Author: Dave Franklin

Do you watch porn? C’mon, you can tell me. Maybe you’re one of those guys who wakes up and immediately staggers bleary-eyed across the bedroom to flip up a laptop lid, a short journey made hazardous by the combination of throbbing boner and ankle-pooled pajama bottoms that necessitate arms thrown out to the side while…

Brad Whitewood Sr. reveals his true colors in At Close Range (1986) It takes more than an hour of this very nicely photographed neo-noir crime pic for Brad Sr. (Christopher Walken) to show he’s a nasty fucker. Up until then, he’s merely a thief, the leader of a tightly knit bunch of rural crims that…

Heroes are OK but when it comes to memorability, villains tend to piss all over ’em. This glaring divergence has long plagued creators and can be traced back at least as far as Shakespeare. Take The Merchant of Venice. Shylock’s vengeful demand for a pound of flesh ensures his status as an all-time bad guy,…

The corrupt: Jim McAllister in Election (1999) The perfect companion piece to the iconic Ferris Bueller. Here we get to see Broderick play a character at the opposite end of the spectrum. Bueller was an exuberant livewire beating the system but the vanilla, sensibly dressed McAllister in his nerdy car is the loser that always…

The wrongly accused: Lucas in The Hunt aka Jagten (2012) Back in the 90s I covered a newspaper story in which a run of the mill, middle-aged sex offender was having a bit of a tough time. He’d been sent to clink for touching up some residents at a women’s shelter. In his favor, the…

The inspirational:  LouAnne Johnson in Dangerous Minds (1995), Mark Thackeray in To Sir, with Love (1967) and John Keating in Dead Poets Society (1989) It’s time to say hi to our latest graduate from the Kelly McGillis Top Gun School of Absurd Roles. Meet the willowy, effortlessly elegant Michelle Pfeiffer (along with her dazzling smile…

We’ve all had teachers. And I don’t mean in the sexual sense. Good, bad, boring, angry and spaced out, teachers tend to stick in the mind. I remember one guy in junior school who routinely flew off the handle, leaving me scared to attend class. He once reduced me to tears by shouting in my…

I love shit about repressed female sexuality. Take nuns. They’re a bunch of wretched, feeble-minded cowards, women who cling to a fantasy deity and starve themselves of Earthly pleasures because they’re ashamed of their pussy. Now The Devils may well appear to be about religion and politics in 17th century France, but it’s more to…