THE
ACADEMY AWARDS
Usually, I refrain from weighing in on the
Academy Awards ceremony and its continuing efforts to turn the presentations
into entertaining television. But this year’s disaster, following 2021’s that
played like a bowling league banquet, begs for commentary.
I’ll dispense with the obvious by stating
that the huge ovation (many standing) for Will Smith when he was announced as
the best actor winner minutes after he assaulted presenter Chris Rock marks the
low point in the history of awards show adulation.
Yet long before this Oscar nadir, the show
was a poorly planned, clumsily scripted, amateurish attempt to do
something—anything—that would attract more viewers.
Among the bright ideas were two Twitter
polls to determine “Top 5 Fan Favorites” of 2021 (“Army of the Dead”) and “Most
Cheer Worthy Moments” (some special effect from “Justice League”). Forget about
Smith, I demand the resignation from the Academy of all involved in these
ideas. To make room for this kind of idiocy (along with the K-pop band BTS
discussing their favorite films), eight categories, including editing, score
and production design, were given out before the show and then sliced into the
telecast.
Then there was the show’s endless series of
film anniversary celebrations.
Surely, at some point during the planning
stage, someone must have said, “Four anniversary spots? Isn’t that, just maybe,
two too many?”
Instead, the two that were most worthy of
celebration—“The Godfather” at 50 and the Bond franchise at 60—were given short
shrift.
To honor the Bond films there were no 007s
in sight, instead skateboarder Tony Hawk and a couple of other X-game types
(thinking this is who young movie fans want to see?) introduced a
thrown-together 90-second compilation of the 27 pictures. Any high school
student could have created a more interesting video.
The tribute to “The Godfather” (see mine
below) was nearly as uninspired. Sean Diddy Combs was chosen to introduce the
clips, for reasons I can’t even imagine, and seemed to improvise his lines. Why
not have someone connected to the Godfather legacy? Wouldn’t Sophia Coppola
have been perfect? But then there was the compilation.
The film that they should have been
memorializing was released in 1972, not the sequel released in 1974 or the
third part released in 1990. Yet the clips included all three films, I guess so
they can recycle it in 2024 and 2040.
The Academy organizers couldn’t come up with a 40 second clip of a nearly
three- hour film with more memorable scenes than all the 2021 best picture
nominees combined? Best of all, they played a hip-hop song over the “Godfather”
music during the clip. That will definitely bring in the younger viewers.
The grand gesture was bringing out Francis
Coppola, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro (who wasn’t in “The Godfather”) to allow
the audience to show their appreciation. The director said a few words, but the
actors had no lines. They dragged them back in for that?
The reunion of the three stars of “White
Men Can’t Jump”---Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson and Rosie Perez—for the film’s
30th anniversary was just an excuse for a few one-liners, though no
mention of writer-director Ron Shelton. But the clip they showed was nearly as
long as the one for “The Godfather.” But, seriously, “White Men Can’t Jump”?
What’s planned for next year: a 30th reunion of “Free Willy”?
They couldn’t wait for the 30th
for “Pulp Fiction” (1994), instead celebrating its 28th anniversary
with Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta. After Jackson offered a
comic bit, Travolta mumbled, “Did Quentin help you write that?” That was the
only mention of the writer-director of the film. Maybe they’ll have Tarantino
on stage for the 30th.
The irony of all these anniversary celebrations
was the derisive tone the hosts took toward this year’s best picture nominees.
Poking fun at the year in movies has always been part of the show, but there’s
a line between funny and delivering bad reviews for the films the Academy has
chosen as the best. Among the comments from the hosts included “I’ve watched it
three times and I’m halfway through” (about “The Power of the Dog”); “I guess
the Academy members don’t look up reviews” (about “Don’t Look Up”); and, on the
entire slate of nominees: “[They are] hard to understand…I didn’t see any of
them.” I guess the show’s writers thought they were auditioning for a gig on
“SNL.”
Along with insulting the best picture
selections, host Wanda Sykes’ “tour” of the new Academy Award Museum, a decade in
planning and building, seemed just an opportunity for laughs. Even the
Academy’s crowning achievement couldn’t be presented with dignity.
