Cleaning Out The DVR Yet Again #15: Quintet (dir by Robert Altman)

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa recently discovered that she only has about 8 hours of space left on her DVR! It turns out that she’s been recording movies from July and she just hasn’t gotten around to watching and reviewing them yet. So, once again, Lisa is cleaning out her DVR! She is going to try to watch and review 52 movies by Wednesday, November 30th! Will she make it? Keep checking the site to find out!)

The 1979 post-apocalyptic film Quintet aired on FXM on November 15th. I recorded it because this film is often cited as being one of director Robert Altman’s worst but I’ve also read some very passionate defenses of Quintet. Since I’ve enjoyed several of Altman’s films (Nashville, Gosford Park, Short Cuts, The Company, The Player, The Long Goodbye, and many more), I wanted to experience Quintet for myself.

I mean, seriously — a postapocalyptic sci-fi film from Robert Altman!? That would have to be at least interesting, right?

Anyway, I watched Quintet and to be honest, I wasn’t really sure what the Hell was going on for most of the film. Things made a bit more sense after I did a little bit of research and I discovered that Quintet was 1) inspired by a fragment of a dream that Altman had and 2) went into production despite not having a completed script.

Quintet opens with a breath-taking shot of a frozen landscape. There’s been a new ice age. The entire Earth is frozen. There’s only a few hundred humans left and their number is rapidly dwindling. Some, like Essex (Paul Newman) and Vivia (Brigitte Fossey) spend their days hiking across the tundra and hunting seals. Others — like practically everyone else in the entire freaking film — spend their times in ramshackle villages, pursuing what little pleasure they can find while waiting to die.

In this new frozen world, the most popular activity — outside of getting drunk — is playing a board game called Quintet. I have no idea how Quintet is played, though the film is full of scenes of people playing it. From what we do see, it really doesn’t look like that fun of a game but I guess you can’t be picky when you’re waiting to freeze to death. I mean, honestly, if the world’s ending, I’d rather play a board game than charades.

Anyway, in one of the frozen towns, a group of people are having a Quintet tournament, with the rule being that, once you’re eliminated in the board game, you are also killed in real life. (And again, this is where it would have been helpful for the film to take just a few minutes to clarify just how exactly Quintet is played.) One of the Quintet players is killed by a bomb, which unfortunately blows up Viva as well. Seeking revenge (or, at least, I’m guessing that was his motivation because Paul Newman didn’t exactly give the most communicative performance of his career in Quintet), Essex assumes a fake identity and enters the tournament.

Soon, he’s running around the frozen landscape, killing people. He knows that the final player standing will receive a prize of some sort but he doesn’t know what the prize is. How deep! Or something.

Dammit, I really wanted to defend Quintet. I really did. Whenever I see a movie that has gotten almost universally negative reviews, my natural instinct is to try to find something good about it. And I will say this: visually, Quintet is fascinating. A lot of care was put into creating this frozen world and it’s interesting to note how every location is decorated by elaborate ice sculptors. The ice may be destroying civilization but it can’t squelch humanity’s natural creativity.

Unfortunately, Quintet may be well-designed but it’s also a painfully slow film. Just because the film takes place on a glacier, that doesn’t mean that it needs to move like one. The slow pace is not helped by the fact that many of the characters have a tendency to suddenly start delivering these faux profound philosophical monologues, the majority of which are about as deep as the typical Tumblr post.

Quintet stars Paul Newman, who was both an iconic movie star and a legitimately great actor. He spends most of Quintet alternating between looking confused and looking stoic. That said, it’s always interesting to watch an actor like Paul Newman slog his way through an artistic misfire like WUSA or Quintet. Let’s give Paul Newman some credit: he delivered his lines with a straight face. Just as Essex knew he was trapped on a glacier, Paul Newman understood that was trapped in Quintet. Both did what they had to do to survive.

Robert Altman was a great director but Quintet is not a great film.

It happens.

Rebel Rebel: Paul Newman in COOL HAND LUKE (Warner Brothers 1967)

Posted on February 23, 2016 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

The Sixties was the decade of the rebellious anti-hero. The times they were a-changin’ and movies reflected the anti-establishment mood with BONNIE & CLYDE, EASY RIDER, and COOL HAND LUKE. Paul Newman starred as white-trash outsider Luke Jackson, but it was his co-star George Kennedy who took home the Oscar for his role as Dragline, the king of the cons who first despises then idolizes Luke.

