In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

Manhattan (1979)
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen & Marshall Brickman
Produced by Charles H. Joffe
96 minutes

Of the 39 feature films he’s directed and written so far, neither the Oscar winning Best Picture Annie Hall nor the handful of other treasures in the Woody Allen vault have the timeless magnificence of Manhattan. Allen discussed the idea of shooting a movie in anamorphic widescreen with cinematographer Gordon Willis on the set of Interiors in 1977. Their ambition was to make a movie that captured an intimacy typically blown away by epic framing and since the story would take place in New York, use black & white film stock to express the vibe of the city. Allen — who grew up in Brooklyn and was introduced to Manhattan via Hollywood movies – began coming up with scenes as he listened to Michael Tilson Thomas recordings of George Gershwin. He then wrote a script with Marshall Brickman.

Manhattan is a valentine for the other 364 days on the calendar. Allen’s intent was to make a picture more serious than Annie Hall but funnier than Interiors, “a serious picture that had laughs in it”. Manhattan fits that bill better than just about any movie you could name. Allen’s one-liners aren’t the knee slappers they may have once been, but the film’s visual and symphonic splendor are as enthralling as they ever were. Expressing the resplendence of a city as it existed mostly in his own dreams, Manhattan volleys between Allen’s contention that we’re being too tough on ourselves, while in the moments that matter most, not being nearly tough enough. Diane Keaton and Mariel Hemingway — far sexier in other roles — have never seemed more beautiful than they are here, while Woody gives his most nuanced performance.

Four friends gather for supper at Elaine’s. Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) is a 42-year-old writer working on a book set in the city he adores. His 17-year-old girlfriend Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) has more intelligence and maturity than Isaac’s ego will give her credit for. His best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is married to Emily (Anne Byrne) but leaving the restaurant, reveals to Isaac that he’s become involved with another woman. Isaac is unable to offer much relationship advice as his second ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep) has taken up with a woman and is publishing a tell-all memoir about their marriage, or as she calls it, “an honest account of our breakup.” While Tracy asserts that she’s in love with Isaac, he advises the teenager to view their relationship as little more than “a detour on the highway of life.”

Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Isaac and Tracy run into Yale and his mistress: journalist and neurotic dingbat Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton). She offends Isaac by disparaging all of his cultural heroes — from Heinrich Boll to Ingmar Bergman — in under a minute. Nervous about his future once he quits a job writing for a hip sketch TV show, Isaac bumps into Mary at a benefit for the Museum of Modern Art and ends up wandering Manhattan with her until sunrise. Yale develops a guilty conscience after breaking off his affair and when Isaac maintains that he’s not serious about Tracy, compels his friend to give Mary a call. Isaac and Mary leap right into a relationship, which ends up being undermined when Mary confesses she still has feelings for Yale. Realizing he made a mistake by dumping Tracy, Isaac sets out to make things right.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 16,781 users: 92% for Manhattan

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
Directed by Nunnally Johnson
Screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, based on the book by Corbett H. Thigpen M.D. & Hervey M. Cleckley M.D.
Produced by Nunnally Johnson
91 minutes

The Three Faces of Eve is so ridiculous that it begs for a spot on Mystery Science Theater. That may be a warning to ignore this, or an invitation to watch it, depending on your taste. The film is based on a case of multiple personality documented in a woman in Georgia known only at that time as “Eve”. Writer-producer Nunnally Johnson — who adapted The Grapes of Wrath and How To Marry A Millionaire — read the manuscript in galleys and sold Fox on purchasing the screen rights before the book’s publication in 1957. Johnson’s first choice to play Eve was Jennifer Jones, who demurred. Marilyn Monroe was considered, then Judy Garland. Joanne Woodward was a TV veteran under contract to Fox and despite having only two screen credits at that time, won the part. Woodward’s performance then won the Academy Award for Best Actress, the one and only Oscar nomination of her career.

