Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Bitter Moon (1992)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Jeff Gross & Roman Polanski and Gérard Brach and John Brownjohn, based on the novel Lunes de Fiel by Pascal Bruckner
Produced by Roman Polanski
139 minutes

It’s not clear whether Bitter Moon is a bad movie on accident or if its giddy banality was designed, but the end result is a debacle either way. Roman Polanski’s producing partner Alain Sarde had purchased the film rights to a 1981 novel by French essayist Pascal Bruckner titled Lunes de Fiel. Seizing on the salacious paperback cover, Polanski adapted a screenplay with Jeff Gross in Paris, while Gérard Brach and John Brownjohn drafted their own scripts separately. Titled Bitter Moon, the erotic drama was a French-English co-production shot largely at Paris Studios Cinema. While the finished film features only brief nudity and no graphic copulations, it struggled to find a U.S. distributor out of fear that it’s overall tone of degraded sexuality might draw an NC-17 rating. Fine Line Features ultimately released Bitter Moon in March 1994.

Like Showgirls, it’s arguable that the hokey dialogue and aberrant sexual situations were stuffed into Bitter Moon on purpose, maybe as a satire of holiday romances. One miscalculation is the casting of Polanski’s wife Emmanuelle Seigner. An adequate actress, Seigner lacks the charisma of Kristin Scott Thomas, who along with Hugh Grant — playing (what else?) a stiff, goofy Brit — are the redeeming factors of the picture. Peter Coyote (taking a role James Woods turned down) does such a good job basking his character in impurity that the act of watching him becomes repellent. The sexual encounters combine old fashioned sophistication with laughable sleaze, as if the men who cooked them up conducted their research at the Playboy Mansion. Vangelis contributed a musical score that comes off too overpowering for such a trifle.

Seeking a holiday after seven years of marriage, Nigel (Hugh Grant) and his wife Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) set sail for Istanbul aboard a cruise ship in the Black Sea. Fiona comforts a distraught French woman in the loo and that evening, Nigel discovers her dancing in the bar, but the precocious Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner) brushes off the stiff Brit. On the deck, a vulgar cripple named Oscar (Peter Coyote) reveals himself as Mimi’s husband and invites Nigel back to his cabin to tantalize him with tales of their love life. Oscar first saw Mimi on a bus between Montparnasse and Porte des Lilas. An American in Paris with grand literary ambitions, Oscar finds himself unable to write until he can reunite with his “sorceress in white sneakers”. Bumping into the apparition as she waits tables, Oscar asks Mimi to dinner.

As Oscar reveals the sadomasochistic routines the couple resorted to out of contempt for their co-dependence on each other, Nigel grows uncomfortable, but is compelled to stay and hear more. Seeking to end their relationship, Oscar concludes the only way to get rid of Mimi is to treat her as inhumanely as possible. After convincing her to have an abortion, Oscar books them a flight to Martinique, only to sneak off the plane and send her off alone. Two years later, a drunken accident cripples him. Mimi returns to Paris under the pretense of caring for her ex-lover, but uses his condition to exact a slow and bitter revenge. Oscar now gives Nigel his blessing to pursue Mimi sexually, but the Brit discovers his wife may be better suited to pushing the boundaries of marriage than he.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average: Not available

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Chinatown (1974)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Robert Towne
Produced by Robert Evans
130 minutes

The only thing really left to debate about Chinatown is whether it belongs among the 25 best films ever made, 10 best or whether it vaults over titles like Citizen Kane or Casablanca as The Best Film Ever Made. According to the legend as repeated by screenwriter Robert Towne, its genesis was a 1969 photo essay in a Los Angeles Times about Raymond Chandler’s L.A. Conceived as a love letter to the vanishing city of his youth and using something as vague as land and water as catalysts, Towne would sell Paramount Pictures production head Robert Evans on his concept for a ‘30s detective mystery and writing with Jack Nicholson in mind, deliver a 178 page script that both intrigued and bewildered director Roman Polanski. Pruning the epic script with Polanski, a point of contention was the ending. The screenwriter wanted good to win the day. The director preferred tragedy.

