Well Soon It’s Time To Give Away The Second DVD!

Well soon it is time to give away our 2nd DVD to someone who comments on this post! Remember it is a random selection–so your chances are as good as anyone else to win.

 

Wild Things (1998) I like it not because it could be considered “racy,” but because Bill Murray and Robert Wagner are outrageous in this film.

The story centers around Blue Bay High School a community filled with the snobby, high-income elite.  During a senior class lecture, all four of the central (but not necessarily the best) characters in the film materialize in one form or another at the lecture.  First we have Sam Lombardo the guidance counselor (Matt Dillon), Ray Duquette the corrupt policeman (Kevin Bacon), Kelly Van Ryan the daughter of the wealthiest real estate mogul in town (Denise Richards), and Suzie Toller the girl from the caravan park across town (Neve Campbell).  All four of these characters have large secrets they’d rather not share.  Their façade begins to peel off when Lombardo, our sensitive and well liked guidance counselor, is accused of raping the rich girl Kelly Van Ryan.  Her story is initially backed up by “trailer trash” Suzie Toller, but then things get a little out of the ordinary.  Enter Bill Murray in one of the (if not best in my opinion) cameos ever who is Ken Bowden, Sam Lombardo’s lawyer.  Murray manages to show the court that things are not as clear cut as they initially appeared.  He gets Suzie Toller (Neve Campbell) to recant her testimony on the stand and admit the rape accusation was a lie.  Why?  Well we have to wait and see to learn the full story.

wild.things the alleged rape set-up

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Along with Murray is another lawyer-cameo played by Robert Wagner, acting as the wealthy Van Ryan’s family attorney.  The Van Ryan’s are humiliated by the scandal, and Lombardo and Bowden negotiate a hefty settlement: 8.5 million dollars.  Lombardo leaves town to retire after this, and encounters Kelly and Suzie at his hotel.  It turns out that the three of them had been working together the entire time, and planned to split the money.

wild.things.the rape allegation and lawyer meeting

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wild.things the police get involved

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However more unexpected twists are revealed at the end through a series of flashbacks, that Suzie had planned the whole thing in order to get all the money and not just a third (as well as the revenge on Duquette for killing her love years before) she was also a very, very smart woman.  Other characters begin to die off as the movie comes closer and closer to the end.  In the final scene, Bowden (Murray) meets Suzie at a tropical resort, and gives her most of the money—minus his “usual fee”—and tells her to “be good.”

wild.things the trial and settlement

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Overall, however, you can’t really go wrong with this film for an evening’s entertainment.  It doesn’t feel the need to talk down at its audience, it doesn’t resort to excess simplicity to make itself understood, and it just tells an unusual story and tells it convincingly well.  I think that Wild Things was an excellent film and was not just some “dark porn,” as many of the media tried to portray it, rather a fantastic and “different” film that was quite entertaining.

wild.things the alleged rape set-up

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Final Look At the B-Movies: Four Brothers.

This film only has a handful of main problems, which I shall outline below:

1) Terrible storyline 2) Terrible script 3) Terrible acting.   But that is why it is a B Movie I suppose.

Often a bad movie gets a bad rap after time passes.  However, too often this is not the case with some bad action movies, especially the movies that contain some decent action but besides that are completely worthless. This is the case with Four Brothers, the storyline is thin, and the acting is poor. Frankly, if I didn’t have guest over that wanted us to review it I would not have watched the who thing.

FOUR BROTHERS_clip0

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The clichés are all over the place in this plot. The two-bit hustler turned crime boss, the dirty city councilman who appears to be trying to clean up the neighborhood while he’s secretly in cahoots with said crime boss, the dirty cop killing his partner, the one good cop who really seems to care, the plot twist that leads them to wrongly suspect one of the “brothers,” the weakest brother dying because he was a little too brash, the boxing match to settle all scores ad nauseum.

The acting in this movie is just plain terrible. The best example is the Bobby Mercer line, as their running from the bodega to look for the guy with an afro who says something to the effect of, “that wasn’t a holdup, it was a contract killing. Let’s go!” They all take off at a brisk jog.  Clearly the writer/director/producer believes that a lot of stupid people are going to watch this film so they need the characters to spell out the plot “twists.” But why are they running? And why does Mark Wahlberg have to deliver each line like he’s reading a comic book? Honestly, that line should have been followed by the horn section doing the original Batman theme.  Moreover, given the different accents the characters all have, if this movie was to be in Detroit, the least they could have lead us to believe that the characters might actually be from Detroit.

FOUR BROTHERS 2

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