neo-noir – Page 3 – The Movie Gourmet

Stream of the Week: ELENA – a vividly dark peek into contemporary Russia

July 16, 2019 by movie gourmet

Elena is a superbly crafted film that vividly peeks into a dark, very dark contemporary Russia. Directed and co-written by Andre Zvyagintsev (The Return, Leviathan and Loveless), Elena is the triumph of drama over melodrama. There is an absolute minimum of on-screen action and no histrionics at all, yet the story simmers throughout. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2012.

Zvyagintsev builds the story upon his characters. It is set in a tony apartment in a quiet upscale Moscow neighborhood, home of Vladimir and Elena. Vladimir is pushing 70 and rich. I doubt that any softies got rich in post-Soviet Russia, and Vladimir is a hard man, devoid of sentimentality except for his estranged daughter. Late in life, he has married the working class Elena, his one-time nurse, now in her 50s. They have a comfortable, frank, affectionate and practical relationship.

Both have adult children from previous marriages. Vladimir’s daughter Katerina has no use for her father, but he subsidizes her lifestyle of perpetual partying. Vladimir and Katerina finally share a moment, bonding over their shared cynicism.

Elena’s nogoodnik son Sergey lives in a hard scrabble suburb and embraces his chronic unemployment with alarming indolence. His equally lazy and selfish teenage son, having an indifferent high school career, is now facing the dreaded Army unless someone can bribe his way into a college.

Elena is desperate to rescue her grandson from his self-inflicted predicament, but only Vladimir’s money can help, and Vladimir despises Elena’s trashy and shiftless family. The movie is built on this conflict, and it is Elena’s story. As Elena, the actress Nadezhda Markina reveals Elena’s affection, desperation and determination with her eyes, face and movements. Perfectly framing Markina’s outstanding performance by isolating it, Zvyagintsev delivers the film in a series of long shots, with terse dialogue and a spare soundtrack. There is no expository dialogue explaining the plot or swelling music manipulating our reaction.

Elena is a dark movie that asks its audience to invest patience, thought and energy – so it’s not for everybody. Elena is also one of the year’s best films, and an extraordinary example of a very pure breed of filmmaking. Elena is available to be streamed from Amazon (free with Prime), iTunes and Google Play.

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT: memory of a doomed romance and an epic plunge into neo-noir

April 29, 2019 by movie gourmet

Jue Huang in a scene from *Long Day’s Journey Into Night*. Photo by Bai Linghai, courtesy Kino Lorber.

In the singular Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Luo (Jue Huang) embarks on a search to find the mysterious woman he dallied with twenty years before. As he follows the clues, he plunges into an atmospheric underworld of dripping darkness and people who don’t want to talk. Along the way, he encounters the sultry, down-on-her-luck floozy Wan Qiwen (Wei Tang), whose lethal, fedora-adorned boyfriend does not want to relinquish her to Luo’s quest.

After a low burn beginning, Luo’s search reaches its climax in a spectacular ONE-HOUR single shot. It’s nighttime and both the exteriors and interiors are lit to evoke a surreal world stained by noirish danger. The shot requires the camera to follow Luo and Wan Qiwen, together and separately, inside and outside, between various levels and twice past a nervous horse, all while other characters interact with them. It’s right up there with the magnificent shots in Children of Men, Goodfellas, Touch of Evil, The Secret in Their Eyes, Atonement, Gun Crazy and the one-shot film Victoria.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is the triumph of writer-director Bi Gan, who never forgets that he is telling his story in the medium of cinema. Long Day’s Journey Into Night is so atmospheric that sometime we feel the dankness of his set designs. Repeatedly, the richest of colors stand out against noirish backdrops. Wan Qiwen is unforgettable in her satiny emerald green dress, lit by Luo’s headlights as he tracks her by automobile in a dark tunnel. (Bi Gan has acknowledged his admiration for Wong Kar-wai, and Bi Gan has created a film as visually intoxicating as Wong Kar-wai’s.) Ban Gi used three directors of photography; the second cinematographer prepared the final shot for the third. There are recurring themes of spinning rooms, flooded floors and dripping ceilings, single flames and sparklers. The soundtrack centers on ambient sound, with very few musical cues.

Wei Tang, Yongzhong Chen in a scene from *Long Day’s Journey Into Night*. Photo by Liu Hongyu, courtesy Kino Lorber.

All of this enhances the story of Luo’s obsession with a doomed romance (and possibly more than one doomed romance). He can’t sure that what he hears is true – or even that what he sees is real. It’s a world filled with dissolute and murderous men and unreliable women. Luo asks a man, “Is that child yours?” and is answered, “She was a master story teller” (not a complement in this instance).

