Films I Watched This Week — Dec 22–28, 2025
Hatari! (1962)
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
Tokyo Fist (1995)
Bullet Ballet (1998)
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
Legends of the Fall (1994)
The Abyss (1989)
Casino (1995)
Sharon Stone deserved an Academy Award playing such a unstable gold-digging junkie like Ginger, a woman thats been given practically everything, except her own self-worth. Because of both her beauty and brains, anything she asks for she obtains. Yet, while living a life of adrenaline and excitement, she still continous to meet up with her sleazy pimp lover, giving him under-the-table cash to quench his and her drug-addiction.
During the course of the picture we watch Ginger's entitled married life begin to unravel, then dieteriate into a kind of downward spiral. Her manic unpredictability and explosive drug-induced outbursts give off instant red flags: This woman is obviously for the streets and definitely not wife material. Her erratic behavior escalates making her not only a bad wife but an neglectful mother. Director Martin Scorsese effectively portrays Giger as someone easy to dislike and at other times
loathe. I will give Ginger early points though for being brutally honest and upfront to Ace right from the get-go. She is straightforward to him about her wild nights on the town. She loves her independence and the need to feel validated by other men. But Ace wants Ginger to be his wife. Even after Ace's proposal for marrage she still bluntly states she would be no good for him and clearly does not love him. But Ace, the foolish beta-male as he is, takes it as a challenge for his ego and is determined to change Ginger's mind making her love him within time. For Ace, he feels splurging on Ginger is a way to control her and manipulate the power dynamics in their marrage. Buying off her happiness with expensive clothes, jewelery and giving her a weekly allowance will constitute Ace full control over her, her finances and a way to keep tabs on where she goes or who she sees. The impossible challenge to transition Ginger from a bad-girl and into a house-wife is a kind of sick thrill for Ace and his manhood.
It is a kind of adrenaline rush to win her heart so he can be rewarded something that is unattainable. Her. But the odds are against him and his luck of the draw (unlike the machines at the Casino) is not in his favor. Ginger is the kind of woman where no amount of money or security in the world will ever tame her. She is a self-destructive powder keg on the very edge of going off on the world. She feels so suffocated she must liberate herself from this binded marriage of oppression, with the oppressor keeping her a prisoner in her own home. Sharon Stone absolutely crushed her Ginger performance in Casino and completely knocked it out of the park, while at the same time raising the bar, heightening the film up to another level of greatness. Scorsese made another masterpiece of 90s clnema.Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
Story of Women (1988)
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