The power of Chinatown is the care the film takes to recreate Depression Era Los Angeles — which Gittes refers to only half jokingly as “a small town” at one point — and fill it with a complex story that remains mesmerizing no matter how many times it’s replayed. Through stunning production design by Richard Sylbert, a desaturated color scheme that evokes black & white photography and a sensual musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, Chinatown achieves the illusion it was produced in 1947 instead of 1974. Where most whodunits focus on little more than heists or serial killers, Towne weaves an ambitious tale of natural resources, corruption and family scandal that stretches clear into the horizon, much as the city of Los Angeles does. In addition to the sucker punch ending, Polanski contributes a rhythm that enables locations like a city morgue or a retirement home to leap off the screen and feel real.

In Los Angeles of the late 1930s, private detective J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by “Evelyn Mulwray” (Diane Ladd) to verify that her husband Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) — chief of the Department of Water and Power — is having an affair. Gittes shadows Mulwray at City Hall, where the engineer cites safety concerns for his refusal to build a dam that would ease the burden on agriculture, which gripped in a drought are sharing the water supply with the public. Gittes completes his job by snapping photos of Mulwray with a blonde in Echo Park. The photos are mysteriously reprinted in the newspaper and the real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) reveals herself to serve Gittes with a lawsuit. Eager to uncover who set him up, Gittes seeks help from Mrs. Mulwray, who now prefers to drop the matter entirely. Before Gittes can question her husband, Mulwray’s body is pulled out of a reservoir.

Pressed for information by Lt. Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez) — Gittes’ partner when they patrolled the morally ambiguous streets of Chinatown — Gittes is hired by Mrs. Mulwray to solve her husband’s death. Snooping around the reservoir where Mulwray died, Gittes is cornered by two goons (Roy Jenson, Roman Polanski) and has a nostril cut open. Sensing that Mrs. Mulwray is hiding something, Gittes visits her estranged father Noah Cross (John Huston), a power broker who once owned the city’s water supply with Mulwray. His interest lies in finding the girl the private eye photographed with Mulwray and he hires Gittes to do so. A key to the mystery lies in the San Fernando Valley, where farmers are being pressured to sell by an anonymous landowner who stands to make a fortune if the dam project that Mulwray blocked is now approved.

Alex Simon of The Hollywood Interview sat down with Robert Towne on the 35^th anniversary of Chinatown for an exhaustive interview on the development of the script.

Richard Ballad caught up with Roman Polanski 35 years previous for an interview in the August 1974 issue of Penthouse Magazine.

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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 …

Yojimbo (1961)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay by Akira Kurosawa & Ryûzô Kikushima, story by Akira Kurosawa
Produced by Akira Kurosawa
110 minutes

To watch a samurai picture by Akira Kurosawa is to read a book adapted by Hollywood in the ‘70s and ‘80s for what we take for granted as the modern action movie. Inspired by the idea of a helpless citizenry trapped between two factions who were equally despicable and corrupt, Kurosawa authored a script with frequent writing collaborator Ryûzô Kikushima that was financed by Toho Studios, home of Godzilla and the company which kept Kurosawa under contract. A blockbuster back home — where it became one of the biggest grossing movies ever in Japan — Yojimbo would be ripped off by Sergio Leone as the basis for the spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and remade by Walter Hill as Last Man Standing (1996), with Bruce Willis battling Depression Era gangsters. Neither comes close to eclipsing the majesty of Yojimbo.

Defining any one aspect that makes Yojimbo a classic is an exercise in futility. Toshirô Mifune anchors the film with a rough charisma and physicality that western action heroes like Eastwood, Stallone and Willis would become celebrated for. Composer Masaru Satô gives the film a medieval swing with a sensational musical score. Cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa and assistant cameraman Takao Saitô collaborated with Kurosawa to give Yojimbo an eye popping visual sheen and depth, respectively. The trend to play graphic violence for the occasional laugh would outrage critics when it started showing up in American movies like Bonnie and Clyde, but executed so fluidly, broke new ground in terms of style. Beyond exploiting violence to sell popcorn, Kurosawa’s moral bearing is felt throughout Yojimbo, which mocks greed and actually condemns violence.

