Bruce Willis – Spinning Platters

Film Feature: Chris Piper’s Top 10 Films of 2021

Films make a big comeback in 2021

2021 in American cinema was remarkable in how it seemed so… normal. Whatever the numbers say, my feeling was that the year started a little slowly, then found its footing around March, then kicked into something like a normal gear over the summer. As fall approached, and it seemed to me more theaters reopened, a slate of films pretty much like those in 2019 awaited. Winter seemed to bring somewhat larger than normal crop of smaller-budget films, and here we are, at the end of the year with a number of solid films released, awards season in full swing, and waiting for Oscar noms in just over a month.

So here are my top 10 films of 2021. See these 10 films in any order you want, preferably in the theater, but on your couch if you must. Here’s hoping for more of more of the same in 2022. Continue reading “Film Feature: Chris Piper’s Top 10 Films of 2021”

Film Review: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Stark, Bloody, and two smoking Marvs

Josh Brolin and Eva Green gets black and white and red all over.

It’s a little bizarre that Sin City: A Dame to Kill For took this long to get made. Creative differences, production and casting issues, and the usual onslaught of headlines and rumors supposedly got in the way of this film getting off the ground. But nearly ten years later, we have A Dame to Kill For, and there are many disappointing elements that the filmmakers, with ten years to play with, should have gotten right. The Sin City film franchise nevertheless continues to showcase some of the most impressive visuals in movies — but has the novelty worn off? The black and white psychedelic neo-noir tone is fun, yet a lacking depth of emotion and a shortage of character variety (compared to 2005’s Sin City) spoils the return to Frank Miller’s dark seedy world.

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Click to Reveal Spoilers: Questions About What Happened in Rian Johnson’s “Looper”

looper-bruce-willis_612x408 — I’ve warned you. Put this post down! Don’t you dare read it before seeing the movie!

Please don’t read this post until you’ve already seen Rian Johnson’s excellent film, Looper. I’m about to spoil the heck out of it. There are some lingering questions about this movie (most of them crazy theories) that I want to discuss with someone, so I’m asking you, the Internet, to discuss it with me. If you click to read more, I’m going to assume you’ve seen it. Click below to reveal spoilers. Continue reading “Click to Reveal Spoilers: Questions About What Happened in Rian Johnson’s “Looper””

Spinning Platters Interviews: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rian Johnson on “Looper”

looper4 — Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis in LOOPER

Looper, the ingenious new sci-fi drama from writer/director Rian Johnson (Brick), has one hell of a setup. The year is 2044, and time travel hasn’t been invented yet — but it will be. And when it is, it immediately becomes illegal. But in the bombed-out dystopian American future of Johnson’s imagining, time travel’s illegality just means powerful crime syndicates are the only ones with access to it. Due to implanted tracking devices, disposing of bodies in the future is impossible. So the mobsters dispatch their targets back to 2044, bound and hooded, where they are immediately shot and killed by assassins known as “loopers,” who then incinerate the remains. But a new crime boss known as The Rainmaker has risen to power, and he is determined to “close the loops” by finding the future versions of the assassins from 2044, sending them back in time and having them killed — by the younger versions of themselves. Got that? The loopers are understandably perturbed by this, and a moment’s hesitation can lead to the older version of themselves escaping and creating quite a time-space conundrum. Such is the case with Joe, played in 2044 by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and in the future by Bruce Willis.

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Film Review: “Moonrise Kingdom”

MoonriseKingdom_PIC2 — Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman in MOONRISE KINGDOM

starring: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel, Bob Balaban

written by: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola

directed by: Wes Anderson

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sexual content and smoking

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