Brian's Thoughts on Movies

Robert Redford announced that he will retire from acting after the release of his upcoming film Old Man and the Gun.   I have been watching Redford films throughout my life and lately have truly appreciated that he continues to contribute interesting material.   Redford used his star power to get some of the best films of the 1970s made.   I will leave it to others to sum up his career and discuss the overall impact of the Sundance Film Institute.   I think he is an intelligent and underrated actor who brings both a star presence and a sense of authenticity to any part he plays.   Redford has only be ennominated once for an Oscar as an actor (for The Sting).   Below as a brief tribute are my top five favorite films in which he appears as an actor.   For the sake of brevity I omitted his directing career. All is Lost (2013) Some of my favorite films are survival stories.   A few years ago I wrote a post on Cast Away. Another film I am very...

“I suppose it’s time to go but I would rather stay” President Abraham Lincoln’s last words to his Cabinet, April 14, 1865 (quote from both the film Lincoln and “Team of Rivals”) Recently I finished the book “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which won several historical awards and is the best book about Abraham Lincoln I have read.   “Team of Rivals” examines Lincoln’s political life, as well as that of his cabinet and generals in the Civil War, many of whom were rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860.   At a time when in the U.S. we have a president who insults anyone who disagrees with him on Twitter, and appreciates the political support he receives from white supremacy groups, I savored spending time reading about the first Republican president whose kindly nature and incredible political savviness kept the United States together and led to the end of slavery. The 754 page book is too long to fully adapt into a film (though it would be a fascinatin...

The Kill Bill movies Vol 1 (2003) and Vol. 2 (2004) were famously filmed as one and then split once writer director Quentin Tarantino (the director of Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained) could not find a way to edit his story down to an acceptable length.  Tarantino’s films tend to be over 2 ½ hours so upon learning that his much anticipated revenge epic starring Uma Thurman, who had a small but memorable role in Pulp Fiction, would be two films I felt it a good choice as it would neither dilute the story nor would it be so long that getting through it would be an endurance test.  Also after getting one Tarantino film I would not have wait a few years for the next one as they were released a mere six months apart. For a years a full version planned for DVD called Kill Bill-The Whole Bloody Affair but it was never released. Tarantino and Thurman first conceived the film while working on Pulp Fiction (1994) and it was the first film Tarantino had...

"I'm too old for this s---!" The four films of the Lethal Weapon series starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, were all directed by Richard Donner which is unique and the biggest key to its success.  Donner’s sense of how to handle the material and the actors and crew’s trust in him fueled the series. Each film touches on a real world issue:,drugs, apartheid, teenage gun violence, and human slavery.  In the first two films the cops are working on assigned cases but in the third and fourth film they stumble onto it.  Ultimately the films focus much more on the relationship between the two men than on their detective work and the relationship is what kept audiences coming back. Lethal Weapon (1987) It is the darkest of the series and although I usually like this, the bond between the men is not as strong which keeps the film from being my favorite.  Although the film is driven by a duo only one of them is a title character.  The f...

"As the sun sets in the west we bid you a fond farewell" True Romance plays like a heist film in reverse in which a newlywed couple named Clarence and Alabama, played by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, try to secure their future by selling cocaine that Clarence inadvertently stole from Alabama’s former pimp, Drexel played by Gary Oldman.  The film focuses on their burgeoning relationship as much as the unpredictable environment the couple finds themselves in while getting mixed up with some pretty nasty and colorful characters. As always I discuss spoilers so please watch the film first. Quentin Tarantino sold this script, one of two from early in his career before he was able to direct his own film.  Natural Born Killers is the other, a story about a vile couple that was changed substantially by director Oliver Stone.  Director Tony Scott in turn made some structural changes to True Romance but maintained the soul of the script and injected it with ...