War vet Luke gets busted for “malicious destruction of municipal property while drunk”, and sent to a prison farm in Florida. The non-conformist Luke butts heads with both the “bosses” (prison guards aka authority) and Dragline, a near illiterate convict who runs the yard. Dragline and Luke decide to settle their differences in a Saturday boxing match. The hulking Dragline beats the shit out of Luke, but the smaller man keeps getting up for more. Dragline finally walks away, and Luke earns both his and…

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Lisa Reviews an Oscar Winner: The Sting (dir by George Roy Hill)

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier tonight, as a part of their 31 Days of Oscar, TCM aired The Sting, the film that the Academy selected as being the best of 1973. I just finished watching it and what can I say? Based on what I’ve seen of the competition (and there were a lot of great films released in 1973), I would not necessarily have picked The Sting for best picture. However, the movie is still fantastic fun.

The Sting reunited the director (George Roy Hill) and the stars (Robert Redford and Paul Newman) of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and told yet another story of likable criminals living in the past. However, whereas Butch Cassidy largely satirized the conventions of the traditional Hollywood western, The Sting is feels like a loving homage to the films of 1930s, a combination of a gritty, low-budget gangster film and a big budget musical extravaganza. The musical comparison may sound strange at first, especially considering that nobody in The Sting randomly breaks out into song. However, the musical score (which is famously dominated by Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer) is ultimately as much of a character as the roles played by Redford, Newman, and Robert Shaw. And, for that matter, the film’s “let-pull-off-a-con” plot feels like an illegal version of “let’s-put-on-a-show.”

The film takes place in the 1936 of the cultural imagination, a world dominated by flashy criminals and snappy dialogue. When con artists Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) and Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones) inadvertently steal money from a gangster named Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), Lonnegan has Luther murdered. Fleeing for his life, Hooker goes to Chicago where he teams up with Luther’s former partner, veteran con man Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman). Gondorff used to be one of the great con artists but he is now living in self-imposed obscurity, spending most of his time drinking and trying to avoid the FBI. Hooker wants to get revenge on Lonnegan by pulling an elaborate con on him. When Gondorff asks Hooker why, Hooker explains that he can either con Lonnegan or he can kill him and he doesn’t know enough about killing.

The rest of the film deals with Hooker and Gondorff’s plan to con Lonnegan out of a half million dollars. It’s all very elaborate and complicated and a bit confusing if you don’t pay close enough attention and if you’re ADHD like me. But it’s also a lot of fun and terrifically entertaining and that’s the important thing. The Sting is one of those films that shows just how much you can accomplish through the smart use of movie star charisma. Redford and Newman have such great chemistry and are so much fun to watch that it really doesn’t matter whether or not you always understand what they’re actually doing.

It also helps that, in the great 70s tradition, they’re taking down stuffy establishment types. Lonnegan may be a gangster but he’s also a highly respected and very wealthy gangster. When Newman interrupts a poker game, Lonnegan glares at him and tells him that he’ll have to put on a tie before he’s allowed to play. Lonnegan may operate outside the law but, in many ways, he is the establishment and who doesn’t enjoy seeing the establishment taken down a notch?

As entertaining as The Sting may be and as influential as it undoubtedly is (Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean films may be a lot more pretentious — which makes sense considering that Soderbergh is one of the most pretentious directors in film history — but they all owe a clear debt to The Sting), it still feels like an unlikely best picture winner. Consider, for instance, that The Sting not only defeated American Graffiti and The Exorcist but Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers as well. On top of that, when you consider some of the films that were released in 1973 and not nominated — Mean Streets, Badlands, The Candy Snatchers, Day of the Jackal, Don’t Look Now, Jesus Christ Superstar, and The Long Goodbye — it’s debatable whether The Sting should have been nominated at all. That’s not a criticism of The Sting as much as it’s an acknowledgement that 1973 was a very good year in film.

So, maybe The Sting didn’t deserve its Oscar. But it’s still a wonderfully entertaining film. And just try to get that music out of your head!

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #36: WUSA (dir by Stuart Rosenberg)

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recently saw the 1970 film WUSA on Movies TV. After I watched it, I looked Joanne Woodward up on Wikipedia specifically to see where she was born. I was surprised to discover that she was born and raised in Georgia and that she attended college in Louisiana.

