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UNUSUAL SUSPECTS: THE SEQUEL

If you're tired of automatically reaching for the latest effort by Arnold Schwartzenegger or Sandra Bullock at your local video store or public library, our staff has compiled a list of forgotten films that you might like to check out.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984, color)
Friendship, betrayal, sex, violence, greed--all these subjects are covered in the epic Once Upon a Time in America, director Sergio Leone's last film.
Starring Robert DeNiro and James Woods, this four-hour saga follows the lives of two friends, Noodles and Max, from their childhoods on the Lower East Side of Manhattan--where they roll drunks and smuggle booze for gangsters at the start of prohibition--through their rise in the criminal and political worlds.
This film tells the story of two friends driven by power and money, and shows just what can happen to men of that nature. They say there are a million stories in the naked city. This movie tells several of them. --RH

BIRD (1988, color)
At the age of 34, Charles Christopher Parker, nicknamed Bird, was a broke, alcoholic, heroin-addicted alto sax player. He also was one of the most respected and celebrated jazz musicians in the world.
How he got to that position in life, his untimely death and subsequent legendary status, is the basis of Bird, director Clint Eastwood's homage to one of his idols.
Actor Forest Whitaker portrays the troubled musician, a man revered internationally and credited with being one of the founding fathers of jazz, but also a man plagued with many personal demons, hounded by the law and sometimes so broke he had to sleep on park benches.
Bird tells the story of a man with enormous talent who shot through the sky like a falling star, burning out too early. --RH

BARFLY (1987, color)
"Don't you just hate people?" asks Wanda.
"No, but I always seem to feel better when they're not around," responds Henry.
These are the first words exchanged between the two lead characters in Barfly, a film written for the screen by Charles Bukowski, one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
Directed by Barbet Schroeder and starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, Barfly is an autobiographical look into Bukowski's world. It's a world filled with seedy rooming houses, dive bars and broken people.
Henry Chinaski is a man with talents for writing, drinking and bumming--not unlike Bukowski himself. Wanda is also a down-and-out barfly who encounters Henry one night after one of his many fistfights.
They become an item, two drunks trying to make their way on skid row in Los Angeles--an intelligent, lonely woman, and a talented artist determined to stay poor and drunk. --RH

STATE OF GRACE (1990, color) brHell's Kitchen is a neighborhood on the West Side of Manhattan near Times Square. It's primarily Irish, poor and violent. This is where the film State of Grace, starring Sean Penn, Gary Oldman and Ed Harris, takes place.
Directed by Phil Joanou, State of Grace is based loosely on the story of real-life Irish gangsters Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone, two men who through the '60s and '70s were leaders in the New York City Irish mob known as the Westies.
They spent a majority of their time drinking and randomly killing anyone who happened to make an offhand comment to them in a bar. It all came apart when they tried to make a deal with the Italian mob, a deal that would give the Westies more control and more security. But crazy tempers and booze, as well as self-imposed conflicts, caused the deal to go south and many of them to end up dead or in jail.
State of Grace is a wild ride through the mean streets of New York City. It's the story of one man caught up in the struggle between what's right and loyalty to his lifelong friend, and another man spinning out of control for reasons no one can understand. --RH

SALVADOR (1986, color)
In the early 1980s, a civil war was raging in the Central American country of El Salvador. Journalist Richard Boyle, broke and having just been left by his wife, decided to go, with hopes of making a little money selling his stories to the press.
But what happened to Boyle was more than could be told in a few news stories. What he experienced is the subject matter of Salvador, directed by Oliver Stone and starring James Woods and James Belushi.
Boyle, already knowing most of the men controlling El Salvador from past reporting experience, right away gets on the inside. But as he drinks and whores his way through El Salvador, things spiral out of control.
Salvador is the true story of a journalist caught up in the political affairs of a small country, who came dangerously close to losing all he had, including his life. --RH

