June 2024

 

KLUTE (1971) and DON’T LOOK NOW (1973)

      It’s somewhat alarming to realize that most of the young movie stars who served as my introduction to serious cinema—Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood—are all over 80 years old. This fact hit me as Donald Sutherland, maybe the most underrated of this group of performers who dominated the 1970s, was remembered following his death at age 88.

      After spending most of the 1960s working in television, the Canadian-born actor’s career took off after being cast as one of “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), among the last of the old-style war films. A very different type of war picture made him a star, Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” (1970).

    As Korean War field surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, equally comfortable with a martini or a scalpel, Sutherland and co-star Elliott Gould (as Trapper John) capture the iconoclastic attitudes of the Vietnam era despite the film’s 1950s timeframe. It’s disappointing that the crazy-quilt style of the movie has been eclipsed by the popularity of the memorable but mainstream television series.

     While making two or three films a year during his peak of 1970-1981, thrillers “Klute” and “Don’t Look Now” stand out as the most adventurous, both offering challenging roles that show the actor at his best even as he works in support of his female co-stars.

      John Klute is a taciturn, somewhat naïve small-town cop who ventures into the sex industry of New York City in search of his friend who has gone missing after being connected to call girl Bree Daniels (Oscar-winning Jane Fonda). He eventually convinces Bree to help him track down the person who connected her with his missing friend, but it’s really just an excuse to explore the city’s underbelly and the traps that led Bree into this world.

      Director Alan J. Pakula (“All the President’s Men”) and cinematographer Gordon Willis (“The Godfather”) create a dark, muted palate in which Klute and Daniels encircle one another, uncovering the truth and changing their lives. The sharp, uncompromising script by Andy and David E. Lewis, brothers who mostly wrote for television, is a coming-of-age story for Klute, who grows emotionally into a man strong enough to save Bree.

       “Klute,” despite the title, will always be remembered as Fonda’s film—maybe her greatest performance—but Sutherland holds his own, revealing a depth not seen in his previous work. (A romance developed between Sutherland and Fonda that lasted for a few years, as both were active in anti-war protests.)

      If the sex trade looked dangerous in “Klute,” it’s nothing compared to the creepy world director Nicholas Roeg creates along the narrow, unlit alleys and murky canals of Venice in “Don’t Look Now.” 

     The film, based on a Daphne du Maurier story, opens with a devastating scene of John Baxter (Sutherland) pulling his young daughter from a backyard pond. The death hangs heavy over him and wife Laura (Julie Christie) as the story takes them to Venice, where he is supervising the restoration of a 16^th Century church. The situation grows intense when a blind woman with “second sight” claims she sees their dead daughter and foresees danger for John.

    Sutherland gives a perfectly measured performance as a down-to-earth man, whose descent into confusion leads him headfirst into the unknown. “Don’t Look Now” is also infamous for its realistic sex scene; an intricately edited sequence that mirrors the changing norms of 1970s Hollywood.    

      The actor continued his string of superb performances as a sad-sack denizen of 1930s Hollywood who falls for a wannabe actress in “The Day of the Locust” (1975), a sadistic Fascist in Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic “1900” (1976), the too-cool Faber College professor in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978), an ordinary man facing extraordinary circumstances in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978), as the soft-spoken grieving father caught between his wife and son in “Ordinary People” (1980) and a German spy who falls for a Scottish woman in “Eye of the Needle” (1981). Sutherland even starred for Federico Fellini in the very theatrical “Casanova” (1976)

     While he found fewer choice roles for the rest of his career, a few memorable performances stand out: his riveting turn as Mr. X, explaining the deep state conspiracy in “JFK” (1991); a reunion with Christie in “The Railway Station Man” (1992); as the naïve, wealthy New Yorker in “Six Degrees of Separation” (1993); as Steve Prefontaine’s track coach in “Without Limits” (1998); and as the wise Mr. Bennet in “Pride & Prejudice” (2005).

