From Hell

The holywood studio system has been known for it's savaging of creative people and creative ideas, take Terry Gilliam or Orson Welles as an exemple, on the other hand, the comic book world has been know to be the nest of the most creative people in pop culture, but sometimes a crossover happens when hollywood wants to adapt a cult graphic novel with a huge following, and most of the time it ends up making it a sensless blockbuster focusing on the obvious and leaving out all the rest

"From Hell" is a cult comic book about the killings of Jack the Ripper, Several prostitutes are found dead in Victorian London, and then posthumously savaged with some vital organs missing, and Inspector Frederick Abberline (Johnny Depp), who is known for his insight, and who is prone to accurate visions is appointed on the case to investigate, night after night the murders happen following a strange ritual, one of the prostitutes Mary Kelly (Heather Graham) ends up assisting Name Name in his investigation, because she is a potential target, and by the almighty blockbuster rules has an affair with him.

The experience and the craftmenship in these murders shows that the murderer has a knowledge of human anatomy, which leads Frederick to seek Counseling by doctor Willian Gull who happens to be a royal doctor, and leads him to cross the paths of the ruthless special police force and it's leader, the dots on this macabre map rapidly have the pattern of a conspiracy, and through the nets of this conspiracy royal princes and secret society members are either entrapped or pulling the strings, until the final showdown which shows a complexity in the motives higher then humanly possible, it's a divlish plan, a plan from Hell.

Sounds nice doesn't it ? well matter of fact this is ten floors below the level of the graphic novel, because the interesting theory about how Jack The Ripper was making some ritual sacrifice in order to prepare humanity for the twentieth century, and the philosophical significance of the places murders took place in, and his view on time and history, and how it all affected the bloody twentieth century and everything which happned during it has been replaced by a Johnny Depp runnint from a murder scene to a murder scene, while being involved in a hard to believe romantic relationship with the female lead, and Jack the Ripper commiting his murders without clear intentions, the theory in the book is far more interesting, so my advice to you, skip the movie and read the graphic novel .

Year : 2001
Directed by: The Hughes Brothers
Starring: Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm

Blow

The movie starts with « can't you hear me knocking » and this can mean two things, either this movie is top cool, or the producers have a lot of money to afford a Rolling Stones song, sadly the second statement is the true one, this song merely starts a movie that goes in one direction like a car on cruise control, and no Johnny Depp charisma, or Penelope Cruze Sexiness is gonna save it, nor the «based on a true story» sticker.

Meet George Jung (Depp) a bright kid from Massachusetts who was raised in a poor household and promised himself it wouldn't happen to him, so as soon as he can he travels throughout America and lands in LA with his childhood friend Tuna (Actor name) where he rents an appartment in Manhattan Beach in the midst of the summer of love.

California lifestyle needing money, Jung starts to deal drugs, first small quantities of herb, then expanding to importing it himself from South America, then expanding again until reaching a status allowing him to deal with Pablo Escobar personally, being the first man to bring Cocaine to America, and the story is true, which means all the craziness surrounding white powder in America in the seventies, it was this dude's fruits of labor.

The plot is really straightforward with not many twists really, it's the whole «rise and fall of ...» thing from VH1, of course a guy like that ends up marrying a trophy wife (Cruz) of course he ends up estranging everybody who ever mattered to him, and the end follows with no surprises, but the film positive side is that it tells a terrible tale of greed, but in a candid way, in the eyes of Jung nothing he did was bad, since he was just meeting the demand in simple marketing terms, even the FBI and the DEA are not bad guys, and besides unlike his South American likes he is not prone to violence, he is just a businessman

The best part of this movie are the exchanges Jung has with his Father played beautifully by Ray Liotta, they are the most interesting parts of the movie, and what save it from totally drowning

Let me just say It is a movie you can live without, Depp made far better movies in his career some we praised here, and Cruz was always overrated in the first place, and If you want to listen to Rolling Stones songs in a movie, pick a Scorsese one, but it was a fairly entertaining one, so if you really have nothing better to do it can be a nice choice.

