I will turn 50 in November of this year, so my project for 2023 will be to watch and review one movie from each year of my life. The only qualification is that it has to be a movie I’ve not reviewed previously.
1995
Top Grossing Movies of 1995:
- Die Hard with a Vengeance
- Toy Story
- Apollo 13
- GoldenEye
- Pocahontas
Best Picture Oscar Nominees and Winners of 1995:
Other Movies I’ve Reviewed from 1995:
- Antonia’s Line
- Before Sunrise
- The City of Lost Children
- A Close Shave
- Clueless
- Ghost in the Shell
- Jumanji
- Party Girl
- The Wind in the Willows
Title: Devil in a Blue Dress
Release Date: September 29, 1995
Director: Carl Franklin
Production Company: TriStar Pictures
Summary/Review:
This film captures the feel of film noir stories in immediate post-war Los Angeles with the additional historical reality of Black migration to the city during that period. Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins (Denzel Washington) is a WWII vet who loses his job as a machinist and needing to pay his mortgage, agrees to work for private investigator DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore). His duty is to track down a white woman, Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), who is known to socialize in Black nightclubs.
Naturally, it’s not that easy for Easy as he finds himself in the middle of multiple murders, harassment from the cops, and a scandal involving both candidates for mayor of Los Angeles. He calls in for help from his friend from Texas, Mouse (Don Cheadle), although that only creates more trouble as Mouse needs very specific instructions on when not to kill people. It’s a great noir in the style of Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, and Kiss Me Deadly with an underlying social message of discrimination and segregation. I like the performances from Washington and Cheadle and most of the rest of the cast. Only Daphne feels underdeveloped and I don’t think it’s Beals fault so much as how she was written and directed, more as a MacGuffin than a woman.
Rating: ****
Panorama of the Mountains 