Bi Gan says, “It’s a film about memory”. Indeed, he has Luo say, “The difference between film and memories is that film is always false. They are composed of a series of scenes. But memories mix truth and lies. They appear and vanish before our eyes .”

That final shot is in 3D. Bi Gan says, “After the first part (in 2D), I wanted the film to take on a different texture. But I believe this three-dimensional feeling recalls that of our recollections of the past. Much more than 2D, anyway. 3D images are fake but they resemble our memories much more closely.”

Hong-Chi Lee in a scene from *Long Day’s Journey Into Night*. Photo by Liu Hongyu, courtesy Kino Lorber.

This film is entirely written by Bi Gan, with no apparent relationship to the identically-titled 1962 film of the Eugene O’Neill play, the famed four-hander with Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell. The Mandarin title of Bi Gan’s film is literally Last Evenings On Earth, a title which came from a short story by Roberto Bolaño. Bi Gan just liked the title Long Day’s Journey into Night and thought that it fit the spirit of his film.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is the biggest Chinese art house hit ever, and won an award at Cannes in 2018. It opens this weekend in the Bay Area.

Stream of the Week: FRANK & LOLA – Bad Girl or Troubled Girl?

April 16, 2019 by movie gourmet

Imogen Poots with Michael Shannon in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society. — Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in FRANK & LOLA.
Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

The San Francisco International Film Festival is underway, so this week’s video pick comes from the program of the 2016 festival. The absorbing neo-noir romance Frank & Lola opens with a couple lovemaking for the first time – and right away there’s a glimmer that he’s more invested than she is. Soon we’re spirited from Vegas to Paris and back again in a deadly web of jealousy.

Lola (Imogen Poots) is young and beautiful, a lively and sparkly kind of girl. Frank (the great Michael Shannon) is older but “cool” – a talented chef. He is loyal and steadfast but given to possessiveness, and he says things like, “who’s the mook?”.

In a superb debut feature, writer director Matthew Ross has invented a Lola that we (and Frank) spend the entire movie trying to figure out. Imogen Poots is brilliant in her most complex role so far. She’s an unreliable girlfriend – but the roots of her unreliability are a mystery – is she Bad or Troubled? A character describes her with “She can be very convincing”, and that’s NOT a complement. Poots keeps us on edge throughout the film, right up to her stunning final monologue.

Shannon, of course, is superb, and the entire cast is exceptional. There’s a memorable turn by Emmanuelle Devos, the off-beat French beauty with the cruel mouth. Rosanna Arquette is wonderful, as is Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies. I especially liked Justin Long as Keith Winkleman (is he a namedropping ass or something more?).

Frank & Lola has more than its share of food porn and, as befits a neo-noir, lots of depravity. But, at its heart, it’s a romance. Is Lola a Bad Girl or a Troubled Girl? If she’s bad, then love ain’t gonna prevail. But if she’s damaged, can love survive THAT either? We’re lucky enough to go along for the ride.

I saw Frank & Lola in 2016 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. I liked it more than most and put it on my Best Movies of 2016. Frank & Lola is now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

NOIR CITY 2019 is here

January 23, 2019January 23, 2019 by movie gourmet

Jayne Mansfield and Dan Duryea in THE BURGLAR

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, opens this weekend in San Francisco. 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 movies not available on DVD or streaming. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.

Eddie Muller, whom you should recognize as the host of Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley series, has programmed this year’s version as NOIR CITY Reveals the Dark Side of Mid-Century America. The tagline is “Think the 1950s were buttoned-down and conservative? Think again.” Trench coats and fedoras are not required (and no smoking, please), but, other than that, you’ll get the full retro experience in the period-appropriate Castro.

You can’t stream three of the very best films in the fest: Nightfall, Pushover and Blast of Silence. And Trapped, The Well, The Turning Point, The Scarlet Hour and Murder by Contract are pretty much impossible to find in any format. So, see it here or don’t see it at all. Trapped has just been restored by the Film Noir Foundation. This year’s program features eight movies on The Movie Gourmet’s list of Overlooked Noir.

