I just finished watching a very good movie. It was Guns for San Sebastian.

This movie looks like a spaghetti western but came in that era of movies that followed spaghetti westerns, call it spaghetti western 2.0 in today’s tech terms.

The movie is about an ex-soldier on the run wanted by the local Mexican governor. He comes to a small village named for the patron saint of the church, San Sebastian.

The village is constantly being over run by a tribe of Native Americans known as the Yakis, which almost sounds like yankees. The name definitely through me for a loop throughout the first quarter of the movie. The local priest is wounded in one of the attacks about the time the ex-soldier shows up.

The priest dies and the ex-soldier is mistaken for the priest. Local thugs that are protecting the villagers in the hills, almost kill the priest and try to run him out of the village, but they do not know that he is a tough guy ex-soldier.

He goes through several mis-steps, but eventually rallies the villagers to bring themselves towards taking hold of their own destiny as opposed to relying on the will of god. Unfortunately, between the thugs and the Yakis the villagers are too week. So he goes to visit the Governor in the guise of a priest and asks for Guns for San Sebastian.

Through a female contact now married to the Governor, he gets his guns and some other support. He trains the locals to fight and build their defenses. He tries to negotiate piece with the Yakis but fails.

Spoiler Follows

As it turns out the Yakis and the thugs are in cahoots, and the thugs convince the Yakis to attack the village and the churck.

They are unprepared for the new strength of the villagers and the priest that confesses his true identity at the last minute and fights with them.

It was a very good movie, although the scenery has that spaghetti western appearance.

Actors

The movie stars Anthony Quinn as the tough guy and strategically minded faux priest. Charles Bronson plays the head of the thugs and a friend to the Yaki chief, possibly a Yaki himself. The movie was directed by Henri Verneuil, Armenian born but more famous for his French action films.

All the Right Moves is about Stef Djordjevic (played by Tom Cruise), a standout football player for his high school team, who lives in a small industrial steel-producing town in Pennsylvania. Stef has ambitions to leave the town by obtaining a football scholarship at a university, hence, achieving a better life. The steel mill, which seems to employ the entire population of the town, is also laying workers off.

This is a very coming-of-age movie and focuses alot on teenagers and issues that they have to deal with as well as on people, who are “stuck” living in small towns or poor areas with limited future prospects. The title “All the Right Moves” translates really to making the right choices in this state of one’s life.

Stef, played by Tom Cruise, has to perform well in football games, impress scouts from universities, and deal with his loving girlfriend Lisa. Other minor characters in the movie are teammate Brian, who unintentionally impregnates his girlfriend which destroys his plan to attent USC on a football scholarship, and Vinny Salvucci, who gets involved in crime and winds up behind bars.

The plot peaks in the movie when Stef gets into a conflict with his coach (played by Craig Nelson), who, as a result, uses his influance to discourage other colleges from offering Stef any scholarships. Can Stef still make it out of the dying mill town via a scholarship or will he be stuck in a factory for the rest of his life?

Cheaters is about the 1995 Academic Decathlon team from Steinmetz High School. Steinmetz HS is an overcrowded, underfunded school located in a poorer section of Chicago. Most of the students appear to be from blue-collar backgrounds. Gerard Plecki, an English teacher (well played be Jeff Daniels) organizes the AD team to try to compete at regionals, particulary against favorite and rival, Whitney Young High School, portrayed as a magnet school. At first the morale and motivation is high amongst the Steinmetz team but as they severely lose to Whitney Young at regionals, they increasingly view their situation as hopeless and lack confidence to compete at the state finals. However an interesting dilemma comes up as one of the team members comes up with a copy of the test for the state finals. Should the team cheat or stay honest? If they cheat, will they get away with it?

The students, encouraged by the teacher, decide to cheat and eventually get caught. Although it wasn’t right for Steinmetz to cheat, the movie shows that the world is not a level playing field and that people from more white-collar walks of life have much higher advantages and potential for success than those from blue-collar walks of life.

Martha is a typical director Rainer Werner Fassbinder film of social criticism, this time focused on marriage, how people marry for the wrong reasons, and how this ruins the lives of both husband, wife, and children.