Earnestly narrated by Alistair Cooke — who in a dash of retro style actually appears on camera to deliver an introduction for everyone in the cheap seats — the drama is thinly sketched, the psychology is poorly rationalized and the production is cheaply shot on the Fox lot, albeit in wide angle proscenium “CinemaScope” by director of photography Stanley Cortez. If given a sense of humor, the script might have been more appropriate for the Texaco Star Theatre with Milton Berle playing Eve. That said, the saving grace of The Three Faces of Eve is Joanne Woodward, the kooky hipster chick and wife of Paul Newman who seemed to blaze a trail in independent film 30 years before Sundance or Miramax existed (her contemporary might be Toni Collette). In what would barely qualify as a movie by today’s standards, Mrs. Woodward is nothing short of beguiling.

In an on camera introduction by “Distinguished Journalist and Commentator” Alistair Cooke, we the audience are assured that the events of the movie we’re about to see are based on an account of “multiple personality” that is a matter of psychiatric record. On August 20, 1951 somewhere in Georgia, dreary housewife Eve White (Joanne Woodward) and her husband Ralph (David Wayne) are referred to a psychiatrist named Dr. Charles Luther (Lee J. Cobb), Eve reports suffering from splitting headaches followed by spells in which she blacks out. Her health improves for few months until Ralph discovers $218 in clothes and shoes in their bedroom. Despite her signature on the receipt, Eve denies having purchased the items. Leaving his wife alone with their daughter Bonnie, Eve next tries to strangle the girl when she refuses to be quiet.

Confiding to Dr. Luther that she hears voices, Eve suffers a spell in her psychiatrist’s office and a new personality emerges. Giving the name “Eve Black”, this side of Eve is a party girl who expresses contempt toward Ralph. Dr. Luther’s colleague Dr. Day (Edwin Jerome) is prepared to pronounce her a faker, but when the spells continue, Eve is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Feeling Eve Black is no threat to her other personality, Eve White is released, but her husband struggles to accept his wife’s illness. When Eve Black reasserts herself and goes out on the town, Ralph hits her. Placed under therapy, Eve reveals a third personality. Giving the name “Jane”, this side of Eve balances her disparate poles and even begins dating a new beau (Ken Scott). Searching for answers, Dr. Luther places Jane under hypnosis and digs into her past.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 70 users: 91% for The Three Faces of Eve

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

The Innocents (1961)
Directed by Jack Clayton
Screenplay by William Archibald and Truman Capote and John Mortimer, based on the novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Produced by Jack Clayton
100 minutes

Submitted in the category of greatest horror movies you’ve never seen is The Innocents, Jack Clayton’s exquisite, heart in a vise adaptation of The Turn of the Screw. The 1898 novella by Henry James had inspired a Broadway play by William Archibald in 1950 (titled The Innocents) and an NBC television drama starring Ingrid Bergman and directed by John Frankenheimer in 1959. Public domain in the United States, 20^th Century Fox owned international rights to James’ story and launched a film version as a British production. Archibald adapted his play, but once Clayton chose the project as his sophomore directorial effort, the director hired John Mortimer to contribute to the story. Clayton then turned to Truman Capote to flesh out a script, utilizing much of James’ dialogue but tweaking some of the action.

The Innocents is a thrill because it exercises artistic restraint, obscuring its images with space and shadow and inviting the audience to give the horrors substance. Under orders to shoot with “Cinemascope” anamorphic lenses Fox had developed and publicized, director of photography Freddie Francis (who’d move into the director’s chair for 15 years until David Lynch recruited him to light The Elephant Man in the same dreamlike fashion) generated claustrophobia with a special lens filter that created an iris effect, clouding the edges of the frame. The child performances are devilish, while Deborah Kerr is just nervous enough to imply that her character may not have both her oars in the water. Like Ridley Scott at his best, Clayton lavishes the film in striking detail and mood with a script that never strays into any blind alleys.

