MOVIE: Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Anatomy of a Fall Year: 2023 Rating: R Length: 151 minutes / 2.52 hours It's interesting how I've seen a lot of crime dramas before, but rarely (if ever) have I witnessed one from a foreign perspective. Movies like A Few Good Men (1992) or 12 Angry Men (1957) focus on the American justice system. Watching a murder trial in a foreign language and in a different country's judiciary style was new and exciting for me. Anatomy of a Fall (2023) does a great job of bringing ambiguity to the proceedings enough times as to make one wonder what truth to believe. The ability of this film to throw a series of twists into the narrative that makes the whole story flip back and forth between guilty and not guilty is an amazing achievement. That being said, despite the marketing for this film making it seem like there was still a question whether the death was an accident or a purposeful moment of murder, I...
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MOVIE: L.A. Confidential (1997)

L.A. Confidential Year: 1997 Rating: R Length: 138 minutes / 2.30 hours There are police dramas, and then there are police dramas set in Los Angeles. Something about this town makes the crimes that much more interesting. Maybe it’s the intersection of fame and criminal activity. Perhaps it’s that the crimes are so much more grandiose due to the wealth of the area. Whatever the reason, L.A. Confidential (1997) is a fantastic film that manages to show different perspectives of the seedy underbelly of the glamor and glitz that makes the town so successful. If it weren’t up against Titanic (1997), it probably would have won a lot more awards than it did. It’s almost surprising how many famous actors are in this film. Sure, some of them were unknowns at the time. Even within three years, we’d see Guy Pearce in Memento (2000) and Russell Crowe in Gladiator (2000), both rising into their stardom. This is not to mention the fantastic performances by Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, and Ron Rifkin....
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