by ·Comments Off on Night Moves (1975, Arthur Penn)

Watched this in mid-Feb, not intending it as a Gene Hackman memorial screening, but here we are. Great detective plot, Gene a two-bit private eye who finds the missing girl a half hour into the movie then sticks around as new smuggling/murder plots continue to unfold, until the girl (Melanie Griffith a decade pre-Body Double) is dead, movie stunt coordinator Ed Binns (Sixth Angry Man) is dead after two crashes and trying to murder Gene, giggling stuntman Marv dead underwater, mechanic James Woods floating in the dolphin pool, stepdad John Crawford (DEI-enforcing mayor of The Enforcer) guilty possibly dead, and tough Florida girl Jennifer Warren, whom Gene and I were both really getting to like, head smashed by a plane. Side plot of Gene discovering his own wife’s affair (via an Eric Rohmer movie date) then trying to repair his marriage, which doesn’t go too well, as he keeps returning to this case. Matt Singer gets it, and Filipe points out that “everything plot related happens offscreen.”

by ·Comments Off on The Conversation (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)

It was instructive to watch a perfect 35mm print of a 1970’s movie at the Plaza the night after watching a 4k DCP restoration of a 1980’s movie from the same seat. The 35mm cost more to attend, since screenings are increasingly rare – this is probably my first time seeing a movie on film since The Grand Bizarre 3.5 years ago. I forget who it was who said digital projection is just watching television in public but… I couldn’t really tell the difference?

I remembered the very end of this – Hackman playing sax in his ruined apartment after failing to discover how he’s being surveilled – but not most of the rest, and especially not that his secretive rich client Robert Duvall is the one who gets murdered in the hotel – presumably by the client’s wife and bf whom Hackman’s group was recording in the park at the beginning.

Hackman’s character is especially memorable here – he’s catholic, lives by a strict code, appears to be a master of his craft, but keeps taking jobs that end in murders, getting tricked and betrayed and spied on. Nice spy-movie construction too – we never learn everything, like what the Director’s assistant Harrison Ford was up to. If this was influenced by Blowup, then Blow Out is kinda a remake of both movies.

by ·Comments Off on Downhill Racer (1969, Michael Ritchie)

Maybe they really don’t make ’em like this anymore. Watched on a whim, dunno Michael Ritchie (two Fletch movies and Prime Cut) and this isn’t about anything of interest (Robert Redford is a hotshot replacement skier on the US olympic team coached by Gene Hackman), but visually it’s really well put together. Maybe not the undercranked-looking wide shots of ski races, but everywhere else the editing and movement is very alive. Redford likes a girl, of course: Swedish Camilla Sparv (of The Trouble with Angels), who is working for a ski manufacturer, and of course he has rivalries with his teammates, including good dude Jim McMullan (of a couple Joel Schumacher movies), who gets laid up and misses the olympics. Not running out and recommending this as an example of Pure Cinema, but more watchable than a late 60’s New Hollywood sports movie has any business being.

What skiing leads to: