June Squibb and Fred Hechinger appear in THELMA by Josh Margolin. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by David Bolen.
The 2024 SLO Film Fest has opened. I’ve screened over a dozen of the features, and here are four that you shouldn’t miss:
Thelma: The closing night film is a hoot, starring 93-year-old June Squibb (Oscar-nominated for Nebraska) in an action picture. Squibb plays a scammed senior who goes on a quest to recover her money from the scammers. Thelma is a lot more than a broad geezer comedy, and the relationship between Thelma and her foundering, Gen X grandson (Fred Hechinger) is very heartfelt. Squibb and Hechinger are both great, and Thelma also features indie favorite Parker Posey and the sweet final performance of Richard Roundtree (Shaft). It’s a surefire audience-pleaser, and I predict that Thelma will become a word-of-mouth hit when released in late June. See it first at the SLO Film Fest.
Chasing Chasing Amy: In this irresistible documentary, filmmaker Sav Rodgers tells his own highly personal story of finding sanctuary in a romantic comedy that ultimately spurs a both a filmmaking career and his transition to trans man. Rodgers weaves in parallel tracks, the origin story of the 1997 movie Chasing Amy, and thoughtful discussion of how that film, after 25 years of cultural evolution, has aged. We learn that Kevin Smith modeled the novelty of a straight man and a lesbian as inseparable soulmates after his real life friends; the core of Chasing Amy is a love affair sabotaged by the guy’s insecurities, mirroring Smith’s own less-than-two-year relationship with Joey Lauren Adams, who plays the titular character. Rodgers meets Smith himself, who becomes a mentor, and we get current on-camera interviews with Smith, Adams and other principals. Along the way, Rodgers matures from a gushing fan girl to a grownup who recognizes the personal flaws that complicate other people’s relationships. Chasing Chasing Amy seamlessly braids together the fictional love story in Chasing Amy with the stories of real life relationships, including his own.
Tokyo Cowboy: This charming dramedy centers on a Japanese corporate turnaround artist, Hideki (Arata Iura). Confident that he has the secret sauce to recharge any stagnant brand, he’s got a slick pitch deck (with a snapshot from his own childhood), and he’s engaged to the corporate vice-president he reports to. His company is about to liquidate a money-hemorrhaging cattle ranch in Montana, when he parachutes in for a quick fix. His Japanese beef consultant goes hilariously native, and Hideki, a smart guy, immediately sees that his idea for a quick fix was mistaken. Now unsettled and off the grid in an alien culture, Hideki recalibrates his values and his life goals. It’s the first narrative feature for director Marc Marriott, who, with cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jiménez, creates a Big Sky setting that could reset any of us in need of self-discovery.
Riding Giants: Monday, April 29: The movie at the SLO Film Fest’s very first Surf Nite was this 2004 surf doc. Riding Giants focuses on the obsessive search for the best wave by some of the greatest surfers in history. We see “the biggest wave ever ridden” and then a monster that could be bigger. The movie traces the discovery of the Half Moon Bay surf spot Mavericks. And more and more, all wonderfully shot. IMO, Riding Giants ranks with Dana Brown’s Step into Liquid as the greatest surf documentary ever. Riding Giants was directed by Stacy Peralta, a surfer, a pioneer of modern skateboarding, and a founder of the Powell Peralta skateboard product company. Peralta, who also directed Dogtown and Z-boys, will attend the screening. Fittingly, Riding Giants screens at the Bay in Morro Bay – only one mile from the surf lanes at Morro Rock.
This year’s San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, opening April 23, presents the richest Skate/Surf program that I’ve ever seen at a mainstream film festival. Here are the highlights.
Friday, April 26: The always popular Surf Night featuring Trilogy: New Wave. Expect the Fremont to be packed again with surfers enjoying drinks in the lobby and the Riff Tide surf band before the screening. The documentary Trilogy: New Wave profiles three emerging pro stars on the world tour as they travel together to some of the world’s top surf destinations. The young guys are engaging and the audience will be stoked by the cinematography.
Sunday, April 28: The award-winning 2001 skateboard documentary Dogtown and Z-boys with the 2023 short 4DWN. The director of Dogtown and Z-boys, filmmaker and skateboard icon Stacy Peralta will attend; a surfer and one of the pioneers of modern skateboarding, and a founder of the Powell Peralta skateboard product company, Peralta also wrote the 2005 Lords of Dogtown. Beforehand, the audience can enjoy custom skateboard designs, with live-screen printing of these custom designs by the San Luis Obispo High School Advanced Graphic Design class.
Monday, April 29: The movie at the SLO Film Fest’s very first Surf Nite was the 2004 surf doc Riding Giants, also directed by Stacy Peralta. Riding Giants focuses on the obsessive search for the best wave by some of the greatest surfers in history. We see “the biggest wave ever ridden” and then a monster that could be bigger. The movie traces the discovery of the Half Moon Bay surf spot Mavericks. And more and more, all wonderfully shot. Fittingly, Riding Giants screens at the Bay in Morro Bay – only one mile from the surf lanes at Morro Rock. IMO, Riding Giants ranks with Dana Brown’s Step into Liquid as the greatest surf documentary ever.
RIDING GIANTS
Other skate/surf films include:
the seminal 1978 skateboard film Skateboard.
the 2024 documentary Art and Life: The Story of Jim Phillips, chronicling the most important figure ever in skateboard art (most famously the Screaming Hand and the Santa Cruz Red Dot). Phillips is a very sympathetic guy with an interesting personal journey. It’s well-sourced deep dive into skateboard art, skateboard manufacturing, surfing art and rock poster art, and almost everything happens just up the coast in Santa Cruz.
The entire surf and skate program at SLO Film Fest shreds. Here’s a clip from for Riding Giants:
June Squibb and Fred Hechinger appear in THELMA by Josh Margolin. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by David Bolen.
The 2024 SLO Film Fest opens on April 25 and celebrates its 30th festival, bringing its characteristic mix of aspirational cinema and sheer fun to California’s Central Coast. This year’s program will be presented at the Fremont, Palm and Downtown Centre in San Luis Obispo, and the Bay in Morro Bay. An encore week will play at at Paso Robles’ Park Cinemas May 1-5. There will also be a Virtual Encore for selected titles, also May 1-5.
Here are festival highlights:
The closing night film is a hoot – Thelma, starring 93-year-old June Squibb (Oscar-nominated for Nebraska) in an action picture. Squibb plays a scammed senior who goes on a quest to recover her money from the scammers. . I’ve seen it, and it’s a surefire audience-pleaser. Thelma also features indie favorite Parker Posey and the sweet final performance of Richard Roundtree (Shaft).
The opening night film is the family dramedy Ghostlight, also a Sundance hit, with the filmmakers in attendance.
The always popular Surf Night featuring Trilogy: New Wave. Expect the Fremont to be packed again with surfers enjoying drinks in the lobby and the Riff Tide surf band before the screening. The documentary Trilogy: New Wave profiles three emerging pro stars on the world tour as they travel together to some of the world’s top surf destinations. The young guys are engaging, and the audience will be stoked by the cinematography.
Surf night is only one part of the richest Skate/Surf program that I’ve ever seen at a mainstream film festival (and I’ll be writing more about it this week). Filmmaker and skateboard icon Stacy Peralta will attend the SLO Film Fest, which features two of his films, Dogtown and Z-boys and Riding Giants.
Actress/director Heather Graham will appear to receive an award, and present her new film Chosen Family.
A screening of Camera, filmed in Morro Bay, with appearances by star Beau Bridges and director Jay Silverman,
A 45th anniversary screening of the zombie classic Dawn of the Dead.
Audience favorites that reflect the 30 years of SLO Film Fest, including Double Indemnity, Big Night, Muriel’s Wedding, and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
I haven’t seen this Canadian horror comedy, but it has my favorite title in the fest: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person.
There’s plenty more, with features, workshops and six programs of shorts. I’m screening my way through the program, and will post my MUST SEE recommendations before the fest opens. Peruse the program and get your tickets at SLO Film Fest.
