Simon's Movie Reviews

The Usual Suspects (1995) is a crime movie with a superb script, tightly directed action sequences, compelling performances and one of the great twists to come out of 1990s cinema. Unfortunately the people involved with the film now resemble the people they play in the movie in the sense that they have pretty spotty history. You have Kevin Spacey, who has been accused by multiple men of sexual harassment and assault, and is now under investigation by Scotland Yard ( https://bit.ly/2C77Yna ). Then there is the director, Bryan Singer, who has been accused of sexual assault by a minor ( https://bbc.in/2Prp7K8 ). You also have Stephen Baldwin, who has endorsed Donald Trump, a man who lest we forget, has also been accused of sexual misconduct ( https://bit.ly/2BZn4Hc ). The Usual Suspects indeed. It is therefore awkward to praise this movie in a post #MeToo era, but to be fair the first time I watched this movie I had no idea these people were allegedly this disgusting. Like eve...

Gangster films have many things in common, but gangster films set in sunny Los Angeles have a special flavour of their own. It doesn’t matter if the main characters are gun-totting criminals or crooked cops, if the setting is Tinseltown then celebrity culture will be a factor. In the Curtis Hanson directed L.A Confidential (1997) a cop moonlights as an advisor for a popular TV show about cops, a publisher of a tabloid magazine sets up celebrity arrests, and a pimp has a group of prostitutes surgically altered to look like Hollywood actresses. Throw in a femme fatale into the mix and you have one delicious piece of film noir. If I recall well this was a movie I saw on HBO with my parents a few years after it came out while we were living in South America. The content matter was somewhat mature for my age at the time, but if anything I had more trouble following the storyline since this is an over two-hour movie with lots of characters, plot twists, and betrayals. Like The Dude s...

The suburbs can be a fascinating place in America. On the surface it seems idyllic, with its white picket fences, happy parents who love their kids, and perfectly mowed grass. However you don’t have to dig too deep to find kids selling drugs, crumbling marriages, and middle-aged husbands having fantasies about their daughter’s friend in the cheerleading squad. Such is the suburb depicted in Sam Mendes’ American Beauty (1999) featuring Kevin Spacey as one of many men from that world having a mid-life, and potentially existential, crisis. However you have to admire the fact his character seems intent on having not just a regular crisis, but the mother of all mid-life crises. Mendes’ film went on to win four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor, which at the time I found quite surprising because I was really pinning for The Hurricane starring Denzel Washington as Ruben Carter. I was having a hard time understanding how a movie about a dead-beat dad could be better than a st...