Robert Benton, director

Having resurrected the careers of two rather obscure directors, it’s time now to turn to one who is about as main stream as it gets. Robert Benton, who left us at the good old age of 92,  was a great director and a great screenwriter. He was nominated for Oscar in both categories and won once in each.

Bad Company (1972) is the story of some renegade young men who evaded the army during the Civil War and instead headed west and got up to no good at all. Drew (Barry Brown) and Jake (Jeff Bridges) turn on each other frequently as they rob and pillage their way across the American west. Not much honor among thieves here and really nobody to root for, but a good off the beaten path western. Director Benton also wrote the screenplay. Two later films with the same name are pretty bad.

The Late Show (1977) won director Benton another Oscar nomination for the screenplay. The main interest in this film is the surprising acting job by Art Carney, Jackie Gleason’s old sidekick, and Lilly Tomlin, excellent comedian. Carney plays Ira, a retired private eye employed to retrieve a kidnaped cat. Really. Tomlin is a very shaky romantic interest and the plot is incredibly complicated. But fun.

Robert Benton’s crowning achievement is the wonderful Kramer v. Kramer (1979) the bittersweet story of a parental divorce and the fallout produced. Benton won the Oscar for direction and for the screenplay. Dustin Hoffman won Oscar as the father and husband and Meryl Streep won as the wife and mother. And the Best Movie Oscar went to the picture. Hoffman is totally lost as a single parent, but you can’t help pulling for him. And Streep is, as always, just excellent as the leaving parent. Never seen it? Do yourself a favor.

Still Of The Night (1982) stars Roy Scheider as psychiatrist Sam Rice, whose patient George Bynum was murdered. The police lean on him for information about Bynum but he refuses to cooperate. Meryl Streep is one of Bynum’s lady friends who forms a strong bond with Rice as they try to unravel the mystery of Bynum’s murder. Benton again worked with the legendary Streep and equally renowned Jessica Tandy, who plays Rice’s mother and a fellow psychiatrist. And Benton wrote the screenplay.

Places In The Heart (1984) closes with nary a dry eye in the house! Sally Field is recently widowed Edna Spalding. She must somehow get the cotton crop planted and harvested to fend off the hovering bank. Her help must come from blind boarder Mr Will, played by John Malkovich and Moze, a recovering thief played by Danny Glover. Add in an approaching tornado and troubles with the KKK and the mix is set. Field won Oscar for her performance, and Benton won for his screenplay. He was also nominated for direction, but this time lost to Milos Forman for Amadeus.

All of the movies in this article are available somewhere, and Mr. Movie recommends them all. All are for grown-ups. Next time, more Robert Benton winners.

                                                              James Foley, Director

Director James Foley died recently in California. If that name has you scratching your head, no wonder. He was never famous, but he did know what he was doing. His major achievement as a director came from helming seven (!) Madonna videos. At the bottom of his directorial hit list would be two of the dreadful Shades Of Grey movies. May they rest in peace.

    Foley’s first major job as director came in 1984 with Reckless. With Aidan Quinn as teen-age rebel Johnny and Daryl Hannah as upper crust cheerleader Tracey, they are thrown together in high school and in this movie. Well, sparks do not fly. The thing ends with Tracey leaving town with Johnny on his motorcycle. As they ride into the sunset, we shed not a tear. Nor a cheer.

At Close Range (1986) has Foley directing two of Hollywood’s strangest actors, Christopher Walken and Sean Penn. However, these two are consummate pros and do a creditable job in this story that is based fairly closely to the Pennsylvania Bruce Johnson gang. The names are changed to protect from lawsuits, but it is obvious that Walken is the crime father and Penn is the wannabe son. Well, these are not nice people, even to each other, and the film winds down with the son preparing to testify against his father. 

After Dark, My Sweet (1990) could never escape that sappy title, but it is a very good modern crime noir film. Roger Ebert just loved it. Audiences did not; it made less than $3 million from a budget of over $6 million. Foley adapted it from a Jim Thompson novel, gave it a modern polish and turned loose Jason Patric (remember him? Me neither), Bruce Dern and Rachel Ward. In keeping with the noir atmosphere, the shady, damaged characters hatch a plot to kidnap the child of a wealthy man. No, we don’t pull for them have any success. 

James Foley’s crowning achievement as a director is the fine film Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) . With a screenplay by David Mamet, based on his Pulitzer Prize winning play, it has become a great American classic. An office full of desperate real estate salesmen who will do whatever it takes to make a deal is the setting. With Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin and Kevin Spacey on board, it takes a real pro to keep this thing together. And he does. The film was not a commercial success, but was highly praised and is on lot of lists of great movies. 

Confidence (2003) involves several con men conning each other and legitimate targets. Just when you think you have it figured out, you don’t. So yeah, I liked it though it didn’t do much business. 

James Foley directed a dozen episodes of House Of Cards, a hit tv series (2013-18) with Kevn Spacey as a crooked South Carolina politician. 

All of the movies in this article are available somewhere. All are for adults only.

