Downhill Racer (1969)

Stars: Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Camilla Sparv
Pros: Hackman, European Locations, Sparv, Racing action shots
Cons: No real plot, Script, Boring Lead character, Pointless

Plot: Redford stars as a David Chapellett, a ruthless, self-absorbed skier out to win Olympic Gold. Gene Hackman is his Coach.

This movie was Redford's baby and he spent years getting it produced. I wonder why. "Downhill Racer" has no plot or point & its a character study of a boring character. Chappellet (Redford) is not so much "ruthless" as tight-lipped, inarticulate and dull. He sets a record for fewest words per minute of screen time and Redford's low-key style makes it worse. Where was Kirk Douglas when you need him?

Nor do we get any back-story of Redford's character. We get one visit to Chappellett's Dad and hometown - but its unconvincingly shown in the usual, phony, Hollywood manner.

However, the European locations shots are attractive as is Sparv who looks beautiful and matches up well with Redford. She's interesting on screen - as is Hackman. Neither are given enough lines. The direction is good, especially the 1st person downhill racing, but there are too many shots of spectators & skiers whizzing by or just standing around.

Conclusion: A movie dying to be remade. 21st camera techniques could make the skiing even more exciting and a new script wouldn't hurt. Recommended only for Redford and skiing fans. Rating **1/2

The Sting (1973) - Hill

Stars: Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Robert Shaw

Pros: Acting, Score, Script, Entertaining

Cons: Drags in the middle.

Plot: In 1930s Chicago, a con-man (Redford) seeking revenge for his murdered partner teams up with a master of the big-con (Newman) to win a fortune from a criminal banker (Shaw).

What Kael thought: "The Sting is for people who like crooks as sweeties. The director is once again the implacably impersonal George Hill. The Script by David Ward is a collection of Damon Runyon hand-me-downs with the flavor gone. Newman and Redford are two of the sexiest men in the country but when they play boyish coquettes, the show is really cloying. I would much rather see two Gay men in love than see two romantic actors going through a routine whose point is that they're so adorable smiley butch that they can pretend to be in love and its all innocent. And the absence of women is really felt in the movie. But then not only is half of humanity left out, so is what engages the remaining half. I found it visually claustrophobic and totally mechanical." - From Reeling by Pauline Kael

“The Sting” is a slick, feel-good bit of fluff and Box office smash that re-unites Newman, Hill, and Redford. However, unlike Butch Cassidy, “The Sting” really isn’t a buddy picture, the two men have few scenes together. Newman has his moments, but he really supports Redford, who’s the main lead from start to finish. The two actors also switch personas. Instead of being the cool, serious Sundance to Newman’s Butch, Redford here is the warmer & more charming of the two. Also notable are Robert Shaw as the arrogant villain and Charles Durning as the crooked cop.

Except in the middle, “The Sting” moves briskly and its twists and turns kept me guessing. While played straight it never takes itself seriously and has no message. The script is clever and tight. The Scott Joplin music while historically inappropriate to the 1930s adds to the enjoyment.

It’s an unlikely Academy Award winner. While a nice entertainment the Academy rarely gives light comedies the Oscar and The Sting really isn’t that remarkable. Possibly, after giving Oscars to “Midnight Cowboy (1969)”, “Patton (1970), “The French Connection (1971), and “The Godfather (1972)” some AA voters wanted to reward a more wholesome, family-oriented film. Or maybe it was the best of the English-language films nominated ( “The Exorcist”, “American Graffiti”, and “A touch of Class”).

Conclusion: One of the weaker Academy Award Best pictures, but an enjoyable light comedy Rating ***

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

The Hype -

Voted No. 8 on the TSPDT 1,000 Greatest Films.

Roger Ebert -

"The Battleship Potemkin'' has been so famous for so long that it is almost impossible to come to it with a fresh eye. It is one of the fundamental landmarks of cinema...If today it seems more like a technically brilliant but simplistic... that may be because it has worn out its element of surprise--that, like the 23rd Psalm or Beethoven's Fifth, it has become so familiar we cannot perceive it for what it is"

Pauline Kael -

Voted the greatest film of all time by an international panel of critics in Brussels in (1958), as it had been in 1950, POTEMKIN (Russians and purists pronounce it Po-tyom-kin) has achieved such an unholy eminence that few people any longer dispute its merits. Great as it undoubtedly is, it's not really a likable film; it's amazing, though--it keeps its freshness and its excitement...

