BLACK MASS (2015) – My rating: 8.7/10

Being a big Johnny Depp fan, I didn’t want to see Black Mass.  I didn’t like the way he looked with the receding hairline and slicked back hairdo, nor did I want to see him as a villain.  Of course that’s ridiculous because Johnny Depp is an excellent actor who can play many different genres.  Black Mass is a long, long, way from Captain Jack Sparrow or Edward Scissorhands.  Not a hint of Johnny Depp’s brand of silliness is anywhere to be found in Black Mass.  This is not Depp’s first go round as a mobster type character (Public Enemies & Donnie Brasco) to name a couple.  Black Mass is a true story about James “Whitey” Bulger, (Johnny Depp) a small time gangster who reined on the South side of Boston in the 1970s .  Bulger controlled an Irish-American gang called the Winter Hill Gang along with his right hand man, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi (Rory Cochrane), Kevin Weeks (Jesse Piemons) and hitman, Johnny Martorano (W. Earl Brown).  Whitey has a brother, William “Billy” Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch) who was a Boston senator and not tied to any type of crime.  A lot of this film surrounds the details of a relationship between Whitey and a FBI agent who was also a childhood friend named John Connolly (Joel Edgerton).  Connolly became corrupt as he grew closer and closer to Whitey and the gang.   The Angiulo Brothers, a powerful family with ties to the Mafia controlled the Northern side of Boston and killed one of the members of Whitey’s gang.  After some pressure from Connolly, Whitey became a FBI informant against the Angiulo Brothers.  The plot runs deep, the crime and violence runs deep and the corruption runs deep.  I found Black Mass to be quite entertaining and a solid story about organized crime.  The end is wrapped up nicely, the acting was superb, the story was real and I heard some talk about Oscar.  BTW, Kevin Bacon plays one of the FBI bosses at odds with Connolly.  I didn’t know he was in the film, so it was a surprise and a treat to see him perform.  This was one of the better movies of 2015.  Definitely worth seeing!

AMERICAN CRIME – My rating: 7/10

American Crime is focused on a crime committed against a married couple in their home.  The husband was killed and the wife beaten and possibly raped.  As she lies in a coma, an arrest is made.  This story gets pretty complicated as we learn more and more about the victims and those accused of the crime as well as the parents of the couple.  Felicity Huffman plays Barb Hanlon and is easy to dislike as she plays a prejudged parent with a cold heart and a vengeful agenda.  American Crime is racially and politically charged with a lot of truth and a lot of falsehoods.  Each episode does not stand on its own.  You have to follow the story in order to know what’s going on.   There are several families that make up this drama, the surviving victim and her parents Eve Carin (Penelope Ann Miller) and Tom Carin (W. Earl Brown),  the estranged parents of the dead victim, Barb Hanlon (Felicity Huffman) and Russ Skokie (Timothy Hutton), the Hispanic, single male parent/father Alonzo Gutiérrez (Benito Martinez), one of the accused and Alonzo’s son, Tony Gutiérrez (Johnny Oritz) and his daughter, Jennifer Gutiérrez (Gleendylis Inoa), Aliyah Shadeed (Regina King) the sister to another of the accused, Carter Nix (Elvis Nolasco) plus his Caucasian girlfriend, Aubry Taylor (Caitlin Gerard) and lastly, the actual guilty person who is also the witness and accuser, Hector Tontz (Richard Cabral).  The series looks like it will get better and better.  American Crime is a look into the justice system through the eyes of the victims as well as the guilty and accused.  Let’s see where this one goes.  So far it’s off to a somewhat, slow start.