Unwilling to raise his orphaned niece and nephew, a London based man about town (Michael Redgrave) interviews Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) for the position. Inexperienced as a governess, Miss Giddens seems to care enough about children for an uncle seeking a speedy replacement for the previous governess Miss Jessel, who has died. Sent to his country estate in Bly — which her employer describes as “a rather large, a rather lonely place” — Miss Giddens is relieved to get along so well with her adventurous young charge Flora (Pamela Franklin). The genial housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins) confirms that like their uncle, the children can be quite charming and persuasive. When Flora’s brother Miles (Martin Stephens) is suddenly expelled from boarding school, he arrives at Bly for the summer, just as his sister oddly mentioned he would the night before.

Strange things begin to occur at Bly. Under glare of the sun, Miss Giddens spots a man watching her from a tower top. Climbing the stairs, she finds Miles playing there, alone; Mrs. Grose claims that other than two maids and a gardener, no one else shares the estate with them. Playing hide and seek with the children, Miss Giddens glimpses a woman wandering the corridor and while hiding downstairs, she comes face to face with the apparition she spotted on the tower, peering at her through a window. The man she describes to Mrs. Grose is confirmed to be Peter Quint (Peter Wyngarde), an ill-tempered valet who suffered a fatal fall outside that window. Discovering that Miss Jessel drowned herself after Quint’s death, Miss Giddens becomes convinced that the spirits have taken possession of the children in a bid to be reunited from beyond the grave.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 130 users: 86% for The Innocents

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes.

Here’s Part 2 of a bill featuring high tech conspiracies in L.A.

Blue Thunder (1983)
Directed by John Badham
Written by Dan O’Bannon & Don Jakoby and Dean Riesner (uncredited)
Produced by Gordon Carroll
109 minutes

There haven’t been many movies about the LAPD’s Air Support Division. That might be due to logistics, or maybe the best picture you could possibly make in that milieu has already been done: Blue Thunder. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon was so incensed by the ghetto bird buzzing his L.A. abode that he was inspired to write a thriller — with USC Film School buddy Don Jakoby — about a Travis Bickle type going AWOL in a police helicopter above the City of Angels. Columbia Pictures loved the ballistic third act, the crazed lone nut in the first and second acts not so much, prompting rewrites in which the LAPD became good guys and government spooks were invented as bad guys. O’Bannon & Jakoby at the time lambasted the finished film, a box office hit that inspired two TV series in the ‘80s; Airwolf on CBS and the short lived Blue Thunder on ABC, one even cheesier than the other.

Blue Thunder is wound like a Swiss watch and designed with almost the same level of craftsmanship, briskly introducing us to Los Angeles, the rigmarole of the Air Support Division (dubbed “Astro Division” in the film to avoid hate mail flooding the LAPD) and issues of privacy on the approach to the year 1984. The action is set up gracefully and executed tenaciously, while a post-Watergate malaise gives the film an edge. John Alonzo’s lighting and Arthur Rubenstein’s electronic score were cutting edge for their time and hold up well, while the casting is superb. It’s easy to forget how strong a leading man Roy Scheider was, while the magnificent Warren Oates — in his final movie — chews up scenery like a buzzsaw. Director John Badham shot the film back-to-back with WarGames and was in a zone, fusing high concept, high tech, compelling characters and fun without crossing over into cartoon.

Maverick police helicopter pilot Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider) breaks in a new partner, the baby faced Richard Lymangood (Daniel Stern) who’s transferred over for some supposed peace and quiet in the haze above Los Angeles. While the men spy on a yoga practitioner in Encino known to perform in the nude, a city commissioner is attacked outside her home in Brentwood and shot. Reprimanded for his flight patterns by the loquacious Captain Braddock (Warren Oates), Murphy contends that the attack on the city commissioner was no attempted rape but a stakeout. A Vietnam vet compressed with PTSD, Murphy makes up with his oddball girlfriend (Candy Clark) and returns to the crime scene, where a memo he retrieves from the commissioner’s lawn has the cryptic word THOR written on it.

