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

                                                                    Val Kilmer 

    Val Kilmer, handsome and talented, died at 65 from pneumonia complications. He joins a list that is far too long of actors who died too young.  He had battled throat cancer for years, a malady which altered his voice and finally made it difficult for him to even speak. He had quite a good, if brief, movie career.

Kilmer’s first appearance of note came in a role he seemed born to play. In Top Gun (1986) he portrayed the laid-back fighter pilot Ice. He made a good counterpoint to Tom Cruise’s character, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. The two are rivals for the Top Gun trophy that goes to the best pilot. Later they help each other in real battles. The aerial dog fights are outstanding. And yep, you can see these guys in these same roles 36 years later. More on that later. 

As far away as you could get is Willow (1988), a fairy tale with dwarves, wizards, enchanted babies and lots of magic spells. Val Kilmer had a good time playing Madmartigan, a magician able to disguise himself as needed and help the heroes prevail.

    But Kilmer’s big break, and the part for which he is famous, is as Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors (1991).This rock biopic made lots of money and is maybe within shouting distance about the band’s rise to stardom. Val Kilmer does his own singing, and is so very good at it that other band members said they could not tell whether it was Kilmer or Morrison singing. What is perhaps true is the film’s portrayal of Morrison as a drug user, who sees himself as a messianic leader of the rock and roll culture. As the band members tire of Morrison’s antics, including his arrest and conviction for indecent exposure,  the band breaks up and Morrison hightails it for Paris with his wife. She finds him dead in a bathtub. He was 27.

Tombstone (1993) is one of many movies about the gunfight at the Okay Corral beween the Earp brothers and the notorious Cowboys gang, containing Johnny Ringo and the Clantons. Val Kilmer is on the side of the angels here, as Doc Holliday,  an old friend of the Earps. Though very sick with tuberculosis, which eventually kills him, he helps the Earps clear out Tombstone of the bad guys. 

It takes some guts to appear in a film with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, but Val Kilmer pulls it off with panache in Heat (1995). He is Chris, one of the gang of thieves  headed by Neil McCauley (DeNiro). Pacino is Lieutenant Vincent Hannah, tasked with the thankless job of tracking down and arresting the McCauley gang. There’s lots of shooting and double crosses galore and a very complicated screenplay.

All of the movies in this article are available for rent or purchase somewhere. All are for adults. 

                                                       Gene Hackman

                                             Part 5 (enough already!)

Well, it had to end sometime. This is the last article about the late great Gene Hackman’s movies. I could have squeezed a couple more, but enough is enough!

John Grisham’s legal thrillers are always best sellers and also good film material. Gene has been picked to star in three of these. The first one, The Firm (1993) is one of the best. Tom Cruise is Mitch McDeere, a top Harvard Law School grad who signs up with the small, powerful Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke. Gene Hackman is senior partner Avery Tolar, who mentors Mitch and tries to keep him inside the rails. Mitch discovers the firm’s major work is laundering mob money, and that it has been involved in nefarious doings including murder. He rebels. They come after him.

The Chamber (1996) is lesser Grisham and a lesser film. But Gene Hackman carries the water as a convicted Klan member whose grandson tries to redeem him. 

In The Runaway Jury (2003) Gene is a highly paid jury consultant who is actually a jury fixer. When one of his juries turns up a couple who are for sale to the highest bidder, the fun begins. 

Gene Hackman is the title figure in The Royal Tennenbaums (2001), playing the father of three extremely gifted children whose exploits as young adults are splendid. But when Dad leaves the family, things go from good to awful fairly quickly. Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Luke Wilson portray the children. Their struggles and disappointments pepper the story. When Royal decides to return and reunite everyone just like old times, it’s not just like old times. This quirky film is an acquired taste, but there’s no doubt about Hackman’s portrayal. 

Crimson Tide (1994) a suspenser based on Tom Clancy’s novel, stars Gene Hackman as Captain Frank Ramsey, and Denzel Washington as Lt. Commander Ron Hunter. A Soviet submarine has broken away from the Kremlin leadership and is headed for the U.S. Ramsey wants Hunter’s sub, the Alabama, to act aggressively toward the perceived enemy. Hunter counsels patience, fearful of starting World War III. As the subs draw closer toward each other, the tension mounts. The ending is a good one you won’t find here. 

Get Shorty (1995) is very loosely based on Elmore Leonard’s crimedy and is lots of fun. John Travolta portrays Chili Palmer, a Miami gangster sent to Hollywood to collect a bad debt from Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman), a producer who specializes in dreadful horror movies. Enchanted by the sparkly people and surroundings, Chilli discovers that Hollywood isn’t very different from the mob. Hackman is just right as the smarmy Zimm.

This is good-bye to Gene Hackman. All these movies are available somewhere. All are for adults. 

                                                                Gene Hackman

                                                                 Part 4

Yep, there are still lots of good films from the late great Gene Hackman. So here goes- hang on!

Gene is Secretary of Defense David Brice in the edge-of-your-seat thriller No Way Out (1987). Impressed by his ability, he hires Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner) as his in-house operative. Farrell begins an affair with Susan Atwell (Sean Young) unaware that she is Brice’s mistress. When he discovers her wandering, Brice kills her. He attempts to pin the murder on Farrell and there’s all sorts of chicanery leading to a very surprising ending.

Hackman stars as Lt. Col. Gene Hambleton in Bat 21 (1988), another suspenseful thriller. He is an electronics weapons expert with critical knowledge. He is shot down over Vietnam but radios his position as he parachutes down. The North Vietnamese know exactly who he is and want badly to capture him. The rest of the film is about his eluding capture and attempting to escape with the help of Captain Birddog Clark (Danny Glover). Their adventures make for really good movie action. 

Mississippi Burning (1988) is the highly fictionalized story of the murder of three civil activists (Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner) in 1964. FBI agents Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman) and Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) are sent to find the missing civil rights workers and charge those responsible. They receive only hindrance from the locals, under the thumb of the Klan and the local sheriff. But they eventually find the bodies in an earthen dam after a tip, and charge some of the responsible men with civil rights violations. Hackman was nominated for Oscar but lost to Dustin Hoffman for Rain Man. The film itself and its director were also nominated but lost to Rain Man.

Postcards From The Edge (1990) is mostly about a young actress, Suzanne Vale portrayed by Meryl Streep and her movie star mother, Doris Mann (Shirley Maclaine). Both are trying to kick debilitating drug and alcohol addictions and are somehow supposed to help each other. Gene Hackman has a nice turn as film director Lowell Kolchek, who tries to rehabilitate Suzanne with work in his movie. Carrie Fisher wrote the screenplay, based on her book. Mike Nichols directed. 

Unforgiven (1992) won Oscar as Best Movie and was nominated for seven other statues, losing them all. Director and lead actor Clint Eastwood was one of the casualties as was Gene Hackman. Eastwood plays Will Munny, reformed outlaw and owner of a failing farm in Kansas. He is talked into trying for the reward offered for the capture of some bandits in Big Whiskey, Wyoming. The sheriff there is the notorious Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), whose skills as a lawman tends toward beating up or killing suspects. 

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