Word: thorntons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Blake (Bruce Willis) is the hard guy. He proves this in Bandits' first minutes by stealing a concrete-mixing truck and using it to crash out of the Oregon state pen. Terry Collins (Billy Bob Thornton) thinks he's a smart guy but is actually a hilarious hypochondriac. Kate Wheeler (Cate Blanchett) is a homemaker driven mad by her husband's solipsistic indifference. Very quickly they constitute themselves as "the Sleepover Bandits." Their m.o. is to invade the home of a small-town bank manager at night, take the family hostage and, bickering all the way, waltz into the vault...
Were it not for Thornton's brilliantly whiny portrayal of a man who knows too much medicine for his own good, Troy Garity (Jane Fonda's kid) might have stolen the picture. He plays the bandits' wheelman, a none-too-bright chap who dreams of becoming a stunt man and occasionally practices the craft by setting fire to himself. He's terrific, but finally Bandits works as a sweetly loony ensemble piece, a sort of cracked romance that's typical of director Barry Levinson at his shrewd but unpretentious best...
...advice tidbits from curiously close brother Jamie--there's some intriguing stuff. When a baby in Sierra Leone screamed upon seeing her, his mother explained, "He's scared because of the color of your skin." It certainly couldn't have been that vial of husband Billy Bob Thornton's blood on the chain around her neck...
Meanwhile, back on lower Earth--in the roiling depths of California film noir--there are plots every bit as dark and complex as those in the season's fantasy films. Just look into the barely beating heart of Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), the barber of Santa Rosa, in Joel and Ethan Coen's tragicomic cardiograph The Man Who Wasn't There. He's got a cheating wife (Frances McDormand), a conniving friend (James Gandolfini), a dead-end job and the depressive sense that "life has dealt me some bum cards. Or maybe I didn't play them right...
Like another bountiful fall offering, David Lynch's Mulholland Dr., the Coen film serves up a lovely, lurid brew of greed, murder and twisted identities. It's a smart essay on the overwhelming human need to love someone who's bad news. Thornton's fabulously dour performance--a prime display of postmortem acting--reminds us that fall is the time when things...