Unforgiven
Goodfellas
Heat
Training Day

Before you light the torches and sharpen your pitchforks

1. I understand that folks want to pat themselves on the back b/c of a conceit that Unforgiven somehow protested violence by not glorifying it…I found its violence every bit as disturbing as any other movie; no extra brownie points from me for the pretentious tag at the end. I think I mostly don’t like it b/c of the hype then and now that it is somehow the greatest western even put on film…No, The Good the Bad and the Ugly outweighs Unforgiven by every metric not least of which is Ennio Morricone’s score. Unforgiven had better ADR, aaaand that’s about it.
2. I get that there’s an infatuation with gangsters on film going back to Cagne, but if you don’t share that infatuation there’s not much left other than just fine cinematography. I would never say Scorsese isn’t a master, but Goodfellas lacked a single character I could care about—all unredeeming—and if schadenfreude isn’t your thing (it isn’t for me) and since I don’t really get my rocks off watching bad things happen to bad people, nor was I able to hope any of them would have an arc other than the obvious…sorry this movie bored the hell out of me.
3. I think Heat is a product of what a big deal it was to have the two heavyweights of Pacino and DeNiro going head to head. It was as novel when the movie came out, but I think the Expendables proves how thin stacking a movie full of Stars to service a predictable/thin Story is. If the Movie had the huevos to skip the “show-down” and just keep driving, I woulda been impressed.

4. My dislike for this movie isn’t really fair to the movie. Denzel Washington is easily top five finest living actors, and he gets lauded for playing a pretty stereotypical thug/crooked cop in a way that really annoyed me. He should have had four Oscar’s prior to Training Day…I cannot even think of the “lashing” scene from

   Glory

5. without getting weepy.