Movies – Page 12 – The Movie Gourmet

Stream of the Week: WIND RIVER – another masterpiece from Taylor Sheridan

January 16, 2018 by movie gourmet

Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner in WIND RIVER

With the contemporary Western thriller Wind River, screenwriter Taylor Sheridan has delivered another masterpiece, this time in his first effort as director. Wind River was probably my most anticipated film of the year because I pegged Sheridan’s previous movie Hell or High Water as the best movie of 2016. Wind River doesn’t disappoint and is one of the best movies of 2017.

The story is set in and around Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation. Cory (Jeremy Renner) is a professional hunter who finds the body of a native American teenage girl. To find out what happened to her and who is responsible, the tribal police chief Ben (Graham Greene) calls for help from the feds. That assistance arrives in the form of FBI agent Jane (Elizabeth Olsen), an inexperienced city slicker who has no clue how to survive in the lethal elements of the wild country. She is canny enough to understand that she needs the help of Cory, who knows every inch of the back country. He has his own reason – very important to the story – to solve the mystery, and the unlikely duo embark on a dangerous investigation, which they know will end in a man hunt.

The man hunt leads to a violent set piece that Sheridan directs masterfully. There’s a sudden escalation of tension, then apparent relief and then an explosion of action. Deadly chaos envelops several characters, but we’re able to follow it all clearly, while we’re on the edges of our seats.

Jeremy Renner’s performance as Cory is brilliant. Cory is a man whose life has been redirected by a family tragedy. He’s a Western stoic of few words, but – unusual for his type – an individual who deals with his grief in a very specific and self-aware way. Playing a character who reloads his own rounds, Renner is able to deliver hard-ass, determined efficiency along with some unexpected tenderness.

Olsen is also very good as Jane who understands that she may appear to be the bottom of the FBI’s barrel because she is a woman and very green and tiny. Resolute and spunky, she moves past what others might take as a slight because no unaided outsider is going to be able to navigate the harsh environment and the culture of the reservation. She isn’t trying to make a name for herself, but just to take responsibility in the old-fashioned way that we would expect from characters played by Glenn Ford, Gregory Peck, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. She’s got to do the right thing.

As Martin, the dead girl’s father, Gil Birmingham (Hell or High Water) has two unforgettable scenes. His first scene is phenomenal first scene, as he processes the worst possible news with an outside Jane, and then with his friend Cory. Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal are also excellent. Kelsey Asbille and Jon Bernthal are also stellar in a flashback of the crime.

Sheridan and cinematographer Ben Richardson (Beasts of the Southern Wild) make great use of the Big Sky country, with the jagged topography of its mountains and the feral frigidity of its forests. Wind River opens as Cory hunts in spectacular postcard scenery; when we first see the reservation, we are jarred – this is a very bad place.

Taylor Sheridan has a gift for writing great, great movie dialogue:

“Who’s the victim today? Looks like it’s gonna be me.”

and

“This isn’t the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of you’re on your own.”

When Cory says, “This isn’t about Emily”, we know that this is precisely about Emily. When Cory says, “I’m a hunter”, we know exactly what his intentions are – and so does Martin.

Sheridan hates that, in much of our society, people are disposable. He has explored that theme in Sicario, Hell or High Water and now Wind River. Wind River begins with a title explaining that the story is inspired by actual events, and ends with a particularly horrifying non-statistic. I’ve also written an essay on Sheridan’s filmmaking signatures, the films of Tayler Sheridan.

Smart, layered and intelligent, Wind River is another success from one of America’s fastest-rising filmmakers. It’s now available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

https://youtu.be/fB8qx_JJVKY

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT: Orson Welles’ Shakespearean masterpiece

January 15, 2018 by movie gourmet

Orson Welles and Keith Baxter in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

The great auteur Orson Welles loved Shakespeare and made three Shakespearean movies, of which Chimes at Midnight is the masterpiece. Welles’ genius was in braiding together parts of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, some Richard III, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor into a cohesive story of what he called “betrayal of friendship”. You can watch Chimes at Midnight Wednesday on Turner Classic Movies.