The Movie Gourmet’s culinary tribute to 127 HOURS and WINTER’S BONE
Every year, The Wife and I watch the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, we had sushi for Lost in Translation, cowboy campfire beans for Brokeback Mountain and Grandma Ethel’s Brisket for A Serious Man – you get the idea. Here’s the 2023 Oscar Dinner, complete with the everything bagel from Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Fruit Loops from Top Gun: Maverick and the Nutella from Triangle of Sadness.
The high point has been the Severed Hands Ice Sculpture in 2011 for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone (photo above). The Wife built on that earlier work with another ice sculpture in 2023 – the severed fingers from The Banshees of Inisherin.
This year, we resisted the temptation to build the meal round the ham and fluffy potatoes anchoring the Christmas dinner in The Holdovers prepared by Mary (Da’vine Joy Randolph) for Paul (Paul Giamatti) and Angus (Dominic Sessa), possibly followed by the impromptu cherries jubilee in the parking lot. And there are lots of food scenes in American Fiction (omelets and brunch and barbecue). In Past Lives, we seeHae Sung (Teo Yoo) consumes gallons of soju with his buddies, army rations and breakfast noodles, and Nora (Greta Lee) has a craving for chicken wings.
But this year has been singular in that so many of the nominated movies had scenes featuring whiskey and pasta. It has just been a one-dish-from-each-movie kind of year. So we are putting the whiskey and the pasta front and center. I usually drink Bulleit Rye, but on Oscar night, I’ll be pouring Maker’s Mark, not for any movie-related reason, but because it was the favorite of in tribute to my former roommate, Kam Kuwata, who has passed.
Here is this year’s complete menu:
Whiskey
Killers of the Flower Moon: Whiskey just keeps showing up, from King (Robert De Niro) greeting Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) with a glass to Mollie (Lily Gladstone) bringing out the good stuff to entertain Ernest.
The Holdovers: In The Holdovers, Paul is a bourbonaholic, who usually drinks Jim Beam, and he buys a pint in the Boston liquor store. (I’m a fan of The Holdovers, but not Jim Beam).
Past Lives: The film is bookended a scene in a New York City bar with the three main characters; Arthut (John Maguro) is drinking an Old Fashioned.
Oppenheimer: The flask keeps showing up – and in the 1940s US, it’s gotta contain whiskey.
Pasta:
Anatomy of a Fall: Defense attorney Vincent fixes spaghetti when first visiting Sandra (Sandra Huller) after her husband falls to his death. It’s a simple, light colored pasta like cacio a pepe or alla Gricia, and that’s what I’ll be preparing.
Past Lives: Given the choice of any cuisine available in New York City, Hae Sung requests pasta, so Nora and Arthur take him to an Italian restaurant where there have pasta with a red sauce.
American Fiction: Monk (Jeffrey Wright) and Coraline (Erika Alexander) are preparing a pasta dinner at her place, when their relationship takes a turn.
To go salad in a deli clamshell from American Fiction: Monk is at a hotel conference center to serve on a panel judging books for a literary prize. At the lunch break, he grabs a clamshell salad instead of a wrapped sandwich, which just perfectly fits the character.
Toast and milk from Barbie: Barbie (Margot Robbie) holds a piece of toast and a cup of milk (but doesn’t actually CONSUME them because she’s made of plastic, after all).
Chinese takeout from Maestro: Lenny (Bradley Cooper) and Felicia (Carey Mulligan) enjoy this Manhattan staple in their Upper West Side apartment with their artsy, intellectual friends.
Pasteis de nata from Poor Things: Belle (Emma Stone) gets addicted to these delectable Portuguese egg custards as she matures into having really good taste. The best pasteis de nata in the Western Hemisphere are from Adega in San Jose, but we had to make our own poor substitute.
German pastry from Zone of Interest: This is from the scene when Hedwig (Sandra Huller) is impressing her mother with the lifestyle perks of Hedwig’s marriage to the big boss.