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT (1992, color)
It's hard being brothers. That's the theme of A River Runs Through It starring Craig Scheffer and Brad Pitt in one of his first starring roles.
The film portrays two brothers from Montana who are sons of a preacher, and couldn't be more different. One is a straight-laced, hard-working young man whom everyone in town calls "professor."
The other brother is a wild child, given to drinking and gambling. A journalist, he's frequently let go by the police after being in bar brawls.
One is spinning out of control, and the other is fighting to save him. --RH

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (ASCENSEUR POUR L'ECHAUFAUD) (1957, black and white)
In French with subtitles, this was director Louis Malle's first feature film, made when he was only 27 years old, and is considered a seminal film of the French new wave. An ex-paratrooper (Maurice Ronet) and his mistress (Jeanne Moreau) have the perfect plan to murder her industrialist husband and make it look like a suicide. Ronet climbs into the husband's office and shoots him with his own gun. Realizing he's left a grappling hook dangling from the balcony, he goes back to retrieve it. The night watchman shuts off the building power, leaving him trapped in the elevator. Meanwhile, two young lovers steal his car. Miles Davis and his band improvised the soundtrack while viewing the film in a studio. --RD

HEAT (1995, color)
DeNiro, Pacino, Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight--I'll say just a bit more. Get off the couch and dig this one up from the archives. The movie is so good I'm not even going to talk about it. If you rent it, get it in letterbox format, which looks like Cinemascope.
When you're all done with Michael Mann's directing, sit back and think for a while. Especially about Neil McCauley's (DeNiro) loneliness. I watched "Heat" about 10 times before I moved on over to the computer for some investigation. I started off downloading the soundtrack. I like the main theme, a track called Refinery Surveillance, and another one called Mystery Man. If you've watched the movie, the music will do it for you, too. You can learn all about the score on this Web site: www.wbr.com/heat/album.html.
On a different note, I remembered that people were comparing the bank robbery scene in the movie to the infamous 1997 North Hollywood bank robbery and shootout. That caper, which resulted in the deaths of the two suspects and the wounding of several civilians and police officers, was captured on camera from a news helicopter and, for some reason, I never saw the actual footage that was played on the news in the days following the attempted heist.
I did, however, find an audio clip that contains more than eight minutes of police radio transmissions recorded during the shootout. It's incredible to listen as the suspects begin firing AK-47s inside the Bank of America and then spray the street with gunfire. The incredible professionalism of the officers and dispatchers can be downloaded at a Web site. Shhh. Don't tell anyone: www.snowcrest.net/marnells/officer.htm.
By the way, here's the plot: Two determined men--one (DeNiro) a career crook, the other (Pacino) a career cop--have a showdown after a series of bloody robberies. --RC

RIVER'S EDGE (1887, color)
In high school, loyalty is always an issue. In River's Edge, a group of friends fight about how loyal you can be, how far you can go with it.
Starring a young Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper and Crispin Glover, River's Edge is an eerie tale exploring the loss of innocence of a group of high school students.
After learning that one of their friends has murdered another friend, their values are put to the test. Hopper plays the dealer they often run to for relief during this madness.
Throughout this ordeal, the teens constantly struggle with the question of whether to go to the cops. They've already lost one friend, do they want to lose another?
They also struggle with issues of sex, abusive parents, drugs and violence. You know, typical teen-age stuff.
River's Edge gives a glimpse into the bizarre and confused world of teen-age life in modern America. --RH

TREES LOUNGE (1996, color)
Written and directed by Steve Buscemi--and a personal account of his struggle with alcoholism--who also stars, Trees Lounge is the simple story of one man who's lost it all, and fights a day-by-day battle to get it back.
It is about hard-working people struggling with the American Dream and a man defeated by that dream, spending all his waking hours in his favorite watering hole, the Trees Lounge.
He's lost the girl he loved, the best friend he ever had and his career as a mechanic. But as he struggles to get all these things back, he seems to dig himself deeper into the hole, all the while drinking his sorrows away in the bar he now lives above. --RH