Assigned a special detail, Murphy accompanies Braddock and two feds to the demonstration of a prototype helicopter designed for crowd control in the Los Angeles ’84 Summer Olympics. “Blue Thunder” is equipped with a 20mm gun turret, turbine boost, whisper mode and surveillance devices that see and hear through walls. The test pilot is Colonel Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell), a nefarious operator Murphy knew in ‘Nam. In an attempt to rub out his competition, Cochrane sabotages Murphy’s chopper. Staying alive long enough to take Blue Thunder for a test spin, Murphy and Lymangood discover the feds have big plans for THOR (Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response), instigating social unrest in L.A. to justify military expenditures. Framed by Cochrane and the feds running the project, Murphy commandeers their toy and takes to the friendly skies.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 147 users: 65% for Blue Thunder

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes.

Here’s Part 1 of a bill featuring high tech conspiracies in L.A.

The Star Chamber (1983)
Directed by Peter Hyams
Screenplay by Roderick Taylor and Peter Hyams, story by Roderick Taylor
Produced by Frank Yablans
109 minutes

Though Michael Douglas had played opposite Geneviève Bujold in Coma and Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome, uncovering conspiracies in the healthcare and energy sectors, the producer and actor took a step toward becoming a movie star with The Star Chamber, an unabashed B-movie of the type that used to star Richard Widmark or Sterling Hayden when movies titled Panic In the Streets or Crime Wave played the bottom half of the bill. With an irresistible plot involving Superior Court judges rendering their own justice whenever the law gets in the way, The Star Chamber is a Dirty Harry picture for people who can read without moving their lips. Equipped with way more intrigue and drenched with far greater suspense than required, when it comes to audience appreciation, this movie overachieves.

Co-star Hal Holbrook — Old Man Conspiracy in Magnum Force and The Firm — calling Michael Douglas “kiddo” isn’t the only thing that dates The Star Chamber like a vintage coat. While Sharon Gless makes a refined impression in her three scenes, no time is wasted on a romantic lead or subplots that don’t relate to the one we paid a ticket for: judges delegating vigilante justice. The script keeps most of its nuts and bolts out of view, remaining plausible by letting the audience’s imagination do most of the work. Adapted and directed by Peter Hyams, the film has credible dialogue, solid performances, elegant set pieces and is cloaked in the sinister shadow that Hyams would execute as his own director of photography on 2010, Narrow Margin and The Relic. The Star Chamber is the director at his most soldered.

Detectives (Larry Hankin, Dick Anthony Williams) on the hunt for a serial robber and killer in South Los Angeles spot a suspect drop something into his garbage can. Lacking a warrant to conduct a legal search, the cops wait for trash collectors to dump the contents of the can into a garbage truck’s scoop, where they retrieve the murder weapon. At trial, Superior Court Judge Steven Hardin (Michael Douglas) is given no choice but rule the evidence, subsequent search and confession inadmissible on a technicality. Lamenting the miscarriage of justice to his mentor Judge Caulfield (Hal Holbrook), Hardin’s next case forces him to set free two suspected child murderers (Joe Regalbuto, Don Calfa) when LAPD officers (Charles Hallahan, David Proval) produce crucial evidence in an illegal search.

The father (James B. Sikking) of the murder victim opens fire on the suspects in court. Visiting the man in jail, Hardin learns that the body of another boy has been found after he set the suspects free. While Detective Harry Lowes (Yaphet Kotto) begins pursuing leads, Hardin approaches Caulfield, who has tantalized his protégé with hints of doing something about his frustration with the legal system. He invites Hardin to join a panel of nine superior court judges who comprise “a court of last resort”, reviewing cases dismissed on technicality and employing their own executioner to carry out sentences. While Hardin’s child murder defendants are soon found “guilty” by the panel, Detective Lowes produces information that the men really were innocent. Unable to cancel the “sentencing”, Hardin takes matters into his own hands and risks exposing the judges.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 5 users: 80% for The Star Chamber