Welles himself vividly plays the recurring Shakespearean character of Sir John Falstaff.
Falstaff is a rogue knight, a shameless braggart and robustly debauched.

The young Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), the future King Henry V, is sowing his wild oats, and he is in the market for a dissolute companion. To the disgust of Hal’s severe father, King Henry IV (John Gielgud), Hal and Falstaff are carousing buddies, their fast friendship forged in taverns with plentiful spirits and women of easy virtue. (Falstaff’s wench is played by Jeanne Moreau.)

Orson Welles and Jeanne Moreau in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

There’s plenty of palace intrigue interwoven with the comic pranks and partying by the rascal Hal and his favorite scoundrel Falstaff. Falstaff even does mocking impressions of Henry IV.

Chimes at Midnight features an amazing 12-minute battle scene beginning at the 55 minute mark. Somehow Welles was able to afford 150 extras and was able to use them and his camera to create a battle scene as effective as the ones in Braveheart and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. Welles doesn’t pull any punches in depicting the brutality of medieval warfare. The initial horse charge is followed by the chaos of hacking and clubbing. The combatants become a roiling cauldron of lethal mayhem. In all the fog of war, it’s still easy to follow Falstaff in his size XXXL armor. Welles’ Falstaff believes that honor is merely ornamental and not worth sacrificing one’s life for. No hero, Falstaff.

Finally, Henry IV dies and Prince Hal will ascend the throne. Falstaff thinks he’s won the lottery, but a king can’t afford sloppy bad habits. Hal rejects vanity, of which Falstaff is the signal emblem. Hal rebuffs Falstaff with Presume not that I am the thing I was and banishes him. Falstaff is stunned – but then proud of his mentee. Defeated in the end, Welles’ eyes show us his pride and simultaneous disappointment. This high point of Chimes at Midnight is also probably Welles’ best moment as an actor.

The broad, raucous comedy in Chimes at Midnight shows us what it must have like to see Shakespeare’s words performed in the rowdy Globe Theater. Shot in Spain with authentic medieval settings, Chimes at Midnight looks very good for a low, low-budget film. It is narrated by Ralph Richardson.

This is a brilliant film, and it’s high on my list of Best Shakespeare Movies.

Chimes at Midnight was extremely hard to find until very recently, except for a bootleg on YouTube and a 2015 DVD released in the UK. It’s still not available to rent on DVD. Fortunately, Chimes at Midnight has become available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and FilmStruck. And, of course, it plays occasionally on Turner Classic Movies where it will be featured on January 17.

IN THE FADE: a moral choice in a revenge thriller

January 11, 2018 by movie gourmet

Diane Kruger in IN THE FADE, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Diane Kruger gives a brilliant performance in the searing and emotionally devastating German thriller In the Fade. Kruger plays a German woman whose husband and child are murdered. Her life essentially disintegrates, as a whodunit carries on mostly beyond her. Katja is not exactly the German Betty Crocker. She’s tatted up and has married a Turkish Kurdish man who is a reformed drug dealer. But her grief is universal, and so is her impulse for revenge. Her husband’s attorney Danilo (Denis Moschitto) leads her on a quest for justice. But she must decide whether to take justice into her own hands. And how. And at what cost. The final scene in In the Fade is unforgettable.

German writer-director Fatih Akin, like Katja’s husband, is the son of Turkish immigrants. In In the Fade’s taut one hour, 46 minutes, he has crafted a pulsating page-turner. It can’t be easy to keep the pace of a movie from grinding down when the protagonist is plunging into a puddle of grief, but Akin pulls it off. The horror of the murder is not shown on-screen, but Akin funds a way to make it even more horrible than if we had watched it happen. Akin has made a successful thriller here, not a “message movie”, but he also effectively addresses the topical issues of immigration, racism and terrorism.

Diane Kruger won Best Actress at last year’s Cannes film festival for this performance. She creates a fundamentally vibrant Katja, who must react to a horrific loss, and then to a series of indignities capped by brutal gut-punch from her mother-in-law. This is a profoundly authentic depiction of grief. When any chance for resolution is jerked away from Katja by a shocking injustice, Kruger takes Katja into steely resolve.