I’ve always enjoyed Noir City, the Film Noir Foundation’s flagship film festival, but I found the 2024 version to be especially rewarding. My attendance is usually driven by the opportunity to see films that are new to me, and those which aren’t available on VOD or even DVD. I particularly value being introduced to international noir, as I pointed out in my Noir City preview
It’s also great to hear the films introduced by film scholars Eddie Muller, Imogen Sarah Smith and Alan K. Rode. The 600-seat Grand Lake Theater, a period movie palace, was packed for each of the double features that I attended.
I experienced six films at this fest – two from France, two from the UK, one from Japan and one from the US – and four were new to me. They were:
The Asphalt Jungle (US, 1950): Muller and Smith pointed out that the Production Code had banned filmmakers from depicting the means of committing crimes. So John Huston and the team behind The Asphalt Jungle blasted right through that stop sign in showing the intricate planning and execution of the heist. Those aspects and the assembly of the heist team are familiar elements of every heist film since, but they were completely original in The Asphalt Jungle. This film is especially well-cast (Sam Jaffe, Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, John McIntyre and a 23-year-old Marilyn Monroe), but this time, I especially noticed the sparkling performances of supporting players Brad Dexter and Marc Lawrence.
Symphony for a Massacre (France 1963): Five crooks plan a big drug score that requires a large amount of capitalization, which will tap most of them out. They collect the fortune, send off the bag man and, then, one of the five steals it all. Each of the crooks becomes a detective trying to recover his money; of course, one of them is only pretending to look for the loot. It looks like the perfect crime, but there’s a slip, a surprise, another slip and…. Symphony for a Massacre is an early career showcase for Jean Rochefort, who plays a particularly amoral character with a reptilian smugness. Co-writer Jose Giovanni, who plays one of the crooks, knew crooked ways from his own eleven years in prison (and was concealing an even darker past). This is a top notch noir, and, because it is available for streaming, I’l be featuring it soon on this blog.
Elevator to the Gallows (France, 1958): I’ve written about Elevator to the Gallows and its groundbreaking aspects, but it was such a pleasure to watch it on the big screen with a sellout crowd.
Across the Bridge (UK, 1957): The ever-intense Rod Steiger is All In as a German-born British merger-and-acquisition buccaneer who is in NYC to gobble up a couple more companies when he learns that Scotland Yard is examining his books. He knows that, within a week, his three billion pound fraud will be discovered (and that’s in 1957 money!). He goes on the lam, figuring that he can travel incognito on the two-day train trip to Mexico and slip across the border before anyone is looking for him. He has money stashed in Mexico City that will buy him time to find a more permanent, extradition-free new home. But the news breaks while he is on the train, so he switches identities with a fellow passenger. His new phony identity brings a very unwelcome surprise. Steiger’s character is a brusque bully, used to getting his way. Usually in film noir, we’re rooting for the anti-hero to get away with it, and that’s not exactly the case here, but Steiger makes his financier’s predicaments and his attempts to evade them absolutely VIVID. The film’s director, Ken Annakin, observed that Steger was “trying to out-Brando Brando”. The story becomes a faceoff between Steiger’s fugitive and the corrupt Mexican police chief (an excellent Noel Willman). Oh – and there’s Dolores, one of the greatest three dogs (with Monty and Asta) in film noir. This is a first class movie, but a bit of a Lost Film, not available on VOD.
Zero Focus (Japan, 1961): This is a dark mystery story with a woman’s focus; in fact, the three most pivotal characters turn out to be women. A man disappears, and his new bride, with some unreliable assistance from his employer and the cops, tries to find out what happened to him. Secrets are revealed, Rashomon-like, at the end , when the mystery is “solved” in differing ways by the police and, then, by two of the women characters; (the screenwriter also wrote Rashomon). The setting is a bleak, wintry coast. I found Zero Focus a little too long and talky at the end, but otherwise an excellent noir,
The Strongroom (UK, 1962): The premise in this 74-minute British programmer is that the crooks easily rob a bank, but then realize that they’ll swing for capital murder if the bank employees now locked in the airtight vault succumb. In a race against time, the robbers try to break back into the bank – and it’s much harder the second time. There’s a shockingly abrupt, but satisfying, ending. Most of the audience recognized an actor playing one of the hoods, Darren Nesbitt, who went on to be a character actor in such memorable 1960s fare such as The Blue Max, The Prisoner and Where Eagles Dare.
