Το σφύριγμα της σφαίρας

SilentDawn4.5

90Gah, this is just delightful. Trash heaven. Denzel Washington faces off against John Lithgow. Full-tilt crazy, both of them. Basically a Harvey Dent vs. Joker movie. Feels like a toxic blend of erotic thriller and 'wrong man' tropes, but that still doesn't account for the prison sword fight between Lithgow and Jesse Ventura. So gleefully violent and nasty. Its sleaze holds no bounds. Not to mention that composer Alan Silvestri crafted a musical score like his life depended on it. All for a wacky late-nite psychological thriller that features death by both circular saw *and* big pointy spike. Have I made it clear enough yet? Watch it!

Josh Lewis4.0

In which a supposed cat-and-mouse Dirty Harry sequel spec-script about a deranged criminal coming back to viciously stalk and torment the cop/DA who put him away years earlier Cape Fear style was instead placed into the hands of an absurd alchemy of 80s action maestros (Joel Silver, Steven E. de Souza and Russell Mulcahy) and turned into one of the most psychotically excessive and sleazy 90s thrillers I've ever seen. Denzel is impeccably cast as the superhumanly charismatic, good-looking and ambitious LA public law official whose carefully crafted moral image/reputation is tarnished by a series of ruthlessly punishing, psychosexual public spectacle gamesmanship set pieces with John Lithgow's wonderfully hammy comic book supervillain meets slasher serial killer psycho who orchestrates what has to be one of the most elaborate and vile plans in revenge movie and wrongly accused man thriller history... At first starting Aryan Brotherhood samurai tournaments in prison and turning parole hearings into bloodbaths while delivering repulsively sexual one-liners, and later doing everything from framing Denzel for pedophilia to getting him hooked on heroin and deliberately giving him an STD, while occasionally arm wrestling him and murdering various friends and family. Also features Mulcahy going absolutely wild with the slick-grimy 90s thriller aesthetic and knockoff De Palma camera tricks courtesy of the Predator 2 DOP (that explosion reflected in Lithgow's eye!), as well as Alan Silvestri blatantly ripping off Bernard Herrmann which together give the consistently gross, lowbrow thrills some old-school class and style. Generating this intense and engaging whiplash effect between the genuinely effective and sinister thriller filmmaking craft on display and the pulpy script which is so ludicrous (Denzel stripping and pulling a gun out of his jock strap???) and sadistic in its details that it feels like a satire of both the genre and of an image/media/crime-obsessed America. I'm a bit late to this one so I will just echo everyone else here: how does this not have a Blu-ray yet? Full discussion on ep 312 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

COBRARocky4.0

Borders on outright transcendent in terms of how utterly deranged it's willing to get, let down only by an obviously test audience approved ending where it seems to wake up and remember it's a Hollywood film. Still there is some outright jaw dropping stuff in this, to the point where you will wonder if it's even a real movie at some points.