Mississippi Burning (1988)

I think I read that potential lawsuits meant the factual story of the FBI's investigation into the murders of three young civil-rights workers in Mississippi in the 1960s couldn't simply be told as it happened, and so the identity of the case's mysterious Mr X informant is altered, names are changed, and liberties are taken with the historical facts of who did what, reducing the impact of the movie-final series of stills telling viewers what happened after the story, but as a gripping, dismaying, maddening period crime drama, this Oscar-winner is star-studded, well acted and completely engrossing.

★★★★☆

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Heist (2001)

There's a gunfight near the end that has the actors barely bothering to point their guns in the right direction, a sign that the actors' care factor, like the audience's, has dwindled to nothing over the course of David Mamet's increasingly unlikely crime caper, which is a shame given the movie's arresting start that introduces, mid-caper, our gang of grifters headed by Gene Hackman's Joe Moore, the mastermind who, yes, needs to do one more job but this time accompanied by the inexperienced nephew (Sam Rockwell) of his fence (Danny DeVito).

★★☆☆☆

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Narrow Margin (1990)

The RKO screenplay, first filmed in 1955 and then this time in 1990, has all the ingredients of a classic thriller: a train carrying a witness to murder and thugs trying to identify her before she and her escort, a Deputy District Attorney played by Gene Hackman, get to Vancouver to testify against a Mr Big - but it all ends up silly, empty stuff with the action amounting to Hackman flinging himself sideways into a sleeping car or into a nook or into a quiet cargo hold as the inept baddies trawl up and down and up and down the train corridors ridiculously unable to pinpoint the car in which Anne Archer, the witness, sits either being breathless and scared in the dark or else engaged in long conversations with the DA somehow still able to stop by regularly for lengthy heart-to-hearts.

★★★☆☆

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The Conversation (1974)

In writer, director and producer Francis Ford Coppola's acclaimed 1974 mystery thriller, lonely and anonymous Harry Caul, a man extremely protective of his own right to privacy and secrets, ironically works as a wiretapper able to listen in on the conversations of others no matter what barriers - walls or crowds or bodies of water - stand between him and them; when his work for a shadowy someone surreptiously recording a couple's private conversations looks like it is going to abet violence, he is troubled because of his complicity, of course, but perhaps troubled mostly because the situation accentuates for him the fact that even the latest hi-tech bugging equipment - voice actuators and enormous reels of tape - can't overcome his remove from others.

★★★★★

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Another Woman (1988)

Woody Allen's terrific psychological drama concerns an austere philosophy professor and author played by a really wonderful Gena Rowlands, who starts to re-evaluate her life after she becomes privy to, via an airvent (like a synapse she can block or unblock) the therapy sessions of a sad young pregnant woman (Mia Farrow).

★★★★☆

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Crimson Tide (1995)

As if the confined spaces, the machismo of the crew and the constant threat of being sunk were not enough to pressure-cook the environment on board the nuclear submarine the USS Alabama, director Tony Scott adds a cigar smoker and a Jack Russell to the mix and then has the Second-in-Command (Denzel Washington) and the Captain (Gene Hackman) disagree on the best way to proceed through a nuclear missile crisis once their craft's communications systems go down.

★★★★☆

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Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

The Superman series starring Christopher Reeve had just given up by number four, worsening inexorably after its sombre, impressive number one, offering up a high camp number three and then, despite the good omen of Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder returning as Lex Luther and Lois Lane, the series serves up this preposterous number four, a movie in which Superman is pitted against a Lex Luther-created solar-powered drag queen and must find someplace to shove her where the sun doesn't shine.

★★☆☆☆

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The French Connection (1971)

Inspired by and informed by a real-life drug-ring-busting NYC cop, this 1971 police procedural won five academy awards for its atmospheric story of cops staking-out, shadowing and gun-battling with drug-smuggling bad guys and features Gene Hackman and Rob Schneider as the dogged cops, the N-word as its conspicuous self, and fluorescent red paint standing in as blood spill.

★★★☆☆

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