healey, Tim Powell, Pruitt Taylor Vince. Screenplay: Roy Carlson. Cinematography: Willy Kurant. Production design: Conrad E. Angone. Film editing: Carol Littleton, Jill Savitt. Music: George Fenton.

John Bailey's China Moon is a  neo-noir with perhaps a few too many plot twists for its own good. It asks us to believe that a police detective (Ed Harris) who is shown to be keenly observant in the opening scenes of the movie should be so easily hoodwinked into a dangerous situation by a femme fatale (Madeleine Stowe). It also asks us to put up with an awful Southern accent assumed by Charles Dance in the role of the femme fatale's nasty husband. But if you can suspend disbelief for those things, it's a tolerable if forgettable movie.  

Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978)

Kaycee Moore and Henry G. Sanders in Killer of Sheep

Cast: Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy, Angela Burnett, Eugene Cherry, Jack Drummond, Delores Farley. Screenplay: Charles Burnett. Cinematography: Charles Burnett. Film editing: Charles Burnett. 

"Poetic" is not a word I like to use about movies, but it's the one that comes most to mind in thinking about Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. Great poetry often comes from juxtaposition and irony, and Burnett's film is full of such things. For example, the scene in which Stan (Henry G. Sanders) and his friend return wearily from an ill-fated task, lugging a motor down some stairs and into a truck, only to have it tumble from the truck bed and crash into ruin. As they trudge home, children are leaping in perilous freedom from rooftop to rooftop over their heads. The image needs no exposition; it lingers in the mind for what it is, a scene pregnant with symbolic truth. Throughout the film, songs are played, sometimes diagetically, as in the dance of Stan and his wife (Kaycee Moore) to a phonograph record of "This Bitter Earth" by Dinah Washington pictured above, but also nondiagetically, throughout the film, with the words of the songs resonating both directly and ironically with the images. This is an almost documentary portrait of life in the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts, inspired by the Italian neorealists, with a mostly nonprofessional cast drawn from its residents. Its poetry comes from a personal vision, and producer-writer-director-editor Burnett's vision is a powerful and haunting one. 

The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024)

 

Cast: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt, Elizabeth Saunders, Jennifer Dale, Eric Weinthal, Jeff Yung, Ingvar Sigurdsson. Vyslav Krystyan, Matt Willis, Steve Switzman. Screenplay: David Cronenberg. Cinematography: Douglas Koch. Production design: Carol Spier. Film editing: Christopher Donaldson. Music: Howard Shore.

David Cronenberg's The Shrouds is a film for those who think we've made a Faustian bargain with technology, or that no good invention goes unpunished. Not that the invention by Cronenberg's protagonist, Karsh Relikh (Vincent Cassel), is necessarily a good one. I, for one, can't imagine enough people wanting to see their loved one rotting in the grave to warrant investment in a technology that allows them to do that. But take that premise for what it is: a way of commenting on the downside of any new so-called technological advancement, from the internal combustion engine to the atomic bomb to artificial intelligence. The point of Cronenberg's story, told through horror movie tropes, is that the human factor, lust and greed, pervades any attempt to transcend human limitations. As a movie, it's not especially satisfying, given that Cronenberg hasn't created any characters that elicit our sympathies. But as a fable, it has a dark power and truth.  

The Big Night (Joseph Losey, 1951)

Philip Bourneuf, Dorothy Comingore, and John Drew Barrymore in The Big Night

Cast: John Drew Barrymore, Preston Foster, Joan Lorring, Howard St. John, Dorothy Comingore, Philip Bourneuf, Howland Chamberlain, Myron Healey, Emile Meyer, Mauri Leighton. Screenplay: Joseph Losey, Stanley Ellin, based on a novel by Ellin. Cinematography: Hal Mohr. Art direction: Nicolai Remisoff. Film editing: Edward Mann. Music: Lyn Murray. 

An odd little noir, Joseph Losey's The Big Night begins with an exposition full of enigmas. We learn that it's George La Main's (John Drew Barrymore) 17th birthday, and that his father, Andy (Preston Foster), who owns a small bar, has bought them tickets to a prize fight. We see George reading a newspaper column by Al Judge (Howard St. John). But when he asks his father if Frances (or perhaps Francis -- the spelling in the closed caption reinforces the ambiguity) is going with them, the answer is evasive. And then, just as his father brings out a birthday cake and George blows out all of the candles but one, none other than Al Judge enters the bar and orders George's father to take off his shirt. "Show me some skin!" he commands, insisting that Andy remove his undershirt as well. Then he beats the submissive, prostrate Andy with his cane. Movies of the era didn't get much more homoerotically sadomasochistic than this, and there's more rather kinky stuff to come. The rest of this strange film takes its short time (75 minutes) to inform George (and us) what's really going on. In its day, reviewers mostly dismissed The Big Night as a routine melodrama. Now we know that Losey was about to go onto the blacklist and into exile (along with a couple of the movie's uncredited screenwriters, Hugo Butler and Ring Lardner Jr.), so it's tempting to interpret it as a fable about American postwar paranoia, homophobia, and even, in one remarkable scene, racism. Time does curious things to art. 

Eureka (Nicolas Roeg, 1983)

Gene Hackman in Eureka 

Cast: Gene Hackman, Theresa Russell, Rutger Hauer, Jane Lapotaire, Mickey Rourke, Ed Lauter, Joe Pesci, Helena Kallianotes, Cavan Kendall, Corin Redgrave, Joe Spinell. Screenplay: Paul Mayersberg, based on a book by Marshall Houts. Cinematography: Alex Thomson. Production design: Michael Seymour. Film editing: Tony Lawson. Music: Stanley Myers. 

I'm pretty sure what Nicolas Roeg had in mind when he made Eureka were those blockbuster melodramas of the 1940s and '50s based on doorstop bestsellers with a touch of scandal, like Kings Row (Sam Wood, 1942, Duel in the Sun (King Vidor et al., 1946), and Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956). They danced on the edge of what the Production Code would allow, but Roeg wasn't hindered by that. Still, he managed to get an X rating slapped on the movie (for, of all things, violence) that was only one of the reasons Eureka was pulled from distribution and failed at the box office. It didn't receive much approval from critics, either, although today there are some who think it an overlooked classic. Gene Hackman plays a prospector who strikes it rich when he discovers gold, buys an island in the Caribbean, and has a daughter (Theresa Russell) who marries a Frenchman. That's where his troubles have compounded by the time the film gets done with the backstory of his gold strike. Everybody wants a piece of his fortune, including his son-in-law (Rutger Hauer) and the mob, headed by a gangster named Mayakofsky (Joe Pesci). The whole thing culminates in a murder and a big trial scene that includes one of the most improbable cross-examinations I've ever seen in a movie. Oh, and there's also a voodoo orgy for good measure. It's a mess, barely held together by Hackman's professionalism as an actor, but it has the kind of perverse fascination that only a movie mess possesses.

Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler, 2013)

Michael B. Jordan in Fruitvale Station

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray, Ahna O'Reilly, Ariana Neal, Keenan Coogler, Trestin George, Joey Oglesby, Michael James, Marjorie Crump-Shears. Screenplay: Ryan Coogler. Cinematography: Rachel Morrison. Production design: Hannah Beachler. Film editing: Claudia Costello, Michael P. Shawver. Music: Ludwig Göransson. 

As long as it stays true to its neorealist roots, Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station is a very good movie indeed, and one that has proved a harbinger of better movies to come in Coogler's career. It goes soft in casting actors like Octavia Spencer and Kevin Durand in roles that bring attention to their familiarity amid less-familiar faces. (Michael B. Jordan has become a familiar face, but was comparatively unknown at the time.) It also indulges in a little too much sentimentality, as in the stray dog scene, and some unnecessary coincidence, as in the reappearance of Katie (Ahna O'Reilly), the woman Oscar helps in the market, on the BART train that night. Perhaps the biggest mistake, however, is in turning the film into a  biopic of Oscar Grant. By focusing on Grant's backstory the film blunts the points it makes about racism, the training of police, and the dynamic of crowds. Oscar Grant certainly didn't deserve to die that night, but then no one did. Still, it's a meaningful film, with fine performances by Jordan, Spencer, Melonie Diaz, and the very young Ariana Neal as Oscar's daughter. It's also a skillfully made one, especially in its editing and in the mercifully subtle score by Ludwig Göransson. 

Benny's Video (Michael Haneke, 1992)

Arno Frisch in Benny's Video

Cast: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mūhe, Ingrid Stassner, Stephanie Brehme, Stefan Polasek. Screenplay: Michael Haneke. Cinematography: Christian Berger. Production design: Christoph Kanter. Film editing: Maria Homolkova. 