Why was I so shocked? Because WUSA was set in New Orleans and it featured Joanne Woodward speaking in one of the most worst Southern accents that I had ever heard. A little over an hour into the film, Woodward’s character says, “What’s all the rhubarb?” And while “What’s all the rhu…” sounds properly Southern, the “…barb” was pronounced with the type of harshly unpleasant overemphasis on “ar” that has given away many Northern actors trying to sound Southern. Hence, I was shocked to discover that Joanne Woodward actually was Southern.

That said, her pronunciation of the word rhubarb pretty much summed up every problem that I had with WUSA. Actually, the real problem was that she said “rhubarb” in the first place. It came across as being the type of thing that a Northerner who has never actually been down South would think was regularly uttered down here. And I will admit that WUSA was made 16 years before I was born and so, it’s entirely possible that maybe — way back then — people down South regularly did use the word rhubarb. But, for some reason, I doubt it. I know plenty of old Southern people and I’ve never heard a single one of them say anything about rhubarb.

As for WUSA, it’s a long and slow film. A drifter named Reinhardt (Paul Newman) drifts into New Orleans and, with the help of an old friend who is now pretending to be a priest (Laurence Harvey), Reinhardt gets a job as an announcer at a right-wing radio station. He reads extremist editorials that he doesn’t agree with and whenever anyone challenges him, he explains that he’s just doing his job and nothing matters anyway.

Reinhardt also gets himself an apartment and spends most of his time smoking weed with long-haired musician types, the exact same people that WUSA regularly denounces as being a threat to the American way. Living in the same complex is Geraldine (Joanne Woodward), a former prostitute who has a scar on her face and who says stuff like, “What’s all the rhubarb?” She falls in love with Reinhardt but finds it difficult to ignore what he does for a living.

Meanwhile, Geraldine has another admirer. Rainey (Anthony Perkins) is an idealistic and neurotic social worker who is regularly frustrated by his efforts to do good in the world. Reinhardt makes fun of him. The local crime boss (Moses Gunn) manipulates him. And WUSA infuriates him. When Rainey realizes that WUSA is a part of a plot to elect an extremist governor, Rainey dresses up like a priest and starts carrying around a rifle.

Meanwhile, Reinhardt has been assigned to serve as emcee at a huge patriotic rally. With Geraldine watching from the audience and Rainey wandering around the rafters with his rifle, Reinhardt is finally forced to take a stand about the people that he works for.

Or maybe he isn’t.

To be honest, WUSA is such a mess of a film that, even after the end credits roll, it’s difficult to figure out whether Reinhardt took a stand or not.

Anyway, WUSA is not a lost masterpiece and I really wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. The film’s too long, there’s too many scenes of characters repeating the same thing over and over again, and neither Newman nor Woodward are particularly memorable. (You know a movie is boring when even Paul Newman seems like a dullard.) On the plus side, Anthony Perkins gives such a good performance that I didn’t once think about the Psycho shower scene while watching him.

As boring as WUSA is, I have to admit that I’m a little bit surprised that it hasn’t been rediscovered. Considering that it’s about a right-wing radio station, I’m surprised that there haven’t been hundreds of pretentious think pieces trying to make the connection between WUSA and Fox News. But, honestly, even if those think pieces were out there, it probably wouldn’t do much for WUSA‘s repuation. According to the film’s Wikipedia page, Paul Newman called it, “the most significant film I’ve ever made and the best.” Paul Newman’s opinion aside, WUSA is pretty dire.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #31: Rachel, Rachel (dir by Paul Newman)

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recently saw the 1968 best picture nominee Rachel, Rachel on TCM and I have to say that, at first, I was rather underwhelmed by it. Don’t get me wrong. I thought it was well-acted. I thought it managed to capture a lot of details of small town life. I thought that, for a film made in 1968, it was surprisingly mature and nonjudgmental when it came to exploring feminine sexuality. I was even more surprised to see a nearly 50 year-old movie that actually featured a sympathetic portrayal of a lesbian. Just consider that the homophobic The Sweet Ride was released at the same time and you can see just how unusually progressive Rachel, Rachel was as far as this was concerned.

