• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

That said, you might want to approach the film with caution, but I’ve met a number of people who cheerfully confess that they like it. I can’t defend my opinion; I can only tell you that it made me laugh, and I do that with my gut, not my intellect.

8. BLOOD AND WINE

(1997)

Directed by Bob Rafelson

Screenplay by Nick Villiers and Alison Cross

Story by Nick Villiers and Bob Rafelson

Actors:

JACK NICHOLSON

MICHAEL CAINE

JUDY DAVIS

STEPHEN DORFF

JENNIFER LOPEZ

HAROLD PERRINEAU JR.

MIKE STARR

Jack Nicholson’s name on a movie should be enough to place it firmly in the spotlight, but the dark qualities of Blood and Wine seem to have soured its distributor on the film’s potential, and that sentiment was passed along to potential viewers. They weren’t wrong about the tone of the picture: it’s tough and violent, an ultra-hard-boiled caper picture set in Florida. The cast includes Judy Davis, Stephen Dorff, Harold Perrineau, and a young Jennifer Lopez, but the main reason to see it is to savor the moments when Nicholson and Michael Caine share the screen.

This 1997 release marks the fifth time Nicholson was directed by Bob Rafelson, who helped forge the actor’s reputation with Five Easy Pieces in 1970. While none of their subsequent efforts (The King of Marvin Gardens in 1972, The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1981, and Man Trouble in 1982) enjoyed the same degree of critical and commercial success, their friendship endured. They met each other while working on The Monkees television series in the late 1960s, which gave Rafelson his first directing experience and Nicholson a chance to contribute to the freewheeling scripts. They subsequently collaborated on the underrated Monkees feature film Head (1968).

If you listen to the commentary track and interviews on the well-produced DVD release of Blood and Wine, you’ll learn a great deal about the unusual push-pull relationship between the director and his star. They are obviously more than coworkers, and they can read each other well. (Rafelson talks a great deal more than Nicholson, but you still get both perspectives.)

One might think Blood and Wine was based on a novel, like so many well-plotted film noirs peopled with colorful characters, but the story was concocted by Rafelson and Nick Villiers, who then wrote the final screenplay with Alison Cross.

Nicholson plays a high-end wine dealer who’s been a neglectful parent to his stepson (Dorff) and a poor excuse for a husband to Davis, whose money he has wantonly squandered. He wants to be free of her, especially since he’s taken up with a sexy Cuban nanny (Lopez). His solution to all of his problems is to steal a valuable necklace from one of his well-heeled customers—Lopez’s employer, in fact. To pull this off he calls on a professional jewel thief named Victor, played with great panache by Caine. Victor has a consumptive cough and a fatalistic worldview, but he’s ready for action. There is nothing redeeming about Nicholson’s character, or Caine’s, for that matter, but you can’t take your eyes off them: that’s the mark of a great script and two consummate actors.

Because this is a film noir, we already know that things are going to go askew; the only question is when and how. The story is solid, but it’s the detail of the characterizations, the sudden bursts of violence, and the fully committed performances that make Blood and Wine so good, and so memorable.

9. BRICK

(2006)

Directed by Rian Johnson

Screenplay by Rian Johnson

Actors:

JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT

LUKAS HAAS

NORA ZEHETNER

NOAH FLEISS

MATT O’LEARY

NOAH SEGAN

MEAGAN GOOD

EMILIE DE RAVIN

BRIAN WHITE

RICHARD ROUNDTREE

Brick was made in about a month’s time for less than half a million dollars, but if it weren’t any good those statistics would be meaningless. The fact that it is so good is a tribute to an inspired idea, a clever screenplay, a talented acting ensemble, and a filmmaker who had the passion and determination to get this movie made. It also proves that money is irrelevant to a film