This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel take a leisurely stroll through a pretty well-executed genre exercise by writer/director Scott Frank (The Lookout). (41:39).
May contain NSFW language.
FilmWonk rating: 7 out of 10
Show notes:
- Music for tonight’s episode is Nouela‘s cover of “Black Hole Sun“, from the film’s trailer.
- Joining us for this week’s episode is Seattle artist Jason B., who will happily sell you a delightful pop-art print (or a mug) of Daniel’s mug here. Check out his other artwork and blog over at Catastrophic Shift.
- The two detective characters that were name-dropped in the film were Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe (created by Raymond Chandler, whom we mistakenly mentioned instead).
- The last (and only other) film in which we saw Brian “Astro” Bradley was Earth to Echo – check out our podcast review here.
- We referred to a recent Cracked article about a convicted drug smuggler, now out of prison, who is now a professional speaker – that was this one, from Brian O’Dea. But we actually mixed in a detail from this article (from an anonymous writer), about how drug dealers are often not the people you expect.
- We referred to the lackluster success rate of Alcoholics Anonymous – for reference, check out this NPR interview with Dr. Lance Dodes, who claims that AA’s success rate is as low as 5-10%.
Listen above, or download: A Walk Among the Tombstones (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)
FilmWonk 
The chances are you want to watch this movie because of Liam Neeson, who’s popularity skyrocketed the last 4-5 years because of such movies as Taken and Taken 2.
Well, Neeson is the only reason that this movie doesn’t suck entirely.
In this movie he is a traumatized ex-cop who hunts down a couple of psychopath killers. The pace of the movie is pretty slow. Don’t expect Taken-like scenes in this one. No big surprises script-wise either. Pretty much standard stuff.
The music could be more suitable for a haunted house horror film, and although there are some scenes in a cemetery the title is misleading.
The narrative is somehow difficult to grasp. There aren’t constant flashbacks as in other movies but for the first half of the movie many viewers are confused about the timeline of some events.
Also the movie is rather long. This simple premise could have been resolved in far less time than its 1h:54m running time.
Check it out only if you are a hardcore Liam Neeson fan.