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Unforgiven (1992)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by David Webb Peoples
Produced by Clint Eastwood
131 minutes

The Outlaw Josey Wales is the best material Clint Eastwood ever lucked into, but this Academy Award winner for Best Picture and Best Director of 1992 is from sunrise to sunset the best screenplay Eastwood has yet filmed. Known as The Cut-Whore Killings when David Webb Peoples wrote it in 1976, Malpaso took a look at the script five years later. The writing was so digressive and subject matter so reprehensible that story editor Sonia Chernus referred to it as “trash”, but when Eastwood took a look much later as a sample of Peoples’ writing, he optioned the script and held onto it until the time was right to make the film. As savage and foreboding as any indie made that decade by directors half his age, this western is a potent exploration of the roots of violence; elegantly written, boldly photographed and magnificently performed.

Rationing the number of fatalities, Unforgiven is explicit in wanting to make the viewer actually feel something for every felled body. Despite the relative lack of gunplay, the deeper we get into the story, the more it crackles with suspense. The characters are compelling — with Eastwood essentially playing a villain revisited 20 years down the road — and the dialogue has an otherworldly splendor, as if Peoples traveled back in time to take notes. Richard Harris and Gene Hackman deliver monologues as rapturous as any torn from a Quentin Tarantino script and like a Tarantino film, when the talking stops and the bullets fly, we aren’t disappointed. Jack N. Green washes the film in thunderstorm gray while the town of Big Whiskey — built in Alberta, Canada by Henry Bumstead — is one of the most visually compelling frontier villages ever put on film.

As a rainstorm pelts the town of “Big Whiskey”, Wyoming in 1880, a cowpoke slashes the face of Delilah Fitzgerald (Anna Thomson) for a slight against his manhood. Sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) considers bullwhipping the assailant and his partner, but when the cut whore’s employer (Anthony James) protests the assault as destruction of property, Little Bill fines the cowpokes in ponies instead. Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher) pools together the savings of the working girls to buy their own retribution. Tending to his pigs, retired mercenary William Munny (Clint Eastwood) receives a visit from the self-proclaimed Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), nephew of a desperado he once rode with. Invited by the kid to partner with him in the murder for hire, Munny maintains that his dearly departed wife cured him of that “drink and wickedness.”

Changing his mind, Munny picks up his pistols and climbs back on a horse for the first time in 11 years. He stops off at the farm of his old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and recruits him to participate in the killings. Gunslinger-for-hire English Bob (Richard Harris) and his “biographer” W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek) arrive in Big Whiskey ahead of them to collect the reward money, only to have Little Bill and his deputies violently yank away the welcome mat. Amused by Mr. Beauchamp’s frontier fiction posing as fact, the sadistic sheriff sets him straight on how law & order out west really works. Arriving in town, Munny has a hurt put on him by Little Bill, but is able to regroup with Ned and the kid to finish the job. One of them falls prey to Little Bill’s posse, prompting Munny to pay a visit to Big Whiskey for his own retribution.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 55 users: 96% for Unforgiven

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 82 for Unforgiven

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Tightrope (1984)
Directed by Richard Tuggle*
Written by Richard Tuggle
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Fritz Manes
114 minutes

Like a quarter shining in the gutter, Tightrope could stand a polish, but if you catch it on a rainy afternoon or late at night, this unabashed B-movie offers spills and thrills aplenty. Escape From Alcatraz scribe Richard Tuggle took his cue from a series of unsolved rapes in the Bay Area. His research resulted in a cop thriller sold to Clint Eastwood under the condition the screenwriter be allowed to make his directorial debut. Tuggle’s struggles on the set threatened his job security on day 1, but DGA guidelines — amended after Eastwood replaced Philip Kaufman as director of The Outlaw Josey Wales with himself — mandated that Tuggle remain on and receive a credit for directing. Whether you believe Eastwood collaborated with Tuggle from there or it was more likely the other way around, whoever directed Tightrope managed a good film that occasionally flirts with being a very good one.

