You’ve gotta hand it to Brad Pitt, for being so pretty, he has sure played some ugly parts. In Kalifornia, he’s a white-trash criminal who gets in on a cross-country ride-share with a writer (David Duchovny) and his girlfriend. As they ride along, Pitt charms Duchovny with his brashness & bold violence. Their weird tour grows ever more tense, but what the rest of the crew doesn’t know (except Pitt’s girl, Juliette Lewis) is that he’s leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.
Christopher Walken in one the most perfectly cast roles of his career: the slimy, sinister crook father of Sean Penn who makes robbery and crime look like fun. Young Penn is a muscular teenage bastard stuck in Farmtown-nowhere. When dad rolls into town, Penn is exposed to the easy money and good times a life of crime could grant him. When he sees Walken kill a man, he has second thoughts. That’s when the story really starts cooking. Based on a true story, At Close Range also features 80s angel, Mary Stuart Masterson & Sean’s brother, Chris Penn.
You saw Memento – hard to follow, confusing, dark. It was the handywork of director, Christopher Nolan. Well, Following came first. If you like movies that test your mental and take you into the warped minds of others – you’ll like this one, too. A man obsessed with following strangers is led into a world even weirder than he hoped for.
America’s greatest modern poet was a beer-drunk, lowbrow maniac named Charles Bukowski. He wrote the script for Barfly about himself. This 1987 cult-classic, featuring Mickey Rourke in the lead, is dark, humorous and tragic. It’s a series of sloppy bar room scenes and a passionate doomed-love hellride featuring a haggard Faye Dunaway in the role of Wanda, Rourke’s love interest/drinking partner. This movie will definitely make you want a drink…maybe two.
A bank robbery gone bad. Not quite Dog Day Afternoon, unless you add heroin, a hooker, buckets of booze & enough blood to drown Quentin Tarantino. This dark thriller from Director Roger Avary (who co-wrote Pulp Fiction and worked on True Romance & Reservoir Dogs) is a mess on purpose. Avary has actually been called a Tarantino rip-off, which isn’t really a bad thing when you get actors like Eric Stoltz and Julie Delpy in the mix.
Just when Vince Vaughn was hitting his stride, between Swingers and Zoolander, he was cast as serial-killer cowboy, Lester Long, in Clay Pigeons. It’s a dark comedy centering around a suicide witnessed by lead man Clay (Joaquin Phoenix ) and the ensuing investigation by FBI agent, Jeanine Garlofalo. Call it deranged-funny.
Christopher Walken plays the same character in every movie he’s in. Creepy, twitchy, that breathy voice. If you love him, you’ll love King Of New York. Abel Ferrara’s direction creates a dark and tony atmosphere for Walken, as a bigwig mafioso, just released from prison ready to reclaim his place in the mob hierarchy of the Rotten Apple. Alongside Steve Buscemi and Lawrence Fishburne, Walken creates one of the tensest scenes in mafia movie history. Watch this and you’ll be quoting it for days. Weeks maybe.
This dark crime slash psychological thriller from Argentina involves an epileptic taxidermist who thinks he can commit the perfect crime. Sounds crazy already, right? Well, it gets a lot weirder when the voices in his head start talking. Set in the shadowy forests of Patagonia, this final film from late director, Fabián Bielinsky, is surreal and absorbing…and just as haunting as when it was released in 2006.
Any movie with Sean Penn or Gary Oldman is worth watching. State Of Grace has them both. This neo-noir crime flick from 1990 has Penn as a reformed Irish mobster returning to his old Hell’s Kitchen gang as an undercover cop. He’s supposed to infiltrate the gang and take down the Flannery Brothers (Oldman and his movie brother, Ed Harris) before they make a deal with the Italian mob. Action and suspense ensue.
You probably saw Snatch. Remember, Brad Pitt, the Pikey? Well, Snatch producer Matthew Vaughan did this film, too. Anyway, if you’re down for those fast-paced British-accent flicks with a twisty plot, frenetic action and some heavy gunplay – you should go back and check out Layer Cake. The plot revolves around a drug deal gone bad. Watch what a million hits of ecstasy will make people do. It’s pretty crazy.
The debut film in Robert Rodriguez’s trilogy including Desperado and Once Upon A Time In Mexico, El Mariachi cost a mere $7000 to produce. While enjoying the suspenseful plot of a man who only wants to play his guitar, but finds trouble in every turn – keep asking yourself – how did he do it for under 10k?
I passed this film by many times, until I recently noted it was directed by Sam Raimi of The Evil Dead, Army of Darkness and Spiderman. A spaghetti western with a killer cast, dark humor, unexpected gruesomeness and top-notch storytelling. You even catch a glimpse at Russell Crowe – long before anyone knew who he was.
If you’re a fan of Dexter, Natural Born Killers, A Clockwork Orange or Spinal Tap, you’ll cherish this film. Comedies don’t get much darker. Man Bites Dog is a mesmerizing, low-budget mocumentary following Ben, a serial killer, as he proudly teaches you (the viewer) how to get away with murder. It’s harsh.
After seeing this flick, you’ll wonder how it slipped under your radar. Five men wake up in an abandoned warehouse. One is bound. One handcuffed & shot. One has a ruptured nose. No recollection of what transpired, who was responsible or better yet, how to escape. This psychological thriller is full of intrigue, suspense, unpredictable twists and it gets only better each time you watch it.
The random hook-up. Thrilling? Or terrifying? In Clint’s directorial debut, Play Misty For Me, this simple act turns out to be the worst decision of a lifetime. Although the 70s trappings are a bit dated and bordering on comical, this Hitchcock-style thriller is definitely worth a watch.
A hot-wired ex-soldier returns home to avenge his abused mentally-handicapped younger brother. This slasher film is a story of vengeance – candy for indie aficionados.