And yet, when I first watched Rachel, Rachel, it was difficult for me to connect with it. And I really wasn’t sure why. I mean, it is true that Rachel, Rachel is one of those films that moves at a very deliberate post but, trust me, I’ve seen and enjoyed many films that were a helluva lot slower than Rachel, Rachel. But, for whatever reason, it took me two viewings to really appreciate Rachel, Rachel as a surprisingly sensitive character study.

The film is about Rachel (Joanne Woodward), a 35 year-old virgin who lives with her mother in a small Connecticut town. Since the death of her stern and overbearing father, Rachel has lived with her mother. She’s a withdrawn and meek woman who has frequent fantasies that veer between unrealistic happiness and nightmarish morbidity. Her best friend, another unmarried teacher named Calla (Estelle Parsons), invites Rachel to a revival meeting and, for the first time in her life, Rachel actually allows herself to be openly passionate. After the meeting, Calla suddenly kisses her. Shocked, Rachel temporarily ends their friendship.

Even before the revival meeting, Rachel has run into Nick (James Olsen), a friend from high school who is in town to visit his family. After getting kissed by Calla, Rachel ends up turning to Nick and losing her virginity to him. Rachel believes that she’s in love with Nick and is soon fantasizing about their future children. However, it’s obvious to everyone (except for Rachel) that Nick doesn’t quite feel the same way…

When I first saw Rachel, Rachel, I had a hard time relating to the character of Rachel. I watched and, as much as I tried to be sympathetic, I still found myself wondering how anyone could possibly still be a virgin at the age of 35. I mean, I understand that times were different and all but seriously! I guess back then, people actually were serious about the whole “no sex before marriage” thing. (That probably explains why people used to get married when they were 17.) The film is full of largely silent flashbacks to Rachel’s youth and we see that she was raised in an emotionally repressed environment. She was raised to wait for the right man to come along and, when he didn’t, Rachel eventually found herself as a 35 year-old virgin.

And, without getting too TMI here, let’s just say that I couldn’t relate to Rachel’s situation.

But, when I watched the film for a second time, I discovered that even if I don’t know what it’s like to be a 35 year-old virgin, a lot of Rachel’s experiences were, in their way, universal. Consider the scene at the start of the film where Rachel fantasizes that everyone in town is staring at her as she walks down the sidewalk, all because her slip is showing. Who hasn’t, at some point in their life, felt like everyone was staring at her and judging? And, for that matter, who hasn’t had a Nick in their life?

Interestingly enough, Rachel, Rachel was the directorial debut of the iconic actor Paul Newman. One thing that I’ve noticed about films directed by actors (especially first films) is that the actor-turned-director often seems to feel that he has to prove himself by indulging in as much showy cinematic technique as possible. (And if you don’t understand what I mean, check out George Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.) And, as much as I hate to admit it because I’ve never read one negative word about Paul Newman, I have to admit that Newman’s direction was one of the reasons why, at first, I found myself feeling detached from the film.

While Newman tells most of Rachel’s story in an admirably straight-forward way, he also included just a few too many arty flashbacks and fantasies. Some of the fantasies — like the one at the start of the film that I mentioned two paragraphs ago — are handled well but others are distracting and they remind the viewer that they’re watching a film. And Rachel, Rachel is a film that works best when it’s naturalistic. Whenever it gets too self-consciously cinematic, it takes the viewer a few minutes to get sucked back into Rachel’s story.

But, and this is the important thing, Paul Newman also gets some great work out of his actors. Judging from some other films in which I’ve seen him, James Olson was not a particularly good actor but he was great in Rachel, Rachel. Estelle Parsons has been an overdramatic presence in a few films and a lot of tv shows but she’s great in Rachel, Rachel. And then there’s Joanne Woodward, who was great in a lot of films, including Rachel, Rachel. Newman and Woodward were married when they made Rachel, Rachel and were still married when Newman died 40 years later. Newman reportedly directed Rachel, Rachel because he wanted Woodward to have a great role. Woodward is on-screen throughout the entire film and Newman’s love for her is obvious in every frame.

Rachel, Rachel is a flawed and imperfect film but it’s still worth catching the next time that it shows up on TCM.