Somewhere in Japan of the 1860s, a samurai who offers the name “Sanjuro Kuwabatake” (Toshirô Mifune) wanders into a town held hostage by a war between two gambling houses.  Taking shelter with an old tavern owner named Gonji (Eijirô Tôno), Sanjuro learns that the trouble started when Seibei (Seizaburô Kawazu) promised his territory to his cowardly son. Seibei’s lieutenant Ushitora (Kyu Sazanka) took half the boss’s men and allying himself with the sake merchant appears likely to topple Seibei. The local constable greets mercenaries arriving in town and receives a commission for selling their services as a “yojimbo”, or bodyguard, to the highest bidder. War has also been good business for a coffin maker (Atsushi Watanabe) whose hammering has Gonji at the end of his rope.

Seeing an opportunity to rid the town of its twin evils, Sanjuro challenges three hoodlums in Ushitora’s employ and dispatches them with his sword. Seibei agrees to pay Sanjuro the sum of 60 ryo to work for him. Seibei’s wife Orin (Isuzu Yamada) advises that it will be cheaper just to kill Sanjuro once the war is won. As the factions gather for battle, Sanjuro abandons his employer, climbing a watchtower to enjoy both sides killing each other. The carnage is postponed when an inspector from Edo arrives. During the ceasefire, Ushitora’s brutal but stupid brother Inokichi (Daisuke Katô) bids against Orin for Sanjuro’s sword. As the samurai plays both houses against each other, Ushitora’s shrewder and much deadlier brother Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai) returns to town with a revolver and a healthy suspicion of the interloper.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 10,518 users: 96% for Yojimbo

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. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.

Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979)
Directed by Richard Lester
Written by Allan Burns, based on characters created by William Goldman
Produced by Gabriel Katzka, Steven Bach
115 minutes

The first prequel Hollywood ever cranked out is also the answer to the question of which one remains the best, Butch and Sundance: The Early Days. That may be faint praise in the company of titles like The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas, Exorcist: The Beginning or the Star Wars prequels, but if there absolutely positively had to be another Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, without Paul Newman or Robert Redford — whose characters were shot up by the Bolivian army in the climax of the original — then this belated follow-up is actually pretty good. A blithe screenplay constructed by Allan Burns (co-creator of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda), a solid cast and comic flourishes by director Richard Lester that deftly sidestep parody while providing plenty of grins all add up to a thoroughly enjoyable western adventure.

Part of the fun is the slight of hand that permits Tom Berenger and William Katt to pull off roles originated by Paul Newman and Robert Redford. That’s not saying they’re preferable to Newman and Redford (nobody is) or really recapture their on-screen chemistry (no one can) but Berenger and Katt hold their own and their casting keeps us in the movie rather than throwing us out of it. The Early Days recognizes what made William Goldman’s original script very good: surprises, action that tilts toward the irreverent and colorful banter zinging between the title characters. Collaborating with director of photography László Kovács and art director Jackson De Govia, Richard Lester spared no expense giving the film both visual panache and certain wit. None of it resembles the Old West and the film lacks the female presence Katharine Ross brought to original, but it all works fine.

One year into a prison sentence for horse theft, Robert A. Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy (Tom Berenger) is brought before the governor for a parole hearing. Vouched for by Sheriff Ray Bledsoe (Jeff Corey) — the crusty lawman who arrested him — Butch promises that if set free he will most certainly commit more crimes, but agrees not to in the state of Wyoming. Visiting a casino, Butch has his new pistol stolen by a lightning fast stick up artist named Harry Longabaugh (William Katt). To retrieve his gun, Butch joins the posse of noted lawman and tracker Joe Le Fors (Peter Weller) who gives up the hunt when his men show little inclination to pursue the kid into a rock fortification. Butch stays behind to parlay with Longabaugh, suggesting that his intellect and the kid’s reflexes would make a good team.

