It's too bad that
Once Upon a Time in London was not a better movie. It had potential: gangsters, so of course lots of violence, clubs, Art Deco stylings, cocktails, good music, and all set against a wartime backdrop. It just wasn't very good, which was too bad. I just didn't care about any of the characters. If you can get past the violence, it's a fun look at the seedy underground (not the Tube) of London at the time, but that's about all it's good for.
The duo of
Richard Pryor and
Gene Wilder made a handful of slapstick comedies together, none of which I had previously seen.
See No Evil, Hear No Evil stars the pair, one of whom is deaf and one who is blind. They witness, such as each of them are able to, a murder. The two of them have to work together to navigate Manhattan while simultaneously evading the real murderer. It's goofy, but I got several good chuckles out of it.
The Voyeurs is in some ways is the ultimate city story. Neighbors are spying on each other through their across-the-street apartment windows. (I probably shouldn't admit that I loved doing this when I lived in the city ... but I did!) Things start out promising for the first third of the movie or so; even after the first half they probably could have pulled it back from the edge, but it just goes completely off the rails in the second half, and then even farther off the rails towards the end. Do yourself a favor and skip this in favor of
Rear Window if you're looking for something in the spying-on-the-neighbors vein.
If you like hearing
Adam Sandler scream at people or into his phone,
Uncut Gems is for you. He plays a gem dealer based in the Diamond District of NYC, but he has a major gambling problem which puts him on the wrong side of some nasty folks. I don't particularly care for the shouty-ness of his character, but otherwise it's a pretty good performance and I did find myself rooting for him in the end. I did find it to be a bit overly-long, however.
Christoph Waltz decided no one could play his main character better than himself, but at least he had the good sense to put strong supporting characters on both sides of him in
Georgetown. He plays Ulrich Mott, a social climber who marries a much older woman played by the inimitable
Vanessa Redgrave. When the elderly woman dies, her daughter (played by the equally spectacular
Annette Bening) is suspicious of Mott and his motives. The film is based on a true story, but don't look it up just yet or you'll find out what really happened!
Tower Heist is a reasonably amusing
Ben Stiller comedy. He plays the supervisor of the building staff at a fancy-pants high-rise Manhattan residential building. When the staff discover that they've been cheated by their wealthy building owner's Ponzi scheme, they band together to take their revenge.
Limitless is another New York movie, and though of course the city figures throughout, my favorite scene is reprised for use with the opening credits. It's a high-speed trip through the streets of the city. As for the actual plot (based on the book
The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn), our previously-struggling main character stumbles upon a drug that allows him to access 100% of his brain capacity, to become the best, most skilled version of himself -- and who wouldn't want to see
Bradley Cooper being his best self?
