By Alan Hurst For an actor or actress to play against type, they had to have had a certain amount of success in a particular genre of film or played a consistent type of character. Think of James Cagney’s gangster films, Esther Williams’ aqua extravaganzas, Burt Reynolds’ good ol’ boy comedies. Cagney and Reynolds did…
By John H. Foote He really did become a full-blown movie star portraying one of the most repellant, terrifying movie characters to ever grace the silver screen. Dr. Hannibal Lecter was brilliant beyond any known human measurement, his IQ soaring into the stratosphere too high to be measured. He was elegant, well read, possessed with…
By Alan Hurst Ann-Margret had been in films for about 10 years when she met with Mike Nichols about a role in his next film, Carnal Knowledge. It was to be a film that focused on two men (Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel) over a period of about 20 years, following them from their days…
By John H. Foote Well aware of her talent as an actress, I was still not prepared for the staggering perfection of Natalie Portman’s performance as Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie. Portman, it seemed to me, did more than merely act the role but rather slipped under the skin to acquaint herself with the very soul…
By John H. Foote Had anyone in the seventies suggested to me that one day Clint Eastwood would be a two-time Academy Award Best Director winner, with two more nominations and two nominations for Best Actor, I would have thought them insane and laughed in their face. Eastwood an artist? Stone faced Dirty Harry (1971)?…
By Alan Hurst This year marks the 40th anniversary of Natalie Woods tragic death. She was one of the biggest female stars of the sixties and, before that, one of the better child/teen actors of the late forties and fifties. But she is now more famous for the circumstances surrounding her death by drowning in…
By John H. Foote As Dr. Martin Dysart in Equus, Richard Burton delivered arguably his greatest film performance, though his work as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) certainly must be considered in that conversation. In Peter Shaffer’s breathtaking Equus, Sidney Lumet’s probing camera strips Burton free of everything but his face and…
By John H. Foote Confession: Alan’s recent article on Marsha Mason sent me back watching a handful of Richard Dreyfuss films from the seventies, so I thought I might flash back to him. Credit to Alan for inspiring this one. After a few years toiling between small roles in film and television, Dreyfuss was cast…
By Alan Hurst For about 10 years Marsha Mason had a pretty decent run in films. She was in some major box-office hits, she received positive reviews and Oscar nominations for her work in both comedy and drama, and she usually projected a likeable and relatable screen presence. But by the mid eighties she had…
By John H. Foote Watching Warren Beatty dressed up in gangsta clothing, rapping his political speeches was often hysterical. Yet if you listen to what he is saying, really listen, there is an urgency, a primal scream in the words telling us how things are, how to fix them, and the cost of doing so.…