| 2. American Beauty (1999) |
Kevin Spacey finally gets the chance to have sex with Mena Suvari, but an attack of guilt stops him. The latent-homosexual (and rabidly homophobic) colonel tries to kiss Spacey, and Spacey gently rebuffs him. The colonel comes back later and shoots Spacey in the head, killing him.
|
| http:// |
| From: Movie Spoilers/Titles A/American Beauty (1999) |
| Rating: [0.00] Votes: [0] Hits: [13] |
Relevance: 88.54%  |
| Add to Favorites | Rate It | Comments | Report | More Info |
| 3. Angels and Insects (1995) |
William (Mark Rylance) walks in on Eugenia (Patsy Kensit) having sex with her slimy brother Edgar (Douglas Henshall) — the siblings have been doing it since they were little (which is why she keeps having blonde babies). William runs away with Matty (Kristin Scott Thomas), who's been in love with him all along.
|
| http:// |
| From: Movie Spoilers/Titles A/Angels and Insects (1995) |
| Rating: [0.00] Votes: [0] Hits: [11] |
| Relevance: 88.10% |
| Add to Favorites | Rate It | Comments | Report | More Info |
| 4. Alfie (1966) |
Selfish, self-centered hedonist Alfie (Michael Caine) seduces virtually every "bird" he meets (including a nurse in the sanatorium where he's being treated for tuberculosis), because he can (and because the pre-feminist women are stupid enough to put up with his narcissistic, misogynistic ways; he even refers to the female being as "it").
One of his married conquests, Lily (Vivien Merchant), gets pregnant, and Alfie (who has already refused to marry the mother of the product of an earlier affair) arranges for her to have a (literal) kitchen-table abortion. Seeing the dead fetus sobers Alfie up in a hurry, and he decides to settle down and marry rich widow Ruby (Shelley Winters) — but when he goes to see her, finds she's replaced him with a new, younger lover. Past his prime and abandoned by all the women he's bedded, Alfie is forced to reevaluate his life.
Followed by:
Alfie Darling (1976) We need a spoiler!
Remade as:
Alfie (2004)
|
| http:// |
| From: Movie Spoilers/Titles A/Alfie (1966) |
| Rating: [0.00] Votes: [0] Hits: [3] |
Relevance: 67.59%  |
| Add to Favorites | Rate It | Comments | Report | More Info |
| 5. Black Hooker (1974) |
a.k.a. Street Sisters
Painted Woman* (Sandra Alexandra), a sleazy hooker, who's black, leaves her illegitimate son, blonde, blue-eyed Young Boy (Teddy Quinn), with her parents, a mean preacher man (Jeff Burton) and his long-suffering wife (Kathryn Jackson), then returns to visit the old homestead occasionally, for no apparent reason but to annoy the couple.
By the time Young Boy turns into Older Boy (Durey Mason, who looks like a cross between Larry Wilcox, "Ponch" of "CHiPs," and Dean Butler, Almanzo Wilder of "Little House on the Prairie"), he's fallen in love with the (black) girl he's grown up with (Gioya Roberson, and later Mary Reed). Their love affair goes to pot after Older Boy sees Grandpa seducing Older Girl in the barn. Grandma — who up to this point has been the only person in Boy's life with any redeeming qualities whatsoever — tells Older Boy not to fret about what he's seen (Grandma's always put up with Grandpa's adultery, and there are worse things that can happen, she tells him), but (and in spite of Older Girl's plea that he stay with her), Older Boy runs away to find Painted Woman and have a normal mother-son relationship (fat chance). Meanwhile, Painted Woman is off whoring around in the city as usual.
When Grandma dies, there's a weird, sepia-toned funeral out in the middle of nowhere, for which both Older Boy and Painted Woman return. Later, Older Boy confronts his wayward mama in her bedroom, and strangles her to death. The End.
Our take: Truly bizarre, low-budget, description-defying oddity that must be seen to be believed. Despite the title, it's not blaxploitation, which is traditionally urban with a funky backbeat.
* None of the characters in this cheesy exploitation flick has a given name.
|
| http:// |
| From: Movie Spoilers/Titles B/Black Hooker (1974) |
| Rating: [0.00] Votes: [0] Hits: [2] |
| Relevance: 67.34% |
| Add to Favorites | Rate It | Comments | Report | More Info |
| 6. Divorcing Jack (1998) |
The blackest sort of black comedy there is, which, if you don't know what's coming (I didn't), will catch you completely off-guard. It starts out as an irrevent comedy-comedy, and turns very dark, very suddenly...