Tightrope could either be considered a Cannon Films styled cop thriller like Cobra or Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects made with a real script and much better actors, or it could be considered just another Cannon Films styled cop thriller. The business of a serial killing rapist on the loose in a Red Light District is routine, repetitive and almost completely indistinguishable for a hundred other bad movies and TV shows. Where the picture shows life are its domestic scenes — where Eastwood’s chemistry with his 11-year-old daughter Alison glows — and the cop’s relationship with a rape counselor played by Geneviève Bujold. Eastwood relocated the script from San Francisco to New Orleans, and the offbeat French Canadian actress proves as alluring as the city itself. The killer is given no substance, but since the family he menaces is something we care about, at the very least, Tightrope provides a riveting ride to the finish.

In New Orleans, divorced police captain Wes Block (Clint Eastwood) cancels plans to watch the Saints game with his two young daughters (Alison Eastwood, Jennifer Beck) when a prostitute is found strangled to death in her home. When another working girl turns up drowned in a bathhouse, rape counselor Beryl Thibodeaux (Geneviève Bujold) presses Block to involve her office in the investigation. Prowling the brothels of The Big Easy to interview prostitutes, Block finds the time to indulge his dark side with a popsicle sucking tart (Rebecca Perle) and a nurse (Margaret Howell) among others moonlighting in the sex trade. Personal items Block leaves at his nocturnal activities — handcuffs, a necktie — begin to turn up alongside the bodies of the prostitutes he’s frequented.

Once she complains to City Hall about his lack of cooperation, Beryl Thibodeaux receives a visit from Block at the non-profit rape center she runs. The cop later seeks Beryl out at her gym and over an oyster lunch on the Mississippi, bluntly shares his attraction for her. She accepts his invitation to go trick or treating with his girls in the French Quarter and receives their approval to continue dating their dad. Meanwhile, Block and his partner (Dan Hedaya) trace glass fragments at the murder scenes to a local beer bottling plant. The killer responds by visiting Block’s daughters, killing their nanny and almost strangling Block. The cop narrows his manhunt onto one suspect in particular, but while he’s staking out the man’s apartment, the killer goes hunting for Beryl.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 11 users: 82% for Tightrope

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In The Line of Fire (1993)
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Written by Jeff Maguire
Produced by Jeff Apple
128 minutes

It’s once in a blue moon that Clint Eastwood comes aboard a production as an actor for hire, recommending a director but letting another company call the shots. If that arrangement results in a movie as sensational as Castle Rock Entertainment’s In The Line of Fire, it’s a wonder Eastwood doesn’t ride in the passenger seat more often. This A-class action thriller was the idea of producer Jeff Apple, who garnered studio interest in a movie about the Secret Service. Apple turned to a struggling screenwriter he knew named Jeff Maguire and while the resulting spec script was good enough to intrigue Dustin Hoffman and later Robert Redford, nothing happened until Maguire got the script to somebody who knew UTA agent Jeremy Zimmer. In the bidding war that ensued between Castle Rock and Paramount, the film and TV company co-founded by Rob Reiner won out.

The time In The Line of Fire spent baking may account for its richness of character, crispness of action and how organically the two blend. The novelty of a murder weapon coming together from a modeling kit is a nice touch, as is an aging hero trying to redeem his failure to protect one president by saving the neck of another. As Frank Horrigan, Eastwood seems compelled to bring out much more of his romantic side, and his randy chemistry with Rene Russo knocks years off his age. The central spoke is John Malkovich, a tremendous villain infused with more idealism and professional courtesy than typically afforded psycho killers in movies. The smaller the scale, the more energy and wit director Wolfgang Petersen seems capable of bringing to a thriller, of which this one ranks near the top of the form. Ennio Morricone employed a light but noticeably felt touch with his musical score.