Kruger is an impressively versatile actress. She’s equally good as an American detective with Asberger’s in the absorbing American miniseries The Bridge and as a whim-driven queen in the French costume drama Farewell, My Queen.

Denis Moschitto and Diane Kruger in IN THE FADE, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

In the Fade is filled with excellent performances. Besides Moschitto, I’ll point out

Johannes Krisch as cinema’s most despicable defense attorney, loathsome down to the prefunctory danke with which he ends each argument.
Hening Peker as the earnest-to-a-fault police investigator, doing everything rationally and by the book, but not in a way comfortable for our sympathetic victim, Katja.
Ulrich Tukur as a character who has found serenity in doing the right thing, difficult as it may have been.

In the Fade won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign language Picture last Sunday and
opens this weekend in San Francisco.

Stream of the Week: HARD EIGHT – the indie neo-noir that launched careers

January 9, 2018 by movie gourmet

John C. Reilly and Philip Baker Hall in HARD EIGHT

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread is topping a good many critics’ top ten lists. So it’s a good time to revisit Anderson’s first feature, Hard Eight, a neo-noir from 1996.

In Hard Eight, the down-on-his-luck simpleton John (John C. Reilly) encounters an older loner, Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) in a diner. The 60ish Sydney, who Has Seen It All, takes pity on the 20-something John and offers to help him get some money. Sydney takes John to Las Vegas and downloads Sydney’s casino expertise. John becomes Sydney’s mentee, and eventually gains confidence, some financial security and the hope of a non-trashy future.

But, alas, this is a neo-noir and John can’t leave well enough alone. He starts making some stupid decisions. He falls for the cocktail waitress (and trick-turner) Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow). He starts hanging out with security guy Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson), who turns out to have a scary side. Soon these folks get themselves into a dangerous situation WAY over their heads. Perhaps Sydney knows a way out…

Hard Eight works largely because of the characters of John and Sydney and the performances of John C. Reilly and Philip Baker Hall. Reilly is especially gifted at playing a goofy naif.

Hall is brilliant as Sydney, the wise loner. We imagine that Sydney has operated in cynicism for decades, but something, perhaps some fundamental, accumulated loneliness, causes him to reach out and adopt John as his protege. It’s as if Sydney suddenly feels the need to father someone. Why does he pick John as his son-figure when it’s clear that John has a limited ceiling? Is it that John is just available when Sydney gets the urge?

Paul Thomas Anderson’s career exploded with his next movie Boogie Nights, also with Reilly, Hoffman and Hall. Then Anderson went on to make Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood, The Master and, now, Phantom Thread. That’s a body work remarkably filled with originality.

Boogie Nights was also the breakthrough movie for both Reilly and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman, of course, was later nominated for an Oscar in Anderson’s The Master after winning one for Capote.

Just before Hard Eight, a 23-year-old Paltrow had a part in Se7en. But in the two years after Hard Eight, she was cast in Emma, Great Expectations, A Perfect Murder and her Oscar-winning role in Shakespeare in Love.

Jackson had already broken through with his performance as Gator the crackhead in Jungle Fever and defined his career as the iconic hit man Jules in Pulp Fiction. But Jackie Brown, Star Wars, Shaft, The Hateful Eight and 70 more feature films were still ahead.

By Hard Eight, Hall had been working steadily for 26 years – almost all on TV. He was best know for his Richard Nixon in Robert Altman’s 1984 Secret Honor. AfterHard Eight, he went on to roles in Magnolia, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Rules of Engagement, The Matador and Zodiac. And, in his 80s, he became instantly recognizable as Walt Kleezak in Modern Family.

Hard Eight is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Philip Seymour Hoffman in HARD EIGHT

PHANTOM THREAD: rapturous and witty

January 8, 2018 by movie gourmet

Phantom Thread, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, is Paul Thomas Anderson’s rapturously beautiful and unexpectedly witty story of a strong-willed man and two equally strong-willed women.