Then there was the “In Memoriam” video,
usually a somber relief from the noisy show. But this year the clips of those
who had passed during 2021 was obscured by a 25-person choir singing and
dancing on stage in front of the movie screen. As they sang a melody of upbeat
numbers (including a bit of the ‘70s pop hit “Spirit in the Sky”), the video
occasionally stopped so that a select few could be personally remembered (Tyler
Perry on Sidney Poitier; Bill Murray on Ivan Reitman and Jamie Lee Curtis and a
dog on Betty White).
It didn’t work and just made you wonder
why these individuals received top billing---especially White who, though a
legendary TV actress, had a negligible film career.
The “In Memoriam” singers, along with the
superbly produced live best song presentations, and the taped Beyoncé opener,
turned the show into a version of the Grammy’s, interrupted by a few movie
awards.
That’s not why I, or most movie fans, watch
the Oscars; it’s for moments like Troy Kotsur signing his acceptance speech or
Kevin Costner reminiscing about seeing “How the West Was Won” at the Cinerama
Dome or Lady Gaga help out Liza Minnelli announce the best picture winner. You
don’t get those moments by cutting out awards, ignoring Lifetime Achievement
winners or taking Twitter polls.
CODA
(2021)
This variation on the
coming-of-age/clinging-parents plotline, which scored a surprising best picture
Oscar, never strays too far into reality, preferring to float through as a
fairy tale. The only aspect of interest is that these clinging parents are
deaf.
A remake of the 2014 French film “The
Belier Family,” this by-the-numbers picture follows the travails of Ruby Rossi
(Emilia Jones), a Massachusetts high school senior who begins her days at 3
a.m. as the only hearing person on a fishing boat with her father (Oscar winner
Troy Kotsur) and brother (Daniel Durant). They rely on her as their ears and
voice, communicating with the buyers of their catch and anyone else who has an
issue. Then she hurries off to school.
It’s never explained how long Ruby has
been serving as the interpreter in their business, but I have a hard time
believing she was working with them when she was 10. Yet her duty to work with
the family and not attend college becomes the central issue of the film.
Beyond the cliches, a few aspects of the
film hit me as ludicrous. First of all, she enrolls in chorus out of the blue
in her senior year, yet it turns out she’s an amazing vocalist (starts
receiving private lessons from the flamboyant Latino choir director), earning a
music school tryout. You are telling me that she went through 11 years of
schooling without her or anyone else noticing her singing ability?
Then there are the parents. Father and
mother (Kotsur and Marlee Matlin, 1986 best actress winner for “Children of a
Lesser God”) mostly play the roles for laughs, constantly talking of sex,
embarrassing the daughter. It’s almost as if writer-director Sian Heder (who
wrote for the cable hit “Orange Is the New Black”) thinks that having deaf
people sign dirty words humanizes them. And they seem to see nothing wrong with
demanding that their 17-year-old devote a few more years to aiding them rather
than getting an education.
Like “Hillbilly Elegy,” the working-class
parents are depicted as incapable of seeing what’s in the best interest of
their children beyond making their life easier. The film asks me to sympathize
with Ruby’s plight, while finding the parents naively lovable.
“CODA” (children of deaf adults) isn’t a
bad film and addresses issues that resonate in the deaf community, but it
doesn’t come close to rising to best picture levels (as dubious as those have
become) and ranks near the bottom of movies earning the honor.
It also becomes the most unavailable best
picture winner in movie history. “CODA” received almost no theatrical
screenings, remaining available only to Apple TV subscribers. Let’s hope this
doesn’t become a trend.
EVERYTHING
EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)
Astonishing technical accomplishments
don’t always equate to good filmmaking. Like a multi-dimensional roller
coaster, a jigsaw puzzle with a dozen missing pieces, with dialogue that whips
by like “My Girl Friday” on speed, this movie left me dizzy, wishing it had
continued on the path it began with, staying on Planet Earth.
Michelle Yeoh (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon,” “Crazy Rich Asians”) made it tolerable, playing Evelyn, a world-weary,
stressed-out owner of a laundromat facing a tax audit on the same night she’s
planning a party for her elderly father (the masterful James Hong). Then
something strange happens as the family rides up the elevator to the IRS
appointment—Evelyn’s husband (a squeaky voiced Ke Huy Quan) turns into an agent
from another dimension attempting to recruit her to help their cause.
I’ll admit that I understood little of the
details of the next two hours of time-shaping, hyper-reality unrelenting
fighting, all set, in its many alterations, at the IRS office. For the majority
that love the film, I doubt they care about the details and just enjoyed the
ride.