     Most recently, Sutherland became a familiar face for another generation as the diabolical President Snow in “The Hunger Games” trilogy.

      Sutherland, with his large ears, droopy eyelids and razor-thin built, looked more like a fourth-billed supporting player than leading man material, but he maintained his marquee-name status for more than half a century, anchoring some of the best American films of his era.

  

KINDS OF KINDNESS (2024)

     Imagine if Bella Baxter, Emma Stone’s Oscar-winning role in “Poor Things,” directed a film. It would be filled with strange characters, saying and doing inappropriate things with little consideration to socially accepted manners or the consequences. That, in a nutshell, describes Yorgos Lanthimos latest picture, an absurdist look at people who long to be told how to live, divided into three short (well, not that short) stories with the same collection of actors taking different roles, like a theatrical troupe.  

      In the opening segment, up-and-coming star Jesse Plemons (“The Power of the Dog,” “Killers of the Flower Moon”) plays a weak-willed employee of the ultimate demanding boss (Willem Dafoe), who requires total obedience, determining, among other details, when he has sex with his wife (Hong Chau from “The Whale”) but blocking the couple’s plans for children. When Plemons’ character refuses to ram his car into another vehicle in an attempt to maim or kill, he’s cut off by Dafoe. His pitifully comical actions to get back into his boss’ good graces have no relation to sanity.

   In part two, Plemons is a cop whose wife (Stone), a marine biologist, is missing following an accident. When she’s rescued, he’s convinced that it’s not really her—though on her first day back she’s ready for the group sex with the couple’s best friends (Mamoudou Athie and Margaret Qualley). This segment’s only value is one of shock as Stone continues to acquiesce to her husband’s delusions. 

     The final episode probably should have been the entire film as it’s more grounded in reality. Stone plays a woman caught between a sex obsessed cult (run by Dafoe and Chau) and an abusive husband. She and Plemons, like a couple of low-rent detectives, are in search of a woman with a dead twin who can bring life to the recently deceased. Clearly, there’s a lot of David Lynch in Lantthimos’ movies.

    Plemons is an acquired taste, so low key that he often seems to be sleep walking but Stone, as usual, brings her high-strung energy to each of the segments, especially as the cult follower, But all the principals display an admirable willingness to give it all for Lanthimos. It’s hard to criticize that level of commitment, even if it seems to me to be wasted effort.

  

SADIE MCKEE (1934)

     No actress altered her looks so dramatically as Joan Crawford. I recently watched “Sally, Irene and Mary,” one of the nine films the 19-year-old appeared in during 1925, her first year in films. If I didn’t know she was one of the stars, I would never have identified this film legend I’ve seen in nearly 50 films.

      Not until the late 1920s, when she became a star, did she start looking like the Joan who became world famous, and even then she continuing to refine herself, with the help of MGM’s top-flight makeup department, in the 1930s.

      One of her best vehicles during this glamour period is “Sadie McKee,” playing the daughter of the cook for the wealthy Alderson family. Impulsively, after hearing the family berate a young man she likes, Sadie leaves with Tommy (Gene Raymond) for New York City, where he almost immediately dumps her to join a nightclub singer’s act.

        Later, working as a taxi dancer, Sadie runs into Michael Alderson (Franchot Tone), whose client Brennan (Edward Arnold), takes an instant shine to her. Sadie, still mad at the Aldersons and bitter over the actions of Tommy, ends up marrying the wealthy, but much older Brennan.

       This classic “women’s picture” is elevated by Crawford’s excellent performance and a very realistic script that offers a caustic look at the Depression era world. And it doesn’t hurt that behind the camera is Clarence Brown, who eventually would be nominated for six directing Oscars, including “Anna Christie,” “National Velvet” and “The Yearling.” Though his most memorable movies were about family dynamics (also “Wife vs. Secretary,” “The Human Comedy”) he didn’t shy away from controversial topics. That same year, Brown direct Crawford again in “Chained,” in which she keeps jumping between lovers Clark Gable and Otto Kruger.

     One of the most interesting aspects of “Sadie McKee” is how Brennan’s drinking and carousing starts as comedy and eventually becomes a central issue, a problem that Sadie faces head-on when no one else will. It’s a refreshing change from how excessive drinking is typically treated in film of the 1930s. It became almost a requirement that every film had to feature a comic drunk, in addition to showing the main characters imbibing every time they walk into the house.      

      An added attraction in “Sadie McKee” is the appearance of long-forgotten Gene Austin, one of the leading crooners of the 1920s and ‘30s, who is shown performing with his trio. His “My Blue Heaven” and “Ramona” were among the biggest hits of the era.

     Of course, Crawford wasn’t done changing her looks and image: Her Oscar-winning turn as “Mildred Pierce” introduced a harder, tougher woman (though she wasn’t yet 40), which led to an impressive run of crime pictures into the 1950s and, arguably, her best performances.

  

THELMA (2024)

     There’s really only one reason to see this outlandish, geriatric road film. June Squibb, the 94-year-old Oscar nominee (for “Nebraska” in 2013), plays Thelma, an alternately confused and feisty grandmother who refuses to sit still after she gets scammed.

    Thelma falls for the classic con—a call from her “grandson” in need of $10,000 for bail. She quickly gathers the money and mails it off to the address given to her by “the lawyer.”

    After the police brush off her and her family, Thelma begins to plot her mission (inspired by Tom Cruise), eventually with the help of old friend and assisted living tenant Ben (1970s legend Richard Roundtree).

     Despite about a dozen too many old-folks clichés, it’s impossible not to root for Thelma—what could be more heartless than ripping off easily duped seniors? Writer-director Josh Margolin (in his directing debut) mixes legitimate issues faced by seniors while soliciting laughs with the usual foibles. But he fails to prop up the creaky plot, instead foisting on viewers Thelma’s irritating family and their issues.

     Her daughter and son-in-law (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) and her slacker grandson (Fred Hechinger), who has a special bond with grandma, are stock sitcom characters who add nothing of interest to the film. I was ready to scream if I had to listen to yet another heart-to-heart between the clueless parents and their childish son Daniel.

      But as long as the focus is on Thelma and Ben and their clumsy attempts at justice, the film has a winning formula.

     Roundtree, who died last October at age 81, was best known for his hipster private eye John Shaft in “Shaft” (1971), but never stopped working in film and television.

      Squibb, who was a stage actor from an early age, didn’t make her film debut until she was 61, in Woody Allen’s “Alice” (1990), and has worked steadily since, most notably as Jack Nicholson’s wife in “About Schmidt” (2002) and then as Bruce Dern’s wife in “Nebraska,” both directed by Alexander Payne. Since her Oscar nod at age 84, she has mostly worked in television. This year, she had a key role in the remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.” 

  

HIT MAN (2024)

     The central idea of director Richard Linklater’s latest—a college philosophy professor and part-time tech guy for the police finds his niche ensnaring ordinary people seeking to hire a contract killer—had the potential to be turned into a caustically clever comedy.

     Yet for a variety of reasons, including its leisurely pacing, off-handed acting and soft-hearted script (all of which could be seen as positives in the right story), the film didn’t work for me. It plays more like a calling card for up-and-coming leading man Glen Powell as the movie veers from comedy to romance to thriller. The production needed the “touch” of the Coen Brothers.

     Powell plays Gary Johnson, a rather ordinary man whose life turns into a Bond-like adventure when he fills in for an undercover detective and poses as a hitman to entrap a man soliciting murder. Without losing a beat, he pulls it off, improvising as if he just spent five years acting at Second City. Not only does he continue this gig, creating a variety of personalities to suit the circumstances, but his real-life persona changes, gaining confidence and presence.

     After persuading an attractive young woman (Adria Arjona from the recent “Father of the Bride”’ remake) to not hire him to kill her husband, Gary—now the cool hitman--pursues a relationship.