The Reality - A very long 65 minute silent movie. Battleship Potemkin is a BAD melodrama full of of bad acting and Cartoonish Soviet Propaganda. There is no character development or real plot. The story is quite simple. Its 1905 Odessa Russia. On the Potemkin, the nasty mustache twirling officers are oppressing the noble sailors. On shore in Odessa, the Cossacks and the Bourgeois are oppressing the noble workers. But they only take so much and start the Revolution - the end. Repetitively, the movie loops the same shots over and over again to fill the time. We see the same shot of the ship again and again. And the same shot of the sailors going up or down the decks over and over. Yes, the "Odessa Steps" scene is well done, but thats 2 minutes out of 65 minutes.

There's no reason to watch Battleship Potemkin 84 years later. Time has passed it by. It should be thrown on the ash heap of history - along with Marx, Trotsky and Lenin.

The Real Reason Its Rated Highly - First, its directed by Sergei Einstein the great Russian film maker. Cinemaphiles always overpraise any movie made by a great director. If the director was great - so their "logic" goes - the movie therefore must also be great. Secondly, its a landmark film. The film pioneered many techniques used in film since 1925. Thirdly, its communist propaganda, & that always warms the heart of the left-wing film critics. Fourth, its silent and list makers always feel they have to toss in a few silent films to be taken seriously.

Citizen Kane - Welles

The Hype -

No.1 on the TSPDT 1,000 Greatest Films.

Andrew Sarris -

"Citizen Kane is still the work which influenced the cinema more profoundly than any American film since Birth of a Nation."

Pauline Kael -

"Orson Welles film is generally considered the greatest American film of the sound period, and it may be more fun than any other great movie. Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher."

Sight and Sound Magazine:

"Dazzlingly inventive, technically breathtaking, Citizen Kane reinvented the way stories could be told in the cinema, and set a standard generations of film-makers have since aspired to. An absorbing account of a newspaper tycoon's rise to power, Orson Welles' debut film feels as fresh as tomorrow's headlines. And he was only 26 when he made it."

The Reality - Good? Yes. The Greatest film ever? Hardly. It has a good script, a few great scenes, some good lines, and some dazzling camera shots. But its dated and the story and characters are mediocre. Over the space of 119 minutes we follow Charles Foster Kane and his rise and fall. There is no suspense since the movie tells us Kane's Life story twice. Once at the beginning in a satirical Time newsreel - then in more detail through flashbacks. Kane himself - although charming at the start - soon becomes an arrogant, bitter old man. Even more dis-likable is Dorthy Comingore (Susan Alexander) who makes an obnoxious character even more so. As for Cotton, he does what he can with the priggish, self-righteous "Jedidiah" - but is defeated by the script.

So after all the hoopla about camera angles and deep focus photography, what is point of the story? The point in 1941 was to attack William Randolph Hearst, a powerful media mogul hated by most of Hollywood and the Left. But that attack and Hearst himself, hold no interest 60 years later.

Ingmar Bergman's overstates it a bit ( Welles' performance is very good) but speaks a Truth about Citizen Kane:

" For me it's just a hoax. It's empty. It's not interesting. It's dead. Citizen Kane, which I have a copy of - is all the critics' darling, always at the top of every poll taken, but I think it's a total bore. Above all, the performances are worthless. The amount of respect that movie's got is absolutely unbelievable.


The Real Reason Its Rated Highly - Landmark film, check. Great Director, Check. Great film Technique, check. Left-wing politics, check. Plus, Kane has something for everyone as the Number 1 film. Its been the No. 1 film for almost 50 years - so its a safe choice. Its an American film but not pro-American. Its left-wing but not overtly so. Its full of great technique but also has some good performances. It brings recognition to poor Orson Welles. Above all, Film professors and buffs can talk for weeks about the politics, the background, Welles, the making of movie, Hearst, Toland, the sound, the camera angles, the brilliant technique.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) - Altman

The Hype -

No. 169 on the TSPDT 1,000 Greatest Films.

AFI No. 8 Western of all Time:

Roger Ebert -

"It is not often given to a director to make a perfect film. Some spend their lives trying, but always fall short. Robert Altman has made a dozen films that can be called great in one way or another, but one of them is perfect, and that one is McCabe and Mrs. Miller(1971)"

Pauline Kael -

"A beautiful pipe dream of a movie: Robert Altman's fleeting vision of what frontier life might have been, with Warren Beatty as a cocky small-time gambler and Julie Christie as an ambitious madam in the turn-of-the-century Northwest. Delicate, richly textured, and unusually understated, this modern classic is not like any other film. Altman builds a Western town as one might build a castle in the air--and it's inhabited."

