THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT (2018)

A film by Lars von Trier

Cast: Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman 

United States, 1970s. We follow the very brilliant Jack through five incidents and discover the murders that will mark 12 years career as a serial killer.

The story is lived from Jack’s point of view. He considers each murder as a work of art in itself. Is a matter of fact he even takes pictures of the victims. While the ultimate and inevitable intervention of the police keeps getting closer (which infuriates Jack and puts pressure on him) he decides – contrary to all logic – to take more and more risks. Throughout the film, we discover Jack’s descriptions of his personal situation, his problems and his thoughts through his conversation with a stranger, Verge. it is not going to be your usual film as Trier write this thing out of the box. The film here has graphic violence, torture, and cruelty. The serial killer played by Matt Dillon here tells us about his first time as he killed a woman with a jack. Jack also tells us he has OCD and comes back to the crime scene to see if he has clean really good the crime scene, and the more killing he was doing his OCD began to dissipate. Jacks talks with a man named verge,trying to justify his actions. Jack has no emotion, he feels nothing. it looks like to me it is the portrait of an artist throughout the serial killer eyes. The thing is what does it all mean at the end. Everybody will have a different opinion. It is well constructed and psychological, so I will tell you this you are going to like it or hate it there is no in between here.

TO DIE FOR (1995)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A film by Gus Van Sant

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix

 

Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) is a woman who lives to be on TV. She lives in the small town of Little Hope, N. H., but in her head, she lives in the hyperspace of supermarket tabloids, and People magazine. Suzanne is small time but she wants to become a star the next Barbara Walters. She is the weather forecaster for a local cable channel you have to start from the ground up as she says. Larry (Matt Dillon) is in love with her but his sister does not see what she sees in her to her she is the ice princess. Suzanne marries him why  it is anybody guess, he’s a nice a guy from a family who owns the local Italian restaurant/bar. Suzanne is played by Kidman as a woman who is always onstage, she can not gain weight and she does not want to have children the thought of boobs to be big and out there plus a big belly well that is just gross and women like her can not get pregnant in order to succeed in this business. It becomes clear that her husband must go. That were it gets a little bit predictable. To help in disposing of her husband, she enlists three airheads from the local high school: Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix), Russell (Casey Affleck) and Lydia (Alison Folland). That is a big mistake. You see suzanne is manipulative sleeps around with an executive that could help her career and her husband is weighting her down. Great performance from all the actor especially Nicole Kidman. Phoenix and casey  Affleck were fairly new actor back then just trying to get in the business look where are they now they have not stop working since then. Illeana Douglas is Janice, Suzanne’s ice-skating sister-in-law who read Suzanne as a phony ice princess. Matt Dillon plays this dude who is this cool dude who is going to get the babe blonde bombshell, Dan Hedaya plays the father-in-law who is the king in his Italian family. And Buck Henry plays a high school teacher who get harassed by the students. It is a neat little movie fill of eccentric characters and it works here. You will see how it starts the film I am not giving away that one. It is a bit predictable because I knew what was going to happen at the end. I saw to many film already. I went yesterday every Thursday near my apartment at this movie theater will put a cult film. This is the first time that I have heard about film. I am glad I went to see it is a cool little film by Gus Van Sant you can’t go wrong there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RUMBLE FISH (1983)

A FILM BY FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA.
CAST: Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane.
Rusty James is the leader of a small, dying gang in an industrial town. He lives in the shadow of the memory of his absent, older brother — The Motorcycle Boy. His mother has left, his father drinks, school has no meaning for him and his relationships are shallow. He is drawn into one more gang fight and the events that follow begin to change his life.
Francis Ford Coppola, who made “Rumble Fish,” calls it an “art film for teenagers.”And he is right.
The teenagers in the movie inhabit an unnamed big American city, perhaps in the 1950s. They’re clones from “Blackboard Jungle” and all the punk gang images in dozens of other films. Their hero is Rusty James (Matt Dillon), a young, handsome, doomed gang leader. His hero is his older brother, Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke), who has just returned from California to teach Rusty James some of the sad lessons of life.
Rumble fish Is daring offbeat and has style. Nice one by Coppola.

THE FLAMINGO KID (1984)

A film by Garry Marshal.
Cast: Matt Dillon, Hector Elizondo, Molly McCarthy.
Jeffrey Willis has just finished high school and isn’t quite sure what the future holds. His parents expect him to go to college but he is starting to find his close-knit family stifling. He gets a summer job at the Flamingo club where he meets Phil Brody, a successful car dealer who fills Jeffrey’s head with ideas about how to make his fortune. Phil is everything Jeffrey would like to be – popular, rich and the best gin rummy player the club has ever seen. Jeffrey’s coming of age includes a romance with the very pretty Carla Samson, but the shine on Phil Brody’s philosophy of life wears off when he uncovers a significant flaw in his character.
Elizondo is a hard-working man who still remembers how to dream,and Richard Crenna, on the other hand, is a man who firmly believes “You are what you wear,” and values his status as the club’s gin rummy champion as if it really meant something. of course the flamingo kid is very much attracted to that or the idea of that. Dillon has the kind of acting intelligence that allows him to play each scene for no more than that particular scene is really about; he’s not trying to summarize the message in every speech. That gives him an ease, an ability to play the teenage hero as if the summer will never end. He also a great actor. Great film with a message.

And the remake keeps on coming. This just in walt Disney is going to remake the flamingo kid. I do not see that I want to see that one.