Dangerous Indiscretion is what happens when someone mistakes a grocery store flirtation for the beginning of a high-stakes erotic thriller, and then builds an entire movie around that single, terrible idea. It’s like they dared themselves to write a script during a hangover, and then never bothered to proofread it before filming. C. Thomas Howell … Read More “Dangerous Indiscretion (1995): Aisle 5—Bananas, Regret, and Erotic Thrillers That Don’t Work” »
Revenge is a dish best served cold. Unless you’re watching Payback (1995), in which case it’s overcooked, underseasoned, and dropped on the floor before anyone had a chance to care. This cinematic faceplant stars C. Thomas Howell as Oscar Bonsetter, a man whose name sounds like a minor league baseball coach and whose personality matches. … Read More “Payback (1995): Love, Lust, and Lazy Revenge in the Discount Bin of Cinema” »
If Criminal Passion were a cocktail, it would be one part bad erotica, one part murder mystery, and five parts spilled boxed wine. The kind of movie where everyone whispers like they’re in a library, but moans like they’re in a brothel. It wants to be Basic Instinct, but it ends up more like Mediocre … Read More “Criminal Passion (1994): A Murder Mystery So Dumb It Should Be Arrested” »
Lake Consequence is one of those late-night cable films that tried to pass itself off as art but forgot to put pants on. It struts around like it’s some kind of deep, brooding, erotic meditation on desire and repression, but let’s be honest—this isn’t Bergman. It’s barely Zalman King. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a … Read More “Lake Consequence (1993): Skinny-Dipping in a Puddle of Pretentious Trash” »
Let’s not kid ourselves: Illicit Behavior sounds like it was named by a bored porn site algorithm. And watching it feels a lot like staying up too late, half-drunk, flipping through cable channels and landing on something that promises sleaze, danger, and a femme fatale—only to deliver moody lighting, Robert Davi grumbling into a payphone, … Read More “Illicit Behavior (1994): Cops, Crooks, and Joan Severance Caught in a Cinematic Dumpster Fire” »
This episode of The Hitchhiker is what happens when someone tries to write a cautionary tale about the dangers of fame, identity, and fantasy… after doing shots of whiskey and reading a Sylvia Plath poem through a rearview mirror. It’s called “My Enemy,” but frankly, the real enemy might be the script, or maybe the … Read More “The Hitchhiker (1989) – “My Enemy”: Identity Crisis Served With Lipstick and a Loaded Gun” »
Ah, the late ’80s—when yuppie smugness was a romantic virtue, and cocaine was probably pitched as a screenwriting tool. Worth Winning is the kind of film that thinks it’s charming, but it’s really just a 100-minute flex by a guy who deserves to get kicked in the teeth with every punchline he delivers. It’s a … Read More “Worth Winning (1989): Worth Skipping” »
If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like if a roided-up cartoon character tried to act in a movie written during a concussion protocol timeout, No Holds Barred is your answer. It’s not a film. It’s a fever dream brought to you by the same minds who thought a man wrestling another man into … Read More “No Holds Barred (1989): Hulk Hogan’s Cinematic Pile of Crap” »
There’s a moment in See No Evil, Hear No Evil where you realize you’re not watching a comedy so much as a series of sight gags duct-taped to a corpse. The corpse is the script. The duct tape is made of fart jokes, pratfalls, and the lingering hope that Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor might … Read More “See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989): Slapstick for the Sensory-Deprived” »
There’s a scene early in Where the Money Is where Paul Newman, playing a paralyzed ex-bank robber named Henry, gets wheeled around by a bored nurse played by Linda Fiorentino. It’s supposed to feel like slow-burn intrigue—cat and mouse with smirks and sexual tension. What it actually feels like is waiting in line at the … Read More “Where the Money Is (2000): Turns Out, It Ain’t in the Script” »