The Reality - McCabe and Mrs Miller is a pretentious, revisionist "Western" for people who don't like Westerns. A Small town hustler (Beatty) sets up a bordello with his drug addled Madame (Julie Christie) in a Northwest lumber town . Not really a "Western" more of a costume drama filled with 1971 dialogue and attitudes. The sound was badly recorded with half the dialogue being uttered out the corner of people's mouths or in remote corners of the set. The indoor photography is also poor and looks like a badly shot 16mm film.

There is no real plot - only a series of vignettes, and the acting ranges from poor to adequate. Beatty wears a beard and does his usual charming, alpha male as puppy dog act. Neither McCabe nor Mrs. Miller are particularly likable or interesting. Like most Altman films the movie is pointless - but has a few great scenes in the last 30 minutes, namely the shootout at the bridge and McCabe death.

The Real Reason Its Rated Highly -

1. Cinemaphiles love Robert Altman. Why? I don't know - but they do.
2. They also love Warren Beatty - I guess 'cause he's so "dreamy".
3. The movie is "revisionist" or according to the New York Times: "McCabe and Mrs. Miller re-imagines the American West as a muddy frontier filled with hustlers, opportunists, and corporate sharks -- a turn-of-the-century model for a 1971 America mired in violence and lies" 
4. Westerns are too popular to leave off any "Great Films" list, but most film critics dislike the Genre. Given their love of Altman, choosing McCabe as a "Great film" is a win-win for them.

Re-watch Postscript - I was struck by how absurdly unrealistic the last part of the film is, including the shootout.

First, the Big Corporation sends 3 hit-men to kill McCabe - no matter what. Isn't the whole point to get him to sell out and only kill him if necessary?

Second,  McCabe owns most of the town and is worth $6,000 - a small fortune in those days,  yet has no "hired gun" or "Muscle"  to protect him or to keep order at the whorehouse and saloon. All the miners are just sweethearts.

And there's the indifference to the killers.  The town marshal who never appears, and none of the townspeople care that 3 killers with guns are wandering about town looking to kill McCabe.  No one tries to help him, and when the killers murder the Churchman in the Church, no one even notices!  However, when the Church is set afire they all come out to put it out.  And none of his whores even act as lookouts.

2001 A Space Odyssey

2001 Space Odyssey Sucks or OVERRATED - Great Movies that aren't

The Hype -

No 4 on the TSPDT 1,000 Greatest Films.

No. 6 on the Sight and Sound Critics Top 10 Movies of All Time

Roger Ebert - "This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, 2001 is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe."

Danny Peary, Cult Movies (1981) ... [T]he most awesome, beautiful (the visuals and the music), mentally stimulating, and controversial science fiction film ever made..."

The Reality -

Inside the 141 minute bore that is 2001 - there's an excellent 60 minute movie trying to get out. The movie's middle part with HAL the computer is actually quite good, but the rest of the movie is simply dull. Lots of "Blue Danube", light shows, Monkeys, and Space Ships. The human characters are cardboard cutouts and there is no plot. Kubrick takes a short story by Clarke and pads it out to 141 minutes. There are some interesting visuals - but if I want great visuals I'll just look out the window.

The following critics got it right:

'Whatever else movies do, they do not postulate definitions; if they try they die. What possible religious revelation could be vouchsafed by a movie whose only memorable character was a gay computer? At this distance, within two years of the title's prediction, 2001 looks dated and bloated; watching the flight attendants on the moon shuttle, I only wish that Kubrick had had the courage to call it 1968: A Bad Year for Hats."-- Anthony Lane

"The ridiculous labor of 2001, the cavernous sets, and the special lenses, ride upon a half-baked notion of the origins and purpose of life that a first-year student ought to have been ashamed of. But this message in a bottle lasts over three (with intermission) hours, and the movie has long sequences of directorial self-indulgence."- David Thomson

"It's a monumentally unimaginative movie... The light-show trip is of no great distinction;
-- Pauline Kael, Harper's (February, 1969) anthologized in her collection For Keeps (1994)

No doubt some people will try to explain 2001's plot and why its a great film. But just as a joke that has to be explained isn't funny, a movie that has to explained and diagrammed isn't good.