Year: 2001
Writers: David McKenna, Nick Cassavetes
Director: Ted Demme
Starring: Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz

Nick of Time (1995)

Sometimes you don't like a movie particularly, but you like something about it, would it be an on-screen encounter between two actors you wish to see together, or some movie artifact, or the general mood of a movie, or sometimes even the title, and that's what leads me to speak about "Nick of Time"

Gene Spencer (Johnny Depp) is an accountant and father of a small girl, arriving to Los Angeles by train do attend to some business, little did he know that he will get trapped in some major assassination business by a mysterious man (Christopher Walken) and his assistant (Romma Mafia) (i'm serious that's her real name), who hold his little daughter hostage, making him understand that he either carries the dirty business or else....as the plot advances we clearly see into this whole plan, and Gene gets grip with reality, finding as always more ressources then he ever thought he was capable off, getting into the unmerciful world where politics and business merge.

The movie is notable for some reason, although far from being a great one, first of all, it is shot in real time, meaning is that a minute in the movie equals a minute in the plot, Johnny Depp and Christopher get away clean with rather a simple and straightforward story, because good actors know how to struggle with average script, the music is good, and is in the whole Bernard Hermann Vertigo-like tradition, of entrapment and claustrophobia, and the cinematography is a clear hommage to Alfred Hitchcock.

That's maybe the sad thing perhaps, an idea like that would find it's right place if they had somebody as Hitchcock to work on this story, because the promisses were interesting, but this movie has a real small running time 82 minutes including the opening titles, and no it's not boring, and it has a great title, and after all it all happens practically in a luxurious hotel, which means it helps with the entrapment feeling, and well if i don't recommend it, i don't advise against it, all i can say is that i spent a gold hour and half watching it, remember, not all movies are masterpieces, some are just average.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1997)

Ever heard of the American Dream, the Chevrolet, the nice house with the Drive-in, the malls, the blondes, this dream has been promoted by a zillion of movies and series from the early twenties, and that's why the American Immigration will be ever strong, despite Nagasaki, Vietnam, Irak, Guantanamo, and even recession.

Mr Hunter Thompson was a singulary Journalis, inventer of the "gonzo journalism", and a righteous witness to the Sixties in San Fransisco, so in the early seventies in the middle of the Vietnam War and during the Nixon administration, he decides to go to some sort of pilgrimage, a "savage journey to the heart of the American dream", so he takes a convertible, a bag full of all drugs known to man, a typewriter, and a Samoan laywer to a trip that was immortalized in the counter-culture canonic book "fear and loathing in Las Vegas.

Many directors and actors have tried to adapt this book, Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Brando, Nicholson, but we had to wait for the end of the millenium and Terry Gilliam to see it in what became a canonic cult movie on it's own right.

Hunter Thompson handpicked Johnny Depp, to play him, or to be exact his Alter Ego Raoul Duke, and you can't omit the irony in choosing an actor who represented the American dream for two decades to do that, Thomoson even shaving his head personally which is a bold movie concidering the chances of it never growing back, Benicio Del Toro completes the cast as Dr Gonzo, the alter ego to the real life crazy lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta (who disappeared in mexico in 74) and cameos of "American Dream" stars such as Cameron Diaz, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, and the main character of the movie "the heart of the American Dream" the city of Las Vegas itself, with it's strip, Casions, affordable Luxury suites, and it's blinding lights.

Duke is sent to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race, and later has to cover a serious convention in Vegas on the other end of the American specturm, and between the two, he juggles with the components of counter culture, on a tightrope without a net below it, just the 3AM sound of desolation.

You have the Sinatra and the Rat-Pack component, you have the big circus with the jugglers and the clowns, you have the ingénue puritain teenagers, and the lone diners at 2 AM, and of course the Las Vegas strip with the flashing lights, plus all the parallel universes which are opened under Acid, Mescaline, Cocaine, Marijuana, or all of them at the same time, all that under the red sky of the involvment in Vietnam, and an acid generation of Cindrellas, following false prophets like Timothy Leary into the place where the wave ended up, in the middle of the desert.

You don't watch the movie in a classical facion, because it's a celluloid equivalent of a psychadelic album, like the "Jimmy Hendrix Experience", the soundtrack is aweome with Dylan, Tom Jones, Buffalo Springfield, and others, and Depp is not only playing Hunter Thompson, he IS him.

Thompson being the man who invented Gonzo Journalism, and a legendary Rolling Stone Magazine contributour, Dr Gonzo being the name of the character played by DelToro, the only thing i can promise is that this movie will affect you profoundly, and keep you wondering about it's famous "wave speech", and what if the sixties mouvement had succeeded, because all we see know is a direct result of their failure, and would we be stuck with reality-tv, three decades of Madonna, and the whole teen queen business, they owe a lot to this failure of good versus evil, and that's the impression you get as you leave the heart of the American Dream, on a Chevy Convertible, on the Highway number 15.