K. Wedgwood's plot summary over at the IMDB gave us a chuckle: "A married drunk hooks up with the ex-girlfriend of a vicious local criminal. He gets booted out of home for his infidelity, has a murderer on his tail, and must try to write the story of his life in order to save his journalism job. He gets help from a stripper dressed as a nun and goes undercover dressed as Shaggy from Scooby Doo. He finds a drinking buddy in an American fellow journalist."
But if you want to know what really happens...
One day in a park, alcoholic womanizer and newspaper columnist Dan Starkey (David Thewlis) meets Margaret (Laura Fraser), an attractive young student capable of keeping up not only with Starkey's drinking, but with his quick wit as well. Charmed (and without knowing her name), Starkey asks her to accompany him to a party. There, we meet Starkey's long-suffering wife, Patricia (Laine Megaw), who later catches him kissing Margaret. Patricia rakes him over the coals and leaves, but instead of going after her, Starkey goes home with Margaret and spends the night with her.
When he comes home the next morning, he finds an answering-machine message from Patricia telling him she's going to stay with her parents for a few days, and that each should use this time to figure out the future — oh, and that he'll find one of his collectible vinyl LP records (worth 300 quid) in the toaster grill.
Starkey isn't terribly rattled by the possibility of an impending divorce, nor by the ribbing he takes from his co-workers, who are well aware he spent the night with a "wee" bit o' fluff. While his boss is screaming at him to get back to work, Starkey calls Patricia and swears he wasn't unfaithful, and that he was gone all night "walking the streets." But he still doesn't seem very upset about the idea of his wife leaving him.
While Patricia is gone, Starkey continues seeing (and sleeping with) Margaret, who knows he's married and loves his wife (she doesn't care). Patricia certainly cares; one day when Margaret enters her apartment, the windows start shattering. Gunshots? No; it's Patricia hurling potatoes from the alley below. Finished, Patricia screams up at Margaret that she can have Starkey.
At one point, Margaret opens a birthday present from her father in front of Starkey; it's a collection of audio tapes of classical music. She insists on gifting Starkey with one tape, of Antonín Dvorak (say DVOR-zhak out loud, and see if you can guess why the pronunciation is important), with the promise that he can come back for each of the other 23 tapes.
Meanwhile, Starkey meets up with Boston Globe journalist Charles Parker (Richard Gant) as the two men are cleared to cover Northern Ireland's upcoming elections, focusing on Prime Minister frontrunner Michael Brinn (Robert Lindsay), who is campaigning on establishing permanent peace (he says) between the country's warring Catholics and Protestants, despite having been the victim of a terrorist bombing himself.
Starkey doesn't buy Brinn's rhetoric, and even attempts to embarrass him in public (by demanding to know why he dropped the "O'" from his family name of O'Brinn). Parker, meanwhile, for reasons we can't imagine (other than the fact that Parker can drink Starkey under the table with no visible ill effect), takes a liking to Starkey, befriending him and standing by him, even after (much later in the film) the two are chased on the road by Protestant paramiltary skinheads who fire pistols and ram Parker's car. The assailants, Starkey says, have been after him ever since he wrote something "sarcastic" about them a few years earlier.
Meanwhile, back at the Margaret situation... One night after making love, Starkey and Margaret are craving chips, so Starkey goes out to buy some. Find the nearest chips shop closed (due to "varicose veins" - !), he buys pizza instead. He enters Margaret's apartment and finds her on the bed, covered in her own blood and minutes away from death. Starkey, who by this time has fallen in love with her, manages to keep himself from having a complete meltdown as Margaret dies... but not before she utters what sounds like "Divorce... Jack... Divorce... Jack..." She then chokes on her own blood and shuffles off this mortal coil.
(Best line so far is Starkey's response to the emergency operator on the phone, who asks, "What service do you require?" "Every f-ing service!")
Suddenly, Starkey hears the front door open, and, thinking the killer is either still in the apartment or has returned, creeps out to investigate, and encounters a shape in the stairwell. Starkey attacks the intruder, and, next thing you know... Well, as Starkey later says directly to the camera:
"I sat and thought of lovely Margaret, of her hair and her eyes and her laugh and the way she kissed me and her skin that smelled of mandarin oranges. She had died in my arms. What would she think of me now? Would she still want me now that I had pushed her mother down the stairs and broken her neck?"
With Margaret dead in bed, Margaret's mother dead at the bottom of the stairwell, and Margaret's blood all over himself, rather than stay at the scene of the crime, Starkey runs.
The next day, Parker picks up Starkey for their big interview with Brinn. Starkey, with Margaret's murder foremost in his mind, isn't quite his old jolly, devil-may-care self, and attributes his subdued mood to a hangover.
