In 1989, director Rob Reiner was just starting to make people forget actor Rob Reiner (Meathead from “All in the Family”) when he created a cinematic standard for romantic comedies. Helped by an all-star team (writer Nora Ephron, cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, stars Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan), Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally” is the Woody Allen movie for everyone who doesn’t like Woody Allen movies, a Manhattancentric look at Baby Boomer relationships with romance and pathos leavened by cunning wit. Crystal and Ryan are the friends who think friends can’t be lovers (or is it vice versa?) until they are.
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If #metoo existed back when “Hurlyburly” (1998) was being filmed, a mob of anarchist feminists would have descended on the set and murdered all the male characters. Historians can debate whether we’d be better off. Anyway, this is probably the worst of those 1990s movies that tried to portray the vacuousness of Hollywood wheeling-dealing. It’s definitely the most misogynistic. And to think, 15 years later, Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey would team up again for “House of Cards.” And by the time she negotiated an equally inflated salary, he’d get me-tooed and she’d ultimately lose her job. It’s next-level karma.
Film noir isn’t all cigarettes, alcohol and funky cinematography. Unfortunately, “D.O.A.” (1988) is. The gimmick here is that Dennis Quaid has been poisoned and before he dies, he must tell the police his version of all the death and destruction that’s taken place over the previous 36 hours. Problem is, he only seems to suffer symptoms when it’s dramatically convenient and walks out of a precinct house with a very long hallway much better than he walks in. (As I write this, I’m suddenly thinking somebody pulled a Keyser Soze on me. But they didn’t. It’s just a mediocre movie.)
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