The impression I've gotten is that it was originally supposed to be free-floating anomie, but I've gleaned that from reading about the book without having read it so I guess I'm talking out of my ass. Cheers!

Good call, that one does seem pretty likely. I usually forget it though because usually when I think of Hill I think of something a bit off-kilter, and 48 Hrs. fits so well in the Hollywood mode.

Have you seen anything to indicate that the police do not tacitly endorse police brutality?

I came up with pissbabies, but this is what struck me as well.

At this point, enough people know about the legally-sanctioned abuse of power that it's probably part of the draw.

Especially with KRS, who iirc has been both from time to time.

Bad Lieutenant came out in 2009, so Knowing isn't even the best Nic Cage movie from that year.

I hope there's a Walter Hill movie in this series somewhere. What came out in '79? (I'm assuming Alien counts as a horror movie.)

I'm not sure if it fits in with blaxploitation proper, but Across 110th Street is a damned good movie.

I'd say get Friedkin while he's still kicking (though that's also a factor with Miller).

It bugs me to no end that there are eleventy-three transpositions of Red Harvest but no one ever just went and filmed the damned thing.

Added for posterity: he's really good in Edge of Darkness too.

You can get the point of the scene and still think that it's laughable as written. It sounds like placeholder dialogue that the writers forgot or decided not to go back and finish.

Dayman vs. Nightman

I had sort of the opposite experience — I went into the movie angry after the most loathsome set of trailers I've ever seen. There was the Deepwater Horizon movie, some mighty-whitey Civil War thing (American Civil War, not Marvel), and one with Jonah Hill about war profiteering. Then again, after that garbage the…

Man, I tried watching Signs the other day, and I don't know if they were directed to act the way they did or everyone turned in a shit performance and M. Night just didn't notice, but it was like everyone in the cast was interacting with other human beings for the first time. I made it about ten minutes.

I did notice that someone apparently named their kid Cobol.

Those were some long goddamn credits too.

I see what you're saying and I think your interpretation also follows more closely on the conflict of Winter Soldier. Though the reviewer implies the ideologies are kind of slippery so who knows?

He's too unstable to keep power and I'm pretty sure he's made enemies of or killed everyone he's ever met at this point.