Monday Reviews

With two-to-three inches of snow on the ground today, I decided to make a movie day of it - what else? - and underwent four movies in succession. 
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Now my OCD prohibits me from potluck viewing, so I almost always have a plan going in, frequently categorizing my viewing habits either by year, genre, director, actor or what have you. So today, I tackled some late 80's/early 90's brooding thrillers, thanks to Netflix's handy streaming/Watch Instantly service. 
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First up was Phil Joanou's Final Analysis ('92), starring Richard Gere, Kim Basinger and Uma Thurman. Now I'm a sucker for Richard Pierce's No Mercy ('86) if for nothing else than the steamy sexuality of the leads, which is why Final Analysis was so messily disappointing. 
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It's essentially regurgitated, chewed up-and-spit-out Hitchcock tropes, served up over a bed of psycho-babble and by-the-law subterfuge. The twists pile up so high and so furiously over the last hour, each one as inept as the last, all the way up too the embarrassing finale atop a creaky lighthouse. DePalma is appalled. [D+]
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Next is Ridley Scott's Someone to Watch Over Me ('87), a competent cop-thriller that nonetheless is ultimately muted by its middling aspirations and formula climax. There's an intriguing through-line as Tom Berenger, a happily married man, slowly falls under the spell of his beautiful, socialite witness - played by Mimi Rogers - but this tale is ultimately a little too bare. [C+]
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Roman Polanski's Frantic ('88) was next up and found a lot of admire here (the director's trademark tension and slow-burning paranoia are in full effect in the first half), but the central mystery is solved a bit too tidily and too soon, leaving the audience weary instead of hanging by the end. Still, this is a well above-average thriller, makes a nice companion piece to The Ghost Writer. [B]
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Last but not least, Jim McBride's The Big Easy ('87) is a Southern cookin' mystery with a luminous Ellen Barkin and a spicy Dennis Quaid. The moralizing and emphasis on cop corruption spoil the mood a little, but for the most part, this is a winning formula of witty and charming. [B]