Bottom line: Noir City revealed two hitherto unknown classics: Symphony for a Massacre and Across the Bridge. I’ll be writing more about each of them.
Photo caption: David Allen White in Fabio D’Orta’s THE COMPLEX FORMS. Courtesy of Slamdance.
It’s time for the 30th Slamdance Film Festival, which is all about discovering new filmmakers and unveiling their work. It’s a hybrid festival with events in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah from January 19th to 25th and online on the Slamdance Channel from January 22nd to 28th. All Slamdance feature films selected in the competition categories are directorial debuts without U.S. distribution, with budgets of less than $1 million. The 125 films in this year’s program were selected from 9,004 submissions.
Slamdance was founded in 1995 by filmmakers reacting to the gatekeeper role and growing marketplace focus of a nearby film festival with a similar name. Whenever I cover a film festival, I’m on the lookout for first films and world premieres – and here’s a festival essentially entirely made up of first films and world premieres.
Slamdance alumni include: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Memento,Dunkirk), Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room), Lynn Shelton (Outside In,Sword of Truth), Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine), Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Brick), Benny & Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems) and the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War).
MUST SEE
Here are three films from the 2024 Slamdance program that you shouldn’t miss. Each features at least one original and fresh element:
The Complex Forms: This visually striking atmospheric is set in a centuries-old Italian villa, where Christian (David Allen White) and other down-on-their-luck middle-aged men sell their bodies for a period of days to be “possessed”. Possessed how? By who or by what? As the dread builds, Christian resolves to pry the answers from the secretive masters of the villa. Director Fabio D’Orta unspools the story with remarkably crisp black-and-white cinematography, a brooding soundtrack and impeccable editing. In his astonishingly impressive filmmaking debut, D’Orta wrote, directed, shot and edited The Complex Form. US premiere. (Full review goes live on January 22.)
The Accident: Marcella (Giulia Mazzarino) is a meek, good-hearted young woman who, in quick succession, loses her partner, custody of their daughter, her car and her job. Desperate for financial survival , she buys a tow truck, but she is utterly unsuited for the cutthroat Italian towing industry, where no good deed goes unpunished. Marcella is trapped into a downward spiral of increasingly disadvantageous situations, until she happens on a logical, but outrageously amoral, solution. The Accident is the first full-length narrative feature for documentarian Giuseppe Garau, who describes it as an “experimental film” because virtually the entire movie is shot from a camera in the front passenger side of Marcella’s vehicle. That may be an experiment, but it’s not a gimmick, because it drives our attention to Marcella’s incentives and disincentives in this allegory, an acid parable of social criticism. North American Premiere. (Full review goes live on January 22.)
Demon Mineral: This environmental justice documentary explores the impact of uranium mining on the Navajo people. This real life story takes place in one of the most iconic locations in American cinema – Arizona’s Monument Valley, and cinematographer Yoni Goldstein’s black-and-white photography soars. The story is told by indigenous voices, one of whom, environmental scientist Dr. Tommy Rock, co-wrote Demon Mineral with director Hadley Austin. First feature for Austin. (Full review goes live on January 22.)
And here’s a bonus recommendation: Slide is a firehose-in-the-face of anarchic cynicism from the veteran animator Bill Plympton. Set in a 1940s backwater town hoping to become a location for a Hollywood movie, Plympton harnesses all the tropes of movie Westerns to send up human corruption. The music by Maureen McElheron and Hank Bones is pretty cool, too. Here’s a taste of the fun.
Remember, even if you don’t travel to Utah, you can sample these films on the Slamdance Channel from January 22nd to 28th.
Photo caption: Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns January 19-28 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. The program for each night (or matinee) will present a double bill – one classic film noir from the US or UK, matched with one from Argentina, Mexico, France, Italy, Egypt, Japan or South Korea. This year’s tagline is Darkness Has No Borders.
Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies.
One of Noir City’s greatest gifts to noiristas, and to cinephiles in general, has been introducing us to previously unfamiliar foreign noir classics. It is ONLY because of Noir City that I’ve seen some of my favorite movies: Los tallos amargos(The Bitter Stems), Black Gravel, El vampiro negro(The Black Vampire), Ashes and Diamonds, La noche avanza (Night Falls),…And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear and Girl with Hyacinths.
These titles from this year’s Noir City program are NOT available to stream, so Noir City is your best chance to see them:
Street of Chance (US)
Cairo Station (Egypt)
Victims of Sin (Victimas del pecado) (Mexico)
Black Tuesday (US)
Aimless Bullet (South Korea)
Plunder Road (US)
Without Pity (Italy)
Four Against the World (Mexico)
Across the Bridge (UK)
Strongroom (UK)
Murder by Contract (US)
Smog (Italy)
Not all the program is obscure. Here are three Must See classics:
Elevator to the Gallows: This is such a groundbreaking film, you can argue that it’s the first neo-noir. It’s the debut of director Louis Malle, shot when he was only 24 years old. In 1958, no one had seen a film with a Miles Davis soundtrack or one where the two romantic leads were never on-screen together. Totally original.
La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) and Human Desire: In this Murder-The-Jealous-Husband double bill, Jean Renoir’s classic La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) with the charismatic Jean Gabin and Simone Simon is paired with Fritz Lang’s remake, starring Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford. Grahame projected an uncanny mixture of sexiness, vulnerability and unpredictability, perfect for this hard luck femme fatale; (the fact that Gloria was a Bad Girl in real life doesn’t hurt.) I have the Australian version of the Human Desire poster in my living room; the tag line is “She was born to be bad…to be kissed..to make trouble“, and the Aussie authorities have labeled it “NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN“.
Le trou: This is the all-time best prison break movie, combining a riveting real-time escape procedural with a fear of betrayal that crescendos. Le trou is a true crime story, with three of actual participants consulting on the film and one of them playing the mastermind. It was the last film by Jacques Becker, who had directed Casque d’Or and one of the very best film noirs in any language, Touchez pas au grisbi.
Photo caption: The Wife and The Movie Gourmet celebrating our anniversary
Happy 23rd Anniversary to The Wife, also known as Lisa, The Love of My Life!
We started out the year by catching up with Empire of Light and Living, and ended, as is our beloved Holiday tradition, watching It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen. Along the way, we watched together almost 70 movies and seasons of episodic television. Barbie may have been the most fun. We were the only patrons at The Holdovers, which made it a private screening, just for us.
We had a great year with the classics, too, watching The Godfather and Godfather, Part II back-to-back and introducing our adult niece and nephew to our favorite film, Casablanca.
We attended a 100th anniversary event for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 The Ten Commandments, co-sponsored by the DeMille family, the Central Coast Film Society, the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival and the (Guadalupe) Dune Center (which houses remnants of the DeMille’s monumental set). (Impressive event, but we both contracted COVID.)
This year, like the previous three, we binged hundreds of hours of episodic television together; the highlights were the original Scandinavian version of The Bridge and rewatching Happy Valley.
Once again, she tolerated my spending huge chunks of time covering Noir City and the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival in person and Cinequest, Slamdance, Frameline, San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), Nashville Film Festival and San Francisco Jewish Film Festival virtually. She was also OK with my helping out Cinequest by screening 89 film submissions. I’m getting ready now to cover Noir City in person and Slamdance virtually again in January.
She’s the biggest fan and supporter of this blog DURING ALL OF ITS THIRTEEN YEARS, and I appreciate her and love her. Happy Anniversary, Honey!
Gene Hackman in the car chase in William Friedkin’s THE FRENCH CONNECTION.
