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Reviews
Night Moves (1975)
Hackman's greatest role
This is the perfect role for Hackman as the aging sports star unable to find his role in life once the playing days are over. He is the accidental jock, too sensitive to play the stereotype and so finding no sense of belonging. He has become a detective but he is a bumbling amateur compared to a Philip Marlowe type. He is shy and hestitant and is frequently made to feel discomfort by the seedy, untrustworthy people he comes into contact with. He has none of Marlowe's self assurance. It begs the question why has he become a detective? Maybe it is partly due to his abandonment by his father who years later Hackman tracks down only to fail in confronting him. He is condemned to search for people to whom he is of no importance.
This idea of the lonely seeker is Hackman's own turf. His affable charm conveys a sense of a lifetime's wrongheaded idealism. In the wrong job, deluding himself, looking for a way out. Eventually, he is able to see clearly and see how his drifting has allowed the people around him to manipulate him in their games. Unlike many of this film's peers such as 'Chinatown', 'Taxi Driver', 'The Long Goodbye', we are not left to be slightly repulsed by the lead actor's ways. Hackman plays the everyman character as an affable, amateur sleuth whose hestitancy and chronic lack of commitment give him a fallibility more recognizable to an audience.
Mystic River (2003)
Laura Linney, the best Hollywood actress
She was great as Clint's daughter in Absolute Power and he has used her again in one of this film's key roles as Sean Penn's wife. She is as good as a ruthless pragmatist like this as she was as the warm hearted single mum in 'You Can Count on Me'. Like the possibly undervalued 'Bloodwork', this film raises the question of evil finding its way past even good intentions. In the former, Clint's much reported good deeds as a cop instigated the crimes and attentions of a obsessive stalker/serial killer and here Linney chillingly argues that anything is justified if it is in the name of self preservation. She is wrong but no doubt she is the film's winner.
Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
Geoffrey Rush was the funny one.
This was very disappointing considering it was a Coen brothers's film. Clooney and Zeta Jones were charmless as the might-be lovers and I couldn't care less about such morally reprehensible people. Geoffrey Rush was more funny and likeable than the leads in his early cameo and I wish he had been a greater force in the film. As an obvious renewal of screwball comedy it was fatally compromised by the inclusion of such degraded personalities as to make it in the worst of bad taste.
The Producers (1967)
Great fun with a criminal mastermind
The opening scene of "The Producers" has to be one of the most brilliantly constructed comic scenes ever. The scene develops with the meeting of Biallystock and Bloom where at first they despise each other but soon on the discovery that they could become partners in crime they show trust in one another. It is the overbearing impresario, Biallystock, who controls the scene as he manipulates the accountant, Bloom, into at first feeling sorry for him and later into believing that he (Biallystock) could be a criminal mastermind cunning enough to pull off the fraud. In his scene which is only about 10 minutes long it is fantastic to watch the trust develop between the naive, emotionally withdrawn Bloom and the flawed but charismatic Biallystock. The shambolic apartment is a great setting with the grime on the windows shielding the two misfits from reality. They are both dreamers who want to escape this dilapidated existence and we too go along for the ride trusting in Biallystock's scheme.
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
star performances
With its out_of_control egos, destructive relationships, alcoholism and self disgust the film is an intense portrayal of a producer's struggle to accommodate the feelings of his friends with the creative process itself. The film is never judgemental but shows how these excesses will always be around creative people. Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner are magnificent as the lovers at odds with themselves and each other as they try to exorcise the ghosts of their famous fathers. The rigid structure of the flashback narrative form can be easily criticised for being too episodic (indeed, the last third of the film could just as well have been dispensed with) but each time the film cuts back to the present the audience is given a great insight into the fallibility of the ego. The flashbacks show how the characters have been in some way unfair in forming their unfavourable opinions of Douglas who is redeemed in our eyes for his tenacity and exuberance. Douglas's sheer magnetism and charisma also helps and if there was ever a film that needed the luminescence of its stars to truly elevate it to the level of greatness then this is it.