Earlier today I wrote that Kerry Condon‘s performance in Robert Lorenz‘s In The Land of Saints and Sinners (Samuel Goldwyn, 3.29) amounts to “one of the greatest female villains ever…a feisty, take-no-shit-from-anyone IRA firebrand.”

There’s no rolling your eyes or waving this woman away — she holds eye contact, means every feckin’ word and is full of absolute conviction and a fair amount of controlled rage. Condon’s character, Doireann McCann, won’t take “no” or “maybe” from anyone about anything, and her eyes are fierce and flaming. Talk about a fascinating lady from the word “go.”

In The Land of Saints and Sinners is “a Liam Neeson movie,” and we all know what that means — a steady and stalwart Neeson fellow who’s not looking for trouble and in fact would like to back off into a shelter or backwater of some kind, and then a slow burning, a gradually tightening situation, implications of tough terms, bad people up to bad stuff (including the threat of serious harm to a couple of innocent characters as well as to Neeson’s guy) until it all blows up in the end.

But the story, set in rural Ireland in the mid ’70s, pulls you in bit by bit, and the script has been carefully and compellingly written by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane, and the shaping of Condon’s character is exceptional. You can call Doireann a volcanic madwoman, but that would be selling her short or at least putting it too simply. She’s a villain, all right, but she doesn’t believe in playing it cool or fair or even-steven. You can’t help but believe every damn word she says, and at least respecting whatever it was that put so much acid into her blood. Not a woman to be trifled with.

I certainly didn’t see Doireann as some kind of broad charicature or cliche…some kind of Irish Cruella de Ville. She’s way too blistering for that.

All I know is that I sat up in my seat when Condon came along and start giving orders and barking questions and challenging and intimidating pretty much everyone, and I’m thinking of watching the film again just for her performance.

Last Tuesday (4.2) HE shrugged at the notion of the forthcoming interracial London stage production of Romeo and Juliet…Tom Holland and Frances Amewudah–Rivers…another “woke casting stunt”, “wealthy London liberals will eat this shit up,” etc.

I happened to agree with a reader comment that a Zendaya-like actress would have been a better fit match-wise or looks-wise (i.e., Amewudah-Rivers isn’t quite on Holland’s level). Otherwise any blatantly racist criticisms (I haven’t read any but I’ll take the Jamie Lloyd Company’s word for it) are deeply unfortunate and probably best ignored.

Due respect for the 151 signatories of today’s “we agree with Jonathan Glazer’s anti-Zionist-overkill Oscar speech” letter, but may I ask what took them so long? The over-one-thousand-signatures letter that sharply disagreed with Glazer’s compassion–for–Gaza–victims speech…that timely letter was posted nearly three weeks ago (3.18). Life is a moving train. Hubba-hubba.

Out of the blue I sat through a pair of wowser thrillers last night, both mature and well-measured and absolutely not aimed at the popcorn hooligans, and one of them, surprisingly, was a formula-adhering Liam Neeson film.

There’s nothing like the pot high of suddenly seeing a good movie or two on an unexpected (or not necessarily anticipated) basis, and just feeling more and more ripped as they proceed. And you know that most of the low-lifes out there will ignore these films or give them short effing shrift.

These are just iPhone jottings…I’ll expand in a few hours.

Steven Zallian’s Ripley (Netflix, 4.4) is a stunning work of visual art — one of most beautiful monochrome films I’ve seen this century or ever. All hail dp Robert Elswit! I watched episode #1 last night. (Eight episodes in all.) Haunting, quietly eerie and creepy and deliciously atmospheric. A knockout performance by Andrew Scott, and fascinating cameo performance by Kenneth Lonergan. It’s a completely gourmet–level serving, and I loved the careful attention to period detail. (It’s set around the time of Rene Clement’s Purple Noon, which opened in France in March 1960.)

Set during “the troubles” (‘74 or thereabouts), In The Land of Saints and Sinners (which isn’t an especially good title) is a way-above-average Liam Neeson film. Restrained and solemn and well-plotted, and it gets better and better as it moves along. Directed by longtime Clint Eastwood producer Robert Lorenz, it follows the basic Neeson-flick formula but the writing and particularly the character-sculpting are of a very high calibre, and the magnificent Kerry Condon delivers one of the greatest female villain characters ever — a feisty, take-no-shit-from-anyone IRA firebrand. What an actress!

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.

No, I haven’t seen Remembering Gene Wilder.

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.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (’77) was the third and final Sinbad film. VFX by Ray Harryhausen, of course. Shot in ’75, the release was delayed two years due to Harryhausen’s exacting visual standards. And yet all of Harryhausen’s creatures used the exact same body language and exaggerated gestures. And who came up with that cyclops “erp” sound?

I’d never seen so much as a snippet of footage from this film until tonight. Clearly a bargain basement effort. It’s the visual equivalent of eating french fries at a Burger King

Directed, believe it or not, by distinguished stage and screen actor Sam Wanamaker (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Death on the Nile, Private Benjamin, The Competition, Raw Deal), who was in his mid 50s in ‘75. Talk about a paycheck gig.

The film stars Patrick Wayne (36 at the time), 22 year-old Taryn (daughter of Tyrone) Power, 24 year-old Jane Seymour and Patrick Troughton.

Stop-motion creatures were riveting in their early to mid 20th century heyday (early 30s to mid 50s). From the ‘60s onward it seemed as if Harryhausen alone kept this increasingly passé but surreal-seeming technique going…the exotic unreality, the rareness of it…an odd-bird visual realm that was neither “real” nor animated nor CG’ed.

And yet Harryhausen’s Sinbad films were curiously arresting as far as they went, and even the stiff and hokey Clash of the Titans (‘81) had its brief diversions. I still love the shadowy, torch-lit confrontation scene between Harry Hamlin and the Medusa serpent with the bow-and-arrow.

The constant problem, of course, was the difficulty of blending live-action humans with these creatures. They were almost always in separate shots. And of course, the action was always about the same choices — run or fight and possibly be killed ad infinitum.

I had never seen this scene from Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger before Wednesday night, and I’m sorry but I felt immediately underwhelmed. That midday, too-much sunshine visual palette, for one thing. And I instantly recognized those Spanish boulder-strewn hills from the battle scenes in King of Kings (’61). And what was the horn-headed cyclops looking to accomplish exactly?