Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-06-28 (Friday)

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

John Grissom's The Rainmaker (Showtime) 1997 movie starring Matt Damon
as a young man fresh out of law school who gets a job working at a bar
while waiting to take the bar exam.  But it turns out the bar's owner
(Mickey Rourke) is also a crooked lawyer, and hires Damon for his small
firm.  Danny DeVito also stars as the firm's paralegal who mentors Damon
on his first big case going up against an insurance company that refuses
to pay claims.  I'm sure I probably watched this back in 97 but I had no
memory of the movie.  It was OK.

I like this movie; DeVito is just terrific. Directed by Coppola. Grisham
himself likes the movie (not just for the licensing fees) because it
very closely adapts the novel, while the other adaptations make
important changes.

1997 was Matt Damon's peak year. He did Good Will Hunting the same year,
and Chasing Amy (if you like Kevin Smith), his first starring role.

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (Cinemax) Charles Bronson stars as a
vigilante who is coerced into going after a drug gang.  I've been slowly
making my way through this over the past few days. I guess it was OK.
I'm not sure if I've ever watched Death Wish 3 or not, but the plot of
this one seemed stand alone enough that it didn't matter.

Bronson famously became a successful action movie star in his mid 50s, but his
best movie during this period was Hard Times, which I saw in theater as
a kid.

There's still Death Wish V; he was 73.

In 1970, his Hollywood career was down the tubes so he went to France to
do Rider on the Rain, which I also saw in theater when I was a kid. It's
his Chinatown, I guess; his character screws up everything.