In this movie, Martha, a 31-year-old virgin marries Helmut, a wealthy engineer. From dating to marriage, Helmut completely dominates Martha and makes her do things she doesn’t want to do. He makes her ride rollercoasters with him which she fears, he makes her listen to his favorite music, makes her read a book about his profession which she finds boring. He even finally orders her not to leave their house, so that she can exist exclusively for him. He has very violant sex with her, which includes bites, bruises, even when she is heavily sun-burned. He both physically, mentally, and emotionally terrorizes her.

Why does Martha, at least for most of the movie, let Helmut do this to her? This is a result of a loveless marriage between her mother and father. Both were unhappily married, disliked one another, and often expressed that onto Martha, frequently putting her down. Her father makes fun of her all the time. Her mother calls her a disgusting 31-year-old virgin and blames the father’s death on her. As a result of this, Martha needs someone like Helmut to dominate her and usually finds Helmuts sadistic behavior acceptable.

Even other people in the movie are heading in the direction of unhappy loveless marriages. Her boss at the library asks her associate to marry him after Martha turns him down. Martha’s sister also gets married out of pressure.

At the end, the marriage between Martha and Helmut has tragic consequences. I think the message of the movie is a criticism of society and how many people get married for the wrong reasons and end up destroying their lives.

People anywhere in the world can relate to this movie and I think people should watch it before making the final decision on popping or answering the big question.

Sword of Gideon is a fascinating movie. It is based on a true story and I think it should be watched because it is about fighting terrorism, a major American and global issue of our time.

The movie takes place in the seventies or eightees. Sword of Gideon was a famous covert operation of the Mossad, the Israeli secret service, to find and kill terrorists hiding in various European countries who were responsible for previous terrorist attacks that killed civilians, particulary the attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

A group of agents, led by an IDF officer named Avner (played by Steven Bauer), is sent to Europe to locate and kill the terrorists. The terrorists are hiding throughout different cities including Rome, Paris, and others. Each of the agents has special skills. One is an expert in making explosive devices, another in creating documentation, another is a former race car driver (getaway expert), and another is a good agent for securing the scene.

At first, the mission is going well but as time goes on, the agents are somehow being discovered and also killed off one by one while also killing the terrorists.

At the end, relations between Avner and the Mossad deteriorate as the issue is raised: was all the bloodshed worth it.

Popi is about a Puerto Rican widower named Abraham (wonderfully played by Alan Arkin) living in Manhatten with his two sons Junior and Luis. They live in an impoverished high-crime neighborhood. He works 60 hours a week doing blue collar jobs and gets 5 hours of sleep per night. He wants to get his sons out of the neighborhood with a plan of faking their arrival on Miami Beach as escapen refugees from Cuba, hence getting nationwide attention and potential adoption to wealthier families. Once his sons get cruelly bullied by fellow neighborhood kids, Abraham finally decides to implement his plan. It works at first and all eyes in the US are on the two boys. But at the end, they virtually throw all possibilities of adoption and a better life away and reveal their identity to stay with their Popi, their father.

This is a very warm yet emotionally confusing movie. It is both sad, happy, and funny in one. The ending is one of the most funny, sad, and happy endings I have ever seen. In the movie, you sympathize with Abraham for living in impoverished conditions with his kids, working his fanny off, and just wanting a better life for them. Yet, at the end, the movie proves one of the most important messages in life: no money in the world can replace the love of family.

Ben (Perry Shen) is an overachieving high schooler with the one aim of getting into an ivy league school. He gets straight As, learns a new word every day to score perfect on his SATs, works part-time in a fast food joint and warms the bench on the JV basketball team to strengthen his college application.

However, there is another side to his life very different from that of the model student. Together with his friends Virgil (Jason Tobin) and Han (Sung Kang) he steals from electronics stores by fraudulent use of bar codes, merchandise, packaging, as well as credit cards. Things get worse when the trio get involved with Derek (Roger Fan), the ultimate model student, president of every school club and standout on the varsity tennis team.  They get involved in selling cheat sheets and drugs throughout the school as well as Ben becoming addicted to cocaine.

Ben is attracted to a classmate by name of Stephanie (Karin Anna Cheung) but does not approve of how her boyfriend Steve (played by John Cho from American Pie) is neglecting and cheating on her. The plot reaches its peak when Steve asks the four of them to rob his parents’ house, whom he feels are too neglectful of him. With Derek as their ringleader, the group decide not to rob the home but give him a good beating which results in his death.