My personal favorites on the program:

Two underrated noir masterpieces on the same double bill: Nightfall and The Burglar. Nightfall features smoldering chemistry between Aldo Ray and Anne Bancroft as they hunt for hidden loot while on the run themselves. The core of The Burglar is the stellar lead performance of Dan Duryea as a tortured and worn-out guy – with one deep loyalty. There are plenty of noir moments – lots of shadows, uplit faces in the darkness, amoral, grasping characters and not one, but two noir vixens – Jayne Mansfield and Martha Vickers.
The cop-yields-to-temptation double feature with Pushover and Private Hell 36. Tracking a notorious criminal, the cop (Fred MacMurray) in Pushover, follows – and then dates – the gangster’s girlfriend (“Introducing Kim Novak”) as part of the job, but then falls for her himself. He decides that, if he can double cross BOTH the cops and the criminal, he can wind up with the loot AND Kim Novak. (This is a film noir, so we know he’s not destined for a tropical beach with an umbrella drink.)
Another double feature, pairing the down-and-dirty Kiss Me Deadly and Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking Killer’s Kiss.
Sam Fuller and James Shigeta breaking ground by normalizing a Japanese-American protagonist in The Crimson Kimono.
The closing double feature with Sam Fuller’s brutal Underworld USA and that most emotionally bleak transition into neo-noir, the proto-indie Blast of Silence, which I’ve described as “a cauldron of seething hatred“.

Noir City runs from Friday, January 25 through Sunday, February 3. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here. I’ll be there myself on this Friday and Saturday.

Stream of the Week: THE AMERICAN FRIEND – Dennis Hopper and Robby Müller make things weird

November 27, 2018 by movie gourmet

Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper in THE AMERICAN FRIEND

Dennis Hopper, in his Wild Man phase, brings electricity to the 1977 neo-noir The American Friend, an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel Ripley’s Game. Highsmith, of course, wrote the source material for Strangers on a Train along with a series of novels centered on the charming but amoral sociopath Tom Ripley; her gimlet-eyed view of human nature was perfectly suited for noir.

German director Wim Wenders had yet to direct his art house hit Wings of Desire, his American debut Hammett or his masterpiece Paris, Texas. He had directed seven European features when he traveled to ask Highsmith in person for filming rights to a Ripley story.

In The American Friend, Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz) is a craftsman who makes frames for paintings; he dabbles in the shady world of art fraud, making antique-appearing frames for art forgeries. Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) entangles him in something far more consequential – a murder-for-hire.

As befits a neo-noir, Zimmermann finds himself amid a pack of underworld figures, all set to double-cross each other with lethal finality. In very sly casting by Wenders, all the criminals are played by movie directors: Sam Fuller, Nick Ray, Peter Lilienthal, Daniel Schmid, Gérard Blain, Rudolf Schündler, Jean Eustache. Nick Ray is especially dissolute-looking with his rakish eye-patch. Sam Fuller, in his mid-60s, insisted on performing his own stunt, with a camera attached to his body on a dramatic fall.

As the murder scheme unfolds, there is a tense and thrilling set piece on a train, worthy of The Narrow Margin. Other set pieces include a white-knuckle break-in and the ambush of an ambulance.

Here’s one singular sequence. After a meeting with Ray, Hopper walks away from the camera along an elevated highway. Then Hopper is shown, still on the highway, in long shot from what turns out to be Fuller’s apartment, where Fuller interrupts the filming of a skin flick to deny having a guy shot on the Paris Metro. Then we see Hopper on an airplane, and then Ganz on a train. Finally, Ganz returns to a seedy neighborhood by the docks. It’s excellent story-telling – at once economical and showy and ultra-noirish .

Dennis Hopper and Nick Ray in THE AMERICAN FRIEND

Cinematographer Robby Müller pioneered use of fluorescent lighting in The American Friend. The nighttime interiors have a queasy eeriness that matches the story perfectly. Müller, who died in 2018, was endlessly groundbreaking. He made the vast spaces of the Texas Big Bend country iconic in Paris, Texas. He was also responsible for the one-way mirror effect in Paris, Texas’ pivotal peepshow scene. For better or worse, he jerked the handheld camera in Breaking the Waves, spawning a legion of lesser copycats. Müller gave a unique look to indie movies from Repo Man to Ghost Dog; The Way of the Samurai.

The American Friend was shot in 1977, in the midst of Dennis Hopper’s tumultuous drug abuse phase. He had just directed his notorious Lost Film The Last Movie and arrived in Europe from the Philippines set of Apocalypse Now!, where he was famously drug-addled and out of control. After getting Hopper’s substance abuse distilled down to only one or two drugs of choice, Wenders gave Hopper carte blanche to take chances in his performance, The American Friend being the only movie Tom Ridley in a cowboy hat. It paid off in a brilliant scene in which Hopper lies on a pool table, snapping selfies with a Polaroid camera; it’s a brilliant imagining of a sociopath in solitary, with no one to manipulate. John Malkovich, Matt Damon and even Alain Delon have played some version of Tom Ripley. Hopper’s is as menacing as any Ripley, and – by a long shot the most tormented. Courtesy of the Criterion Collection, here is Wenders on Hopper.