Sometimes I admire the unsparing vision of Michael Haneke's films, and sometimes I think he's just bullying us. I felt that way at the beginning of Benny's Video when he showed the slaughter of a hog twice in succession. Later, when I knew why he did it, I felt more accepting. And yet, by the end of the film, when a sort of justice is done to his characters, who are both disturbed and disturbing, I felt nothing but a kind of resentment at being toyed with for 110 minutes. Haneke is a great manipulator, able to make you believe in his characters and the ghastly situations they put themselves in, but to what end? If that's an objection, it could probably be made of any number of great filmmakers, starting with Alfred Hitchcock, but why do I feel that in films like Benny's Video Haneke represents the decadence of an art form, and not what he seems to be trying to suggest: the decadence of our civilization? 

Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1962)

Cast: Jean-Claude Aimini, Stefania Sabatini, Yveline Céry, Daniel Descamps, Vittorio Caprioli, David Tonelli, André Tarroux, Christian Longuet, Michel Soyet, Arlette Gilbert, Maurice Garre. Screenplay: Michèle O'Glor, Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: René Mathelin. Film editing: Monique Bonnot, Claude Durand, Marc Pavaux. Music: Jacques Denjean, Paul Mattei, Maxime Saury. 

The Nouvelle Vague loved its threesomes, but the dynamic in Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine is different from the more famous ones in François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962) and Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à Part (1962). Instead of two men and one woman, Rozier gives us two women and one man. Otherwise, it walks the same sexual tightrope, juggling the same ideas about what it means to be free in a world that seems determined to stifle that freedom. 

Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1972)

Elisa Andrade in Sambizanga

Cast: Elisa Andrade, Domingos de Oliveira, Jean M'Vondo, Dino Abelino, Benoît Moutsila, Talagongo, Lopes Rodrigues, Henriette Meya, Manuel Videira, Ana Wilson (voice). Screenplay: Sarah Maldoror, Maurice Pons, Mário de Andrade, Claude Agostini, based on a novel by Luandino Vieira. Cinematography: Claude Agostini. Film editing: Georges Klotz. 

Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga is a tough, heartbreaking portrait of Angola struggling for independence from colonial rule, focused on the arrest, torture, and death of a revolutionary leader called Domingos Xavier (Domingos de Oliveira) and the attempt of his wife Maria (Elisa Andrade) to discover what has happened to him. Beautifully filmed and performed by a mostly non-professional cast, many of whom had ties to the revolutionary movement. It was shot in the neighboring Republic of the Congo. 

Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)

Michael B. Jordan in Sinners

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O'Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Delroy Lindo, Peter Dreimanis, Lola Kirke, Li Jun Li, Saul Williams, Yao, David Maldonado, Helena Hu, Adrene Ward-Hammond, Nathaniel Arcand, Emonie Ellison. Screenplay: Ryan Coogler. Cinematography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw. Production design: Hanna Beachler. Film editing: Michael P. Shawver. Music: Ludwig Göransson. 

I admit that I felt a little let down when, after one of the most exhilarating scenes I've seen in a movie for years, Ryan Coogler's Sinners turned into a vampire movie. But by the end of the film, and the mid-credits coda that HBO Max stupidly will make some viewers miss, I was back with it again. It's a movie so alive in texture and significance that it reminds me of the old days when people would sit around and talk about what they had just seen. I'm not surprised that in the online world there are people asking if the version now available for streaming is the same one they saw in theaters: It's easy to miss some of the nuances when you're having your expectations challenged -- not in the gimmicky plot twist way but in changing insights into characters and themes -- at every turn. I can only hope that Coogler's hit sets an example for directors to make movies that succeed by provoking comment and thought rather than just gratifying expectations.

Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001)

Shu Qi in Millennium Mambo

Cast: Shu Qi, Jack Kao, Duan Chun-hao, Chen Yi-Hsuan, Jun Takeuchi, Doze Niu, Jenny Tsen Yan Lei, Pauline Chan, Huang Xiao Chu. Screenplay: Chu T'ien-wen. Cinematography: Mark Lee Ping-bing. Production design: Huang Wen-Yin, Wang Chih-cheng. Film editing: Yoshihiro Hanno, DJ Fish, Giong Lim. 