Lisa Watches An Oscar Nominee: The Verdict (dir by Sidney Lumet)

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Speaking of the good, old-fashioned star power of Paul Newman, The Hustler and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were not the only films to receive an oscar nomination as the result of his charisma. There’s also The Verdict, a 1982 best picture nominee that would probably be forgotten if not for Paul Newman’s performance. However, since Paul Newman did play the lead role in The Verdict and he did give an amazing lead performance, The Verdict was nominated for best picture and, 33 years later, it ended up on TCM where I just watched it.

That’s the power of good acting.

Paul Newman plays Frank Galvin, a Boston-based attorney. At one time, Frank was a lawyer at an elite firm. But he has since fallen on hard times. Now, he’s the type of attorney who crashes funerals and hands out his card. He spends his spare time at his favorite bar, playing pinball and telling long jokes while stumbling about in a drunken haze. In many ways, Frank represents everything that people hate about personal injury attorneys but, since he’s played by Paul Newman, you know that he’s going to turn out to be a good guy.

Frank only has one friend left in the world, his former mentor Mickey (Jack Warden). Looking to help Frank out, Mickey sends Frank a medical malpractice suit. A woman at a Catholic Hospital was given an anesthetic during child birth that has led to her now being brain dead. Both the woman’s family and the Archdiocese are looking for a settlement. The family needs the money to pay for her medical care. The Archdiocese just wants the case to go away. All Frank has to do is accept whatever settlement deal is offered…

However, something has changed for Frank. He’s visited the comatose woman and, looking at her trapped in a vegetative state, he’s decided that the hospital needs to be held responsible for its mistake. He rejects the settlement and takes the case to court, looking for both justice for the victim and redemption for himself.

That’s easier said than done, of course. The Archdiocese has hired Ed Concannon (James Mason, perfectly cast), one of the best and most powerful attorneys in Boston. Ed has a huge legal team working on the case. Frank has Mickey. As well, the Judge (Milo O’Shea) makes little effort to hide his contempt for Frank.

Probably the only bright spot in Frank’s life is that he’s met a woman. Laura (Charlotte Rampling) meets him in a bar and soon, they’re lovers and Frank is confiding in her about the case. What he doesn’t suspect is that Laura herself is a spy, hired by Concannon.

It looks like all is lost but then Frank discovers that there is one nurse (Lindsay Crouse) who might be willing to tell the truth about what happened at the hospital…

In many ways, The Verdict is a predictable film. From the minute we first meet him, we know that Frank is going to be redeemed. From the minutes that we hear about the case, we know who we’re supposed to root for and who we’re supposed to hiss. Just about every courtroom cliché is present, right down to a surprise witness or two…

But no matter! The Verdict may be predictable but it works. As he proved with 12 Angry Men, Director Sidney Lumet knew how to make legal deliberations compelling and the entire film is full of small but memorable details that elevate it above its simplistic storyline. As a director, Lumet gets good performances from his cast and, as a result, this is a film where the hero is flawed and the antagonists aren’t necessarily evil. Even the Bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston (who, in most films, would have been a cardboard villain) is given a scene where he’s allowed to show some humanity.

And, of course, Paul Newman is great in the role of Frank. When we first meet Frank, he looks and sounds terrible. Indeed, it’s strange to see Paul Newman playing a character who is essentially such a loser. (Even Eddie Felson in The Hustler had an appealing swagger about him.) It’s during the scenes where Frank considers the woman in a coma that Newman starts to reveal that there’s more to Frank than what’s on the rough surface. By the end of the film, Frank may be a hero but Newman doesn’t play him as such. He’s still has that alcoholic rasp in his voice and his eyes still betray hints of insecurity and a fear that, at any minute, he’s going to screw up and mess everything up. It’s a great performance, one for which Newman received a nomination for best actor.

Speaking of star power, Bruce Willis also shows up in The Verdict. He’s an extra who appears as an observer in the courtroom. He’s sitting a few rows behind Paul Newman. (He’s also sitting beside Tobin Bell, the Jigsaw Killer from the Saw films). It’s probably easiest to spot Willis towards the end of the film, when the verdict is read. Bruce breaks out into a huge grin and almost looks like he’s about to start clapping. Bruce only gets about 10 second of screen time but he acts the Hell out of them!

Thanks to Paul Newman, The Verdict is a memorable and entertaining film. Be sure to watch it the next time it shows up on TCM.

Lisa Watches An Oscar Nominee: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (dir by George Roy Hill)

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Should I start this post by ticking everyone off or should I start out by reviewing the 1969 best picture nominee Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid?

