CODA (Sian Heder, 2021): 4/5
A Hallmark movie on an extremely high level. A great argument for using actual deaf people to play deaf people. I loved that they didn’t caption the sign language; I’ve seen enough movies to know what was being communicated and I think it encouraged audience engagement. But I’m a sucker for young people achieving their dreams, especially in music. So just call me a sobbing, Sundance bitch.
Persona, rw (Ingmar Bergman, 1966): 4.5/5
Bergman’s most radical mise en scène and editing—and perhaps the closest he got to A Dream Play. Stylish, abstract and devastating. The last 20 minutes are an elliptical puzzle.
The Silent Partner (Daryl Duke, 1978): 2/5
By 1978, Elliott Gould seems to have lost his mojo. In this cold Canadian thriller, he’s supposed to slowly transform from nebbishy to suave but can’t convincingly manage either.
The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi, 2014): 4/5
Probably my second favorite Dumont (after The Life of Jesus). By which I mean a brutalist portrait of brutish people. This one benefits from zero spoken dialogue or music, as well as a startling long-take, traveling medium-shot mise en scène as well as horrorshow, Taxi Driver-adjacent subject matter. The movie’s silence is powerful.
Stuart Rosenberg Film Fest
He directed Cool Hand Luke in 1959.
WUSA (Stuart Rosenberg, 1973): 2/5
The most inconsistent, tonally, of the Rosenberg movies I’ve seen, and slavered with Robert Stone’s bitter and purple prose. Newman and Woodward are fully doing the Cassavetes free thing. But when Newman goes to work for a cartoonishly exaggerated Fox News-like radio station, the tone switches to colorful and cartoonishly sarcastic. Tony Perkins is also wandering around feeling sorry for black people with a Norman Bates look on his face. Poor Cloris Leachman shows up as a prostitute finding her own peace.
The Laughing Policeman (Stuart Rosenberg, 1973): 3/5
Cops Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern wander around a gritty 1972 San Francisco, trying to solve a murder and encountering many dirty hippies, pimps, junkies, leather daddies and strippers of various genders.
The Amityville Horror (Stuart Rosenberg, 1979): 2/5
Based on his behavior when the evil creeps in, Brolin’s character is a guy who would secretly like more alone-time and time for his hobbies (such as chopping wood and impotence)—and Kidder’s character is very needy of his attention and service. Plus there are some obvious step-father resentment from both sides as well as parenting-style differences. But if so, let’s confront it, bitterly and vituperatively argue about it, and resolve it. Instead, the movie is all overflowing toilets and dripping walls. Lighting, make-up and mise en scene is pure tv, and Brolin and Kidder are not gifted screen presences. I feel like I almost always prefer the 70s version of most movies, but in this case The Conjuring is 10 times better.
Brubaker (Stuart Rosenberg, 1980): 3.5/5
Rosenberg returns to prison, this time not just to play out a martyr narrative. Southern prison horror show turns inevitably to full-on prison reform movie. Excellent work from Redford, Brian Keith, Yaphet Kotto, M. Emmett Walsh and a bunch of other familiar 70s faces (eg. Murray Hamilton and Matt Clark—look them up!) doing great character work.
Pope of Greenwich Village, rw (Stuart Rosenberg, 1984): 2/5
Rafifi and Grisby, with (even) more toxic masculinity and method acting. After watching The Laughing Policeman and even Brubaker this one comes off as rankly sentimental and broad. “Tough like shoe leather, that Moozarel” Rourke is doing dime-bag DeNiro, and Eric Roberts is slurring so bad you can hardly understand his lines. Lots of sub-Raging Bull “Charlie Charlie” and “Polly Polly.” I should add that I loved this movie when I saw it in theater when I was 16. I definitely thought handsome, strutting asshole Rourke was cool, and I related to fuck-up Roberts, whose character does seem to be about 10, emotionally and intellectually.
Pre-80s Robert Redford Film Fest
One of the least method-y big actors of the time. If Redford pauses before saying something, it isn’t because he’s summoning up great stormy depths of feeling; he’s just being present with the other actor or serving the story. Redford often picks stories set in the past, and in fact his charms are old-fashioned. He also doesn’t shy from playing dumb or shallowly dickish characters. Two movies each with Syndey Pollack, George Roy Hill, Michael Ritchie.
