Cinema Basement

We bring Tony Scott month to an end with a very deep cut for him. If you've been following along and watching the films as we go through the month, consider this your final exam. Strangely this is his first film and one of his strangest. This is the only horror film Scott made and one of the strangest films of the '80s. The Hunger is basically about a very strange love triangle. Susan Sarandon plays Dr. Sarah Roberts, who is working with primates in an attempt to find a way to possibly reverse the aging process. She is approached by John Blaylock, played by the God himself David Bowie, who seems to age rapidly after Roberts denies his request for help. When she goes to find him, she is seduced by John's lover Miriam, played by the ravishing Catherine Deneuve. The Hunger is part of the wave of vampire films that came out of the '80s. They were slicker than the likes of the dark violent ones that came from the '70s, such as the violent Hammer Dracula films. Film...

The final post for Tony Scott month will be coming this weekend and will be a forgotten film just not on Friday. It's a weird one too so fair warning. So for Friday's actual post I want to quickly look at a fun forgotten horror film from 1997, Wishmaster . If I ask you to think of your favorite horror icons, who comes to mind? The classics maybe, like Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy. Or maybe you think of the horror legends of the '80s, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kruger, Chucky, Pinhead. I argue the Djinn should be regarded right up there with them. This guy is totally awesome and the actor, Andrew Divoff, is having a great time playing him. Wishmaster is about the djinn, an evil genie basically who is freed from captivity hundreds of years after being imprisoned. Of course any wish someone makes is twisted to be fatal to them or someone else. His psychic connection to Alex, the woman who freed him and if granted three wishes will bring about the...

A review by Brooks Rich This is kind of a forgotten film Friday in the middle of the week. Spy Game is a fantastic film and would work as a double feature with Enemy of the State . Both films deal with the corruption and back room dealings of intelligence agencies. Enemy of the State is probably a little more heightened than Spy Game is but they do go hand in hand. Our government has ulterior motives and will betray their own people to cover themselves. Spy Gam e simply tells this kind of story from within the agency. The film takes place in 1991. Brad Pitt plays CIA asset Tom Bishop, who is captured by the People's Liberation Army of China during an unsanctioned mission. Bishop is to be executed in 24 hours unless the US government claims him.  The CIA calls in his former mentor and soon to be retired Nathan Muir, played by the legendary Robert Redford. Muir suspects the CIA is looking to burn Bishop to protect a major trade agreement between China and the United States so ...

A review by Brooks Rich I said before that one of my favorite film genres is monsters eating people and that some of the best came to us in the '90s. My favorite of the genre is Deep Rising , already covered on this blog. A close second is Tremors and a close third to that is The Relic , directed by Peter Hyams and a totally fun if flawed monster movie. The Relic stars Penelope Ann Miller and Tom Sizemore, a troubled actor in real life but damn is he good when he can get his shit together. Miller plays Dr. Margo Green, an evolutionary biologist at the Chicago Museum of Natural History. A brutal murder at the museum brings in lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta of homicide, played by Sizemore. Of course there is pressure to solve the murder before a gala premiere at the museum, where the best and brightest of Chicago will attend. I wonder if a giant monster will attack and start wrecking shit? Oh yeah, it totally does. OK. Let me get this out of the way. Peter Hyams shot this fi...

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman In my humble opinion this is the best revenge film ever made. Man on Fire is everything you want from a B-grade revenge movie but it’s cranked up so hard you are waiting for the whole thing to collapse. It is a film that revels in the odd beauty in Mexico City as much as it loves the strange darkness of the city. Tony Scott by this point had proven has abilities as a director but this is where he really shows his ability to press meaning into action something later directors of big budget star driven action films lose. Man on Fire is the story of John Creasy, a former military man suffering from depression looking to die, and his time working as a bodyguard for the daughter of a prominent mexican businessman during a time where kidnapping of children are at an all time high. This film is an adaption of a novel but it changes so much while novel and film take place in Europe, Scott pushes the film to where a rise in crime is currently happening at the t...

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman I am really pushing the limits of this concept for this one. This isn’t an older flick that has become forgotten by time. This isn’t something that the cultural zeitgeist moved past that I wanted to talk about nor is it something that deeply reflects my personal experiences as a child growing up and discovering films. No this week I want to talk about a movie that is so immediately violent and angry, so immediately ready to tear everything down just to show the hypocrisy of it all, and most of all so immediately visually stunning when something isn’t it is stark and shocking. Assassination Nation could be this generation’s Heathers. This is a future cult classic looking for its cult and that is what I am aiming to do today. I need to help this film find an audience because if no one does it will be forgotten. This week we are aiming to combat that. Assassination Nation is the second film from Sam Levinson and it seems like in writing this he was furiou...

A review by Brooks Rich For the first time in Tony Scott month, we have a film being covered on forgotten film Friday. I didn't think most of his filmography could be called a forgotten film. Even Beverly Hills Cop 2 isn't forgotten. People just forget he directed it. The Fan , Scott's sports thriller, is probably forgotten but that film is so awful I don't want to even waste time thinking about it. The Last Boy Scout is probably forgotten but is startling bad but we will get there. So instead we come to the brutal 1990 revenge thriller aptly titled, Revenge . Kevin Costner stars as a recently retired Navy pilot who travels to Mexico to visit his old friend Tiburon "Tibey" Mendez, played by the legendary Anthony Quinn. An ill advised affair with Tibey's wife, played by Madeline Stowe, leads to a brutal act of retribution which then in turn leads to a violent and tragic third act. This does not look like he usual Tony Scott fare. His editing and sty...