Let’s do the review first. I recently watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when it aired as a part of TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar. This was actually my third time to see the film on TCM. And, as I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the third time, I was shocked to discover how much I had forgotten about the film.

Don’t get me wrong. I remembered that it was a western and that it starred Paul Newman and Robert Redford as real-life outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I remembered that it opened and ended with sepia-toned sequences that suggested that Butch and Sundance represented the last gasp of the old west. I remembered that Butch won a fight by kicking a man in the balls. I also remembered that they robbed the same train twice and, the second time, they accidentally used too much dynamite. I remembered that, for some reason, Butch spent a lot of time riding around on a bicycle. I remembered that Butch and Sundance ended up getting chased by a mysterious posse. I remembered that Sundance could not swim. And I remembered that the film eventually ended on a tragic note in South America…

And I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “It sounds like you remembered the whole movie, Lisa!”

No, actually I did not. The thing with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is that the scenes that work are so memorable that it’s easy to forget that there’s also a lot of scenes that aren’t as memorable. These are the scenes where the film drags and you’re thankful that Paul Newman and Robert Redford were cast as Butch and Sundance, because their charisma helps you overlook a lot of scenes that are either too heavy-handed or which drag on for too long. You’re especially thankful for Newman, who plays every scene with a twinkle in his wonderful blue eyes and who is such a lively presence that it makes up for the fact that Redford’s performance occasionally crosses over from being stoic to wooden. It can be argued that there’s no logical reason for a western to feature an outlaw riding around on a bicycle while Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head plays on the soundtrack but Paul Newman’s so much fun to watch that you can forgive the film.

Newman and Redford both have so much chemistry that they’re always a joy to watch. And really, that’s the whole appeal of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the chance to watch two iconic actors have fun playing opposite each other. Even though Katharine Ross appears as their shared romantic interest, the film’s love story is ultimately between Butch and Sundance (and, by extension, Newman and Redford). You can find countless reviews that will give all the credit for the film’s appeal to William Goldman’s screenplay. (You can also find countless self-satisfied essays by William Goldman where he does the exact same thing.) But, honestly, the film’s screenplay is nothing special. This film works because of good, old-fashioned star power.

Now, for the part that’ll probably tick everyone off (heh heh), I think that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is actually a pretty good pick for a future remake. All you have to do is pick the right actors for Butch and Sundance. I’m thinking Chris Pratt as Butch and Chris Evans as Sundance…

Oh, c’mon! It’ll be great!

Lisa Watches an Oscar Nominee: The Hustler (dir by Robert Rossen)

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For my final Oscar-nominated film of the night, I watched the 1961 film The Hustler.

Filmed in harsh black-and-white and featuring characters who live on the fringes of conventional society, The Hustler is one of those films that’s so unremittingly bleak that it would probably be so depressing as to be unwatchable if not for the talented cast. Paul Newman plays “Fast Eddie” Felson, a pool hustler who is talented but cocky, a guy who has the talent of a winner and the self-centered, self-pitying personality of a loser. When we first meet Eddie, he and his manager, Charlie (Myron McCormick) have traveled all the way from Oakland to New York, all so Eddie can challenge and hopefully beat the legendary pool player Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). Eddie does get his chance to challenge Minnesota (or perhaps I should call him Mr. Fats?) and comes close to winning. However, in the end, Eddie is too arrogant and impulsive and he ends up losing to Mr. Fats.

Defeated and humiliated, Eddie is hiding his meager possessions in a storage locker at the local bus station when he first meets Sarah Packard (Piper Laurie). Sarah is an alcoholic and an aspiring writer. She claims to be a part-time student but we never actually see her in class. She walks with a pronounced limp and she has a habit of declaring the world to be “perverted, twisted, and crippled.” Soon, she and Eddie are living together, two lost souls who support and destroy each other at the same time. When Sarah attempts to write a short story about Eddie, Eddie responds by destroying the page and ordering her to never write about him again. Charlie views Sarah as a destructive influence and decides that he doesn’t want to have anything else to do with Eddie.

