Michael Connelly’s first novel The Black Echo came out in 1992, and I became an instant fan. I grew up in Southern California, which is Connelly’s beat. I saw him at a writer’s conference in Manhattan a few years ago, and he acknowledged Raymond Chandler and Robert Towne (writer of the superb film Chinatown) as […]
Heist (2015), dir. Scott Mann, screenplay Stephen Cyrus Sepher and Max Adams. 1hr 33min. With Robert DeNiro, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Dave Bautista, Gina Carano, Morris Chestnut, Mark-Paul Gosselaar. Even though this got only one star out of four on RogerEbert.com, I found it to be a pleasant surprise, a good-looking direct-to-streaming release with big names, […]
Django, Prepare a Coffin (1968) This is the unofficial prequel to Django (1966). But instead of Django’s Franco Nero, this one stars Terence Hill, who went on to make the Trinity series of Westerns and many action-buffo films with the unforgettable Bud Spencer. In this prequel, Django is working as a hangman. But he’s actually […]
Last night at the movies in Times Square I saw “Lowriders,” starring Theo Rossi, Gabriel Chavarria, Demián Bichir, and Eva Longoria. I had to see this one. Back in my Southern California high school days, I’d go watch the lowriders on Whittier Boulevard. This was in the late 1960’s when the lowriders played doo-wop on […]
Over the last two days, I saw two fascinating movies about the end of Spanish colonial influence in Africa. Both are set in the mid-1950s, as Spanish power is diminishing and independence movements are on the rise. It’s rare to see a movie about modern Spanish colonialism, and here were two of them in two […]
Lady Gunsmith #1: The Legend of Roxy Doyle, by J.R. Roberts (pseudonym of Robert J. Randisi). Santa Fe, New Mexico, Speaking Volume Books, March 2017. Also on Kindle. This is the first in a new series of Western novels about Roxy Doyle, a young girl with a troubled childhood who grows up to be a […]