Returning to his old hideout, Butch is reunited with cattle rustler O.C. Hanks (Brian Dennehy) before being swept up in a raid by Sheriff Bledsoe. Convinced Butch set him up, O.C. threatens to kill him first chance he gets. Butch and the kid get their feet wet as bandits by knocking over high roller casinos and such. Butch bestows his young partner with the handle Sundance Kid, due to jail time the kid spent in Sundance, Wyoming and their adventures take them through snowbound Telluride and to the farmhouse in Circleville, Utah which Butch occasionally shares with his wife Mary (Jill Eikenberry) and two sons. Life as a citizen doesn’t sit well with Butch and with the help of two bumbling outlaws (John Schuck, Christopher Lloyd), Butch and Sundance attempt to rob a train carrying U.S. Cavalry troops and cash.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 2 users: 100% for Butch and Sundance: The Early Days

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” the programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Screenplay by Peter Stone, based on the novel by Morton Freedgood (as John Godey)
Produced by Gabriel Katzka, Edgar J. Scherick
104 minutes

Listening to a Beastie Boys LP or watching The Taking of Pelham One Two Three will not only assist a visitor in the successful navigation of the New York subway system, but for 1 hour 44 minutes, the latter is an electrifying 1970s cops and robbers thriller that captures the magnitude of NYC as well as the mettle of many of the people you’re likely to encounter there. Based on a 1973 bestseller by Morton Freedgood — a PR hack who published several potboilers under the name “John Godey” — Hollywood came calling during a bleak time for the Big Apple, which was depressed economically and threatening to crack with crime and ethnic tension. In an effort to turn the city’s fortunes around, Mayor John Lindsey invited the film industry to use Manhattan as a back lot, but his office initially found in this script exactly the type of social distortion he was trying to clean up.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of those once in a blue moon entertainments that fires on every cylinder from start to finish, sharply adapted by Peter Stone and supremely well cast right down to walk-on roles. If anything is better than “Walter Matthau as Lt. Zachary Garber” and “Jerry Stiller as Lt. Rico Patrone”, I don’t know what is; the equivalent would be Ricky Gervais and Patton Oswalt starring in a $150 million summer action movie; in other words, unlikely. Even more so than The Fugitive, this is an E-ticket ride through a great metropolis, with accents and plot developments that feel singular to that city above any other. TV journeyman Joseph Sargent does a yeoman’s job balancing action across different locations, while the peerless camerawork by Owen Roizman and musical score by David Shire send this movie into another stratosphere.

On a subway train departing Pelham Bay Park Station in the Bronx at 1:23 in the afternoon, men sporting long coats, hats and wearing fake moustaches and eyeglasses move into position. Identifying each other as Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), Mr. Grey (Hector Elizondo) and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman) and armed with submachine guns, the men access the motorman’s compartment and hijack the train, using Green’s expertise as a conductor to stop in a tunnel somewhere between 28^th Street and 23^rd Street. At the Transit Authority command center, the wry Lt. Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau) and Lt. Rico Patrone (Jerry Stiller) have their boredom interrupted when Blue radios threatening to execute hostages starting in one hour unless a ransom of $1 million is delivered.

While the Mayor (Lee Wallace) dithers over how New York voters will respond to his decisions — negatively, it seems, no matter what he does — his deputy (Tony Roberts) and wife (Doris Roberts) advise that it would be wise to pay the hijackers and avoid risking another Attica. Sparring with Blue over the radio, Garber is stumped over how the meticulous ex-British Army colonel plans to escape an underground tunnel. When a sharpshooter fires off a round on accident, Blue makes good on his threats and executes one of the hostages. With the ransom cash running late, Garber thinks fast and produces a ruse to prevent Blue from shooting anyone else, including an undercover transit cop whose identity remains unknown. As Pelham 123 gets moving again and hurdles toward Manhattan, Garber hits on how the hijackers plan to escape.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 208 users: 94% for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

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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The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Philip Kaufman (as Phil Kaufman) and Sonia Chernus, based on the novel Gone To Texas by Forrest Carter
Produced by Robert Daley
135 minutes

Paul Newman is Cool Hand Luke, Steve McQueen is Bullitt and Clint Eastwood’s screen persona is personified by Josey Wales. The finest material he ever chanced upon originated with Forrest Carter, who had approximately 75 copies of a novel then titled The Rebel Outlaw Josey Wales printed by Whipporwill Publishers in Alabama. Without knowing any better, Carter mailed a copy to Malpaso, where the book would’ve been returned without being read if not for a soulful cover letter that struck producer Robert Daley. Eventually giving the novel a read, Daley absorbed it one sitting and recommended it to Eastwood, who was game to make the movie. Malpaso story editor Sonia Chernus asked to write the adaptation, which was injected with greater suspense by Philip Kaufman, who Eastwood tapped to direct before replacing several days into filming.