However, Eddie soon finds a new manager. Bert Gordon (a demonic George C. Scott) is a gambler who says that if Eddie sticks with him, Eddie will not only get rich but he’ll defeat Minnesota Fats as well. At first, Eddie wants nothing to do with Bert but, when his own attempts at hustling lead to him getting his thumbs broken, Eddie has a change of heart. Under Bert’s guidance, Eddie find success but he does so at the expense of what little decency that he had to begin with…

Eddie is an interesting character, one who most viewers will probably have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, he’s a jerk. He’s an arrogant, cocky jerk who thinks that he’s the best and who either uses or allows himself to be used by almost everyone that he meets. Though he definitely ends up being exploited by Bert, Eddie knew what he was getting into when he made his deal with the devil. Though he loves Sarah and she loves him, Eddie still treats her poorly. There are just so many reasons to dislike Eddie Felson.

Except, of course, Eddie Felson is played by Paul Newman.

Seriously, it is possible to dislike a character played by Paul Newman? As an actor, Newman was so charismatic and projected an innate goodness that came through even when he was playing a character who didn’t always do nice things. As written, the character of Eddie spends the majority of the movie acting like a louse. But, as played by Newman, Eddie becomes a wounded anti-hero, the bad boy that every girl dreams of somehow redeeming.

Ultimately, there are many reasons to see The Hustler. Gleason and Laurie both give good performances. George C. Scott, meanwhile, is like a force of nature. Just listen to him as he shouts, “You owe me money!” Director Robert Rossen finds an odd beauty in some of the sleaziest parts of New York City. But, in the end, the main reason to see The Hustler is for Paul Newman’s amazing performance in the title role. It’s a great performance that elevates the entire film.

I have to admit that I don’t know much about pool. During my first college semester, I lived in a dorm that had a pool table in the front lobby. There was always a large group of people gathered around that table, playing pool and generally looking like a bunch of hipster douchebags. Sitting in the lobby meant having to listen to a constant soundtrack of balls clacking against each other, followed by people saying, “Such-and-such in the corner pocket” or whatever the Hell it is people say when they’re playing pool. (To be honest, though I could hear the voices, I rarely listened to what they were actually saying.) I don’t know if the people playing pool in the lobby were any good. But, after seeing The Hustler, I can say that Eddie Felson would have beaten all of them.

Shattered Politics #52: Blaze (dir by Ron Shelton)

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh those crazy Southern politicians!

As I’ve mentioned in a few other reviews, filmmakers have always loved to make movies about the crazy demagogues that we have historically tended to elect down here in the South. Sometimes, those movies are serious and thought-provoking, like All The King’s Men. And sometimes, like in Hold That Co-Ed, a film will attempt to play up the inherent humor in rabble rousing. And then you’ve got films like Ada and Hurry Sundown, which are so melodramatic that those of us down South just have to shake our heads in amazement that people up North actually believe this stuff.

The 1989 film Blaze (which is currently making the rounds on cable) is a part of this cinematic tradition of films about flamboyant Southern politicians. It’s part comedy and part melodrama and, perhaps not surprisingly, it takes place in 1950s Louisiana.

(Why isn’t that surprising? Listen, my family used to live in Louisiana. I still visit Louisiana on a fairly regularly basis. Louisiana is crazy. That’s one reason why I love it.)

Blaze is based on the true story of Gov. Earl K. Long (played here by Paul Newman). The younger brother of former Governor Huey P. Long (who himself served as the basis for the character of Willie Stark in All The King’s Men), Earl served as governor for three non-consecutive terms. He was a flamboyant populist, in the style of his older brother, the type who campaigned as one of the “common” people and who was either extremely corrupt or extremely progressive, depending on which historian you happen to be reading.

In Blaze, Earl is nearing the end of his third term. Because the state’s constitution does not allow a governor to succeed himself, Earl is currently campaigning for lieutenant governor, with the plan being that one of Earl’s allies will be elected governor and will then resign so that Earl can succeed him. While this is traditionally the sort of thing that voters in Louisiana would love, Earl is struggling because some voters are angry over his support for the civil rights movement.

Earl is also struggling because he’s just met Blaze Starr (Lolita Davidovich), a much younger stripper from West Virginia. For Earl, it’s love at first sight and soon, Blaze feels the same way. Soon, she and Earl are going across the state together. However, after Earl’s opponents arrange for him to be sent to a mental asylum, Blaze is forced to consider that she might be too big of a political liability to remain with the man she loves.