Director William Friedkin, one of the most significant filmmakers of the past 50 years, has died at 87. Friedkin is best known for his two great films, The French Connection and The Exorcist, each groundbreaking in its own way. The French Connection, despite an anti-hero with off-putting characteristics and a setting in NYC at its grimiest, had audiences on the the edge of their seats, and its car chase (before CGI) is still the gold standard. The Exorcist was the first horror movie to be nominated for Oscar (a recognition previously unthinkable).
Robbie Robertson (front center) in THE LAST WATZ.
Robbie Robertson was justifiably famous as a musician and a songwriter, fronting The Band with its many hits and backing Bob Dylan’s transition from acoustic to electric. In fact, I was introduced to Robertson on-screen as a subject of Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Last Waltz, still one of the greatest concert films. But Robertson also became a significant force in the music of cinema, amassing almost 300 screen credits on IMDb as a composer, music supervisor or contributor to the soundtrack. Robertson’s behind the screen work included many collaborations with Scorsese, the last being the heralded Killers of the Flower Moon. Robertson identified as an indigenous Canadian, whose mother was Cayuga and Mohawk from the Six Nations Reserve.
Director Hugh Hudson’s FIRST FEATURE won the Best Picture Oscar – Chariots of Fire. He never approached that level of achievement with feature films again, although he had a successful career directing commercials. He was one of the very few directors to attempt to make a movie about the American Revolution, Revolution.
Writer Bo Goldman won an adapted screenplay Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and an original screenplay Oscar for Melvin and Howard.
Early on, Raquel Welch was thought of more as a novelty movie star than as an actress. She had become instantly recognizable for displaying her spectacular figure in a skintight spacesuit (Fantastic Voyage), a doe-skin bikini (One Billion Years B.C.), a star spangled bikini (Myra Breckenridge), and flimsy undergarments (100 Rifles). In 1972, she proved that she could act in Kansas City Bomber. Welch nailed the character of a hard scrabble single mom committed to raising her kid while facing one indignity and bad choice after another. (Welch herself had two kids by the time she was 21 and was divorced at 24.) In 1973, she demonstrated brilliant comic acting chops in The Three Musketeers,
Her birth surname was Tejada; she took Welch from her first husband. Welch’s father was Bolivian, and her cousin was the first female president of Bolivia.
Alan Arkin in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS.
His NYT obit notes that Alan Arkin “won a Tony Award for his first lead role on Broadway (and) received an Academy Award nomination for his first feature film”. Arkin soared in comic roles, especially in The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! and Little Miss Sunshine and as a chilling villain in Wait Until Dark. For my money, his greatest performance as as the desperate and life-worn salesman in Glengarry Glen Ross, a puddle of vulnerability.
Tom Sizemore in THE LAST LULLABY
Actor Tom Sizemore is most remembered for his Oscar-nominated performance as Tom Hank’s sergeant in Saving Private Ryan. Sizemore was intense and charismatic and hugely talented, but his longtime cocaine addiction kept him off the screen and in the tabloids, rehab and jail. In a rare leading role, Sizemore carried an excellent little neo-noir, The Last Lullaby; see it on Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu and redbox.
Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent in AWAY FROM HER.
Prolific Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent was unforgettable in Away from Her, Sarah Polley’s Alzheimer’s movie with Julie Christie (my choice for the best movie of 2007). Pinsent piled up 152 screen credits, much of it lesser material on TV. He played a bad guy in one of my favorite neo-noirs, Chandler with Warren Oates.
Glenda Jackson in Elizabeth R.
Glenda Jackson won Oscars for Women in Love and a A Touch of Class. I most admired her as the fierce Queen Bess in the 1971 miniseries Elizabeth R. Many actors have tried on politics in real life, but Jackson took off 23 years from her acting career to serve as a hard Left Labor Party MP, before returning to the stage as an acclaimed King Lear.
Harry Belafonte in ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW.
Already a big musical star, Harry Belafonte burst on screen with searing performances in the 1950s – Carmen Jones, Island in the Sun, Odds Against Tomorrow. He only made a few movies after 1959, but they were good ones: Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher, Robert Altman’s Kansas City and The Player, Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansman. Belafonte could have had an even bigger film career, but, early on, he refused roles that he found demeaning and then devoted the last six decades of his life to civil rights work, where he made immense contributions.