TRUE BELIEVER (1989, color)
James Woods is one of the finest actors around and this compelling film is a showcase for his considerable talents.
Woods plays a burned-out, middle-aged, hippy lawyer who used to fight valiantly for the poor and oppressed, but now is content to make his living representing low-life drug dealers. The pot-smoking Woods has allowed cynicism to mute his zeal for justice.
The very young Robert Downey Jr. enters the film as the idealistic crusader fresh out of law school and ready to get his hero back on track again--an old theme that works wonderfully in True Believer.
What develops is a great mystery and suspense film that captivates and entertains without preaching. Downey helps Woods remember the principles that made him a lawyer to admire, and a new case involving an innocent man brings forth the return to grace.
The story is filled with energy, the acting is first-rate, and the plot twists and surprise ending make True Believer a joy in cinema. --BG

THE RIGHT STUFF (1983, color)
Philip Kaufman's epic of the first American astronauts is a great film that never got the box office draw it richly deserved.
Based on Tom Wolfe's compelling book, the story of the race to space is told from the threshold of supersonic flight to men orbiting the earth.
Breaking the sound barrier was far more daunting than we appreciate today, and the connection to Niagara Falls little known.
Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947 in a plane designed and built at the old Bell Aircraft plant that straddled the Niagara Falls airport. As kids living in Packard Court, we'd hear a boom from the heavens and say, "Hey that's Chuck Yeager," and often we'd be right. The X-1 and X-2 aircrafts built in your back yard opened the world's eyes to space.
The conflict between the planners of manned space flights and the test pilots who became the first astronauts forges a great story. The acting is first-rate, with Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Sam Shepherd, and the marvelous Kim Stanley as the owner of the pilots' favorite watering hole.
Watch the editing! It's as good as it gets. The cuts during the flight that broke the sound barrier should be must viewing at all film schools.
Bill Conti's musical score is rousing and won a well-deserved Academy Award. Turn up the volume at the end of the film and through the closing credits.
The Right Stuff has all the right stuff and is worth every moment. --BG

THE BLACK STALLION (1979, color)
This is one of the most beautifully photographed films ever made. Francis Ford Coppola produced this masterpiece, and his father wrote the stirring musical score. It's the story of a boy and his horse--as simple as that.
But director Carroll Ballard brings that old theme to new heights.
The majestic sequence of the boy and horse first bonding is filmmaking at its best. The little boy plays the role with naturalness and grace and makes the fantasy so easy to believe.
Teri Garr as the boy's mother and Mickey Rooney as the trainer turn in first-rate performances.
Buy it if you can; otherwise, rent The Black Stallion and gather the whole family around and watch this exceptional film. No one will be disappointed.
My only regret is that I never saw The Black Stallion on the big screen. --BG

THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER (1989, color)
The "wife," Helen Mirren (Georgina) may not have top billing in the title, but surely she makes the movie. Her stellar, sensual performance coupled with the cinematography of Sacha Vierney makes this movie more a work of art than entertainment.
Thing big, think lavish, think gluttonous. Michael Gambon plays restauranteur Albert, Georgina's husband. Gambon's character, who is central to all that is going on around him, is vulgar, crass and devoid of any notion of respect for his wife, who begins having an affair with a bookish patron of her husband's French restaurant right under his nose.
Mirren restores credibility to women baring it all--she is beautiful in her realness. The film's endless comedy is both morose and biting, and the violence--though gratuitous--is somehow disturbing in its beauty. The film has political significance, but its parallel to history escapes me now. The end will shock you, and the way in which Albert eventually tortures Georgina's lover is the antithesis of poetic justice. Mirren's performance in the aftermath is flawless and painful to watch, in a Shakespearian way.
Director Peter Greenaway manages to pull you into his grotesque and utterly disturbing picture without making you loathe to watch. For a fantastic love story, a delectable offering of food--exquisite in presentation--and a heaping plate of all that makes you squirm, this film is what's for dessert. --JL