Reynolds (Day-Lewis) is a dressmaker to the rich and famous in 1950s London. His unmarried sister Cyril (Lesley Manvilla) runs their home and takes care of business affairs. On a foray to a provincial resort cafe, Reynolds is taken by the breakfast waitress Alma (Vivky Krieps), and brings her back to London with him. Barely tolerated at first by Cyril, Alma becomes Reynold’s muse – until she isn’t.

In the movie’s first two minutes, Anderson establishes Alma as vibrant, Reynolds as fastidious and Cyril as commanding. Phantom Thread is about the three characters’ relative power in the interpersonal relationships. Alma starts at the very bottom, but changes the power balance in a quite novel way.

Daniel Day-Lewis creates a wonderfully watchable character in Reynolds. He uses his creativity as an excuse for license to get his way in every regard. Cyril indulges Reynolds and keeps him in a cocoon. He says that a distraction at breakfast can ruin his productivity for an entire day. Anderson heightens the volume of breakfast noises to show how grating the sound of buttering toast is to Reynolds. It’s very funny.

Reynolds is so obsessive that, when he brings a date back to his place, he DRESSES her instead of undressing her.

The formidable Cyril is as chilly as February in the Yukon. She is a woman of very few words, but her cutting observations and acid reactions are very, very funny. The great actress Lesley Manville gets the most out of very brief lines – and, often, a mere silent look. Manville’s performance is reason enough to see Phantom Thread.

The Luxembourgian actress Krieps (never thought I would write the adjective Luxembourgian) has received much critical buzz. She is adequate as Alma, but I wouldn’t cross the street to see her next movie.

Reynolds adorns women in impressive dresses throughout Phantom Thread – the costume design is stellar. Anderson’s frequent collaborator, Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead, supplies a beautiful score. The total effect of visual imagery and music is opulent, so opulent as to remind me of Max Ophuls’ The Earrings of Madame de… and Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard.

I saw Phantom Thread at a special SFFILM screening (70mm print!) with Paul Thomas Anderson in attendance. Anderson said that he set out to make a gothic romance like Hitchcock’s Rebecca. The kernel of the story was a strong-willed man who becomes nicer when laid low by illness – and his wife prefers him that way. Anderson said that he was further inspired by the period British films The Passionate Friends and I Know Where I’m Going.

In a very nice touch, Anderson dedicated Phantom Thread to his late friend, the director Jonathan Demme.

Phantom Thread is a beautiful and witty film – one of the best of 2018

THE POST: riveting thriller and revelatory personal portrait

January 7, 2018 by movie gourmet

The Post may be a docudrama, but it plays as a thriller and an astonishingly insightful portrait of Katharine Graham by Meryl Streep. It’s one of the best movies of the year – and one of the most important.

Essentially, this movie is about a corporate decision, but master storyteller Steven Spielberg sets it up as a tick-tock, high stakes thriller. Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham (Streep) must decide whether to publish the Pentagon Papers at a moment when her company is most vulnerable to market forces and government intimidation. Nothing less than the American principle of freedom of the press hangs in the balance.

The Post also delivers the personal and feminist transformation of Katharine Graham, learning to move beyond her Mad Men Era roles as wife/mother/socialite andto , for the first time, assume real, not titular, command of a business empire. And she goes All In on the ballsiest gamble any CEO could make. To say that Streep brings Graham to life is inadequate. Streep IS Graham. It sometimes seems like Streep can get an Oscar nomination without even making a movie, but this performance is one of Streep’s very best.

Spielberg surrounds Streep with a dazzling cast. Tom Hanks lowers the pitch of his voice and becomes the swashbuckling editor Ben Bradlee. Tracy Letts gives us another fine performance, this time as Graham’s financial guru Fritz Beebe. As Bradlee’s second wife Tony, Sarah Paulson ignites a monologue with her piercing eyes.

Bruce Greenwood is quite brilliant as Robert McNamara, Graham’s old friend and the architect (and unwilling sta) of the Pentagon Papers. Greenwood is such an overlooked actor, and he’s so reliably good (he was even good in Wild Orchid, for Chrissakes).