When talking about The Outlaw Josey Wales, the question is: What doesn’t the film do masterfully? The colorful saga stretches from farmland to battlefield, the Missouri River to the Indian Nations, a windswept outpost in Texas to an abandoned silver town where ghosts of war catch up to Wales. The characters are so compelling that even roles taken by Chief Dan George, Sam Bottoms or John Vernon (playing a non-asshole for once!) have the fullness of the heroes in any other movie. The script is a tapestry of deliciously crafted dialogue, goofy wit, idealistic spirit and riveting action. For all its frontier excitement, The Outlaw Josey Wales is ultimately an antidote to war, implying that communities are capable of living together by making peace that their governments seem unable or unwilling to. This is as vital a message for today as it was for the Bicentennial. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Wild Bunch aside, it’s the best western ever made.

On a plot of dirt in Missouri, farmer Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) stands helpless to protect his wife and son from a marauding Union outfit known as the Redlegs. Wales takes up arms for the Confederacy and once the war is lost, becomes the only member of his unit to reject the offer of commanding officer Fletcher (John Vernon), who’s accommodated disarmament terms with the Union. Fletcher is betrayed when the bloodthirsty Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney) summarily executes the men he’s turned in, but is well compensated to ride along with the Redlegs in the manhunt for Josey Wales and a young wounded rebel (Sam Bottoms). Wales and the boy outsmart the Redlegs at a ferry crossing, then a pair of bounty hunters in a marsh, but his young traveling companion succumbs to his wound before they can reach the safety of the Indian Nations.

Resigned to returning to Missouri to settle up with Fletcher, Wales runs into a wily old Cherokee (Chief Dan George) headed to Mexico to join others who refused to surrender. At a trading post, Wales inherits a Navajo woman (Geraldine Keams) he rescues from servitude. The trio beat it through Texas with Redlegs on their tail, stopping to assist Kansas pilgrims set upon by bandits. The two survivors — punchy Grandma Sarah (Paula Trueman) and her odd granddaughter Laura (Sondra Locke) — join Wales next. Followed by Comanche warriors, the band reaches the dried up silver town of Santa Rio, whose residents (Matt Clark, Royal Dano, Joyce Jameson) are ecstatic to receive settlers. Wales brokers peace with Comanche chief Ten Bears (Will Sampson) whose land they build on, but when a bounty hunter tips the Redlegs off to Wales’ location, the war finally catches up to him.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 31 users: 97% for The Outlaw Josey Wales

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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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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The Gauntlet (1977)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Michael Butler & Dennis Shryack
Produced by Robert Daley
109 minutes

Whether The Gauntlet is one of the lousiest action movies ever made or a wickedly funny satire of lousy action movies, it certainly ranks as one of the more bizarre Clint Eastwood ever made. The most expensive Malpaso production up to that point in time with a budget of $5 million, it boasted top notch stuntwork and two over-the-moon sequences in which a house and a bus were each wired to explode with 250,000 squibs. Somehow, it all manages to look and feel like a low down dirty B-movie, as if made by a film company traveling around on a bus, making things up as they went along. Taking a story as old as It Happened One Night and refreshed as recently as Midnight Run, the plot proceeds in such a wildly idiotic manner that scenes practically beg for the Looney Toons logo and fanfare to precede them.

The Gauntlet can be excused as a drive-in movie, with moments of high intensity followed by stretches where you can go for popcorn, wander around and then return to your car when it looks like something is about to get blowed up real good. None of the banter between Eastwood and Sondra Locke (taking a role the studio pursued Barbra Streisand to fill) has any thought put into it at all. Even when the couple elicits moments of genuine affection for each other, it barely makes sense within the wacky mechanics of the plot, which builds toward one of the most ridiculous action sequences ever conceived. Frank Franzetta illustrated a fantastic poster that offers a hint into how seriously this picture was taking itself, but judging by what made it on screen, it’s hard to tell whether the filmmakers were in on the joke.