If that all sounds incredibly romanticized — well, it is. After I watched Blaze, I did a little bit research on Earl and Blaze. To say the film is fictionalized would be an understatement. (Though, interestingly enough, Earl actually was sent to a mental asylum while serving as governor.) But is that really a surprise? Would audiences rather watch a movie about a corrupt, old racist who regularly cheated on his wife or would they rather watch a romanticized love story with hissable villains and moments of crowd-pleasing comedy?

As for the film itself, it’s okay. It moves a bit too slowly for its own good and it’s never quite as enthralling as you might hope it would be, but both Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich are well-cast and have a likable chemistry. I related to the film’s version of Blaze Starr, mostly because we’re both redheads with big boobs who have a natural distrust of authority figures. If you’re into Southern politics and you’re not obsessed with historical accuracy, you might enjoy Blaze.

Embracing the Melodrama #31: When Time Ran Out (dir by James Goldstone)

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If I had been alive in the 70s, I would have been terrified if I had ever found myself in the same general location of Paul Newman, William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Jacqueline Bisset, or Burgess Meredith. Just based on the movies that they spent that decade appearing in, it would appear that disaster followed them everywhere.

Just consider:

Both Paul Newman and William Holden were trapped in The Towering Inferno.

Ernest Borgnine and Red Buttons both ended up taking an unexpected Poseidon Adventure together.

Jacqueline Bisset was a flight attendant in the first Airport and nearly got killed by a mad bomber.

And finally, Burgess Meredith was a passenger on The Hindenburg.

Seriously, that’s a dangerously disaster-prone bunch of thespians!

So imagine how terrifying it must have been on the set of the 1980 film When Time Ran Out when all 6 of those actors — along with a lot of other disaster film veterans — were first gathered in one place. People were probably running for their lives, both on-screen and off.

When Time Ran Out takes place on an island in the South Pacific. Shelby Gilmore (William Holden, playing yet another ruthless but essentially good-hearted businessman) owns a luxury resort that happens to be sitting dangerously close to an active volcano. Oil rigger Hank Anderson (Paul Newman) is convinced that the volcano is about to erupt but Shelby’s son-in-law, Bob Spangler (James Franciscus), refuses to listen and claims that even if the volcano does blow, the resort will be safe.

(As a sidenote, why were William Holden’s son-in-laws always too blame in disaster movies? First, you had Richard Chamberlain in The Towering Inferno and now, it’s James Franciscus in When Time Ran Out…)

Suspended over a volcano

You can just look at the film’s title (When Time Ran Out!) and guess that Bob is probably wrong. However, Bob has other things on his mind. First off, he’s cheating on his neurotic wife (Veronica Hamel) with a native islander (Barbara Carrera) who happens to be married to the hotel’s general manager, Brian (Edward Albert). Brian also happens to be Bob’s half-brother and is therefore owed at least half of Bob’s fortune but nobody but Bob realizes that.

And, of course, there are other colorful guests at the hotel who will soon find themselves either fleeing from or drowning in molten lava. There’s a white-collar criminal (Red Buttons) who is being pursued by a detective from New York (Ernest Borgnine, of course). There’s also two retired tightrope walkers (Burgess Meredith and Valentina Cortese) and you better believe that there’s going to be a scene where one of them is going to have to walk across a plank that happens to be suspended over a river a lava…

Told ya!

Eventually, that volcano does erupt and…well, let’s just say that When Time Ran Out is no Towering Inferno as far as the special effects are concerned. The scene where one random fireball flies out of the volcano and heads for the resort is particularly amusing for all the wrong reasons. Not only does the volcano apparently have perfect aim but it’s also painfully obvious that the fireball is streaking across a matte painting. This is the type of film where, when people plunge into a river lava, they do so with heavy lines visible around their flailing bodies. That, along with the cast’s obvious lack of interest in the material, adds up to make When Time Ran Out a film that is memorable for being so ultimately forgettable.

The Horror!

(It’s odd to consider that this film was directed by the same James Goldstone who directed such memorable films as Rollercoaster and Brother John.)

When Time Ran Out is something of a historical oddity because it was the last of the old 70s all-star disaster films. (This may have been released in 1980 but it’s a 70s film through and through.) The movie was such a monumental failure at the box office that it pretty much ended an era of disaster films.

For that reason, it also feels like an appropriate film with which to close out the 70s. Tomorrow, we’ll continue to embrace the melodrama with the 1980s.