More new releases. (NOTE: TomCat
wrote to tell me that I made a cut-and-paste
error on the date of "Miss Zuza's
Diamonds". It is a 1971 movie.) "Trial By Jury" (1994)
This is a cliched jury story. Joanne
Whalley-Kilmer is a single mother and an
entrepreneur who could easily get out of jury
duty because of her circumstances, but she won't
do so because of her sense of civic
responsibility.
Bad choice, because she ends up on the panel
hearing a multiple felony trial against a mafia
don.
During the trial, the don and his minions need
an "innocent" vote, so they threaten
her, her child, her pets, her business, yadda,
yadda, yadda. The don even makes a personal visit
to her house and fucks her while the trial is
going on. He's out on bail, I suppose. Maybe they
just let him out for a conjugal visit. By the
way, he's Don Rusty. OK, I admit Don Vito sounds
kind of scary, but Don Rusty? Sounds more like a
veteran pinch hitter.
When the jury retires to deliberate, the
evidence is overwhelmingly against the ol' don.
And it's not subtle. He personally strangled
people's mothers at home plate of Yankee Stadium
during a world series game, then admitted it that
night when he was hosting Saturday Night Live,
and told people how much he enjoyed killing. Or
something like that. But Whalley holds out as the
dissenter in an 11-1 vote, because the evidence
isn't very convincing to her.
Needless to say, the other jurors think she's
full of, um, the Holy Spirit, but be that as it
may, the don goes free until he can be retried.
Call me cautious, but if I had been the judge,
I would have sequestered the jury in such a case,
but even without sequestering it's hard to
believe that he can just come to her house and
rape her senseless during the trial. I found all
this to be stretching my credulity a bit. Of
course not as much as the opening scene, in which
the government's star witness, Tony "The
Stoolie" Scungulli, is killed in a hotel
room he shares with five armed guards, because
they let in an unknown hooker in to gratify his
lusts. I guess this shows that all law
enforcement officials are as dumb as they are
powerless.
This movie was such a mistake, that it wasn't
surprising that the box office topped off at
seven million. The same-old same-old script, the
complete lack of plausibility, the lack of star
power (Whalley is reasonably attractive and
reasonably talented, but she sure doesn't have
the kind of charisma needed to carry a picture.),
the cliched dialogue, the one-dimensional cartoon
characters. What a turkey!
Whalley never gave up the goods, except in a
non-revealing shower scene. Kathleen Quinlan, as
the murderous hooker, showed off a very
impressive derriere for a 40 year old woman.
Speaking of age, is anyone but me suspicious of
Whalley's 1964 birthdate? She was supposed to be
29 when this film was made, but she looked closer
to 40. Oh, she looked good enough, and she
dressed to the nines, but she didn't look 29.
Quinlan
Whalley
"Oxygen"
(1999)
Adrian Brody plays a psycho who buries a woman
alive in order to get a ransom from her
zillionaire husband. Obviously, the police can't
afford to kill him during the apprehension,
because he's the only one who knows where she's
buried.
Maura Tierney plays a highly competent but
secretly masochistic cop whose proclivities Brody
senses and exploits, at least up to a certain
point.
Although it isn't a bad story, and the
suspense is sustained at a high pitch by good
actors, I don't think the film ever had a U.S.
theatrical release. Don't expect a cinema
classic, but it's a better movie than Trial By
Jury, which was released to theaters.
There isn't any nudity, but Laila Robbins was
buried alive in her underwear.
Robbins
"Sour
Grapes" (1998)
Steven Weber does an uncanny impersonation of
Jerry Seinfeld in this film, which was written
and directed by Seinfeld's Larry David. In fact,
it's a Seinfeld episode. Do you remember the
episode of Seinfeld where they used the score
from The Barber of Seville to underline a
comic-opera plot about Jerry being unfaithful to
his barber? Well, there aren't any barbers here,
but they used the exact same device, right down
to the exact same music.
Here's the plot that is probably a rejected
script from Seinfeld: Kramer is about to play his
last quarter in a slot machine. George tells him
that you can't win the jackpot unless you play
three quarters. Kramer, down on his luck as
usual, has only one quarter, so George gives him
two more. Kramer hits the jackpot. George seethes
because Kramer intends to keep the entire
$400,000, even though he won using George's
quarters and George's advice. They
"get" each other back and forth ad
infinitum.
They changed the character names, and some of
their personality traits, and had the incident
happen to the Jerry guy instead of the George
guy, but you'll get the idea. Incidentally, the
George character can't get the Jerry guy's
receptionist to go out with him because she's
seen him in his underwear, because Jerry doesn't
make her knock before entering the room. Sound
kinda familiar?
An episode of Seinfeld is 22 minutes without
the commercials. The running time here is more
than four times as long. Anyway, if you'd like to
see a ninety minute four-part Seinfeld without
the regular characters, here's your chance.
The brief nudity was supplied by Karen
Sillas
"Gorace
piaski" (1969), from Johnny Web and TomCat
Malgorzata Braunek starred in this B&W
Polish film (marketed in English as "Hot
Sands" and "Shifting Sands")
directed by Wladyslaw Slesicki. According to
TomCat, who did the captures, Ms Braunek is now
retired from films, and he knows of no other film
where she did nudity that included her face in
the frames.
Again TomCat did the caps, and I assembled
them. The last one is some frames of Braunek in
another film, from another imager.
Braunek has also been in: "Polowanie na
muchy" (Hunting Flies) 1969 db Andrzej Wajda
"Potopie" (Deluge) 1974 db Jerzy
Hoffman "Diabel" (Evil) 1972 db Andrzej
Zulawski
Braunek in "Hot Sands" (1, 2,
3)
Braunek
in "Potopie"
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