Hell Is Right

STRAIGHT TO HELL-1987-More pretentious nonsense from director Alex Cox who seems to want to combine Sergio Leone with Alejandro Jodorowsky while throwing in non-actors and a few character actors: Joe Strummer, Sy Richardson, Courtney Love, Elvis Costello, Jim Jarmusch, Grace Jones, Dick Rude, Miguel Sandoval, Zander Schloss, Fox Harris and The Pogues. As with other Cox projects like WALKER and DEATH AND THE COMPASS it's mostly crap. The plot centers around a group of bank robbers, buried money and shootouts in a south of the border town.

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Ghost Dog

GHOST DOG : THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI-1999-This very unusual drama stars Forrest Whitaker as a philosophical hit man involved with the disappearance of a mob bosses’ daughter. He uses pigeons to communicate with his “retainer” (John Tormey) and his only friends are a French ice cream vendor ( who doesn’t understand English ) and a little girl he discusses books with. He likes to steal cars too.

Henry Silva is the unsmiling mob boss who likes to watch cartoons (Felix The Cat is one of them). Cliff Gorman is his rap music loving second in command who has a memorable death. All the gangsters seem mean and ugly but are really old, comical, kind of inept and at the end of the line. Much like Ghost Dog himself. A landlord keeps hassling Gorman’s character for rent money!

Whitaker’s character (minus the samurai references) reminded me a little of his character in DIARY OF A HITMAN! Like much of writer/director Jim Jarmusch’s work it’s very un-commercial and quite hypnotic but the ending is a downer and as Ghost Dog says “The end is important in all things”.........

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