110) The Expendables

The Expendables (2010)

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Giselle Itie, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, David Zayas, Charisma Carpenter, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger

As soon as I heard the line up that Sylvester Stallone was putting together, I knew The Expendables was going to be one of the must see movies of the year. However, I also knew that it was going to be one of the most average movies of the year. Call it a hunch.

A team of mercenaries led by Barney Ross (Stallone) is commissioned by a mysterious Mr. Church (Willis) to assassinate the merciless dictator of a small South American nation. Barney and his right hand man Lee Christmas (Statham) head down on a reconnaissance mission, meeting up with local rebel Sandra (Itie), who reveals to them the true nature of what is occurring on the island nation. After their cover is blown Ross and Christmas escape the island, while Sandra insists on staying behind. Ross is then inspired to return to the island to rescue her, with a little help from his friends.

Sylvester Stallone has done an amazing job in recent years of making himself relevant again. After rivalling Arnold Schwarzenegger as king of the 1980s, the 1990s saw Sly's career start to slide. By the early 2000s it's is fair to say he was no longer a box office commodity. But in 2006 he managed to get Rocky Balboa up and it was a surprising success both with critics and at the box office. From there he returned to his other staple character, John Rambo, and made the slightly less successful Rambo. Between the two though he must have managed to convince a few studio financiers that there was still some gas left in the tank and when he assembled the action hero super cast for The Expendables he got the green light. It has since topped the box office all over the world. It will be interesting to see if he can go anywhere from here or if this was just a last hurrah.

There are no surprises in The Expendables. It is pretty much exactly what you would expect a film with this cast to be like. There are plenty of explosions, big guns, bone shattering hand-to-hand fights, a body count that is in the hundreds and a handsome smattering of ow grade witticisms with not much attention given to insignificant details like narrative, characterisation or scripting. There's probably slightly less shirts-off, look at my muscles gear than you'd expect, but given a lot of these guys are on the wrong side of fifty you can understand it might be better to just leave some things to the imagination. Thankfully the film has the right tongue-in-cheek feel, not taking itself too seriously (as Stallone was accused of doing in the recent Rambo) which makes it easier to go along for the ride.

The thing which most stood out to me with this film is that as a viewer you just have zero investment in the characters. The only character whose name I could remember was Lundgren's Gunner. You have an investment in the actors who are playing them, but not the characters they are playing. Rather than providing some character development and background, we are encouraged to just accept that there is a camaraderie and history there between these guys. To be fair, there are a couple of scenes which deal with the relationship between Statham and Carpenter's characters, but they bring very little to the fold and in the end just feel a little out of place. To Stallone's credit though, he resisted the temptation to fabricate a romance between his character and Sandra (I think the beautiful young woman falling for the 64 year old and weathered Sly might have been a step too far to ask the audience to go). Stallone has said he wants to do a sequel, but I don't think it is required. I can't see anyone coming out of this film wondering what happened next to this group of guys.

The role played by Terry Crews was originally meant for Welsey Snipes. When tax issues forced him to decline the role it was given to Forrest Whittaker. I remember when they first started talking about this action super movie which was going to be made starring Stallone, Lundgren, Statham, Li and Forrest Whittaker I thought that last name stood out a bit. Ultimately a scheduling conflict forced him to pull out, and I think it was probably for the best.

A lot was made of the fact that for the first time in their careers Stallone and Schwarzenegger would be sharing the screen for a scene. The scene was a bit of a non-event. A few winks and nudges to the audience about the fact that Arnie was out of the game because he was in politics. It doesn't really compare to the cinemas other great meeting of the legends scene, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny's shared scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Trivia for you, The Expendables is the first film Sylvester Stallone has directed since Staying Alive, the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, in which he has not appeared as either Rocky Balboa or John Rambo.

In it's own right, The Expendables is a pretty average film. But the value of this film is as an article of nostalgia. It successfully recreates the tone of the muscle-man action movies of the 1980s which made the likes of Stallone and Schwarzenegger household names. I'm a bit disappointed that Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris all turned down Stallone's approaches (seriously, what were any of these guys doing that was so pressing?), as that would have completed the collection. If you have a soft spot for movies about muscular beefcakes with big guns blowing things up, this one will be a bit of fun. If you look at the cast list and it doesn't excite you, then don't bother because those names are pretty much all it is.

109) The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Director: Joseph Sargent

Starring: Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, Earl Hindman, Jerry Stiller


Last year I went and saw Tony Scott's The Taking of Pelham 123. I quite enjoyed it, not thinking it to be as bad as a lot of critics did. But then, at the time I was only vaguely aware of the original. Sargent's film has been mentioned a few times in various articles, books and lectures I've come across since then so I've grown more and more keen to see it, and possibly explaining why so many were disappointed by Scott's remake.

Four gunmen, led by a man known only by his colour codename 'Blue' (Shaw) take a New York subway train, Pelham 123, and its passengers hostage. They demand $1,000,000 be delivered to the train in one hour, with one hostage being killed for every minute late the delivery is. Lt. Zachery Garber (Matthau) of the New York City Transit Police is serving as the primary negotiator with the terrorists. While dealing with City Hall and the NYPD in order to try and save the hostages lives, Garber can not help but ask himself the question how can four terrorists in a train carriage in an underground tunnel surrounded by police possibly escape?

What makes this film amazing is that it actually works. Hijacking a train carriage in an underground tunnel seems like such a ridiculous plan that you'd assume it would fall flat on it's face. But Shaw plays Blue with such composure that we accept his plan as being well thought through. Sargent manages to build a great deal of tension through the negotiations between Garber and Blue, while at the same time having a nice smattering of sarcastic comments acknowledging the absurdity of the situation.

The city of New York has a great tradition of cinematic depictions, particularly in the films of Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three stands alongside the films of those three directors as one of the great New York films. Not only is the plot built around the iconic New York subway, which we are constantly being reminded is the worlds largest underground train network, the characters who drive the film are very much New Yorkers. Matthau has that sardonic sense of humour that is associated with New Yorkers. Plus consider the hostages on the train itself. Their listing in the credits shows a cross-section of the New York population. You have the The Maid, The Delivery Boy, The WASP, The Hippie, The Hooker, The Pimp, The Old Man, The Spanish Woman, The Alcoholic, The Salesman and The Homosexual. Without gratuitous shots of the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, Sargent manages to create a really strong connection between his film and the city.

One thing Kate and I couldn't help but notice is the amazing amount of sexism and racism in the film. There are numerous little asides and one-liners which have no real bearing on the narrative at all. There are a couple of characters who constantly complain about women being allowed into their workplace ("If I've got to watch my language just because they let a few broads in, I'm going to quit. How the hell can you run a goddam railroad without swearing?") and then you have Garber belittling the Japanese delegates who he is taking on a tour of the facility, but the joke then turns out to be on him when it is revealed they actually speak English. Garber is also responsible for one of my favourite lines: "The guy who's talking has got a heavy English accent. He could be a fruitcake." None of it is particularly offensive, it is just amusing in how unnecessary it is.

For Tarantino fans this is where he got the idea for Reservoir Dogs of using colours as pseudonyms for the robbers. So that is one down of the thousands and thousands of homages and references in Tarantino's films.

Interesting to note the differences between this and the remake. There are obvious changes and updates that have to be made. One million dollars has to become ten million dollars, because, as Austin Powers pointed out, one million dollars isn't much of a demand these days. But there are a few changes which have obviously been made in homage to the original. Denzel's character is named Walter Garber rather than Zachery Garber, in honour of Walter Matthau. Denzel's character has apparently been demoted as punishment for some alleged corrupt dealings with Japanese businessman. Sargent's film starts with Garber giving some Japanese delegates a tour of the facility. One change I didn't understand was the decision not to use the colour code names for the terrorists, as it was such an iconic part of the original film.

As is nearly always the case, the original is indeed better than the remake, although I still don't think the remake was awful. It is not hard to build tension in a hostage film, but Sargent manages to make The Taking of Pelham One Two Three something more than just another formulaic hostage film by establishing interesting characters. The back and forth between Matthau's sardonic Garber and Shaw's icy Blue is compelling viewing. It's got a killer theme tune too.

108) Any Given Sunday

Any Given Sunday (1999)

Director: Oliver Stone

Starring: Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, James Woods, Aaron Eckhart, Jim Brown, Lawrence Taylor, LL Cool J, Matthew Modine, John C. McGinley, Charlton Heston

Last week I was looking around Youtube and came across a terrific mash-up of inspirational speeches from movies. Check it out. One of the moments in the clip is Al Pacino's team rev up from Any Given Sunday, a film I haven't seen for a few years. So when Kate had an all day meeting on Sunday it was fresh in my mind.

Aging Miami Sharks coach Tony D'Amato (Pacino) is under pressure. His team has lost three games in a row and look like missing the playoffs. The franchises fiesty young president and owner Christina Pagniacci (Diaz), who inherited the team from her father, a good friend of Tony's, is starting to think that Tony is over the hill. To top it all off in the one game his teams inspirational leader and veteran quarterback Cap Rooney (Quaid) and his second string quarterback both go down with serious injuries. D'Amato has no choice but to throw in unproven third-stringer Willie Beaman (Foxx). Beaman has bounced around a few teams and believes this is probably his last chance to get his career going. With some electrifying individual play Beaman quickly becomes the man of the moment. D'Amato doesn't like him; he's not a team player, he doesn't listen to instruction and quickly loses the respect of his teammates. For Pagniacci though, Beaman represents the future of the Miami Sharks.

Oliver Stone films always have a similar feel to them, whether they concern the world of politics (JFK, Nixon), war (Platoon) or commerce (Wall Street). They are always have an almost mythical feel to them, creating an entire world with a wide web of characters surrounding the one or two central figures. More cynical viewers might consider he has made a career out of making the same film over and over. This time Stone sets his focus on the world of professional sports, and the result is probably the best professional sports movie that I've seen. None of the ideas that Stone chooses to focus on in the film are particularly original or profound if you know anything about professional sports; there is the conflict between generations, between the old way and the new way, between business and sport, between idealists and pragmatists, there is the raging egos and self-promotion, the players risking their own safety and well being in order to play and the corruptible doctors who let them do it. But what Any Given Sunday shows us is that even reasonably cliched and well explored concepts can be really engaging and interesting when they are well written, well directed and performed by a fantastic cast. Stone's films always use huge supporting casts and this one is no exception. The main burden of the film is carried by Pacino, Foxx and Diaz, but great performances from guys like Quaid, Woods, Eckhart, Taylor and Stone regular McGinley (sporting a career worst hairstyle) really flesh out the world.

Any Given Sunday is one of those moments in Jamie Foxx's career when he reminds you that he's actually talented. He does a really good job bringing a bit of authenticity to Willie Beaman's journey from being the keen but unsure nobody, to the arrogant man of the moment caught up in his own hype and finally repentant and ready to listen. It's just a bit of a shame that for every Any Given Sunday, Ray and Collateral in Foxx's career there is a Stealth.

Like most sports movies, Any Given Sunday is more about what happens off the field than what happens on it. But Stone's treatment of the games themselves is pretty impressive. It's pretty flashy stuff; lots of quick editing, montage, close ups and slow motion. It doesn't capture the strategy of the game at all. There is no way you can follow a play. But while the shooting style neglects the team as a whole, it does capture the moment for the individual. You feel the intensity, the rapidity, the urgency of the moment for the player having to make the decisions. Shooting a sporting contest, particularly a team sport, for the cinema doesn't appear to be an easy thing to do (watch some of the rugby scenes in Clint Eastwood's Invictus to see how even brilliant directors can struggle to capture the magic of a sporting contest) but Stone does a pretty good job with this one.

During a scene in which Willie visits Tony's place for lunch, Tony has Ben Hur playing on his television, the famous chariot racing scene. Stone cuts back to Ben Hur a few times during the scene and at the time I was thinking that there must be some significance to this, he must be trying to say something, create some allusion. This thought was confirmed in a later scene when Charlton Heston appears playing the league commissioner. That being said I couldn't really work out what the allusion was. In the directors commentary on the DVD Stone explains that he was indeed trying to make a meta connection, showing the way that yesterday's rebels become today's establishment. So now when you watch it and Ben Hur comes on you'll know that that is what it means.