    Powell, who played “Hangman” in “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) and John Glenn in “Hidden Figures” (2016) and possesses an audience-friendly screen persona in the Jon Hamm-Ryan Reynolds mold, makes the most of this colorful role.

     Linklater has failed as often as he’s succeeded in his 30-year, prodigious career; starting, of course, with the classic 1993 high school tale, “Dazed and Confused.” His bittersweet romantic French trilogy with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy---"Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” “Before Midnight” stands with the great New Wave films of Truffaut and Rohmer and his “School of Rock” (2003) gave Jack Black his best vehicle. The director’s animated “Apollo 10 ½” was among the better films of 2022, but he also made “Tape” (2001), “A Scanner Darkly” (2006), “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” (2019) and, inexplicitly, the remake of “Bad News Bears” (2005).

       I wasn’t a fan of his most acclaimed picture, “Boyhood” (2014), which earned Oscar nominations for picture and direction, more for his process (he filmed it over many years) than the resulting film.

     I do appreciate that you never know what to expect from a Linklater film—he remains little known despite numerous high-profile pictures—but “Hit Man” isn’t among his best.

  

EZRA (2024) and RED LIGHTS (2012)

        Another industry already has “first, do no harm” as its oath, but the movie business might consider incorporating the idea into whatever checklist it uses to greenlight pictures.

      The filmmakers of “Ezra,” in their enthusiasm to portray a parent’s support of his autistic son, seems to be siding with parents over health professionals about who knows best how to treat the effected child. In fact, whatever crazy thing Max (Bobby Cannavale) does in the course of the film is shown as pure love while doctors and law enforcement are the problem. Even young Ezra’s mother (Rose Byrne) is written as clinging, overly protective parent.

     The relationship between Max, a struggling standup comic (at 50something?), and son Ezra (an impressive debut by William A. Fitzgerald) feels sincere, very believable even as the plot veers into crazy territory. 

      The reason I went to the theater and sat through 10 trailers was because 80-year-old Robert De Niro plays Max’s father, Ezra’s grandfather. As always, the great actor enlivens every scene he’s in, mostly in confrontations with Cannavale.            

      Tony Goldwyn, another veteran actor who has a role in the film, also directs. Unbeknownst to me, he’s been directing, primarily on television, since 1999; his debut was “A Walk on the Moon.” Not sure when he has time, as he’s constantly working on episodical television, including taking over for Sam Waterston as the DA on “Law & Order.”

       Since De Niro became eligible for Medicare in 2008, he’s appeared in 36 movies—that’s an entire career for most actors. For every “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Killers of the Flower Moon” (earning Oscar nominations for both), “The Irishman,” “The Intern” and “The Comedian” (maybe his most underrated performance), there are three films like “Savage Salvation,” “Dirty Grandpa” and “The Bag Man.”

    I caught up one of those “other” films, “Red Lights,” featuring a cast that belies its forgotten status. Last year’s best actor Oscar winner Cillian Murphy plays Tom Buckley, the teaching assistant to psychologist professor Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and her partner in debunking claims of paranormal activity. One of their students, played by Elizabeth Olsen, eventually joins their team.

    Also in the cast is Toby Jones as a rival professor and Joely Richardson as the assistant to Simon Silver (De Niro), a world-famous blind psychic who has just emerged from a decades-long hiatus, becoming the focus of Matheson’s and Buckley’s sophisticated efforts to prove him a fraud.

     The film, well directed by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Cortés, falls apart about halfway through, growing overly melodramatic and taking characters in rather incredulous directions. De Niro, who chews scenery with the best of them, doesn’t hold back as this conceited madman.

 

 

PHOTOS:

 Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda in “Klute.”  (Warner Bros.)

 Joan Crawford in “Sadie McKee.”  (MGM)

 June Squibb and Fred Hechinger in “Thelma.”  (Magnolia Pictures)

 Robert De Niro and Bobby Cannavale in “Ezra.” (Bleecker Street Media)