Better Luck Tomorrow (directed by Justin Lin)  is really a suspenseful coming-of-age drama about identity and finding your role and place in society loosely based on a true story. The characters are multi-demensional and each has his/her own issues in dealing with the pressure of success and the boredom of American suburbia. The issues and plots are complex and often difficult to understand, nevertheless an entertaining watch.

Sitting on my balcony over the weekend, sipping on a mimosa and watching the sun set on another blustery New England day, I heard the voice of hot-shot Detroit cop Axel Foley emanating from the living room. Thats right, Beverly Hills Cop was playing on BET last weekend. Before you ask the innevitable question, “Why were you watching BET?”, I have to ask you why weren’t you watching BET?

Anyway, for all the folks out there who aren’t aware that Eddie Murphy is in any movies where he doesn’t either dress as an obese man or woman or play multiple roles, this film may shake the very pillars of your existence. Brace yourself, Eddie Murphy plays only one role! Murphy plays the single role of Axel Foley, a cop who travels to Beverly Hills to investigate the murder of a friend who got “clipped” in Detroit.

Along the way, Axel Foley (Murphy) teams up with detectives William ”Billy” Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggert (John Ashton) in a quick paced adventure that drops comedic bombs like a greedy Texan in the Middle East. Seriously though, this is one of my favorite films of all time and is laugh out loud funny.

Directed by Martin Brest, Beverly Hills Cop absolutely destroyed previous box office records (1984) to become one of the all time top ten grossing films of that era. I’m actually holding the VHS in my hand right now and can feel the comedy coursing through my veins. Go watch this movie, go now to a video store, call in sick tommorow, do whatever you must to see this film and if you’ve already witnessed this epic masterpiece… you already know.

Summer Catch is a summer love movie between a working class guy and an upper middle class girl bringing back memories of other rich girl goes for poor guy and vice-versa movies such as Pretty in Pink and Titanic.

Ryan Dunne (played by Freddie Prinze Jr.) lives and works with his father on the northeastern coast mowing lawns. However, being a talented pitcher, he is aspiring to make it into the major league. This summer is his big chance as he was chosen to compete for a high level cape league team. If he performs well, he may catch the eye of one or the other major league scout.

At the same time, Tenley Parrish (played by Jessica Biel) is vacationing in the same town. The two get to know each other in a bar and immedietely fall in love. Ryan, who has a history of self-doubt and self-defeat, must find the courage and confidence to compete well in the ball games this summer. Tenley also has her issues with her domineering father who wants her to pursue a career in the financial field which she doesn’t desire to do. Also, her father does not approve of her dating blue collar kid Ryan, whose father mows his lawn.

Can the two of them find the strength and courage in one another to succeed and choose the path they believe to be best? That is the main concept in Summer Catch. The movie is a good mixture of drama with some scenes of comedy, particulary with the addition of team catcher and Ryan’s closest teammate Billy Brubaker (played by Mathew Lillard). It may not have done too well in the box office, but it is a good movie to watch with your date.

I hate to say this but this film let me down a little. It is not a bad film the special effects were awesome especially the demons that ghost rider had to fight. The water demon was definitely my favorite. The Ghost rider transformation scenes were stunning especially the changes in his motorcycle. The plot was what let me down. I guess I was just hoping for something more from this film it never fully brought me in and I felt that it was a little rushed to get to the end. On a side note it is weird to see Nicolas Cage with hair. The acting was kind of what you would expect for a movie of this genre. It will not keep you on the edge of your seat. It is very predictable and I think that is what hurts it. There were no real surprises nothing separates it from any of the other comic book movies that recently have sprouted up everywhere. The film was not a total loss Nicolas Cage actually pulled of being a dare devil hot shot who turns into a flaming skeleton at the end of the night. It is a fun action packed movie that does not require you to think very hard. For pure entertainment value it is not a bad waste of time. On the whole while the plot let me down. I did enjoy this film I just think that they could have done so much more with it. Maybe if they do a sequel it will be one of those rare breeds that are actually better than the original. One can only hope I guess.

Steven Defnall