Damage - 1992

Damage, also known as Fatale, is a 1992 film directed by Louis Malle. It is based on the novel Damage by Josephine Hart. The plot is about a politician who falls in love with his son's girlfriend.

Miranda Richardson was nominated for an Academy Award and won a BAFTA in the category of Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the aggrieved wife of the film's main character.

Dr. Stephen Fleming, a British cabinet minister, lives a pleasant life with wife Ingrid and young daughter Sally. His older son, Martyn, is a rising journalist. At a party, Stephen meets a young half-French woman named Anna Barton, who introduces herself as a close friend of Martyn's; it is immediately apparent, however, that Stephen and Anna are intensely attracted to each other. When Martyn visits his parents in London, he brings Anna with him; they are romantically involved. The sexual tension between Stephen and Anna is clear, though their respective mates are oblivious to this.

Despite her relationship with Martyn, Anna arranges a tryst with Stephen at her apartment. Stephen becomes obsessed with Anna. After an international summit adjourns in Brussels, he travels to Paris to meet her instead of going home. While Martyn is still sleeping in a Paris hotel room, Stephen and Anna have sex in an open doorway in broad daylight. Afterwards, Stephen checks into a hotel across the street from Anna's, so he can spy on her and Martyn through his window. Eventually, Stephen's infatuation with Anna reaches a point where he desires to be with her permanently, even at the risk of destroying his relationship with his son. Anna dissuades Stephen from doing this, reassuring him that as long as she is with Martyn, he will always have access to her.

The Usual Suspects - 1995

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

"Keaton always said, "I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him." Well I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze." Verbal

"Who is Keyser Soze?" Find out in one of my favorite twisted plot films with an amazing cast. Shot on a budget of $6 million over a period of 35 days this movie is a must see.

When five unacquainted scalawags are hauled into a police station to appear in a criminal lineup, they decide to pull off a heist together. The plan gets complicated, however, when they intermix with an underworld kingpin named Keyser Söze. Gabriel Byrne, Benicio Del Toro, Kevin Pollak, Stephen Baldwin and Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey star in this intricately plotted, critically acclaimed thriller that won another Oscar for Best Screenplay.

Christopher McQuarrie's inspiration for the character of Keyser Soze was a real-life murderer by the name of John List, who murdered his family and then disappeared for 17 years.

Kevin Spacey had to read the script twice when he first received it to make sure he fully understood it.

All the actors were encouraged to ad lib perplexed reactions to Benicio Del Toro's oddball vocal stylings.

Dark City - 1998

My personal friend, Dov Hoenig, was the film editor to this film as well as the classics The Last of the Mohicans, The Crow and The Fugitive (to name a few). His editing touches make a difference in a film. This one--in particular--called DARK CITY is a neo noir sci-fi film that is quite different. I loved the focus, search and yearning for "Shell Beach".


The film depicts a city in which human inhabitants never see the sun, as their lives are manipulated by extraterrestrials referred to as the "Strangers", who masquerade as humans. The Strangers are committed to studying the race of humanity through experimentation. Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, and Jennifer Connelly star in principal roles. Dark City explores the subject matter of murder, as well as abstract ideas such as hallucination, simulated reality, and the relationship between memory and personal identity.


Dark City is a retelling of the "Allegory of the Cave" used by Greek philosopher Plato, who conveyed the allegory as a fictional dialogue between his teacher Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon. In the film, the city inhabitants are prisoners who do not realize they are in a prison. John Murdoch's escape from the prison parallels the escape from the cave in the allegory. He is assisted by Dr. Schreber, who explains the city's mechanism as Socrates explains to Glaucon how the shadows in the cave are cast. Murdoch however becomes more than Glaucon; Gerard Loughlin writes, "He is a Glaucon who comes to realize that Socrates' tale of an upper, more real world, is itself a shadow, a forgery."


Murdoch defeats the Strangers who control the inhabitants and remakes the world based on childhood memories, which were themselves illusions arranged by the Strangers. Loughlin writes of the lack of background, "The origin of the city is off–stage, unknown and unknowable." Murdoch now casts new shadows for the city inhabitants, who must trust his judgment. Unlike Plato, Murdoch "is disabused of any hope of an outside" and becomes the demiurge for the cave, the only environment he knows.


The city in Dark City is described by Higley as a "murky, nightmarish German expressionist film noir depiction of urban repression and mechanism". The city has a World War II dreariness reminiscent of Edward Hopper's works and has details from different eras and architectures that are changed by the Strangers; "buildings collapse as others emerge and battle with one another at the end". The round window in Dark City is concave like a fishbowl and is a frequently seen element throughout the city. The inhabitants do not live at the top of the city; the main characters' homes are dwarfed by the bricolage of buildings.


"The Matrix" was released one year after "Dark City" and was also filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia using some of the same sets. Comparisons have been made between scenes from the movies, making note of similarities in both cinematography and atmosphere, as well as the plot.