Written and directed by Dan Kwan and
Daniel Scheinert (they go by the collective Daniels), best known for the cult
film “Swiss Army Man,” “Everything” plays like a Marvel film, replacing the
invincible superhero with a middle-aged Asian woman. No question, that’s a
positive and the film does its best to play up that irony, but it relies on the
cartoonish action and CGI tricks way too much for my taste.
I would have enjoyed a film about this
overwhelmed woman’s rocky relationships with her daughter (Stephanie Hsu) and
unhappy husband while facing an IRS audit. But when it turns into
“Matrix”-lite, I zoned out.
THE
GODFATHER (1972)
There are two dozen angles of this
masterpiece I could write about to mark its 50th anniversary. I
recently read the 2021 book about the production, “Leave the Gun, Take the
Cannoli” by Mark Seal, that offers some insight into the making of, but mostly
brings together tidbits reported elsewhere over the years (overstating, from my
point of view, real-life mob connections to the film).
The book’s most interesting details
include a chronicle of how close Francis Coppola came to getting fired, how
James Caan instead of Al Pacino was set to play Michael, that Richard
Castellano improvised the second half of his most famous line and, most
damning, how Paramount executives did everything they could to undercut the film.
Any time you read about Robert Evans, the boy-wonder head of Paramount
production at the time, remember that he envisioned a low-budget,
contemporary-set picture starring Ernest Borgnine and Ryan O’Neal.
But what I’d like to discuss are the
film’s shortcomings; even Hollywood’s finest achievements, be it “Citizen
Kane,” “Vertigo” or “Casablanca,” aren’t flawless. Knowing what Coppola was
forced to cut, mostly in an effort to keep the running time under three hours,
and the contents of the deleted scenes (detailed in “The Annotated Godfather”
and available in the DVD Collection of all three films) makes it easier to see
what’s missing. And like all films, the more you see it—I’ve probably watched
“The Godfather” 20 times—the more you see where it could be improved.
1) After an almost perfect opening 40
minutes—the introduction of Don Vito (Marlon Brando) holding forth in his
office during the wedding reception for his daughter, the legendary horse’s
head sequence and the meeting in the ancient Genco Olive Oil offices between
the Corleones and drug dealer Sollozzo (Al Lettieri)—the aftermath of the
assassination attempt on the Don is needlessly confusing. There’s no scene in
which Sonny or anyone in the family is officially notified that their father
has been shot or a scene in which the family visits the hospital. Cut were
scenes in which Sonny is notified by a friendly cop that his father has been
shot and a short scene of Sonny telling his mother.
My question is: where is Fredo? He was at
the scene of the shooting. Didn’t he immediately contact Sonny and his mother? It
doesn’t make sense. A few more minutes of explanation would have improved this
part of the film.
2) Another scene that was left on the
cutting room floor shows Sonny going into the Don’s office and trying to
contact various members of the Corleone crime family—including Luca Brasi (Lenny
Montana), who viewers know is already dead. Most interesting is Sonny’s shying
away from sitting in his father’s chair—a telling sign that Sonny is more
reluctant to take his father’s place than it seems in later scenes. After
seeing the finished film, Caan complained about his screen time: “It was like
painting a fourteen-foot canvas and ending up with a three-foot canvas.”
3) The invisible women: I’m not even
referring to Sonny’s and Tom’s wives. Connie (Talia Shire), whose full face has
barely been shown through half of the film, gets her big scene in a screaming
session with husband Carlo before he beats her up offscreen. Her only other big
moment comes at the very end when, again hysterical, she accuses Michael of
murdering her husband.
As for Mama Corleone (jazz singer
Morgana King), it’s almost as if she doesn’t live in the same house as Vito.
One son is killed, another spends more than a year in Sicily and her husband
dies, yet her biggest scene is when she sings during the wedding reception.
And
then there’s Kay (Diane Keaton): after being central to the film before Michael
leaves for Sicily, she’s more “out” than Robert Duvall’s Tom once Michael becomes
the don. Not only do we not see their wedding (was there a honeymoon?) or the birth of their son, but there isn’t a
moment of domesticity between them. At least, her and Connie were given their
due in “The Godfather Part II.”
4) When Michael returns from Sicily,
after Sonny is killed at the causeway, two things are never explained: how the
family pulled it off (he’s wanted in the murder of a police detective and a drug
dealer) and how he formulates his plans for revenge and the move to Las Vegas.
