Desperado (1995)
DIRECTOR: Robert Rodriguez
CAST:
Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Joaquim de Almeida, Steve Buscemi, Cheech Marin, Quentin Tarantino, Danny Trejo, Carlos Gomez
REVIEW:
In 1992, film student Robert Rodriguez took a group of complete unknowns (his personal friends) and $7,000 to Mexico and filmed El Mariachi. The so-called ‘$7,000 Wonder’ was successful enough for Columbia Pictures to give Rodriguez a Hollywood-scale budget to essentially remake the unpolished indie (although it’s technically a sequel). The concessions to Hollywood influence over indie freedoms are obvious. Continue reading
Virtuosity (1995)
DIRECTOR: Brett Leonard
CAST: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Kelly Lynch, William Forsythe, William Fichtner, Louise Fletcher, Stephen Spinella, Kevin J. O’Connor
REVIEW:
Virtuosity, from director Brett Leonard (playing in virtual reality for the second time after 1992’s The Lawnmower Man) and screenwriter Eric Bernt, is another in the mid-90s fad of “high-tech” thrillers, following Sneakers and The Net, and like the latter Sandra Bullock vehicle, it fails to offer up anything very original or creative, using a “futuristic” premise for a cheesy thriller long on generic action sequences and bad action movie dialogue and deficient on intelligence or thrills.
Continue reading