Gina Lollibrigida has died at 95. Her very solid mainly, European body of film work was overshadowed by her image in the US as a sex symbol (Solomon and Sheba). Check her out in John Huston’s sly Beat the Devil. Lollibrigida was the first five-syllable Italian word that I learned to pronounce.
Richard Roundtree’s FIRST MOVIE role was as the iconic John Shaft in Shaft. He went on to over 250 more screen credits, including four more as John Shaft. Although in my mind, the biggest star of Shaft was Isaac Hayes’ music, Richard Roundtree was, along with Pam Grier, the most significant on-screen force in Blaxploitation cinema.
Michael Gambon, the venerated actor of the British stage, ended his career famously as Dumbledore in several Harry Potter movies. He had also played LBJ in Path to War, the lord of the manor in Gosford Park and the king in The King’s Speech, and elevated smaller movies like Page Eight, Quartet and Layer Cake.
Melinda Dillon was Oscar-nominated for Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Absence of Malice. But my favorite Dillon performance will also be that of another mom, who is worried her son will shoot his eye out in A Christmas Story. She also shared an intimate scene with Paul Newman in Slapshot, and said, “I spent 10 and a half hours naked in bed with Paul and absolutely loved it.”
Cindy Williams, before her TV success in Laverne and Shirley, made two of the 50Greatest Movies of All Time. George Lucas’ American Graffiti is about that moment in 1962 when the innocence of the 1950s was months away from being replaced by the turbulence of the 1960s, for which nobody in America was prepared; she played the girlfriend of Ron Howard’s Steve, whose willfulness got her in a situation that was more than she could handle. Williams’ apparent sweet innocence was also perfect for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, where it is revealed that her character was not so threatened after all.
Sadly, the actor Robert Blake will be remembered for the horrific childhood and sordid post-career detailed in his NYT obit, a hit TV show with a parrot and an absence of boundaries on TV talk shows. He was a child star, exploited by an abusive parent, in Our Gang and even The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. But he proved his underlying talent in In Cold Blood.
From 1974 to 1979, Frederic Forrest was making unforgettable movies (The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The Rose), but those led to a passel of forgettable ones in the 80s. He did sparkle as the villainous Blue Duck in Lonesome Dove.
Treat Williams began his career with a string of interesting movies from 1976 through 1981: The Ritz, Hair, and the highly acclaimed Prince of the City. He continued a prolific and respectable career for four more decades, but his films never matched his early ones.
Julian Sands earned 156 screen credits and will be best remembered for A Room with a View.
Ryan O’Neal became a movie star when he starred in the disgustingly saccharine Love Story. He later was eclipsed by his own daughter’s Oscar-winning performance in Paper Moon. He was a good sport, mocking Love Story with his final line in What’s Up, Doc?.
Jim Brown is justifiably best known for being voted the best NFL player of the 20th Century, but the reason he left NFL was to star in Hollywood movies, where he was an African-American trailblazer. In 1969’s 100 Rifles, he played the first African-American male character in a major Hollywood movie to be shown having sex with a white woman (Raquel Welch). Although Brown displayed a range of emotion onscreen described by James Wolcott as “no wider than a mail slot”, he was a pretty convincing action star, perhaps best in The Dirty Dozen.
Paul Reubens was the star of and the creative force behind the goodihearted and gloriously weird Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
Joss Ackland was one of those stage-trained British actors who could elevate a role in any film, as he did in Lethal Weapon 2, The Hunt for Red October, White Mischief and over 200 other screen credits.
Lance Reddick earned over 100 screen credits, appearing in several movie franchises and 60 episodes of The Wire. His final performance, in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, is one of his best.
Jane Birkin is remembered as a model, fashion icon, pop singer and a celebrity jet setter in the Mod 60s. She appeared in an extraordinarily good movie, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up, but in a cameo playing a Mod Era jet set model. She was the mother of a very gifted screen actress, Charlotte Gainsbourg.
