Tag: Billy Dee Williams
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Hit! is multiple movies all at once. It’s a heist procedural, with Billy Dee Williams putting together an unlikely crew of experts to take out the Marseille heroin syndicate. It’s a rogue secret agent movie—Williams’s boss, a profoundly under-cast Norman Burton, doesn’t want him showing up the U.S. government by taking out the bad guys.…
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Nothing really works out in Return of the Jedi. Even the opening, which is about as good as it can be with director Marquand’s inability to direct the actors and do the special effects, doesn’t exactly work out. Jedi’s problems keep bumping into each other, knocking over the good stuff. What good stuff? Jabba the…
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The most amazing aspect of The Empire Strikes Back is its effortlessness. The film is clearly exceptionally complex–the three story lines have different sets, different actors, different tones, not to mention entirely different special effects requirements–not to mention Frank Oz’s Yoda–but it all appears effortless. Director Kershner is infinitely confident, infinitely assured. He simultaneously manipulates…
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With a larger budget–and a different director–Number One with a Bullet might succeed. It’s a wry spoof of cop movies and TV shows, pairing crazy man Robert Carradine and urbane Billy Dee Williams. One has to assume Carradine’s casting against Revenge of the Nerds-type is part of the joke, but Williams seems to be there…
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Constantly problematic and constantly great big screen comic book movie with fantastic direction from Burton, wonderful score (from Danny Elfman), a good (against type) performance from Michael Keaton in the title role, and spell-binding production design. The minuses include leading lady Kim Basinger, who’s often quite bad, some clunky plotting, and a disinterested (albeit not…
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Catherine Mary Stewart’s British? She’s in Nighthawks for a second and she looked familiar but I don’t keep track of her filmography, so I didn’t find out until the end credits. (Actually, she’s Canadian, which is closer than I thought). Besides that trivia tidbit–if it even qualifies as a tidbit–the most amusing thing about Nighthawks…
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