Al's motivations speech, known as the 'Peace by Inches' speech, has got to be the best inspirational sporting speech in cinema. I think it even trumps "What are your legs?" "Steel springs" from Gallipoli. It is delivered with that brilliant Pacino mix of gravelly quietness and rage filled yelling. Richard T. Kelly's book Ten Bad Dates With De Niro, a book of alternative movie lists ranks the speech number four in the list entitled "The Mighty Apoplexies of Pacino: Ten Scenes Where 'Shouty Al' Shows Up".

At times this film may verge on being a bit pretentious visually, Stone definitely pushes the envelope a bit with some of his stylistic choices. It doesn't sit alongside Platoon, JFK, Wall Street and Nixon as one of Stone's best films, but it is still very good. Stone has assembled an excellent cast and got great performances out of them. And let's face it, Al Pacino is always worth watching and here he seems to relish not having to play a cop or a criminal. Any Given Sunday is the best professional sports movie I've seen, it takes you into that world of egos and excess and shows you the highs and the lows.

107) Easy Rider

Easy Rider (1967)

Director: Dennis Hopper

Starring: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson


Another double up, again as a result of the New Hollywood unit of Screens, Images, Ideas. This time it was Dennis Hopper's highly influential Easy Rider. Again, I don't want to just repeat myself, so I'll only mention a few other things which came up.

Easy Rider has this iconic tagline: "A man went looking for America and couldn't find it anywhere." It has been just as iconic an element of the film as the image of Billy and Wyatt on their Harleys or the rock and roll soundtrack. However, after watching the film we watched an excerpt from a documentary called Wanderlust, all about the American road movie. In this documentary there was a clip in which Dennis Hopper talked about this tagline. It was interesting because he takes no credit for this iconic tagline, it was just a piece of crap some guy in publicity thought up. In fact he doesn't even like it because in his opinion, and when I think about it mine, they do find America absolutely everywhere and that is the problem.

What I also found interesting on watching this film again is that for a film which is seen to be such a icon of a particular political time, the political message of the film is not very easily determined. Basically, Easy Rider deals non-specifically with this idea that America is somehow no longer free. The causes of this lack of freedom are never really suggested and thus neither are solutions. It doesn't actually attempt to make an argument for their particular political perspective, but rather relies on an audience who already thinks that way. So it really struck a chord with the counter-cultural youth of 1969, because they finally had a film which was speaking from their perspective, but if you aren't a part of the choir, the preaching isn't all that effective.

While I think I got more out of Easy Rider this time than I did earlier in the year, it didn't really change my view of the film. It is a very important and influential film, but it hasn't held up well and apart from certain elements, mainly the soundtrack and Nicholson's performance, it doesn't do much for me.

106) More Than a Game

More Than a Game (2008)

Director: Kristopher Belman

Starring: LeBron James, Dru Joyce, Romeo Travis, Sian Cotton, Willie McGee

Tonight I'm going to see my team, the Sydney Kings, play their first pre-season game. It will be their first game in over two years, since they were withdrawn from the NBL due to financial difficulties. So I'm quite excited about it and therefore had basketball on the brain today. I decided to watch a basketball movie and had two to choose from; Steve James's celebrated documentary Hoop Dreams, which unfortunately has a slightly inhibiting 170min run time, and Kristopher Belman's slightly less renowned More Than a Game.

The documentary follows the nine year journey of five talented young basketballers from Ohio to become the best high school basketball team in the country. Throughout the journey this group of friends are tested by the growing fame and expectation placed upon them, particularly the circus which surrounds LeBron James as the media recognises him as the next big thing.

Cinematically, there is nothing overly interesting about More Than a Game. Belman doesn't do anything overly different or exciting with the documentary form, but then, the expectation is not there for him to. This is, after all, a sports documentary. It may try to play to the "sport is a metaphor for life" kind of idea, but I am willing to bet more people saw this particular film because they were basketball fans or LeBron James fans than because they were interested in documentary.

One thing that hit me watching this film was that I really do not understand American high school sports. This team, the St.Vincent's/St. Mary's Fighting Irish, were playing games in packed out arenas. Their home games had to be moved from their high school to the local college because the high school's arena did not have the capacity to meet the demand. These were 16 and 17 year old students playing in front of crowds of as many as 10,000 people. Their games were being broadcast on television. This culture of high school sport does not exist in Australia. Generally high school teams in Australia will have no crowd to speak of. Perhaps your bigger private schools may insist on students going along to cheer their team on, but the idea that a city or community would get behind a high school team the way they would a professional team is a very foreign concept to me. It does make you realise how these athletes grow up to be the way they are. It can't have been easy for a guy like LeBron James to keep his ego in check when as a 17 year old, still in school, he has crowds of people wanting autographs and he's being interviewed by the media and seeing his face on TV and in the press. It is no wonder the guy's ego has just snowballed over the years.

About a year ago I was reading an article on NBA.com about how a number of NBA players were putting some of their money into film production. It specifically talked about three players. Carmelo Anthony's company Krossover Entertainment was one of the main backers for James Toback's brilliant documentary Tyson which I watched earlier in the year. Baron Davis, through his company Verso Entertainment, produced the slightly lower profile film Crips & Bloods: Made in America. I had to laugh though when the article finished by talking about how LeBron James, a man I find to be just the slightest bit arrogant, had also entered the film production game by backing a film about his favourite subject, himself. To be fair, More Than a Game is not just a film about LeBron James, it is about the five of them, but it still made me smile.

More Than a Game is interesting enough, providing you have an interest in basketball. But unlike the best documentaries, like Anvil: The Story of Anvil!, which manage to transcend their direct subject matter, in the case of this film there is ironically not much more than the game.

105) Some Like It Hot

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Director: Billy Wilder

Starring: Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, George Raft, Joe E. Brown

Thursday evening we had a night off. Kate decided she was in the mood for either a movie or trivial pursuit, but after some thought decided that her mind was not up to more thinking, so a movie it was. Kate's been working her way through Hitchcock's films, and loving it, but there were none left on the shelf that both of us hadn't seen. She wanted something old, and despite having never seen it I was willing to take a punt that Some Like It Hot was not going to be too intellectually taxing.

When struggling musicians Joe (Curtis) and Jerry (Lemmon) witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre they find themselves on the run from the mob, needing to get out of Chicago to hide. There just so happens to be a band which is heading to Miami and is in need of a bass player and a saxophonist. Perfect. The only problem is that it is an all girl band. Joe and Jerry decide to go undercover as Josephine and Daphne, travel with the band to Miami and then split. However after meeting the voluptuous Sugar Kane (Monroe) Joe decides perhaps it may be worth hanging around with the band for just a bit longer.

Some Like It Hot is classic Hollywood screwball comedy. For what sounds like a pretty bawdy premise, the film is actually very witty and clever. It is very well written. Once it gets rolling the film moves along at quite a pace and the jokes just keep coming and continue right through to the very last line of the film. There is obviously a fair suspension of belief required to accept that no one knows that Daphne and Josephine aren't women, but the fact that they stand out so much only adds to the fun. Early in the piece you may find yourself thinking this is all a bit ridiculous, but then you can't help but go along for the ride and while at the end of the film you won't think it any less ridiculous, you'll absolutely love it for it.

Born in Austria, Billy Wilder started his career as a screenwriter in Germany. When Hitler came to power, Wilder, who was Jewish, made the move across to America. There he proved himself to be an incredibly versatile director. In the 1940s and early 1950s he directed two of the absolute classics of American film noir cinema, Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd. He would then go on to write and direct some of America's best loved comedies and romances including Sabrina, The Apartment, Irma la Douce, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot. While it pre-dates the globalisation of the cinema and is thus thought of as a very American era, the influence of foreign born directors on the golden era of Hollywood was enormous. For every John Ford, Howard Hawkes, Frank Capra and Preston Sturges churning out classics for the major studios there was an Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder.

This film was made in 1959, well into the era of colour but Wilder chose to film in black and white for two reasons. Firstly he thought it added to the authenticity of era the film was set in. All the films set in the 1920s had been made in black and white, so filming it in colour would have given the film a modern look. Sticking to black and white helped maintain the illusion of the 1920s. Secondly, filming in black and white helped to disguise the incredible amount of makeup on the faces of Curtis and Lemmon, which would have just looked like face paint in colour.

I had never seen anything with Marilyn Monroe in it before. The first thing that struck me though, was how big she looked. Being the kind of film that it was, there were a lot of shots which involved her walking away from camera while other characters and us looked at her bottom. The first time it happened, her bottom looked so big I almost thought there was an issue with the aspect ratio. Now before I get yelled at for being a pig I want to make it known that I do not for a second intend to suggest she is fat or overweight or anything, I've seen plenty of pictures of her and know that she is just a normal sized woman. But seeing her as such was quite a shock, because it really hammered home how petite and not real the Hollywood actress of today is. Even the ones who have the tag 'curvy', like Scarlett Johanssen, still appear much more toned than Marilyn did. Also, for a film made under the strict censorship conditions of the Production Code I was amazed at how sexual it was. Yes, Billy Wilder is a very witty man so managed to get a lot through with suggestive dialogue and images, but that doesn't cover up the fact that in a number of scenes Marilyn is absolutely falling out of her dress.

In terms of the hierarchy of American cross-dressing based comedies, I think it sits:

1. Some Like It Hot
2. Tootsie
3. Mrs. Doubtfire

I don't think it's worth continuing beyond that as I'm pretty sure the gap between Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire is significantly smaller than the gap between Mrs. Doubtfire and whatever comes next out of Big Momma's House, White Chicks and To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.

Some Like It Hot consistently shows up on lists of all time classics and the American Film Institute actually judged it the greatest comedy of all time, so I admit that because of that I was a bit cautious in approaching it. Old comedies don't tend to hold up as well as dramas. Comic styles change over time and a lot of old stuff can be left behind, but I've got to say that Some Like It Hot holds up really well. I absolutely loved it and thinks it deserves all the plaudits that it gets. Greatest comedy of all time? That's not possible to say as comic taste is so subjective but I can see why it is always in the equation.

104) Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Director: Arthur Penn

Starring: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Estelle Parsons

It was bound to happen at some point, I'm actually kind of surprised that it took this long into the year, but I have my first double up of the year. For week three of Screens, Images, Ideas we watched Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, which I previously watched back in January. Seeing as we are studying the New Hollywood it was highly likely that it would come up. Given that I've already done a write up on it I won't say too much, but I did want to make a couple of comments.

I talked in my previous blog on the film about how it was a real landmark in terms of screen violence. Taking advantage of the changes in US screen censorship laws, it took depictions of violence to a whole new level. But what is particularly interesting about the violence in the film is the way in which it builds. For Clyde's first robbery the viewer remains out in the street with Bonnie. For the second robbery we go in with Clyde, but it is a farce as the bank has closed down and has no money. The third robbery, this time of a grocery store, we are again in with Clyde and this time there is a confrontation as the grocer attacks Clyde with a cleaver. Clyde beats him on the head with his gun and we see our first sight of blood. The fourth, a bank hold-up, results in the films first murder, a confronting close up of a bank teller being shot in the face. This steady building of the violence continues all the way to the films final scene, the brutal massacre of Bonnie and Clyde, known as the dance of death because of the way their bodies flailed around under the rain of bullet fire. Penn obviously had it in mind not to blow people away straight away, but rather starting in familiar territory and then shocking them by showing them something they had never seen, then doing it again by taking it further, and so on and so on.

The shockingness of the violence is made all the more effective by the quick changes of tone throughout the film. The film's soundtrack, provided by bluegrass duo Flatt and Scruggs, gives the film a comic, Keystone Cops, kind of feel at times. So when you have Bonnie and Clyde fleeing a bank followed by police with this music, it really hits you when that feeling of fun is juxtaposed with a quite confronting act of violence.

This was the third time I've seen this film and each time I've watched it I've enjoyed it more than the last. It really holds up as a film. It is surprisingly funny at times, beautifully shot and performed with engaging characters.