In Mario Puzo’s novel, a death row inmate agrees to confess to the murders, but
it’s never mentioned in the film.
5) These wealthy mobsters never seem to
enjoy themselves. No expensive vacations, yachts or even fancy dinners.
Ironically, Fredo seems to be the only one enjoying himself, unless you count
Sonny’s extramarital affair.
6) This isn’t really a criticism because
it illustrates what a powerful story Coppola and Puzo were telling, but how
many movies lose its lead character for about an hour and 15 minutes in the
middle of the film? Don Vito is shot at the 44-minute mark and doesn’t have an
audible line until the two-hour mark. Remember, at the time few moviegoers knew
who Pacino, Caan or Duvall were—Richard Conte as Barzini and Sterling Hayden as
McCluskey were far more famous. This was all about Brando, the world’s greatest
actor returning in a major role.
Yet despite all these shortcomings,
“The Godfather” hasn’t lost any of its punch over a half century. While
Paramount brass kept pushing Coppola for more action, more violence, he instinctively
knew that his low-key approach was much more effective and would enhance the impact
of the handful of bloody sequences. Michael shooting Sollozzo and McCluskey in
the Italian restaurant remains one of the most intense killing scenes in film
history—if Coppola never directed another scene he’d still be a legend.
And though they fought throughout the
production, Coppola stuck with cinematographer Gordon Willis, whose Renaissance-like
interiors bathe the characters in noirish darkness, giving the film an
instantly recognizable look.
It
was also Coppola insistence on the casting of Brando, Pacino, Duvall and Caan
over unending objections even after filming began that became essential to
making “The Godfather” so enduring. Few films have ever had a more brilliant
ensemble of actors. And I haven’t even mentioned the great work by Castellano
as Clemenza, Abe Vigoda as Tessio, John Marley as Woltz and even Gianni Russo
as Carlo, though I wouldn’t believe a word of his recent book.)
There’s also Nino Rota score, one of the
most memorable in recent film history, turning, for better or worse, the
actions of a gang of hoods into high opera.
Yet it’s more than aesthetic reasons that
this best picture winner deserves a spot near the top of the list of great
American movies. While Puzo’s novel became a best seller because of the
killings and the sex and its characters’ similarity to real life figures (how
much of Johnny Fontaine is Frank Sinatra?), Coppola molded a story that offers
a sever critique of an American society that has allowed criminals to operate
without restraint, turning gambling and drugs into big business and,
paralleling that corruption, the disintegration of the family, as evidenced by
the many turncoats in the Corleone family. There’s also the decent of a young
educated, war hero who slips into a world where killing and bribery are accepted
realities. While the full extent of Michael’s tragedy—not unlike
Macbeth’s—reveals itself in Part II, it’s clear by the final sequence, as he
eliminates his rivals and orders his brother-in-law’s execution, that his
ambition will come at a high price.
To
me, what remains most astonishing about “The Godfather” is how close it came to
falling apart or turning into an easily dismissed B picture. How does great art
emerge from what everyone involved thought was verging on disaster? Coppola,
just 32, seemed to have an innate ability to see what others couldn’t and
maintain his vision of this story despite the dissent around him (he did it
again with “Apocalypse Now”), crafting a timeless chronicle of greed, violence
and uncertain loyalty.
THE
HIGH WALL (1947)
Everything about this post-war amnesia
movie—admittedly an overused plot device in the 40s and 50s---suggests that it
should be better known and receiving regular showings on TCM.
Robert Taylor, one of Hollywood’s most
popular leads since the mid-1930s, stars as a World War II vet who took a
dangerous assignment after the war in hopes of satisfying his wife’s expense
tastes.
He returns home to discover her in her
employer’s apartment. He then blacks out with his hands around her throat,
awaking to an apartment in disarray and his wife’s lifeless body on the floor.
Putting the body in his car, he drives
off the highway into a ravine in hopes of killing himself.
While most viewers will realize that a
star of Taylor’s magnitude is bound to be proven innocent, to one degree or
another, the storyline maintains the uncertain sense of doom more typical in a
low-budget noir.
Most films would send Taylor’s Steven on
the run, but instead he’s sent to a mental hospital, over the persistent protests
of the D.A. (a feisty John Ridgely). Desperate to understand his actions, at
least enough to explain to his young son, Steven agrees to brain surgery he’s
been putting off since he was injured overseas.