As the sun rises in Phoenix, disheveled metro cop Ben Shockley (Clint Eastwood) reports for work and is ribbed for looking so sloppy by his former partner Maynard Josephson (Pat Hingle) who’s been promoted to a desk job. Summoned before new police commissioner Blakelock (William Prince), Shockley is dispatched to Las Vegas to pick up someone named Gus Mally, who the commissioner maintains is a nobody witness for a nothing trial. Shockley discovers that “Gus” is actually Augustina Mally (Sondra Locke), a feisty hooker who claims that not only is someone looking to kill her, but that bookies in town have actually put a betting line on them never making it to Phoenix. As dumb as he looks, Shockley discovers there is indeed a horse named “Mally No Show” with 50-1 odds that are getting steeper all the time.

Shockley sneaks Mally out of jail in an ambulance but comes under attack before they can reach the airport. The couple seeks refuge at Mally’s workplace, but when Shockley calls the commissioner to request an escort, the entire Las Vegas Police Department shows up and blows the house to bits. Escaping in a storm drain, Shockley and Mally hijack a constable (Bill McKinney) who gets them to the Arizona border before he’s riddled with bullets. Stranded overnight in the desert, Mally reveals that she’s to testify against a sadistic john that sounds a lot like the Phoenix police commissioner. Realizing he’s been played for a stooge by his superiors, Shockley commandeers a charter bus, reinforces it with steel and shares his route with the commissioner, who prepare a reception for the couple’s bus in Phoenix.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 16 users: 81% for The Gauntlet

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Changeling (2008)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Robert Lorenz
141 minutes

Marketed as more than just “based on a true story” but actually “a true story”, there’s a great piece of pulp fiction lurking beneath Changeling, a breathtaking recreation of early 20^th century Los Angeles and a journey down a dark passage almost too lurid to support the claims of its advertising. That’s the dilemma of this highly touted spec script by J. Michael Straczynski, a career TV writer who was tipped off by a source at City Hall about a long forgotten case of a missing child and massive civic corruption. Ron Howard was eager to direct, until Frost/Nixon caught his attention. Howard’s name on the credits certainly doesn’t buy much critical cache these days, but as directed by Clint Eastwood, Changeling has a jeweler’s eye for historical detail and a rough edge that recalls James Ellroy, not Lifetime Television For Women.

Changeling moves through Los Angeles of yore by street car, where LAPD gun squads mowed through organized crime and women who threatened the department ended up branded as hysterical at best and in mental hospitals at worst. The drama is put into motion by a mass murder so gruesome it might have made Robert Stack piss himself, prime real estate for film noir, but promoted as a true life drama, the film’s intentions seems confused. The cast is superb, with Angelina Jolie’s exquisite features giving a silent film performance in a talkie and Amy Ryan doing work as her two-fisted friend. Unlike L.A. Confidential, the characters are unable to shake themselves out of the rigors of plot, but the fact that Eastwood chalks the sights and feelings of that noir classic so convincingly makes it worth visiting.

On March 10, 1928 in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is called to cover a shift at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, postponing an afternoon with her 9-year-old son Walter (Gatlin Griffith). Returning home to find Walter missing, Christine is unable to marshal the full resources of the LAPD, which according to the weekly radio address of a pastor at St. Paul’s Presbyterian named Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich) ranks as “the most violent, corrupt and incompetent police department this side of the Rocky Mountains”. In July, police captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) notifies Christine that her son has been found alive in Illinois. With the press in attendance as mother and son are reunited at Union Station, Christine does not recognize the boy who gets off the train to be Walter.

Despite assertions by Capt. Jones that Walter’s appearance may have changed due to his ordeal, neither Christine nor her son’s dentist or schoolteacher believe him to be the same boy. When she refuses to accept the LAPD’s conclusion and takes her story public, Jones has Christine interned at a psychiatric hospital. There, a prostitute (Amy Ryan) reveals that most of the women have been committed to keep them from making trouble for the beleaguered LAPD for one reason or another. While Briegleb and powerful attorney S.S. Hahn (Geoff Pierson) rally to her defense, Detective Lester Ybarra (Michael Kelly) begins to unravel the ghoulish case of rancher Gordon Northcott (Jason Butler Harner) who appears to have kidnapped and murdered up to 20 boys before fleeing to Canada. Once captured, Northcott remains dubious as to whether or not Walter was one of his victims.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 191 users: 61% for Changeling

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 63 for Changeling

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