2022 Farewells: on the screen

Sidney Poitier in THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT

Sidney Poitier was an actor whose great intelligence, charisma and intensity, which combined into a righteous power. He was the first black A-list movie star and a man who changed things forever by insisting on playing empowered, non-degraded roles. Revisit the moment in In the Heat of the Night when his detective informs Carroll O’Connor’s redneck lawman, “They call me Mister Tibbs“. He wasn’t just an iconic actor, either – he was a also an accomplished director and a bona fide civil rights leader.

William Hurt in BODY HEAT.

Actor William Hurt, broke through unforgettably in his first feature film Altered States, which began a stunning run in the 1980s, of which my favorites were Body Heat, The Big Chill and Broadcast News. Hurt’s characters were frequently cerebral, contained and deliberate. His Ned Racine in Body Heat was always thinking, too, just not thinking as quickly or diabolically as Kathleen Turner’s femme fatale Matty Walker. Even after his A-list days had passed, Hurt was uniformly excellent supporting others in films like History of Violence and Into the Wild.

Jean-Louis Trintignant in AMOUR.

Actor Jean-Louis Trintignant starred in some of the most prestigious European movies of the past six decades: Roger Vadim’s …And Man Created Woman with Brigitte Bardot (1956), Claude Leloach’s A Man and a Woman (1966), Claude Chabrol’s Les Biches (1968), Costa-Gravras’ Z (1969), Éric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Red (1994) and Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012). He even made a Sergio Corbucci spaghetti western The Great Silence in 1968. Trintignant was 91.

Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

Angela Lansbury’s first screen role was as the saucy, self-interested maid in Gaslight, which kicked off a notable Hollywood career.  Her best movie performance was as the evil mother in The Manchurian Candidate, molding her own son into a robotic assassin.  Her memorable work in cinema was outstripped by her careers on Broadway (multiple Tonys for Mame, Sweeney Todd, etc.) and TV (264 episodes and several TV movies of Murder, She Wrote).

James Caan in THE GODFATHER

Actor James Caan is mostly remembered for his vivid portrayal of a guy with too much testosterone – Sonny Corleone in The Godfather (Bada bing!). Caan had been working since age 21 in TV series, with a John Wayne movie thrown in, when he appeared in the TV movie Brian’s Song – a highly popular weeper. He also appeared, with Robert Duvall, in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People. Most underappreciated performance? Probably Rollerball.

Louise Fletcher in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST.

Actress Louise Fletcher was unforgettable in her Oscar-winning performance as Nurse Rached in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  With her cold, assured eyes embodying impervious authority, she could maintain a soft voice and still deflate the charisma of Jack Nicholson’s McMurphy.  Nurse Rached has been voted the second best female villain in all cinema (after The Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz).

Ray Liotta in GOODFELLAS.

Actor Ray Liotta became a star with his leading role in 1990’s iconic Goodfelllas and was still at the absolute top of his game this past year in The Many Saints of Newark and No Sudden Move.

Bo Hopkins in AMERICAN GRAFFITI.

Actor Bo Hopkins left us with some absolutely indelible performances in his heyday, a decade starting in the late 1960s. No one has ever been better at portraying a smirking, dimwitted redneck. I liked him best as the ill-fated young robber in The Wild Bunch, the greaser hard guy in American Graffiti and Burt Reynold’s moonshining partner in White Lightning. In this period, he appeared in Cat Ballou, The Getaway, Monte Walsh and Midnight Express.

L.Q. Jones in HANG ‘EM HIGH

Actor L.Q. Jones, born with the already Texas-colorful name of Justus E. McQueen, took the name of his first movie character (in Battle Cry) and rode it through 165 roles, bringing something interesting and different in every one. His NYT obit quoted him as liking to play “a heavy that is not crazy or deranged — although we play those, of course — but rather someone who is a heavy because he enjoys being a heavy.” Jones worked in some excellent war movies (Men in War, Torpedo Run, The Naked and the Dead, Hell Is for Heroes) and revisionist westerns (The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Hang ‘Em High). He was also a delightful raconteur, which you can enjoy by searching for “LQ Jones” on YouTube.

Clu Gulager in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Prolific actor Clu Gulager has died at 93. The last of Gulager’s 165 IMDb credits came just three years ago in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood. Best known for 105 episodes as the sheriff on The Virginian, Gulager made his living by guest appearances in a zillion TV shows from Wagon Train and Have Gun, Will Travel through Ironside, Cannon, CHiPs and Falcon Crest. One of his three characters on The Name of the Game was Rex Dakota. I have just learned that he starred in 72 episodes of a 1960-62 TV Western that, amazingly, I do not remember – The Tall Man, with Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett and Gulager as Billy the Kid. He also peppered his career with cult movies like The Return of the Living Dead and I’m Gonna Get You Sucka. Gulager teamed with Lee Marvin in Don Siegel’s classic neo-noir The Killers.

Gulager’s best-ever screen performance was in The Last Picture Show as an oil rig foreman who is the illicit squeeze of his boss’ wife (Ellen Burstyn). This guy is trapped in a job he will never improve upon and in an affair he will never control; Gulager perfectly conveys his bitter dissatisfaction. The Director’s Cut also adds some sizzle to his pool hall sex scene with Jacy (Cybill Shepherd).

Henry Silva

Actor Henry Silva is recognizable from his 140 screen credits (and, outside of the Oceans 11 movies, those roles may have all been villains). He leveraged his acting talent and unusual facial features to project menace as few actors have done, most memorably in the original The Manchurian Candidate.