103) I Love You, Man

I Love You, Man (2009)

Director: John Hamburg

Starring: Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones, Sarah Burns, Jaime Pressly, Jon Favreau, Andy Samberg, J.K. Simmons, Jane Curtin, Lou Ferrigno

It was Sunday night, Kate was reading a magazine, I had nothing to do and I don't like Dancing with the Stars or CSI. A DVD and a big bowl of ice-cream sounded pretty good. I enjoyed The 40 Year Old Virgin a few weeks ago so thought another comedy was what I was after to finish the weekend.

Real estate agent Peter Klaven (Rudd) has never had any real male friends. He's always been more of a girlfriends kind of guy. That has never been an issue until he gets engaged to his girlfriend Zooey (Jones) who is convinced by her friends that his lack of male friends will result in him becoming a very clingy and pathetic husband, not to mention the wedding looking a bit lopsided when she has six bridesmaids and he doesn't even have a best man. So Peter sets out on a mission to find a friend. After a number of awkward encounters and man-dates Peter meets Sydney Fife (Segel) at an open house he is hosting. The two hit it off and quickly become very good friends. But this friendship takes on an intensity that Zooey never anticipated and soon starts to jeopardise their relationship.

I Love You, Man is a truly cringe worthy movie, but I mean that in the best possible way. The film is absolutely packed with comical awkward moments designed to make you uncomfortable. Kate is no good with awkwardness so she had to get up and leave the room a couple of times during the film. Paul Rudd does amazing awkward. He makes an art form out of it with this film. Once he steps out of his comfort zone on his endeavour to find a friend he does an amazing job of never quite hitting the mark (the character that is, not the performance). He gets the timing perfect, just talking for that little bit too long, not knowing when to let a joke go, not knowing when to just shut his mouth. Segel's Sydney is the exact opposite, a man comfortable in himself almost to a fault. There are some things you just don't have to be open and honest about. The two of them make a great odd couple, but a complementary odd couple rather than a oppositional odd couple.

This is not one of the best comedies to come out over the last few years, but it is above average and I have a real soft spot for it because I'm a real fan of Rudd and Segel. I much prefer those two to Seth Rogen or Jonah Hill. Rudd is usually an excellent supporting guy in comedies, having made a career out of playing the brother, the friend, the co-worker or the brother-in-law. He has appeared in a supporting capacity in a number of the better comedies of the last decade including Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, as well as making the grade for the all-star cast of Night at the Museum. Over the last couple of years he has started to step up into more leading roles, with Role Models, this film and Dinner for Schmucks. Some have questioned whether he has the screen presence to lead a film, but he's definitely moving in the right direction. Plus he has the male lead in James L. Brooks's next romantic comedy, How Do You Know, which can only help his standing. Jason Segel is probably a step again below Rudd. He also is not believed to have the presence to carry a film and doesn't the same streak of excellent supporting roles to support him. His role in the TV series How I Met Your Mother has brought him some attention though, Forgetting Sarah Marshall found its audience and he knows the right people to get him a leg up in the industry. What I like about him is that he has a real sincerity in his performance which just seems to make him a really likable guy. He's also a genuinely talented guy, not only acting but also writing songs for Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek and writing screenplays for Forgetting Sarah Marshall and, which I am super pumped for, the upcoming The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made (the IMDb page for which includes a cast list, the only two non-Muppet actors listed being Jason Segel and, strangely, Charles Grodin).

I Love You, Man is a really good example of how by simply playing with an existing narrative stereotype you can create a story which is both different and amusing. There is nothing particularly interesting, different or comical about a story which involves a guy with a good group of friends who meets a girl, becomes fascinated with her and in spending more and more time with her starts to jeopardise his existing friendships. That's pretty ho-hum, uninventive stuff. But by switching it around so that it is a guy who jeopardises his romantic relationship when he makes a male friend, it works. It provides a comical spin on a common story.

J.K. Simmons has a small role as Peter's father and is brilliant as always. He and Fred Willard are two guys who I just think always make a comedy better. The scene with Simmons and Samberg as Peter's gay brother are among the highlights of the film. Lou Ferrigno is good value too, in his so extended and somewhat more involved version of the obscure celebrity cameo that seemed to start with Chuck Norris and David Hasselhoff's appearances in Dodgeball.

I Love You, Man is an uncomfortably awkward but really likable film. There are a lot of genuine laughs, but the humour is not cruel or overly crude. I think Roger Ebert hit the nail on the head though when he said that a large part of the success of this movie probably comes from the fact that every guy wishes they had a friend like Sydney Fife.

102) Cool Runnings

Cool Runnings (1993)

Director: John Turteltaub

Starring: John Candy, Leon, Doug E. Doug, Rawle D. Lewis, Malik Yoba

As is tradition, I was at the in-laws place for lunch on Sunday. We had Foxtel on and were flicking through the channel when we came across Cool Runnings playing on the Family Movie Network and the flicking stopped and after about half an hour we realised that we were in this for the long haul.

When Jamaican sprinter Derice Bannock (Leon) is disqualified in the Olympic trials after being tripped by another competitor it appears his Olympic dreams are over. However he tracks down disgraced former Olympic bobsled champion Irving Blitzer (Candy), who now lives in Jamaica and was a friend of Derice's father. Blitzer has long held a theory that sprinters make the best bobsledders, so Derice manages to convince him to coach Jamaica's very first bobsled team. Derice is joined by fellow sprinters Yul Brenner (Yoba) and Junior Bevil (Lewis) and push-cart driver Sanka Coffie (Doug), and the team make their way to Calgary in an effort to qualify for the 1988 Winter Olympics. Not only do they have to work to qualify for the competition, they have to prove to the administrators and other competitors that they belong there.

Cool Runnings is based on a true story, but the way that Disney have sugar coated it makes it feel too good to be true. What you get is a quite generic compendium of sports movie cliches borrowing plot points from Hoosiers, Rudy, Rocky and many others. You've got the wise coach who has demons in his past, you have the team of misfits who have to learn to work together, you have the team of outsiders trying to gain the respect of their peers, you have a finale where despite not winning they end up winners. It really is all there.

Over its 110 year history, the cinema has provided us with some stirring orations. Some of the most inspiring, uplifting words ever spoken have been spoken on the silver screen. Who could forget Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poets Society urging his students to seize the day, Mel Gibson in Braveheart insisting that while the English may take their lives they'll never take their freedom, or Peter Finch in Network urging his viewers to get mad as hell. Well Cool Runnings makes its own contribution to this pantheon of motivational speeches:

Yul: Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.

Junior: I see Junior.

Yul: You see Junior. Well, let me tell you what I see. I see pride! I see power! I see a bad-ass mother who don't take no crap off of nobody!

It's really stirring stuff.

At the moment we live in a time when family and children's movies come under great scrutiny. People complain when a Harry Potter movie gets rated M because it means their kids can't see it. They also complain when it gets rated PG because it is too frightening. Old cartoons get re-edited to take out all the scenes where a character is smoking. People are keen to not have anything in family or children's movies which sends bad messages. So I found it quite amusing as I watched Cool Runnings to come across a really fun bar room brawling scene. If it was made today their would be a big fuss kicked up about it promoting drunken violence. I think this is when I'm supposed to say "Political correctness gone mad!"

Cool Runnings is not a great movie, but it is one of those films which everyone who was old enough to be watching films in the 1990s, regardless of their age, has some memory of. It is one of those films which everyone seems to have seen, and as a result it is a film which everyone has a connection to and a fondness for. Cool Runnings is pretty simple, family friendly stuff. It is corny to the max, but it is impossible to hate. The colour, the music, the jokes, the feel good story just make it a really lovable film. It's exactly the kind of Saturday afternoon, Disney family movie which doesn't seem to get made anymore.

101) Goodfellas

Goodfellas (1990)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Robert DeNiro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino

I got a text message from a friend the other day. He had hired out Goodfellas and was somewhat surprised when the film finished after only 65mins. He then realised that it was one of those double sided DVDs and he'd started on the wrong side. He was crushed. It reminded me though that I had been meaning to revisit Goodfellas. I'd watched it a couple of years ago and had thought it was very, very good but it hadn't struck me as great, yet it continues to come up on so many greatest-film-of-all-time lists, so I wanted to give it a second go.

Based on a true story, as recounted in Nicholas Pileggi's book Wise Guy, Goodfellas tells the story of Irish-Italian-American Henry Hill (Liotta). Since he was a kid he has always wanted to be a gangster. After being taken into Paulie Cicero's (Sorvino) gang as a youth he works his way slowly up the chain while forming an alliance with the slick Jimmy 'The Gent' Conway (DeNiro) and the hot headed Tommy DeVito (Pesci).

What makes this film such an effective gangster movie is the honesty and balance with which Scorsese tells the story. Often gangster films fall into one of two camps. They either glamorise and romanticise the criminal lifestyle or they show it to be brutal and detestable. In Goodfellas, Scorsese finds a balance between the two. On the one hand we get a very real sense of what attracts people to this lifestyle. At the beginning of the film Henry Hill narrates that "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To me, being a gangster was better than being President of the United States." And we believe him. We see the world through Henry's eyes and as a result we understand the appeal of it. But while he shows us the appeal, Scorsese doesn't overly romanticise or glamorise it. Goodfellas doesn't have the epic, operatic feel of The Godfather. We don't look at the mafia figures like they are members of some type of Italian-American royal family. We see them as small time hoods, and their flash cars and mink coats all feel a bit ciche. On the other hand, Scorsese does not shy away from showing the dark side of the lifestyle. We see how brutal they can be in dealing with other people, the complete disregard for human life, and also the paranoia and discomfort that comes from constantly having to watch your back. Scorsese goes to great lengths to make sure we fully experience the life of a gangster, the best parts and the worst.

Like Scorsese's best films of the 1970s and 1980s, Goodfellas is not narrative focused. The film contains no central narrative thread. Rather the film is about creating and exploring a world. If Goodfellas is about something, it is about what it feels like to be a gangster. Scorsese uses first person narration, a somewhat unpopular technique, really effectively. Most of the story we get from Henry Hill's mouth, but we also get some very interesting narration from his wife Karen (Bracco). Through the narration we experience the world through their eyes. Through Henry we understand that appeal. Through Karen we understand how someone can just get sucked into the lifestyle.

As much as Henry and Karen are the films emotional centre, what makes this film so brilliant is the supporting cast. DeNiro is at his best as he so often is in his collaborations with Scorsese, Sorvino is great as the mob boss, very still and quiet but still very powerful, but the particular star is Joe Pesci. Goodfellas was overlooked at the 1991 Academy Awards (the year Dances With Wolves dominated), but the one award that it did win from its six nominations was Best Supporting Actor for Pesci. He is simply outstanding as the strangely engaging but terrifyingly short tempered Tommy DeVito. For a little guy, Pesci's ability to dominate a scene and invoke fear is very impressive indeed.

If you're after a bit of fun while watching Goodfellas, try playing 'Spot the Sopranos cast member'. I spotted five: Lorraine Bracco -Dr. Melfi in The Sopranos and Karen Hill in Goodfellas, Frank Vincent - Phil Leotardo in The Sopranos and Billy Batts in Goodfellas, Michael Imperioli - Christopher in The Sopranos and Spider in Goodfellas, Tony Sirico - Paulie in The Sopranos and Tony Stacks in Goodfellas, and the one I was most proud of, Vincent Pastore - Pussy in The Sopranos and the very important role of 'Man with Coatrack' in Goodfellas. I thought I did pretty well, but apparently there are a total of 27 cast members who appeared in both productions, though the vast majority of them are extras. None the less, it is no wonder it was such a great television show, they just lifted half the supporting cast straight out of one of the greatest ever gangster movies.

Goodfellas is a brilliant film, so much so that the great debate is whether Goodfellas is a better gangster film than The Godfather. A lot of people think it is. I'm not sure that it is really a valid comparison because they are such different pictures. The Godfather is epic and operatic while Goodfellas is gritty and local. Goodfellas is very much a Martin Scorsese picture in the same way that The Godfather is very much a Francis Coppola picture. What Goodfellas does really well, and why it has maintained its reputation as a modern classic, is that it takes you inside the lifestyle of a gangster and makes you experience it and feel it. But as brilliant as it is, it is still not my favourite Scorsese film.

100) The Conversation

The Conversation (1974)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Starring: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr, Robert Duvall

In my blog on Tucker: The Man and His Dream I made mention of the hot streak that Francis Coppola was on in the 1970s. The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now. Four films, four best picture nominations for two wins, three best director nominations for one win, four best screenplay nominations for two wins. Not a shabby decade. The Conversation is easily the lowest profile of the four films Coppola made in the 1970s, but it is still an amazing film. It is the only one of the four which is based on an original story be Coppola, the others were all adapted screenplays, so for Coppola fans it is a must.

Harry Caul (Hackman) is a legend in the surveillance game. He is the best wiretapper and bugger in America. He and his team are hired by the director of a large corporation (Duvall) to record a conversation between his wife (Williams) and her lover (Forrest). Caul prepares the recordings and goes to deliver them and receive his payment, but the urgency with which his employers assistant (Ford) tries to get the tapes off him makes him wary and he decides to have another listen to these tapes. With a bit of work he manages to uncover a previously inaudible bit of dialogue, "He'd kill us if he had the chance", which leads him to believe his employer plans to murder the lovers. Haunted by a previous job of his which lead to the murder of three people, Harry doesn't know what to do.

While The Conversation came in the midst of that amazing streak for Francis Coppola, so the natural inclination is to look at it in terms of Coppola, a lot of credit for the success of this film has to go to editor and sound designer Walter Murch. Coppola had to get to work on pre-production for The Godfather Part II so much of the post-production for The Conversation was left in the capable hands of Walter Murch. Murch ended up changing the structure of the film, moving a few scenes around and adding one particular audio device which is key to the unraveling of the plot. What resulted is an absolute masterclass in the power of editing and sound engineering to contribute to narrative. In The Conversation the editing and sound design play a major role in the slow revealing of information. The conversation that is recorded at the beginning of the film is repeated over and over again throughout the film, with different details and pieces of information becoming apparent at different points. The way Murch structured the film puts us right in Harry Caul's head. We discover things as he discovers things. We are encouraged to interpret information the same way that he chooses to interpret things. We are mislead the same way he is mislead.

One of the defining features of the New Hollywood of the late 1960s and 1970s was the way in which American cinema was influenced by European art cinema. In the case of The Conversation this influence is very apparent. The central narrative device of The Conversation is a different take on the central device of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up. While in Blow-Up we see Thomas exploring a series of photographs he took, enlarging and focusing them until it reveals a murder, The Conversation does the same thing but with a sound recording. Both films explore similar themes of perception, perspective and what is real. The Conversation is, however, a much more American picture. It uses a more conventional narrative form than Blow-Up, resulting in a much more accessible film experience.

One thing I have to mention in relation to The Conversation is John Cazale. This is an actor who's career I find to be simply amazing. He only made five feature films before his career was tragically cut short in 1978 when he lost his battle with bone cancer. Those five films were; The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter. That is an absolutely brilliant collection of films. All five of those films were nominated for best picture Oscars with three of them winning the award (The Conversation was, of course, beaten to the award by The Godfather Part II so really it was only possible to win four of the five). I doubt there are any other actors in history who can say that over half the films they appeared in won best picture Oscars. He was also engaged to Meryl Streep, so he did pretty well for himself there too. Apparently when the producers of The Deer Hunter found out he was dying of cancer they moved to have him replaced in the cast but Streep threatened to walk from the film if he was sacked. He was an absolutely brilliant supporting actor and it's a real shame we never got to see more of him.

Demonstrating a lot of the paranoia that was evident in 3 Days of the Condor and other films of the early 1970s, The Conversation is a really tense thriller which tackles issues of privacy, but is also an intriguing character study of a character who would regularly be peripheral. The Conversation is a must see for anyone interested in film editing or sound design, and a very worthwhile couple of hours for anyone else.

So that's 100 movies on the board for the year so far. It look a bit longer than I'd thought it would, but I suppose that is down to the fact that for every movie I've watched I've had to write up a blog which makes them each a little more time consuming.

99) Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008)


Director: Sacha Gervasi

Starring: Steve 'Lips' Kudlow, Robb Reiner

One of the best reviewed films of last year was an obscure rock documentary directed by the guy who wrote the screenplay for The Terminal, about a band no one had heard of, called Anvil! The Story of Anvil. It was consistently getting five stars and two thumbs ups across the board so I was quite intrigued by it.

At the age of 14 Steve 'Lips' Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, has been hailed as 'the demi-gods of Canadian metal' and members of bands like Guns 'n' Roses, Metallica and Motorhead testify to the influence they have had on the world of heavy metal music. But despite this, Anvil has never really hit the big time and Lips and Robb, now in their fifties, are still striving to achieve rock fame and recognition. The documentary follows Anvil on a disastrous tour of Europe and into the studio to record their 13th album in a last ditch effort to realise their dream.

As you watch this hilarious rock documentary you can't help but draw parallels to the brilliant mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, so it takes you a while to work out whether what you are seeing is actually for real or just a gee up, a dilemma that is not helped by the coincidence that one of the subjects name is Robb Reiner (Rob Reiner, with one 'b', directed This is Spinal Tap). But this is all 100% legitimate, which makes it all the more funny, but also all the more profound.

You don't have to be a heavy metal fan to enjoy this documentary and to get something out of this film, because at the end of the day Anvil! The Story of Anvil is not actually a film about heavy metal. It is a film about following dreams. It is a film about two guys who have spent their entire adult lives pursuing a goal and are now confronted by the probability that they may never actually achieve that goal. In that regard it is a film which anyone can relate to. Everyone has dreams, everyone has ambitions, and while some may pursue those dreams harder than others, ultimately very few people can say at the end of their lives that they achieved their wildest dreams. This film asks questions about how far you should go, how much you should spend, how much you should put your family through, in order to follow your dream.

The two best friends appear to be a really odd couple. On the one hand you have Lips. He is exactly what you'd expect a 50 year old who has been in a heavy metal band that hasn't quite made it for 35 years to look like and act like. He's a little ball of energy and enthusiasm. His long hair is a wiry mess and he's only ever seen wearing old band t-shirts, usually of his band. Robb Reiner on the other hand is not at all what you'd expect. He is a really softly spoken, contemplative guy. He paints! At one point he takes the camera on a tour of his house showing off the different paintings that he has done. While you can understand that Lips has the kind of personality that would believe that success is always just around the corner, you struggle to see how Robb could have stayed faithful for so many years. It's a bit of a shame that the film focuses so heavily on Lips because I found Robb to be the more intriguing figure and it would have been nice to explore his story more.

As I was watching this film I kept thinking to myself that Lips sounded really familiar. I spent most of the film racking my brain trying to work out who he sounded like, and it was really starting to bug me. Then about 15mins from the end it hit me. He sounds a lot like a slightly higher pitched version of Alf, the cat eating alien from the planet Melmac. Slightly off putting during moments of high emotion (it is at these moments of high emotion that he sounds most Alf-like).

The documentary form has really re-emerged over the last ten to fifteen years. Michael Moore brought documentaries back into the mainstream and you'll get a number of documentaries a year getting releases in local megaplexes when that was unheard of before then. But while we are seeing more documentaries being released, the documentaries we are seeing tend to be a bit depressing. It's all been a bit doom and gloom lately. Anvil! The Story of Anvil is the antidote to the recent spate of demoralising documentaries by presenting a story which, despite showing a journey with more downs than ups, is amazingly optimistic in tone. The film is at times legitimately funny but is also genuinely touching and profound. You may start the film laughing at Lips and Robb, but by the end you are well and truly on their side.

98) 3 Days of the Condor

3 Days of the Condor (1975)

Director: Sydney Pollack

Starring: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Max Von Sydow, Cliff Robertson, Michael Kane

School is back in. The second semester has kicked off and this term I am tutoring for a subject called 'Screens, Images, Ideas', not quite as straight forward as 'Introduction to Cinema'. For the first six weeks of the course I am right in my element because we are looking at New Hollywood cinema. The course convener has chosen an interesting place to start. You'd expect to start things off by looking at either Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde or The Graduate, given that they are the three films which are seen as the starting point for the New Hollywood movement. Instead we jumped straight into the middle of the period to look at Sydney Pollack's 3 Days of the Condor, a decision I didn't mind since I've never seen the film before.

Joe Turner (Redord), codename 'Condor', is a reader for Section 17 of the CIA, fronting as the American Literacy Historical Society. His job is to read published material from all over the world to see if it is being used to send covert messages. Turner's suspicions are roused by an obscure book which has been published in three languages; Dutch, Spanish and Arabic, so he files a report. Later, after going on the lunch run, he returns to the office to find everyone has been murdered. He contacts his CIA superiors to report the incident and organise to get picked up, but when he arrives at the rendezvous point he is almost killed. Unsure who he can trust, Turner abducts a young woman, Kathy Hale (Dunaway), and uses her apartment as a safe place to hide while he tries to work out just who is after him and why.

One of the features of the New Hollywood period was that American films started to speak to the experience of the American people, exploring issues, ideas and themes that were relevant to the time. Previously Hollywood film had been all about escapism; large scale epics and glittery musicals, whereas in the late 1960s and the 1970s Hollywood films began to function as a form of social commentary. In the 1960s and 1970s a number of things had occured which had shaken the American psyche; there was the debacle that was the Vietnam War, the assassination of President Kennedy and the release of the controversial Warren Report, and, of course, there was the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Nixon. These events had led to a loss of trust in their government and left the American people suspicious of their institutions. Thus the early 1970s saw a cycle of films dealing with paranoia and conspiracies. These films included Alan Pakula's conspiracy trilogy of Klute, The Parallax View and All the President's Men, Roman Polanski's Chinatown, Francis Coppola's The Conversation and Sydney Pollack's 3 Days of the Condor. In his review of Pollack's film, American critic Roger Ebert noted that it was a sign of the changing times that Hollywood stars who would once have been playing cowboys and generals were now playing wiretappers, assassins or targets.

I found the film's final scene very interesting because of the context out of which the film came. I don't like to ruin the ending of films for people so I won't say exactly what happened, just that the film ends with Turner putting his fate in the hands of the press, showing a great deal of faith in the integrity of the free press. I found this really interesting because, as I said before Vietnam, the Warren Report and Watergate had left Americans disillusioned with their government and their institutions. But the fact that Watergate was blown open by two journalists from the Washington Post meant that despite this lack of trust in their institutions there was still a faith in the integrity of the free press. So the final scene of 3 Days of the Condor feels very much like a product of it's time, coming out of a very small window before the the integrity of the press came under equal scrutiny. In the following year Sidney Lumet's brilliant film Network is released, exploring the influence of the profit orientation of the television networks, turning the spotlight onto the media.

I love a good supporting actor. Over the last couple of years I've developed a growing appreciation for the value a good supporting cast can add to a film. 3 Days of the Condor has a great supporting performance by the great Swedish actor Max Von Sydow as the assassin Joubert. Von Sydow is one of those guys, like Christopher Plummer or Christopher Lee, who just continuously shows up in films of the last sixty or seventy years. He first came onto the radar in the 1950s through his work with legendary director Ingmar Bergman, appearing in, among others, his highly regarded films The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. He really broke the US market in 1965 when he scored the role of Jesus in George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told, leading an all star cast which included the likes of Charlton Heston, Martin Landau, Angela Lansbury, Sidney Poitier, John Wayne, Donald Pleasense, Shelley Winters and Claude Rains. Over the last 50 years he has continued to pop up in an eclectic range of films including The Exorcist, Flash Gordon, Conan the Barbarian, Dune, Ghostbusters II, Minority Report, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Rush Hour 3. I've already come across him twice this year in Shutter Island and Robin Hood. Especially now, in his old age, he adds a real sense of prestige to a film. Through his connection to Bergman his presence brings with it a sense of film history, a history you know directors like Scorsese, and likely in this case Pollack, are trying to play off when they cast him in their films.

3 Days of the Condor is a well made thriller. It is intense and exciting, and Redford, Dunaway and Von Sydow all put in good performances. But it is not one of the greats. If you look at that shortlist of 1970s paranoia/conspiracy movies I mentioned above, it is not as good as Chinatown, The Conversation or All the President's Men and I haven't seen Klute or The Parallax View so I can't really comment on those. It is a solid three and a half stars kind of movie. One you'll enjoy but not one you'll want to see again and again.