Dir. Sydney Pollack. Starring Robert Mitchum, Ken Takakura, Keiko Kishi Remember when you were in college and you had that one friend who studied abroad in London for a semester, and when he came back he called it “football” and not “soccer” because he had been enlightened by three months there? The Yakuza is the movie equivalent… Read More The Yakuza (1974)
Dir. Richard Linklater. Starring Cate Blanchett, Emma Nelson, Billy Crudup Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a truly rare thing: a movie that runs at about 105 minutes that really ought to run about 135. Anyone who’s watched an Oscar movie will know that the opposite is so much more often the experience, but like Nocturnal Animals,… Read More Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019)
Dir. Todd Haynes. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Bill Camp To hear so many others tell it, Dark Waters is a fairly safe drama which happens to be directed by Todd Haynes. A good movie, not a great one, a little dim in comparison to the corona of I’m Not There or Carol. As I… Read More Dark Waters (2019)
Dir. Hal Ashby. Starring Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid The Last Detail, with its frustrated young men, faithfully rendered milieu, and miles of walk-and-talk, screams “Linklater movie.” It’s no wonder that Last Flag Flying borrows from this movie; the guidebook is right here in Hal Ashby’s direction and Robert Towne’s screenplay before either of them lost… Read More The Last Detail (1973)
Dir. Bob Rafelson. Starring Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Susan Anspach As much as any of the promising American directors of the early 1970s, Bob Rafelson was a victim of his own hype. Five Easy Pieces is an American entry into “angry young man”-ism which twists the typically industrial roots of that very British genre into… Read More Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Dir. Roman Polanski. Starring Natassja Kinski, Peter Firth, Leigh Lawson Dir. Delbert Mann. Starring David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth Two scenes from Tess, one of the great movies of the 1970s, made me wonder what the movie would have been like in another director’s hands. When Angel (Firth) returns from Brazil, with a shaggier beard… Read More Tess (1979) and Separate Tables (1958)
Dir. Billy Wilder. Starring Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Ray Teal The father of the man who is trapped in an old Native American burying ground underneath “the Mountain of the Seven Vultures” is a hangdog type, one who may have doomed his son to tragedy via phrenology alone. Papa (John Berkes), or Dad, for he… Read More Ace in the Hole (1951)
Dir. Elia Kazan. Starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau Here’s my Slate pitch about A Face in the Crowd: its best piece is its greatest weakness. By making Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes an Arkansas drifter, the film can call upon the services of Andy Griffith, who is absolutely electrifying. However, by making Lonesome Rhodes a Southerner,… Read More A Face in the Crowd (1957)
Dir. David Carson. Starring Patrick Stewart, Malcolm McDowell, Whoopi Goldberg In Somm, one of the candidates, Ian Cauble is a little notorious among his in-group because of the smells he claims to be able to get hints of in a glass of wine; doubtless the most idiosyncratic is the “freshly opened can of tennis balls.” But Ian… Read More Star Trek Generations (1994)
Dir. Ted Kotcheff. Starring Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty The following review addresses what might reasonably be referred to as animal cruelty. “All the little devils are proud of Hell,” Doc (Pleasence) mumbles by way of greeting. It’s at that moment that I knew that Wake in Fright would be strong medicine; forty-some years… Read More Wake in Fright (1971)
Seeing Things Secondhand 