After Parker hammers Brinn with a series of hard questions (those darn Yanks!), a call comes in about the deaths of Margaret and her mother. Turns out Margaret is the daughter of one of the high-ranking members of Brinn's political party — and she's also the girlfriend of domestic terrorist Patrick "Cow Pat" Keegan (Jason Isaacs). This is not good. (And it's on their way back from Brinn's house that Parker's car is attacked by the Protestant skinheads.)
Despite everything that's gone on, Starkey is compelled to call Patricia again, but doesn't have change for the pay phone. (This is 1999, remember, so don't ask why he doesn't have a cell phone; almost nobody did). He approaches a hairy young street vendor selling tapes to ask for change, which the young man refuses to give him. Desperate, Starkey produces the Dvorak tape Margaret had given him and offers to sell it to the young man for the mere cost of 50p. After hesitating a moment, the hairy young man gives him the money and takes the tape.
Starkey phones Patricia. Their call is interrupted by a ruckus that sounds like Patricia is being murdered — but she's only ("only"!) being kidnapped by Keegan. At wits' end, Starkey finally tells his new friend Parker everything that's happened in the past few days. He begs Parker to keep his mouth shut, and not go to the poilce.
Parker agrees to help him. He learns that Margaret did know a man named Jack. Starkey finds this Jack and beats the tar out of him in an attempt to get him to confess to murdering Margaret. But Jack really had nothing to do with it.
That night, Starkey has another run-in with the militant Protestants and is shot in the leg. He's rescued by a nun in a small car. Lee (Rachel Griffiths) isn't really a nun; she's a nurse by day and stripper by night. She brings him home to her place and takes care of him, and shows no fear when she tells him she knows who he is and that the authorities are searching for him.
Lee plays some music, which she identifies as Dvorak (say DVOR-zhak, remember?), and Jack suddenly realizes Margaret's last words were not "Divorce Jack"; she was saying "Dvorak." Starkey needs to get the tape back.
Starkey meets Parker at a restaurant, and finds out how Parker intends to "help" him; Parker has set him up to be captured by Keegan (but then, it appears Keegan forced Parker to lure Starkey out into the open). Keegan and his minions take Starkey and Parker to an empty flat in a high-rise, where Parker is dangled upside down outside the window. If Starkey doesn't give Keegan the tape, Keegan will cut the rope holding Parker aloft. Starkey swears he doesn't have the tape; Keegan cuts the rope, and Parker plummets many stories to the street.
When Keegan produces the captive Patricia and threatens to kill her in the same manner, Starkey begs for Patricia's life and finally admits he had the tape, but sold it. Keegan is about to cut the rope holding Patricia when Lee, in her nun's habit, bursts in with an automatic pistol. Starkey, Lee, and Patricia escape.
Starkey goes back to the hairy street vendor to retrieve the tape, but the vendor tells him he sold it to a priest. Starkey manages to track down the priest, who plays the tape; it's a recording of Brinn confessing to planting the bomb he had claimed was set by terrorists. Starkey goes to the post office to mail the tape to Margaret's apartment (we don't understand exactly why he does this), but is again taken captive again by Keegan.
Keegan orders Starkey to drive to a spot out in the middle of nowhere for an exchange in which Brinn (who, of course, wants the tape very badly) will pay Keegan a huge sum of money. (Why Keegan makes Starkey bring the tape, instead of just killing Starkey and taking the tape himself, we don't know.) Starkey does as he's told, handing over the tape, which Keegan inserts in a portable player before giving it to Brinn, who forks over a suitcase full of cash.
As Brinn and his underlings drive away, Brinn pops the tape out of the player, and his car suddenly explodes in a ball of flame. With Brinn out of the way, Keegan and his gang leave Starkey and drive off. The goon riding shotgun opens the suitcase and picks up a stack of cash, only to see a red LED clock counting down the seconds. The suitcase, like the tape recorder, is a booby trap; Keegan's vehicle blows up.
Later, Starkey, now out of danger, is approached by high-ranking civil servants who try to convince him not to write his story for publication. Starkey delivers a few choice words about the queen, then goes home to start over with Patricia.
Random notes: I'm pretty darned good at understanding accents/brogues of any kind (especially Irish, having been schooled by Irish nuns for eight years), but David Thewlis's manner of speaking had me stymied throughout most of the film. (I spent many minutes wondering why everybody was searching for some sort of "tip" before I realized they were all saying "tape.") Fortunately, the rest of the Irish folks (and Rachel Griffiths, an Australian with a gift for accents rivaling that of Meryl Streep's), speaking far more clearly, compensate for Thewlis's decidedly muddy speech.
— JR
|
| http:// |
| From: Movie Spoilers/Titles D/Divorcing Jack (1998) |
| Rating: [0.00] Votes: [0] Hits: [11] |
Relevance: 24.75%  |
| Add to Favorites | Rate It | Comments | Report | More Info |
|