Director Curtis Bernhardt, an underrated
German emigrant who also made “Devotion” and “Possessed,” brings plenty of
stylish touches to the script based on a play by Alan R. Clarke and Bradbury
Foote, including opening the film with Willard Whitcombe (veteran character
actor Herbert Marshall) having a cocktail before returning to his Christian publishing
house to discover his secretary has left early. Turns out, she is the dead
woman.
The bulk of the movie centers on the
relationship between Steven and his sympathetic doctor played by film noir
regular Audrey Totter. As usual, Totter steals every scene she’s in with her
realistic line readings and believable emotions (a rare chance for her to
portray someone not a mobster’s dame); why she wasn’t a bigger star continues
to baffled me. On the other hand, I could never understand Taylor’s stardom,
but here the gritty details bring out a worthy performance, far from his usual,
rather stiff, romantic figures. The snappy dialogue throughout the film clearly
reflects theatrical beginnings of the material.
Encouraging Steven to remember the details
of the night his wife died, she administers sodium pentanol, another gimmick
plotline screenwriters fell in love with after the war.
A combination of 1940s melodrama and a more
serious psychological study of the tricks the brain can play, enhanced by the
claustrophobia cinematography by Paul Vogel (Oscar winner for “Battleground”) and
two compelling performances, “The High Wall”—while not quite a film noir—is a
first-rate man-in-peril picture that rises above the cliches that prop up the
plot.
SIDNEY
POITIER (1927-2022)
In the last 20 years of his life, Sidney
Poitier, who died in January, was lionized by mainstream Hollywood as one of
the finest actors in American film history. Yet it was that same Hollywood that
ran out of roles for Poitier after he shocked the old guard by becoming one of
the most popular stars in the mid-1960s.
In 1967, he starred in two of the year’s
five best picture nominees (“In the Heat of the Night,” “Guess Who’s Coming to
Dinner”) and was originally cast in a third (“Doctor Dolittle”) before his role
was written out of the bloated musical fantasy. On top of that, in 1967 he
played his most beloved role, as a London public school teacher in “To Sir,
With Love.” This watershed year came after his 1963 best actor Oscar for
“Lilies of the Field” and, in 1965, another hit film, “A Patch of Blue” (1965).
After Poitier’s best actor win in 1963,
only two Black actors were nominated in the category over the next 20 years:
James Earl Jones in “The Great White Hope” (1970) and Paul Winfield in
“Sounder” (1972) and neither became popular stars. Not until 1984, did another
African American actor, Eddie Murphy, rank in the Top 10 of box office stars.
Poitier’s career as a star pretty much
ended within a year or two after 1967; he had another mainstream hit with “For
the Love of Ivy” (1968) and then milked his Mr. Tibbs role in two “In the Heat
of the Night” sequels. After that he took his skills into blaxploitation
pictures, directing and starring in “Buck and the Preacher” (1972), “Uptown
Saturday Night” (1974), “Let’s Do It Again” (1975) and “A Piece of the Action”
(1977). At that point, he stopped acting, focusing his energies directing, on
writing his autobiography, the politics in his native Bahamas and the U.S.
Civil Right movement, something he had been involved in since the 1950s. He
didn’t act again until 1988.
It’s
easy to dismiss Poitier’s acting career based on his mid-1960s roles, but he
had already established himself as a fine, occasionally powerful actor in the
first decade of his career.
He manages pretty well in his film debut,
“No Way Out” (1950), a high-profile picture directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in
which he plays a doctor who is harassed and eventually kidnapped by the racist
brother (Richard Widmark) of a man he treated. The film wears its liberal heart
on its sleeve, offering up Poitier’s character as the ultimate “turn the other
cheek” guy.
Two gritter roles showcased his talent, in
“Blackboard Jungle” (1955) as one of the angry students in a New York ghetto
and in “Edge of the City” (1957) as a dock worker trying to carve out a life
amid repressive racism. Then stardom arrived with another race-relations film,
“The Defiant Ones” (1958), playing an escaped convict on the run with a white
man (Tony Curtis). He became the first Black man nominated for a best actor
Oscar nomination.