The Pentagon Papers was the 7,000-page secret official history of the American involvement in the Vietnam War. Commissioned by then Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the Pentagon Papers chronicled the years of bad decisions by the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations and, especially, the deceitfulness of JFK’s and LBJ’s public optimism about the War. The truth was that the US government knew that the war was unwinnable and that it was only prolonged because nobody knew how to get out while saving face. The US President in 1971, Richard Nixon, was following the same course, unnecessarily wasting the lives of another 20,000 Americans during his term of office; the ruthless Nixon and his henchman Henry Kissinger were desperate to keep the Pentagon Papers secret. A private sector defense expert, Daniel Ellsberg, had access to the Pentagon Papers and sought to have them published, and The Post tells this story, which takes the audience from a jungle firefight into the courtroom of the US Supreme Court.

Baby Boomers will appreciate being transported back to quaint 1971 technology: typewriters, one-page-at-a-time Xerox machines, rotary pay phones, real typeset and ink presses. (And cigarette smoking in restaurants and cigars in the workplace.)

I’ve also written an essay on some of the historical figures and events depicted in The Post: historical musings on THE POST.

The Post is worth seeing for Streep’s performance, for the history (incredibly important at this moment in the nation’s history) and for the sheer entertainment value. One of the year’s best.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME: first love in a luscious Italian summer

January 6, 2018 by movie gourmet

Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer in CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

Call Me by Your Name is an extraordinarily beautiful story of sexual awakening set in a luscious Italian summer. The film is gorgeous and magnificently well-acted, but flawed.

Each year, the family of 16-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) spends the summer in a villa in Northern Italy. Elio’s father is an American professor of ancient Greek and Roman culture, and each summer he invites a different grad student to live in their villa and work on scholarly pursuits. In this summer of 1981, that lucky grad student is the 26-year-old Oliver (Armie Hammer). Elio is attracted to Oliver, who is a closeted gay man. Oliver is attracted to Elio, but initially resists Elio’s overtures. What follows between the two of them is an enthralling and authentic exploration of first love.

Timothée Chalamet is really perfect as Elio, a musical prodigy who is beating off the girls with a stick. Even really handsome and talented 17-year-olds have some awkwardness, especially while they’re trying too hard to be cool. Chamalet captures that perfectly, along with the obsessive longing of a first romance. (Chalamet is also in Lady Bird, where he plays the dreamy kid who plays in a band, the object of Lady Bird’s desire.) Armie Hammer is also superb as the more worldly Oliver, whose external confidence masks inner conflicts.

Timothée Chalamet in CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

The story of the two main characters would have made a perfect film, but famed screenwriter James Ivory adds some distracting implausibility with the other characters. First, there are Elio’s impossibly cool and understanding parents (Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar) who practically push their teen son into the arms of an older man; nobody has parents like that, especially TWO of them. (And, yes, I did understand the dad’s motivation, made almost explicit in his final monologue). Second, Elio hurts the feelings of a girl (in a way that almost every male has hurt some girl). Later, she forgives him and it’s all made to be okay. This is just too convenient for Elio, and I didn’t buy it.

And then there’s one of my own movie pet peeves. I generally despise musical interludes in movies, when the dialogue is suspended and a song is played over a montage of imagery. This usually indicates a lack of imagination in the story-telling. A movie gets negative bonus points from me when the music is an insipid pop ballad. In Call Me by Your Name, there are two such Euro-pop interludes.

On the other hand, the depiction of the Italian countryside, with its rustling breezes, orchards heavy with fruit, ancient buildings and is pure travel porn. I think that The Wife would have walked out of Call Me by Your Name – not because she wouldn’t have liked it – but to make reservations for a return to Tuscany. Director Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash, I Am Love) has a gift for making his native Italy unbearably attractive on the screen. Between the work of Guadagnino and Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), Italy has been well-celebrated in recent films.

Call Me By Your Name is a very good movie, and the core story of Elio and Oliver is great cinema.