After tangling with counterfeiters in a sting operation, Secret Service Agent Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) tickles the ivories in a D.C. bar. His new partner (Dylan McDermott) reminds Horrigan about a threat they were given to check out. The suspect isn’t home, but Horrigan discovers a wall devoted to the assassination of President Kennedy. Horrigan receives a call from the tenant, who gives the name “Booth” (John Malkovich) and expresses his admiration of Horrigan dating back to when he was JFK’s favorite agent. Booth announces his intention to kill the current president. Joining the hunt for the would-be assassin are Agent Lilly Raines (Rene Russo) and the agent in charge of the president’s detail (Gary Cole). Convinced that Booth will make a try for the President, long in the tooth Horrigan asks to be placed back on protective duty.

Booth continues to taunt Horrigan by phone, sympathizing with his adversary for the blame he took over Kennedy’s assassination. Though unable to trace the calls due to Booth’s technical superiority, the White House Chief of Staff (Fred Dalton Thompson) refuses to take the President out of the public eye during the re-election campaign. Using Booth’s interest in model toys to pursue him, Horrigan discovers their man is named Mitch Leary and during a foot chase, lifts his palm print from a car windshield. Horrigan discovers the CIA is also hunting Leary, a rogue operative the agency tried to let go. Removed from protective detail due to his obsession with Leary, Horrigan manages to close in on him as the assassin infiltrates a fundraiser at the Bonaventure Hotel in L.A. with a handmade pistol invulnerable to metal detectors.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 35 users: 97% for In The Line of Fire

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 74 for In The Line of Fire

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Heartbreak Ridge (1986)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by James Carabatsos and Dennis Hackin (uncredited) and Joseph Stinson (uncredited)
Produced by Clint Eastwood
130 minutes

Firing locker room trash talk with the repetition and accuracy of a machine gun, Heartbreak Ridge is loaded with more R-rated one-liners than the careers of all the male action stars you could name combined. James Carabatsos wrote a first draft, which was doctored by the authors of the goofiest film Eastwood ever made (Bronco Billy) and the one with the greatest line of dialogue in action movie history (Sudden Impact), Dennis Hackin and Joseph Stinson, respectively. Greeted with dissent by some army veterans who maintained that the Marines never engaged Heartbreak Ridge and by a Marine Corps which did not square with the film’s language or Gunny Highway’s training techniques, Heartbreak Ridge may be trying to fit a size 12 foot into a shoe two sizes too small, but reality aside, it’s one of the more entertaining movies Clint Eastwood ever made.

The combat sequences — which utilize the U.S. military intervention in Grenada that the United Nations later voted illegal — are on auto-pilot, reflecting neither the terror of combat or hinting at any real consequences for the combatants. Heartbreak Ridge was the last in a line of war movies going back to John Wayne fighting Injuns in Fort Apache where the enemy was evil and when shot, went down like a bowling pin. For those able to cotton to the film’s outdated approach, its macho bluster is hard to resist. With an opening line of “I been pumping pussy since Christ was a corporal” the script never apologizes for being about a crusty Marine gunny and never lets up. Underneath lies a character that fits Eastwood’s screen persona like a glove, a man whose distaste for authority is matched by a loyalty to the ideals of that authority. Showing real signs of age, Eastwood gave what feels like the richest performance up to that point in his career.

In 1983, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Highway (Clint Eastwood) is allowed to walk away from drunk and disorderly charges — including urinating on a police car — due to his distinguished service in both Korea and Vietnam. Despite his contempt for authority and loose tongue, Highway is so gung ho about being a Marine that he earns a transfer back to his old unit: 2nd Recon Battalion, 2nd Marine Division in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Reuniting with a sergeant major (Arlen Dean Snyder) he survived a battle with at the so-called Heartbreak Ridge in Korea when they were army corpsmen, Highway runs afoul with Annapolis football hero Major Malcolm A. Powers (Evertt McGill) who’s displeased as much with Highway’s age and his record of insubordination, commenting, “Well I ask for Marines, the division sends me relics.”

