Word: cons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Like Pulp Fiction and his 1992 debut, Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino's latest film is populated with jive-talking killers and other lowlifes. The plot revolves around a streetwise flight attendant, played by Grier, who double- and triple-crosses a gun dealer (Samuel L. Jackson) despite interference from an ex-con (Robert De Niro) and a stoned-out beach bunny (Bridget Fonda) who bounces between the two men. Filled with Tarantino-lingo overkill (the N word is reportedly used 10 times in the first scene alone), the film mixes ultra-violence with the director's usual pop-culture references...
...comedy Nothing to Lose, meets co-star Tim Robbins when he jumps into Robbins' car, brandishes a pistol and demands money. But, he later explains in a tone of aggrieved dignity, "I don't steal. I just dabble in future used goods." It is the art of the con man--and of the movie actor--to fool others so exquisitely that he may be fooling himself. So admirers of the popular actor-comedian must hope, and detractors will wonder, when Lawrence defends himself against a flurry of criminal and domestic accusations by saying, "I've grown." "I'm cool...
...this puts the commissioners in a delicate spot. Nevada Governor Bob Miller was on the phone to them last week. So were a lot of fight fans, pro and con Tyson. "This is the toughest thing I've ever had to deal with in my life," says commissioner Luther Mack. Enforcing civilized standards is never easy in a sport where acceptable behavior is to beat your opponent to a pulp, and where unacceptable behavior has never been bad for the gate. Holyfield himself once bit an opponent, "Jakey" Winters, during a Golden Gloves bout in 1980. Holyfield, who gnawed Winters...
...auteur kudos would give giggle fits to veteran sleazemasters, who saw films as just part of the con of peddling the promise of smut to suckers. If there was an art to grindhouse movies, it was the art of the spiel. As ace exploitation entrepreneur David F. Friedman (She Freak, Trader Hornee) boasts in Eddie Muller and Daniel Faris' breezy, authoritative, gaudily illustrated Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adults Only" Cinema (St. Martin's Griffin; 160 pages; $19.95), "I've got a high school education in making movies but a Ph.D. in selling them...
...gags that is the modern action movie. And when the stars aren't killing off the supporting players, they are cracking wise--lamely. All right, nobody goes to hear an action movie, but the verbal humor in The Lost World didn't have to be so stilted. In Con Air and Batman & Robin the lines have the rhythm of wit but not the content; they are their own rim shots...