The Real Reason Its Rated Highly - 2001 checks all the boxes. Landmark film, Great Director, great technique and visuals. Further, 2001 is the perfect movie for a certain group of people. You know who they are. The internet wonks, the comic book guys, the SF buffs, --the student or professor of philosophy/art/film. A person with a passion for avante-garde films with wacky imagery and little else. They're the type of people who find a college thesis' worth of material from the dialogue in the Matrix sequels, they're the ones that boldly declare a film 'art' and anybody else who disagrees with them 'just didn't get it.' 2001 is art alright. The kind of art that I can only liken as being assaulted and nearly beaten to death by an Andy Warhol painting. Yes this movie is art, and you will hate it for that.

Hawaii -George Hill (1966)

Stars: Julie Andrew, Max Van Sydow, Richard Harris

Pros: Photography, set design, soundtrack, Hawaiian locations, Jocelyne LaGarde, Topless natives
Cons: Too long, Dull Script, one dimensional characters, Van Sydow over-the-top

Plot: In 1820 Abner Hale, (Van Sydow) a rigid, priggish, New England missionary, marries Jerusha Bromley (Andrews) and takes her to Hawaii intent on converting the natives. It proves a difficult task & Sea Captain Richard Harris shows up to test their marriage vows

“Hawaii” is surprising movie. It’s surprised me that in 1966 such a long (over 3 hours) overtly anti-Christian movie, dully scripted by a communist, and starring a Swedish actor was given the green light by Hollywood with a budget of $12 million. Even more surprising, it was the 1966 box-office champ - pulling in over $16 million.

Unsurprisingly, it’s been pretty much forgotten. While score is great, the Polynesian actors (especially Jocelyne LaGarde) excellent, and has some lovely Hawaiian cine-photography the story itself is a crushing bore that lumbers along & never seems to end. And the same is true of Abner Hale. We see far too much of this dullard, who never goes away, and who never changes (except at the end). Trumbo’s script and Van Sydow excessive piety make him more robot than human. Andrews, who has top billing, is given little to do and seems rather muted. Richard Harris is Richard Harris. Incredibly even though its 3 hours long, none of the 3 main characters are given any real background or depth, they remain unchanging clichés.

But some scenes are excellent and stay with you - Andrews illness, the Sea voyage to Hawaii, the outbreak of disease. George C. Scott is excellent in a brief appearance. Carol O’Connor is laughable as a New England puritan

Conclusion: An overlong, turgid historical romance that overstays its welcome. Some competent supporting actors and beautiful photography made some of it bearable. Best seen on a big screen with plenty of booze.Rating **1/2

They Shoot Horses Don't They (1969) Pollack

Stars: Jane Fonda, Susannah York, Gig Young

Pros: Acting in general, Gig Young, Jane Fonda, Dialogue
Cons: Ending, Gimmicky Flash-forwards, Often over-the-top, Drags in the middle

Plot: Set during the Great Depression. Unemployed people enter a dance marathon, hosted by a manipulative businessman Gig Young. Contestants include bitter, sharp-tongued, Jane Fonda, her new found quasi-boyfriend Michael Sarrazin, would-be actress Susannah York, ex-sailor Red Buttons, and a married couple who are expecting.

"There can only be one winner, folks, but isn't that the American way?"

Its easy to be critical of TSHDY. Its a mildly interesting but unpleasant movie about dance marathons in the 30s. Well acted, but pretty much every character (except Red Buttons) is a loser, unpleasant, and/or crooked. Not content with suffering on the dance floor, the contestants fight and quarrel with each other and go crazy, while Gig Young manipulates everyone for the "good of the show". The ending is abrupt and unconvincing since (a) it makes little sense and (b) the movie never provides a convincing motivation/background for their actions.

But the acting saves it. Gig Young (Yowsa, Yowsa, Yowsa) shines as the aging, disillusioned and somewhat dishonest manager while Fonda puts in her best performance next to Klute. She's competitive, bitter, funny and strong and will do almost anything to win. Unfortunately, her strength makes nonsense of her characters story arc. York also plays her part well except for an over-the-top shower scene.

Direction: Although Pollack was nominated for an AA, the direction is flawed. The photography and set design are excellent. But the flash forwards are gimmicky, the opening scene is pretentious, and many of dance scenes (especially the dance 'races') are absurdly overdone. Pollack even uses slow motion so that even the dimmest dim-bulb can see the "suffering." Subtle it ain't.

The film also drags at times, with too many repetitive shots of actors dancing and getting on and off the dance floor. Oh, and its supposed to be some deep allegory about life or 1930s capitalism, or something.

Summary: One of the better Hollywood "Everything stinks" movies of the late 60s. TSHDY is an excellent, character piece with some great acting by Gig Young and Jane Fonda. Its held back by a bleak simple-simon plot and too much melodrama . Rating **1/2