The sloppy recon platoon Gunny Highway is assigned — “The Marines are looking for a few good men. Unfortunately, you ain’t it” — regrets the day they met him. This includes Corporal “Stitch” Jones (Mario Van Peebles), a loudmouth who ripped Highway off on the bus ride to Lejeune. Accustomed to serving as target practice for 1^st Platoon, Recon is whipped into combat shape by Highway. He has less success rebuilding a relationship with his ex-wife Aggie (Marsha Mason), a barmaid who tired of waiting at home for Highway to return from whatever war zone he volunteered for. Termed an “0-0-1” by Powers — 0 wins, 1 tie for Korea, 1 loss for Vietnam — Highway gets a shot at redemption when the Marines are deployed to Grenada to free American medical students stranded by a Communist coup d’état on that Caribbean island.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 12 users: 83% for Heartbreak Ridge

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Amazing Stories 1.12: Vanessa In the Garden (1985)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Steven Spielberg
Produced by David E. Vogel
24 minutes 40 seconds

After directing four of the biggest box office successes of all time within a 10-year time frame, Steven Spielberg was a brand name that NBC felt confident committing 44 half-hours of prime time to with an anthology TV series titled Amazing Stories. Unlike The Twilight Zone — which CBS resurrected in 1985 — Spielberg intended his tales to be more wondrous than weird, magical instead of macabre (Stephen King need not apply). Spielberg co-wrote and directed the first episode Ghost Train, but neither critics nor Nielsen families were very amazed and after two seasons, the pricey show (roughly $1 million per episode) was dimmed out. What was intriguing about Amazing Stories while it lasted were the directors Spielberg invited to play with him in TV Land, which in Season 1 included Peter Hyams, Joe Dante and Martin Scorsese. A filmmaker who delivered memorable results was Clint Eastwood.

Vanessa In the Garden suffers from the usual Amazing Stories ailments, offering less than the talent involved seemed capable (the best episode was the animated Family Dog directed by Brad Bird in Season 2). The premise of a grieving artist who receives inspiration from his recently deceased wife was a good enough idea, but the resulting sketch is neither eerie nor romantic, with Harvey Keitel and Sondra Locke miscast as lovers and Spielberg insisting on marooning adult characters squarely in Fantasyland. That said, Eastwood eschews the manic pace and special effects orientation most of the directors embraced for the show and turns in a leisurely paced, thoughtful and pastoral piece that channels a Merchant Ivory production into prime time. Lennie Niehaus composed the elegant musical score, while Spielberg’s mom Leah Adler made a rare cameo for the art gallery scene.

Somewhere in America of the 1920s, painter Byron Sullivan (Harvey Keitel) seems posed for major success in the art world, due to the efforts of his agent Teddy (Beau Bridges) but mostly his loyal wife and muse Vanessa (Sondra Locke), the subject of Byron’s work. At their country estate, Teddy announces that he has in fact secured an exhibition for his client and already taken commissions for half of his paintings. Bryon takes Vanessa out to lunch to celebrate, but on the carriage ride home, a bolt of lightning strikes down a tree, spooking the horse. In the crash that ensues, Vanessa is killed.

Bryon piles most of the paintings of his late wife into a bonfire, threatening his chances at an exhibition. Attempting to light a match to one last painting of his muse, the flame is mysteriously blown out. The following morning, Byron notices that Vanessa has disappeared from the painting. He then discovers her taking a stroll in the garden. When she jumps back onto canvas, Byron realizes he can restore his wife’s place by his side as long as he keeps painting her in his work. He soon has enough paintings to fill an exhibition, with a mysterious lady in black by his side.

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Metacritic “Metascore” average: Not available

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