2017 at the Movies: farewell to the icons

January 1, 2018 by movie gourmet

Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne

As important as are filmmakers, so are the great film popularizers. All movie fans owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Osborne, the longtime host of Turner Classic Movies. Osborne got his start in Hollywood as an actor, developed many personal friendships with icons of classic cinema and became one of the first popular movie historians. Here’s his NYT obit. Virtually all of his obits describe him as “a gentleman”, a throw-back to a less course culture. He didn’t shy way from referring to Hollywood scandals (Gloria Grahame, Mary Astor and the like) but did not take glee in them.

Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

At the beginning of her career, Jeanne Moreau capped the best of French film noir as the gangster’s unreliable squeeze in Touchez pas au grisbi and sparked neo-noir with Elevator to the Gallows. Then we Americans saw her as the face of the European art film with Malle’s Elevator and The Lovers, Antonioni’s La Notte, Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and Bunuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid – all between 1958 and 1964. Her wide-ranging body of work included Orson Welles’ best Shakespeare movie Chimes at Midnight. And, for a Guilty Pleasure, there’s the silly 1965 Mexican Revolution action comedy Viva Maria!

With exactly 200 screen credits on IMDb, Harry Dean Stanton was a prolific character actor who improbably became a leading man at age 58 with his masterpiece Paris, Texas. Harry Dean often seemed like that uncle/neighbor/mentor who had Lived A Life but would let you inside and let you learn from his journey. He was ever accessible and always piqued the audience’s curiosity about his characters. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel once posited that a movie could not be entirely bad if Harry Dean Stanton were in it.

2017 at the Movies: farewell to the actors

December 30, 2017 by movie gourmet

I first noticed the actor Bill Paxton as small town police chief Dale “Hurricane” Dixon in the 1992 indie neo-noir One False Move (a very underrated indie). In two more indelible and more widely remembered performances, he played the lead role of polygamist Bill Henrickson for the five seasons of HBO’s Big Love and astronaut Fred Haise in Apollo 13.

Mary Tyler Moore with Donald Sutherland in ORDINARY PEOPLE

Mary Tyler Moore, of course, is a giant of television history because of The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and all the fine shows produced by her MTM Enterprises. And her Mary Richards instantly became a societal icon. If ever anyone doubts the genius of her comic timing, they can just watch the 4-minute Chuckles the Clown funeral from the Mary Tyler Moore Show (it’s on YouTube).

She made very few movies, but they are worth remembering. She was Oscar-nominated for her still, emotionally distant parent in Ordinary People – a performance that she later said that she had modeled on her own father. She was hilarious as Ben Stiller’s mom in Flirting With Disaster. And she was also Elvis Presley’s last movie leading lady in the unintentionally funny Change of Habit, in which she played a social worker nun (!) who had to choose between her religious order and the ghetto doctor (Elvis!).

Powers Boothe in GUYANA TRAGEDY: THE STORY OF JIM JONES

I first noticed – and was captivated by – the actor Powers Boothe as the mad cult leader Jim Jones in Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones; this is one of the best (and scariest) movie portrayals of a historical figure. That Emmy-winning performance launched his screen career and led to another delicious role – Cy Tolliver, the cold-eyed and evil rival to Ian McShane’s cold-eyed and evil Al Swearingen in Deadwood.

Martin Landau had an acting career that spanned seven decades and resulted in 177 screen credits. His two finest performances came at age 61 and age 66 – the killer of an inconvenient mistress in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors and his Oscar winning turn as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood. Landau’s most famous role came when he was only 31, as he chased Cary Grant across the faces of Mount Rushmore in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.

The actress Dina Merrill made a career of playing high society matrons (as she was in real life). She was never better in one of my favorite films, Robert Altman’s The Wedding.

The actor Stephen Furst had 88 screen credits, but none more iconic than the role in his second feature film: Kent “Flounder” Dorfman in Animal House. “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

I remember the versatile actress Glenne Headly for giving Steve Martin and Michael Caine more than they can handle in the hilarious con artist movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Here’s her NYT obit. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

Michael Nyqvist co-starred with Noomi Rapace in the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies. He was also really good in last year’s overlooked indie neo-noir Frank & Lola.

Sam Shephard was America’s greatest living playwright for decades, and also made a mark as an actor with 68 screen credits. His most memorable role was as test pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.

Danielle Darrieux, who at age 36 played the privileged and shallow countess in Max Ophuls’ The Earrings of Madame de…, died at age 100.

Emmanuelle Riva’s 89 screen credits are spread over the past SEVEN decades. She was a fixture of the French New Wave, beginning with Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour in 1959. We remember her Oscar-nominated performance in 2012’s heartbreaking Alzheimer’s drama Amour.

Emmanuelle Riva in ARMOUR — Emmanuelle Riva in AMOUR

The actor Frank Vincent gloried in mobster roles, playing characters like Johnny Big , Joey Big Ears, Tommy Tomatoes and Tommy ‘The Bull’ Vitagli. He is best known as Phil Leotardo in The Sopranos. His most memorable (and ill-fated) line was directed to Joe Pesci in Goodfellas: Go home and get your shine box….

Haruo Nakajima was the first actor to play Godzilla (before computers did that). Nakajima, who had been playing the minor bad guys dispatched by the hero in samurai movies, sweated profusely inside the rubber monster suit for twelve Godzilla films.

John Hurt’s magnificent career started in the 1960s, but I first noticed him in 1976 when he leaped out of the screen as the lethally mad Caligula when PBS broadcast the BBC miniseries I, Claudius. Hurt is probably most recognized (by my generation) for his Oscar-nominated performance as the title character in 1980’s The Elephant Man or as the first victim of the alien in Alien. But Hurt was always able to stay current with performances in popular films like V for Vendetta and Hellboy and he played Ollivander in the Harry Potter movies. He also recently made Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) and Snowpiercer (2013), and was the best thing (as The Priest) in the awful film Jackie (2016). My own favorite John Hurt performance was as the more disciplined hit man in the 1984 British neo-noir The Hit.

John Hurt (left) with Derek Jacobi in I, CLAUDIUS

John Hurt with Natalie Portman in JACKIE

2017 at the Movies: farewell to the filmmakers

December 29, 2017December 29, 2017 by movie gourmet

If he had made no other films, Jonathan Demme would be forever remembered for his horror masterpiece The Silence of the Lambs (1991), one of only three movies to win Oscars in all four major categories: Best Picture, Director (Demme), Leading Actor (Anthony Hopkins) and Leading Actress (Jodie Foster). It also won the Screenwriting Oscar (Ted Tally).

Jonathan Demme, however, was a director who could master many genres. He started out with genre exploitation movies, and I first admired his work in the little indie Melvin and Howard (1980), with its delightful performances by Jason Robards and Paul Le Mat. Then he made one of the two or three best ever rock concert films, Stop Making Sense (1984) with The Talking Heads. And then he directed the topical drama Philadelphia (1993) and the wonderfully engaging addiction dramedy Rachel Getting Married (2008).

His body of work screams versatility, and his masterpiece…Well, his masterpiece just screams.

John Avildsen won the Best Director Oscar for Rocky (which also won Oscars for Best Picture and Film Editing). We still employ many cultural references to Rocky today, and remember it for launching the career of Sylvester Stallone and a spate of mostly mediocre sequels. But don’t discount Rocky. Remember that someone had to choose how to shoot Rocky Balboa pounding beef carcasses, running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and courting Adrian by introducing his turtles Cuff and Link. Movies don’t achieve iconic status by accident. Avildsen made a brilliant film that was both poignant and thrilling.

In his film Night of the Living Dead, George Romero re-invented the fictional zombie as a shambling, semi-decomposed brain-eater, and that is the zombie that we all envision today. Night of the Living Dead also changed movie standards (for better or for worse) to accept gratuitous gore for the sake of entertainment. And, because its rejection by major movie studios forced Romero to go indie, Night of the Living Dead became one of the first hugely successful independent films.

Bruce Brown directed The Endless Summer in 1966, thus inventing the surf documentary.

Jerry Lewis: Not My Cup of Tea. Maybe now we’ll finally get to see his notorious and long-suppressed The Day the Clown Died, the 1973 movie Lewis wrote, directed and starred in – about a clown imprisoned with children in a Nazi death camp.