The Chase (Arthur Penn, 1966): 2.5/5
Robert Redford’s escape from prison and imminent return to a small Southern town exposes some sub-Payton Place spouse swapping and racism—and gives the town residents an excuse to get drunk and act badly. Brando is strong and silent as the outsider sheriff. Cast also includes Robert Duvall, Jane Fonda, Angie Dickinson and James Fox, establishing or furthering their personas as introverted cuck, sexpot, nice girl with big boobs, and chinless wonder, respectively.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, rw (George Roy Hill, 1969): 4.5/5
Prefigures Tarantino in that it yada yada yadas through robberies and celebrations to get to the parts where these criminals are just hanging out and talking and bitching, mostly in a light comic mode in contrast to the violence and fatalism of much that surrounds it. Poor Cloris Leachman again shows up as a prostitute finding her own peace. Redford is playing an exaggeratedly terse character-actor role and excels, making a big impression during his scenes and disappearing when it’s Newman’s time to shine.
Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie, 1969): 4.5/5
Spare in dialogue but with a beautiful physicality and authenticity. Some unusual editing radically shortens dialogue scenes and other cliches. Redford is utterly believable and easy to watch as perhaps his most gormless character (among many).
Little Fauss and Big Halsy (Sidney J. Furie, 1970): 3.5/5
As in Bonnie and Clyde, Michael J Pollard falls in with a charismatic ne’er-do-well. Redford first appears shirtless and continues to smile, fuck and drink around the desert dirt-bike racing circuit with charming insouciance and a wide variety of hats. Lauren Hutton’s hippy chick is shown reading a paperback copy of Burroughs’ Soft Machine and then, later, Naked Lunch (?!). Certainly the most explicitly sexy of Redford’s roles.
The Candidate (Michael Ritchie, 1972): 3.5/5
Proceeds more from enjambment and interruption, compared to the blissed-out, physical and near-silent Downhill Racer. Redford starts out as a strong silent type, but the demands of his position require increasingly more talking, each word of which leads him farther from his convictions and his true self. Here Redford is smart and aware of his bland handsomeness—and what it lets him get away with—but also naive and corruptible.
The Way We Were (Sydney Pollack, 1973): 2/5
This movie has a “oh man, I remember exactly where I was when I heard FDR had died” moment. Since that’s 1945, I figure this movie is for people around my mom’s age. (B. 1940). She was 33 when it was released, so this makes perfect sense. Pollack himself was 11 when FDR died. Redford is beautiful and empty (a symbol of all that was “too easy” about America’s success, also see Gatsby). Enlivened by Streisand’s manic Jewish pixie.
The Great Waldo Pepper (George Roy Hill, 1975): 3/5
As with Butch Cassidy, this begins as a light-hearted romp and slowly turns more serious, until it eventually becomes a story about people who would prefer to die on their own mythic terms than betray their essential identities. Similarly concerned with the end of an era (here, of bi-planes and barnstorming) and with the distance between legend and reality.
Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack, 1975): 3/5
Although I prefer Redford’s easygoing hang out movies like Downhill Racer and Little Fauss, I still relished all the (pretty dumb) plot here because it meant that Redford had to act—to be afraid, sad, brave, freaked out, tender, angry—and he’s actually pretty good at it. Believable and well-calibrated.
All the President’s Men, rw (Alan J. Pakula, 1976): 4.5/5
“Reporter as private detective” is still super sexy, although obviously we have lost faith not necessarily in reporting but in the idea that it would make a difference. In this void, what’s left is Hoffman and Redford, and it’s plenty. Redford is confidently underplaying every scene and is generous to Hoffman and every other actor on set. Hoffman attempts and often achieves an almost sexy, nebbishy intelligence. With all the obscure, paranoid, tenuous lines flying everywhere, it reminds one most of JFK and Inherent Vice. The movie is all investigation; all the emotional payoff is done in text just before the end credits.
A Bridge too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977): 2.5/5
An old-fashioned, three-hour, “War is Heck” movie, and a massive display of how well-equipped the American military was in 1944 and the American film industry was in 1979. Dirk Bogarde and Sean Connery carry the first act. James Caan, Elliott Gould and Anthony Hopkins the second. And Ryan O’Neal and Redford the third. (Also features Gene Hackman, Edward Fox, Michael Caine, Liv Ullman, and Laurence Olivier. Where the hell were Steve McQueen and James Coburn?) No doubt because of his current status in Hollywood, Redford leads a very Saving Private Ryan river crossing, possibly the best sequence in the movie. In the lack of actual acting requirements, these actors rely with ease on their personas. Good enough.
One more from George Roy Hill
Slap Shot (George Roy Hill, 1977): 3/5
More hanging out, talking and bitching. But maybe since this is more stupid and raunchy, it’s easy to see these characters as irresponsible man-babies. And upon reflection, maybe the Butch Cassidy and Waldo Pepper characters were as well. Newman soulfully embodies a dumb, ridiculous character with a silver chipped tooth, brown pleather leisure suit and wide-collared silk print shirt.
