All Articles by Andrew Killeen

INSIDE MOVES DVD Review

Posted: June 13th, 2009 at 11:23 am

Richard Donner’s Inside Moves begins with a scene that evokes his own version of Metropolis, utilizing late 1970′s New York for a quiet, yet quite startling entreat into a character’s life that nearly ends as soon as the film starts. After a botched suicide attempt, Roary, played by Jon Savage, begins a slow recovery (time-compressed by a subtle montage, natch), including some self-medication at a nearby watering hole. There, Roary meets a cast of local characters, like bartender Jerry Maxwell, well acted by a very young David Morse. It turns out Jerry is an injured former basketball player, and he and Roary share more in common than just a hangout.

Inside Moves is treasured character film making from an era when slow moments weren’t boring, and unattractive characters weren’t Hollywood taboo. There’s a special texture to movies like Inside Moves that distinguish them from today’s faire. Not that it’s entirely a stock piece, because Richard Donner has accomplished a wonderful portrait of humanity here, at turns touching enough to draw in the heart, and ugly enough to push it away at times. Among its highs are an Oscar-nominated performance by Diana Scarwid, a great screenplay that celebrates the miracle of friendship in the face of adversity, and Richard Donner’s gift for dramatic directing.

Virtually begged-for by its longtime fans, Inside Moves arrives on DVD in wide screen format and should not be missed.

MIRACLE AT ST. ANA DVD Review

Posted: June 10th, 2009 at 11:17 am

Set in World War 2 and following the exploits of the Buffalo Soldiers, the nickname for the all-black 92^nd Infantry, Miracle At St. Anna tells the story of a mystical statue head that is at once responsible for the murder of a German bank customer in 1983, and the preservation of said 92^nd Infantry during the invasion of Axis Italy in 1944.

The film gets off to an intriguing start when a black postal worker fires a luger into the aforementioned German customer, resulting in his arrest and an investigation by a detective played by John Turturro and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young reporter looking for a break. Not long after news breaks of the circumstances surrounding this ex-Nazi’s death, the film flashes back to World War 2, where we find the mystical statue head traveling with the Buffalo Soldiers into battle.

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