The Usual Suspects (1995)

If you've not seen or been spoiled on TUS yet, do yourself a favour by not reading anything more and instead just watch it because a first viewing will give you something that cannot be repeated. Part of what separates it from its crime drama peers of the era is that it respects its audience's ability to keep up with the twists, and engages their willingness to go along for the ride.
Subsequent viewings will likely take a more analytical approach. It was during such an endeavour that I was struck by how much Dir. Singer valued both the language of film and its unique storytelling devices; his big budget films may attempt the same but often get swamped by spectacle. The flashbacks, v/o, timing and techniques used herein are modernised but familiar, a kind of revitalisation of cinematic tools that had worked their magic for decades.

4 probable causes out of 5

New Eden (1994)

There’s very little to recommend about New Eden, but I ought to try because in spite of its blandness I've always kind of liked it.
Admittedly, the prison-planet setting wasn't a new concept in sci-f, nor the use of an off-worlder as a catalyst for self-imposed limitations to be highlighted, but at least the sparse, white sands of the desert work in favour of the low budget. And while the passiveness of Baldwin’s character exudes mostly blankness in place of quiet hopefulness, Lisa Bonet counteracts it. And finally, the music adds strangeness to even the most banal moment.
What's impossible to defend is the awful sensei/pupil training montage. It's shit no matter how you spin it.

1½ ways of living out of 5

LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN [1989]

1952 Brooklyn is Hell in director Uli Edel's adaptation of Requiem For A Dream author Hubert Selby, Jr.'s classic novel, Last Exit To Brooklyn.
It's a difficult novel to adapt and Edel doesn't quite get a grip on it, by toning down quite a bit of the harsher material and letting the 6 narratives of the novel mesh into each other making for an uneven viewing.  Not to say that it isn't all rainbows and puppy dogs because it's still a pretty depressing and uncomfortable viewing dealing with poverty, drug addiction, violence, prostitution and transvestites.   Edel does a wonderful job at blacking out the rest of the world that surrounds the neighborhood making it feel all the more claustrophobic and hopeless.

3 trouts for a hat out of 5