The American Friend is not a great movie. Zimmermann is motivated by a grave health issue, but too much screen time is wasted on that element, causing the movie to drag in spots. Movie auctions come with built-in excitement, but The American Friend’s art auction is pretty ordinary. And, other than Fuller, Ray and Blain, the directors are not that good as actors.

Still, the unpredictability in the high wire Dennis Hopper performance, the look of the film and the action set pieces warrant a look.

The American Friend can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu. The late great FilmStruck offered some exceptional features, including a 38-minute interview with Wenders (excerpted above).

Stream of the Week: DOSE OF REALITY

August 13, 2019July 31, 2018 by movie gourmet

Fairuza Balk, Ryan Merriman (rear) and Rick Ravanello in DOSE OF REALITY

I’m sure that you’ve never seen this week’s video pick because I don’t think it got a theatrical release. It’s the indie thriller Dose of Reality, which I saw at Cinequest in 2013.

Dose of Reality packs wire-to-wire intensity and a surprise ending that no one will see coming. A woman is found in a bar’s restroom after closing time, apparently beaten and raped, but unable to remember by whom. Two bar employees are the only possible suspects. Both deny it, and the woman launches a series of searing mind games to determine her attacker.

Fairuza Balk (American History X, Almost Famous) commands the screen as the woman. Her character, starting from a place of utter victimization, becomes totally dominant over the men. The most interesting of the guys is played by veteran TV actor Rick Ravanello (106 acting credits on IMDb). Ravanello’s eyes have an uncommon capacity to credibly take the character through dimness, cunning, tweaked impairment, guilt and terror.

It’s a plenty compelling movie for the first 75 minutes, but Dose of Reality is all about the Big Surprise at the end – which is a shocker on the scale of The Crying Game. Afterward, I was able to reflect back and identify at least four clues in the story, but every one of the 250 audience members at Dose of Reality’s Cinequest world premiere was rocked by the surprise on first viewing. Actor Ravanello recounts that when he first read the script, he got to the end and blurted “No Fucking Way!”. It’s a success for writer-director Christopher Glatis.

Dose of Reality is available to stream on Amazon.

THE STRANGLER: momma’s boy hunts down women, then fondles dolls

April 5, 2018 by movie gourmet

This Friday night, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1964 serial killer movie The Strangler, the masterpiece of director Burt Topper, who specialized in low-budget exploitation movies. It’s on my list of Overlooked Noir.

First, we see that lonely lab tech Otto Kroll (Victor Buono) is twisted enough to murder random women and then return to his lair to fondle his doll collection. Then we learn his motivation – he dutifully visits his hateful mother (Ellen Corby – later to play Grandma Walton) in her room at the convalescent home; she heaps abuse on him in every interaction. Pretty soon, even the audience wants to kill Mrs. Kroll, but Otto sneaks around taking out his hatred for his mom by strangling other women.

Because Otto is outwardly genial to a fault, it takes a loooong time to fall under the suspicion of the cops. The character of Otto and Buono’s especially brilliant and eccentric performance elevate The Strangler above its budget and launches it into the top rank of serial killer movies.

Victor Buono and Ellen Corby in THE STRANGLER

The Strangler, which plays occasionally on Turner Classic Movies, is NOT available for rent from Netflix or streaming providers. You can buy the DVD from Amazon or find a VHS on eBay.

BLOOD SIMPLE: Frances McDormand at 27

March 14, 2018 by movie gourmet

On March 17, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1984 film that was Oscar winner Frances McDormand’s first screen credit, Blood Simple. That was also the storied Coen Brothers’s first feature film (and sparked McDormands’ 34-year marriage to Joel Cohen). Since their debut, the Coens have gone on to win Oscars for Fargo and No Country for Old Men, and their True Grit and the very, very underrated A Serious Man are just as good. Along the way, they also gave us the unforgettable The Big Lebowski.

It all started with their highly original neo-noir Blood Simple. It’s dark, it’s funny and damned entertaining. The highlight is the singular performance by veteran character actor M. Emmet Walsh as a Stetson-topped gunsel. The suspenseful finale, when Walsh is methodically hunting down the 27-year-old McDormand, is brilliant.

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.

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.