Ceiling fans, a dame of dubious motivations, drugs, sex, the sinister side of Hollywood, top hats and tommy guns, high stops from above ceiling fans, they’re all here in “Marlowe,” the new noir thriller from filmmaker Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game,” “The End of the Affair”), with Liam Neeson as the dependable yet perennially down-on-his-luck private eye Philip Marlowe. “Marlowe” finds Raymond Chandler’s
It definitely helps to give your protagonist a certain “set of skills,” particularly if he is played by that grand master of icy revenge, Liam Neeson. Neeson, impossibly craggy yet as ruggedly handsome as ever, stars in the new film “The Marksman” as Jim, a widowered Arizona rancher with a history in the armed forces and a rather keen eye with a rifle scope—hence the title. Jim’s ranch abuts the Mexican border, and during one of his daily rounds he comes upon injured migrant Rosa
Do sleeping dogs lie forever? The question can be asked about Peter Landesman’s biopic of Mark Felt, the FBI agent who leaked drop after drop of damning information regarding the Watergate burglary to Bod Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, until they turned into a flood that drowned Nixon and acolytes in 1974. If one relies on the story as it is told here the dogs will indeed not wake. Mark Felt
Homer’s memorized recitals of the stories of the heroes and gods certainly required a attention span. The Wrath of The Titans certainly does not. It demands only the attention typically demanded by modern Hollywood blockbuster screenwriting. But would Homer, in all his “As I lay dying, the woman with the dog face wouldn’t close my eyes as I descended into Hades”-ness, been better served by less longwindedness and more
Director Jaume Collet-Serra dials up the paranoia and suspense while the action, which includes some fights, explosions and a terrific car chase, thrills. Of course the way this all ends is very important and while it’s familiar, the ending still makes sense enough not to botch what came before it. And this is Neeson’s movie. The big, gruff action hero knocks it out of the park. Ganz also proves a definite scene stealer and Kruger and Frank Langella, playing Martin’s shady boss, offer fine support. Unknown is nothing groundbreaking but it's effective and thrilling, and at this point in the year who could ask for anything more?
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