MOLLY'S GAME is the true story of Molly Bloom a beautiful, young, Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game for a decade before being arrested in the middle of the night by 17 FBI agents wielding automatic weapons. Her players included Hollywood royalty, sports stars, business titans and finally, unbeknownst to her, the Russian mob. Her only ally was her criminal defense lawyer Charlie Jaffey, who learned that there was much more to Molly than the tabloids led us to believe.
Stanley Kubrick's 1961 version of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's notorious 1953 novel, prompted a scandal in its day: even to address the issue of paedophilia on screen was deemed to be as perverted as the hapless protagonist Humbert Humbert. James Mason plays Humbert, the suave English Professor whose gentlemanly exterior peels away as quickly as his scruples once exposed to Sue Lyons' well-developed teenage beauty. In order to be close to her, he marries her mother, the lonely and pathetically pretentious Charlotte (Shelley Winters) only for her to expire conveniently, leaving Humbert free to embark on a motel-to-motel trek across America with Lolita in tow, evading suspicions that theirs is more than a father-daughter relationship. Peter Sellers, meanwhile, gives a Dr Strangelove-type tour de force performance as Clare Quilty, a TV writer also in pursuit of Lolita, who harasses Humbert under several guises, including a psychiatrist. As a movie, Lolita is flawed, albeit interestingly so. The sexual innuendo (a summer camp called Camp Climax, for example) seems jarring and pointless, while Sellers' comic turn detracts from any sense of guilt, tension or tragedy. It's as if the real purpose of the film is to offer a sort of silent, mocking laughter at the wretched Humbert and systematically divest him of his dignity. By the end, he is a babbling wretch while Sue Lyons' Lolita is pragmatic and self-possessed. It's Mason and Lyons' performances, which lift the film from its mess of structural difficulties. Decades on, their central relationship still makes for pitifully compulsive viewing. On the DVD: Few extras, sadly, though the brief original trailer is excellent, built around the question, "How could they make a film out of Lolita?". The original black and white picture and mono sound are excellent. --David Stubbs
The team behind Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary--two really stupid, gross-out films that worked and were quite funny--also made King Pin, a really stupid, gross-out comedy that doesn't work and isn't funny at all. Woody Harrelson stars as a former bowling phenomenon with a hook for a hand, and Randy Quaid is an Amish farmer with a hidden talent for pins. The two join forces and get a sexy business partner (Vanessa Angel), and the film starts looking more and more like a jokey variation of The Colour of Money. The Colour of Money, however, didn't feature jokes about having oral sex with a hideous landlady or defecating in a sink or dragging disgusting stuff out of one's teeth with a length of floss. Bill Murray provides some much-needed relief as Harrelson's ex-partner turned rival. How come this stuff is obnoxious while the equally perverse punch lines of There's Something About Mary are a riot? It's a great mystery, all right, but there it is. --Tom Keogh
Molly's Game is the true story of Molly Bloom a beautiful, young, Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game for a decade before being arrested in the middle of the night by 17 FBI agents wielding automatic weapons. Her players included Hollywood royalty, sports stars, business titans and finally, unbeknownst to her, the Russian mob. Her only ally was her criminal defense lawyer Charlie Jaffey, who learned that there was much more to Molly than the tabloids led us to believe.
Less Than Zero is adapted from the dreary, pointless late-80s novel by literary poseur Bret Easton Ellis, which focused on listless, shiftless, drug-sniffing, sex-swapping, dead-end California teens with too much money and time on their hands--though the movie is not nearly as interesting as that. This is mostly due to the ridiculously cleaned-up script and lifeless direction, which whitewashes the baser depravity and replaces it with perversion-lite and fashion shows. It doesn't help that director Marek Kanievska is saddled with Brat Pack lesser (make that least) lights Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz. The only things that lift this film above the muck are the performances by James Spader as a particularly heinous drug dealer and Robert Downey Jr as a rich-kid addict with no self-control. --Marshall Fine
When successful lawyer Gwen Warwick begins a passionate extramarital affair with handsome young clerk Martin commiting infidelity is not her only problem. Soon after a rival colleague is murdered and all evidence points in her direction. In order to clear her name Gwen must race against the clock to find the killer. However as she unravels the murderer's motives Martin's name seems to appear one too many times.
At Harrad college the students are given classes on sexual freedom and are freely encouraged to experiment on themselves! Based on Robert Rimmer's novel of the same name. This drama stars Tippi Hedren and James Whitmore as heads of an experimental college that decides to promote sexual freedom. Mixed sharing of dorm rooms group marriages and wife swapping are eagerly promoted amongst the students but some students are rebelling....
Lt. Samuel Drake (Chadwick Boseman, Marvel's Black Panther) is a troubled vet plagued by his actions whilst deployed in Iraq. Recently discharged, he is trying to piece his life back together. He attends counselling sessions led by Marshall (Billy Zane, Titanic) to help cope with the horrors of his past. Drake's fragile new life is shattered when two executives (Peter Greene, Pulp Fiction and Ted Rooney, Grimm), who represent a private military contractor, present a new mission, one with no option to refuse; track down and kill Sgt. Devin Carter (Tory Kittles True Detective), an AWOL Marine Corps sniper who knows the truth about Drake's past and who himself is on a mission to target and kill members of a mercenary firm. Kill Zone is a story of one man who is forced to face his violent past and the uneasy bond he forms with the mysterious assassin he must kill.
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