In
1959, he played Porgy in Otto Preminger’s film version of the Gershwin opera
“Porgy and Bess,” then had two of his best roles. As Walter Lee, reprising his
Broadway performance, in the superb adaption of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin
in the Sun” (1961), about a struggling family fighting over their late father’s
life insurance policy, Poitier encapsulated a generation of young Black men
desperate to find a way to break away from the dead end of low-paid jobs. In
“Paris Blues,” he and Paul Newman play jazz musicians working in Paris who fall
in love with a pair of American women.
A career of these types of roles would
have been revolutionary, but as his star rose, the roles softened as did
Hollywood’s take on race. The last of his great performances was as Virgil
Tibbs, the Philadelphia homicide detective determined to solve a murder in
Sparta, Mississippi in “In the Heat of the Night.” While he spends most of the
movie reacting to Rod Steiger’s Chief Gillespie anger and the town’s racism,
Poitier gives a commanding performance as the proverbial fish out of
water. While Steiger deserved his best
actor Oscar, Poitier should have been among the nominees.
When he returned to acting, it was mostly
in action pictures (“Shoot to Kill,” “Little Nikita,” “Sneakers,” “The Jackal”)
but did some prestige TV projects, including as Thurgood Marshall in “Separate
But Equal” (1991), alongside of Burt Lancaster, and as Nelson Mandela in
“Mandela and de Klerk” (1997) with Michael Caine.
Poitier isn’t the first or last
actor—Black or white, male or female—who Hollywood has failed, but his career
is emblematic of the industry’s inability to find room for the African-American
experience during the last half of the 20th Century. But Poitier
forged a legacy none the less; as a star actor who occasionally delivered great
performances and a pioneer who went through a once-locked door that many,
eventually, would follow.
APOLLO
10 ½: A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD (2022)
As my regular readers know well, modern
animation has rarely impressed me—I prefer Bugs Bunny, Bullwinkle or Top Cat
over all the Pixar, Disney and even the more serious indies.
So imagine my surprise when I was almost
immediately drawn in by this heartfelt work of nostalgia by director Richard
Linklater. As much as I’ve enjoyed some of his films (“Dazed and Confused,” the
French trilogy), I didn’t enjoy either of his previous attempts at animation
(“Waking Life,” “A Scanner Darkly”). But “Apollo 10 ½” is very different.
The plot of the Netflix film is ludicrous:
NASA recruits a 10-year-old boy who lives in suburban Houston to pilot a test
flight to the Moon in preparation for the landmark trip of Apollo 11 in the
summer of 1969. While that gives the writer-director a chance to animate the
Moon landing, what makes the picture so appealing is Linklater’s spot-on
remembrance of a boy’s life circa the late 60s.
Leisurely narrated by an older Stan (Jack
Black), the story, after getting the main plot in motion, hones in on daily
life, from what we had for dinner 50 years ago to the TV shows and movies we
watched, the music we listened to, the clothes we wore. Though I grew up 1500
miles away in Pennsylvania, as a 13-year-old in 1969, I can attest that
Linklater doesn’t miss much (he was four years younger).
Most amusing is his name checking of at
least 25 TV shows from the era—from “Bonanza” to “Dark Shadows,”—even showing
scenes from “The Johnny Cash Show” (Joni Mitchell’s appearance) and Dick Cavett
interviewing Janis Joplin. It was like
an animated version of one of those CNN retrospective shows.
Linklater and his team use a process
called rotoscope animation, created by trancing over live-action footage. While
much of it feels very realistic, it also has a dream-like sheen that fits the
film’s themes.
Stan goes to the movies to watch “2001: A
Space Odyssey,” listens to his older sister’s vinyl collection (The Beatles’
“White Album,” Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow”) plays Little League
baseball, collects baseball cards, enjoys canned-ham dinners and home-made
popsicles and huddles under his school desk during A-bomb drills. Linklater
doesn’t miss a moment of the era.
But for Stan there’s also the intense
training for his “mission” and, later, watching Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and
Michael Collins follow in his footsteps.
While in many ways, “Apollo 10 ½” is no
more than a vanity project, the director’s memories are so vivid that they
become personal for anyone who grew up in that era.
PHOTOS:
Jamie Lee Curtis and Michelle Yeoh in a rare quiet moment in "Everything Everywhere All at Once. (A24)
Francis Coppola directing the opening wedding scene as Marlon Brando looks on in "The Godfather." (Paramount)
Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger in "In the Heat of the Night." (MGM)