In Millennium Mambo, Hou Hsiao-hsien presents Vicky (Shu Qi) to us as an object of contemplation, as lacking in agency and volition as an apple in a Cézanne still life. She is being contemplated not only by us but also by herself, ten years later, so Vicky sometimes narrates events before we even see them. She is existentially passive, allowing herself to be propelled through life by others, especially men and particularly her boyfriend Hao-Hao (Duan Chun-hao) and the gangster Jack (Jack Kao). Naturally, as a woman and not an apple, she responds to stimuli, pleasure and pain, but we're no more expected to pass judgment on her than we are the apple. It's a film that replaces plot and narrative with incident and images, handsomely provided by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing, in a cinema moving away from novels and plays toward paintings and sculpture, yet retaining a connection with actuality inherent in the medium. Millennial indeed.

In Celebration (Lindsay Anderson, 1974)

James Bolam, Alan Bates, and Brian Cox in In Celebration

Cast: Alan Bates, Brian Cox, James Bolam, Constance Chapman, Bill Owen, Gabrielle Daye. Screenplay: David Storey, based on his play. Cinematography: Dick Bush. Art direction: Alan Withy. Film editing: Russell Lloyd. Music: Christopher Gunning. 

Upward mobility is not all it's cracked up to be in the Shaw family, the focus of David Storey's play and Lindsay Anderson's film In Celebration. The middle-aged sons of a coal miner have come home to the cramped house where they grew up to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary of their parents. The oldest, Andrew (Alan Bates), studied the law but has given it up to become an artist. The middle son, Colin (James Bolam), works for an automobile manufacturer as a labor negotiator. And the youngest, Stephen (Brian Cox), is a schoolteacher who has been writing a book but has hit a block. The father (Bill Owen) still works the mines at 64, and the mother (Constance Chapman) keeps a tidy house. You can see where this is going, and it doesn't take long for family secrets and half-buried resentments to surface. D.H. Lawrence and Eugene O'Neill, among others, did this kind of cultural and generational clash with more color and meaning. But this is mostly a vehicle for actors, and we get to watch several very good ones do their thing. Bates, Cox, and Chapman get the roles with more nuance and ambiguity built into them, and  
they serve them up well. It's barely a movie rather than a play opened up around the edges, partly because it was part of an experiment called The American Film Theatre, which for a couple of years in the mid 1970s produced adaptations of stage plays shown in selected movie theaters on an advanced sale and subscription basis. The results satisfied neither theatergoers nor movie lovers, but they provide an interesting portrait of the theatrical life of the era and preserve some performances that would otherwise be lost. In this case, it's interesting to see the young Brian Cox after becoming familiar with him as the patriarch on Succession.  

Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell in Miami Vice

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, Ciaràn Hinds, Justin Theroux, Barry Shabaka Henley, Luis Tosar, John Ortiz, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Dominick Lombardozzi, Eddie Marsan, Isaach De Bankolé, John Hawkes. Screenplay: Michael Mann. Cinematography: Dion Beebe. Production design: Victor Kempster. Film editing: William Goldenberg, Paul Rubell. Music: John Murphy. 

The dark-on-dark credits roll for Michael Mann's film version of his hit 1980s TV series Miami Vice is the most illegible I've ever tried to read. It's as if no one connected with the movie was especially eager to be associated with it. Not that it's a bad movie, but that it never comes to life, never stirs the kind of enthusiasm that the original did. It has all the elements: attractive performers, hip music, fast cars, boats, and planes, the requisite sex and violence. But it doesn't seem to be going anywhere new or interesting. The characters don't generate much empathy or commitment to their fates. It ends on the most perfunctory note I think I've seen in a big American movie, not even trying to make you want a sequel.

Breakfast of Champions (Alan Rudolph, 1999)

Bruce Willis in Breakfast of Champions

Cast: Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Barbara Hershey, Glenne Headly, Lukas Haas, Omar Epps, Vicki Lewis, Buck Henry, Ken Hudson Campbell, Jake Johanssen, Will Patton, Chip Zien, Owen Wilson. Screenplay: Alan Rudolph, based on a novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Cinematography: Elliot Davis. Production design: Nina Ruscio. Film editing: Suzy Ruscio. Music: Mark Isham. 

When a film starts with a man with a gun in his mouth, you expect it to explain why he's doing that. Alan Rudolph's Breakfast of Champions never really does. You can only accept as explanation a desire to escape the hurly-burly of events that follows. There are those who love this movie and those who would need to be strapped to a chair with their eyes taped open to watch it again. I found it exhausting and pointless, with gags that went on too long and characters who serve no function in whatever plot it possesses.