When you boil it all down, the great Gene Wilder, who lived for 83 years, enjoyed a peak period of 13 years (’67 to ’80). Performance-wise he knocked it out of the park seven times but four of these happened in ’67 and ’74 — his super-peak years.
One, his genius-level cameo as the giggling excitable undertaker in Bonnie and Clyde (’67). Two, Leo Bloom in The Producers (’67)…”Max, he’s wearing a dress.” Three, the doctor who has a sordid affair with a sheep in Woody Allen‘s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (’72). Four and five, his double-whammy performances in Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (both in ’74). Six, George Caldwell in Silver Streak (’76). And seven, Skip Donahue in Stir Crazy (’80).
And that was it. Wilder gave other noteworthy or beloved performances (Willy Wonka, The Woman in Red, The Frisco Kid) but they weren’t as good as the hallowed seven.
I could never fully understand why Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner, which opened five and a half years ago, was blown off by nearly everyone. The Sony Pictures docudrama is about the tragic fall of Presidential contender Gary Hart during the 1988 primary campaign.
I completely fell for it after the Telluride ’18 debut. It featured a commanding lead performance by Hugh Jackman and several delicious supporting performances. And it all but completely flopped — cost $25 million to make, earned $3.2 million theatrically, and was pretty much ignored on during the 2018 award season.
Seriously, what happened?
Posted on 9.19.18: Less than ten minutes into my first viewing of Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner, I knew it was at least a B-plus. By the time it ended I was convinced it was a solid A.
It’s not a typical Reitman film — it doesn’t deliver emotionally moving moments a la Juno and Up In The Air. It is, however, a sharp and lucid account of a real-life political tragedy — the destruction of former Colorado Senator Gary Hart‘s presidential campaign due to press reports of extra-marital womanizing with campaign volunteer Donna Rice.
The Front Runner is an exacting, brilliantly captured account of a sea-change in press coverage of presidential campaigns — about a moment when everything in the media landscape suddenly turned tabloid. Plus it feels recognizable as shit. I immediately compared The Front Runner to Michael Ritchie’s The Candidate, Mike Nichols‘ Primary Colors and James Vanderbilt‘s Truth. It is absolutely on the same wavelength and of the same calibre.
Hugh Jackman delivers a steady, measured, well-honed portrayal of Hart, but the whole cast is pretty close to perfect — every detail, every note, every wisecrack is spot-on.
Why, then, are some critics giving Reitman’s film, which is absolutely his best since Up In The Air, the back of their hands? The Front Runner easily warrants scores in the high 80s or low 90s, and yet Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic aggregate tallies are currently in the high 60s — over 20 points lower than they ought to be.
I’ll tell you what’s going on. Critics can be cool to films that portray journalists in a less than admirable light, which is what The Front Runner certainly does. The Miami Herald reporters who followed Hart around and broke the Rice story are depicted as sleazy fellows, and the relationship between the Miami Herald and Hart is depicted as deeply antagonistic, especially on the Herald’s part. Hart screwed himself with his own carelessness, but the Herald is depicted as being more or less on the same level as the National Enquirer.
You can bet that on some level this analogy is not going down well with certain critics. Remember how Vanderbilt’s Truth (’15), a whipsmart journalism drama, was tarnished in the press for portraying the collapse of Mary Mapes‘ faulty 60 Minutes investigation into George Bush‘s National Guard history and alleged cocaine use? A similar dynamic is happening right how.
The principle behind my imminent submission to Monkey Man roughly parallels my sense of resignation and obligation to see Ken Loach‘s The Old Oak. I can’t wall myself off — I have to engage.
It’s obvious what kind of cards are being dealt here — resentful old Loachian guys in England’s northeastern region vs. Syrian refugees. And I know I’m probably going to struggle to hear a portion of the dialogue. (I’ve never seen a Loach film that wouldn’t have been improved by subtitles.) This is Loach’s last film, however, and I feel I owe it to him.
Favorite Loaches: The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Looking For Eric, My Name Is Joe, Poor Cow.
An HE commenter said the other day that I need to engage more with ongoing spring product, and therefore need to settle into Dev Patel‘s Monkey Man (Universal, 4.5), aka “John Wick in Mumbai” — the same revenge formula with a dunking of Indian nativist class rage…rage and revenge. I realize I have to endure it, but it’s obviously going to be painful. Patel: “I wanted to give it real soul, real trauma, real pain…and I wanted to infuse a little bit of culture.”
Back in the Nixon, Ford and Carter era I had a thing for Angel Tompkins. This was partly due to the fact that she’s my type (blond, great eyes, WASPy) but mostly because she’d delivered a mature, grounded, open-hearted performance as a cheating wife in Mel Stuart and Robert Kaufman‘s I Love My Wife, a minor but decent dramedy about a young married doctor (Elliott Gould) who cats around.
My memory is a bit hazy but Tompkins’ character, Helene Donnelly, was listlessly married to Dabney Coleman‘s Frank Donnelly, and her affair with Gould’s Dr. Richard Burrows was about more than just gymnastic distraction — she was all in, and you could really sense the unambiguous depth of feeling. It was Tompkins’ best role and finest-ever performance — nothing else she did came close.
The deal was doubly sealed after I spoke with Tompkins following a Rear Window screening on the Universal lot, sometime in late ’83 or early ’84. Okay, she struck me as a glib conversational surfer that night but almost everyone is like that after a drink or two. And perhaps my recollection of I Love My Wife is overly generous, but it wasn’t half bad.
Tompkins’ career hung in for a while but gradually tapered off. She married Ted Lang, described on her Wiki page as a film and comedy writer slash venture capitalist. She gradually became a political conservative (no problem) and then a Trumpie (good effing God).
And then today I saw this. Obviously not a statement that anyone with any sort of informed, straight-arrow perception or sense of rationality would share with a straight face. I’m distressed that Joe Biden didn’t pass the baton, but Tompkins seems to honestly believe that a blend of Satanic derangement syndrome and an anti-democratic agenda is the way to go, and it’s mystifying that an actress who seemed to have some sort of basic humanistic grasp of things way back when…it’s odd to think of a person going this far around the bend and becoming this fruit-loopy.