                                                                      Ted Kotcheff

When the highlight of a career as a director is Weekend At Bernie’s (1989), you might think it would be difficult to base a column on this recently deceased guy. And you would be right. But perhaps Mr. Movie is up to it? Let’s find out.

    The film mentioned above is about two young guys who work for an insurance company in New York. They are invited to the Hamptons home of their boss, Bernie, for a fun party week-end. On arriving they find that he is dead. But they’re having such a good time they decide to pretend Bernie is still alive. And they continue to hold him up and convince others he’s okay. Well, that’s the premise. It’s a one-joke movie with a few laughs. It actually made money and spawned two sequels. Ted Kotcheff not only directed but has an acting role to boot. 

And speaking of sequels, Ted Kotcheff directed the very first Rambo movie, First Blood (1982). Sylvester Stallone is a tough Viet Nam vet that everyone for some reason wants to capture or kill. He evades them and kills a whole bunch en route to a somewhat successful conclusion. This action-packed blood fest made lots of money and spawned four (!) sequels, all with Stallone mowing them down.

North Dallas Forty (1979) with Nick Nolte and Mac Davis as aging pro football player paint such a shoddy picture of the NFL that’s it’s no wonder the league refused to help with the filming. Players are hooked on pain killers and forced to play when they should not be, and the drug and alcohol fueled lifestyle is endemic. Coaches, trainers and owners turn a blind eye to all the shenanigans as long as the players suit up and perform. Based on a novel by NFL receiver Peter Gent, this is not a glorification of a gritty, selfish business. This is, perhaps, as close to the truth as a movie ever got to the NFL. Kotcheff’s direction is quite good.

Fun With Dick and Jane (1977) stars George Segal and Jane Fonda as a California couple who appear to have everything until Dick gets fired. Every attempt at recovering their lifestyle legally falls flat. So they decide to pursue a life of crime, carefully robbing only those who can afford it. Like the phone company. They break into their boss’s safe and get $200,000 in cash he kept as a slush fund to bribe politicians as needed. He decides to let them keep it when it appears as though the police will confiscate it and it will be gone. So the moral here is: Crime pays if you’re cute enough. And this Kotcheff outing spawned a sequel that isn’t any better in 2005.

The Human Voice (1966) is the filming of a one-act Jean Cocteau play. It starts Ingrid Bergman who shines as a jilted middle-aged woman in a series of phone conversations with her ex-lover. It’s only 50 minutes long but has quite an impact. This was not an easy film to direct, and Ted Kotcheff here shows that he can pull off a winner out of not much. Bergman is of course worth the price of admission, as always. This film does not seem to be readily available as far as I can find out. 

The other films in this article are available somewhere. All are for adults. 

                                                               Val Kilmer

                                                                 Part 2

    The late (RIP at 65) Val Kilmer had an outstanding movie history.. He was always busy There are over 200 appearances in his short career. Mr. Movie has tried to dig out the very best. 

Kilmer gets the title role in The Saint (1997). This character has been portrayed in numerous movies and TV shows. You could argue that Val is the one of the best. Well, at least it’s different. In most Saint outings he is a good guy, a hero. Not here. This guy is a professional thief who uses various disguises and the names of saints to do his dirty work. But- stay tuned- perhaps his last caper results in a big payday for some charities!

Could film noir work as a tongue-in-cheek comedy. Actually, yes. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) is exactly that with Val Kilmer as private eye Perry Van Slike and Robert Downey, Jr. As a neophyte actor being taught the ropes of crime fighting by Perry. The two observe a car going into a lake and from there things get complicated. 

In Felon (2008) Stephen Duff plays Wade Porter, who winds up in prison after killing a burglar. He doesn’t do well in prison and is transferred to a high security, and very badly run, prison. He is paired with John Smith (Val Kilmer), a hard-bitten lifer. But the two decide to expose the nefarious prison and this goes downhill for Smith, but not so for Porter. 

Cinema Twain (2017) is to me Val Kilmer’s best performance. He begins as this middle-aged rather handsome actor. Before your very eyes he transforms himself into American legend Mark Twain. The monologue is updated with really very little quotation from Twain himself, buy with a good bit of biographical information about the author. Val not only knocks this out of the park, he wrote the thing and is the star. The results are  really quite extraordinary.  

Let’s make a sequel to Top Gun (1986)! Call it Top Gun Maverick (2022). Can we get Tom Cruise back as ace fighter pilot Maverick? Of course. Oh, and can we get Val Kilmer back to play Iceman Kazansky, Maverick’s friendly rival. Certainly. The word is that Cruise and Kilmer’s pressure got this thing made.  Iceman is now a Fleet Admiral, and as such arranges to get Maverick assigned to his unit. Iceman dies before the movies is half over, and this is actually Kilmer’s last film. The aerial part is very exciting. 

Val plays the man himself in Batman Forever (1995) but this is very lesser Batman and not really worth your time. 

    All of the films in this article, except Cinema Twain, are available for rent or purchase. There seems to be a problem with rights for the Twain movie. All are for adults