Actor Roger E. Mosley is best known for his 158 episodes as the helicopter pilot on Magnum, P.I. and over 50 guest appearances in tv series. As the title character in Leadbelly and many TV shows, he paved the way for more positive and empathetic depictions of African-American characters. He also worked in one of best-ever TV movies, The Jericho Mile, in one of the best sports movies, Semi-Tough, and as Sonny Liston (with Muhammad Ali himself) in The Greatest.  

Although her body of work was overshadowed by her off-screen personal life, actor Anne Heche was superb in Wag the Dog. That was one of a remarkable string of Big Movies in 1997 and 1998: Donnie Brasco, Volcano, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Six Days Seven Nights, Return to Paradise and Brian De Palma’s Psycho.

Did Meat Loaf star in The Rocky Horror Picture Show?
Photo caption: Meat Loaf, with Nell Campbell in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW

Meat Loaf unforgettably burst into cinema in the 1975 cult favorite The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Often credited as Meat Loaf Aday, he also acted in a series of character roles, most notably in Fight Club.

Actor Tony Sirico, best known for his Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri in The Sopranos, overcame a youth that landed him in Sing Sing to play a slew of movie and TV gangsters (and appear in four Woody Allen films, too.)

Musician Ronnie Hawkins is best known as the irrepressible, earthy rockabilly mentor of The Band. In the movies, he was unforgettable in The Band’s concert film The Last Waltz; (who is THAT guy on stage with Dylan, Clapton, Neil Young and Van Morrison?) He also had an acting role in Heaven’s Gate.

DVD of the Week: Rampart

In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail.  Woody’s Dave Brown is always seeking control.  He manipulates his superiors.  From behind his badge, he unleashes sadistic brute force on every other unfortunate within his sight.  Yet he is a man out of control, whose impulses to bully,  to drink and to seduce increasingly endanger his job security, his finances and what is left of his relationship with his family.  He is already skating on the edge of self-destruction when one brutal incident is caught on video and goes viral a la Rodney King.

Rampart benefits from the one of the best large supporting casts – less an ensemble than a series of great single performances as individual characters tangle with Dave Brown.  Ben Foster (The Messenger) is brilliant as a homeless man with too many drugs and not enough meds.  Robin Wright is also superb as an emotionally damaged lawyer who sleeps with Dave until his paranoia takes over.   Sigourney Weaver and Ice Cube are two LA officials who see Dave as a walking, talking threat to public order and the City treasury.  Ned Beatty is the retired cop who has kept his finger in the police corruption racket. The Broadway star Audra McDonald plays a cop groupie that Dave meets in a bar.   As one would expect, Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon are excellent as Dave’s two amiable but bullshit-proof ex-wives.  Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky are especially effective as the daughters, who figure in Rampart‘s most breathtaking scenes.

Rampart is a singularly visual film – we always know that we are in the sunwashed, diverse, sometimes explosive anarchy that is LA.  The movie is structured and shot to heighten the experience of both the chaos that Dave causes and that the chaos that he feels.  This is Oren Moverman’s second effort as writer-director, the first being the searing The Messenger, also starring Harrelson and Foster.  Moverman keeps Rampart spinning along wildly as we wonder what will happen next to unravel Dave Brown’s life.

If you need some redemption to leaven a very dark story, this is not the movie for you.  Rampart reminds us that not everyone finds redemption.  It made my list of the Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Rampart: a sizzling portrait of a man spinning out of control

In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail.  Woody’s Dave Brown is always seeking control.  He manipulates his superiors.  From behind his badge, he unleashes sadistic brute force on every other unfortunate within his sight.  Yet he is a man out of control, whose impulses to bully,  to drink and to seduce increasingly endanger his job security, his finances and what is left of his relationship with his family.  He is already skating on the edge of self-destruction when one brutal incident is caught on video and goes viral a la Rodney King.

Rampart benefits from the one of the best large supporting casts – less an ensemble than a series of great single performances as individual characters tangle with Dave Brown.  Ben Foster (The Messenger) is brilliant as a homeless man with too many drugs and not enough meds.  Robin Wright is also superb as an emotionally damaged lawyer who sleeps with Dave until his paranoia takes over.   Sigourney Weaver and Ice Cube are two LA officials who see Dave as a walking, talking threat to public order and the City treasury.  Ned Beatty is the retired cop who has kept his finger in the police corruption racket. The Broadway star Audra McDonald plays a cop groupie that Dave meets in a bar.   As one would expect, Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon are excellent as Dave’s two amiable but bullshit-proof ex-wives.  Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky are especially effective as the daughters, who figure in Rampart‘s most breathtaking scenes.

Rampart is a singularly visual film – we always know that we are in the sunwashed, diverse, sometimes explosive anarchy that is LA.  The movie is structured and shot to heighten the experience of both the chaos that Dave causes and that the chaos that he feels.  This is Oren Moverman’s second effort as writer-director, the first being the searing The Messenger, also starring Harrelson and Foster.  Moverman keeps Rampart spinning along wildly as we wonder what will happen next to unravel Dave Brown’s life.

If you need some redemption to leaven a very dark story, this is not the movie for you.  Rampart reminds us that not everyone finds redemption.

Cedar Rapids

Cedar Rapids is surprisingly winning comedy about a guy (Ed Helm) whose life is so boring that an insurance agent conference in Cedar Rapids is a revelatory experience.   Helm plays a character whose sincerity and decency elevate his guileless cluelessness.  There are excellent supporting performances by Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and the irrepressible John C. Reilly.

This could have been a much courser and a lesser movie in the wrong hands.  It’s directed by Miguel Arteta, who also brought an appealing sense of humanity to the underrated The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt.