Tyne Daly of Cagney & Lacey fame plays Inspector Kate Moore and is wonderful in the role. She endures sexism and scepticism from Harry before eventually winning his respect.
Directed by James Fargo, the film is very nicely shot, with clever, well-judged framing of scenes making for satisfying visuals throughout. The villains seem unnecessarily hammy and one-dimensional, but the real theme of the film is Harry’s developing relationship with Kate and that more than makes up for it.
Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are both at their very best playing the journalists. It’s a fascinating glimpse into another era. In this pre-internet world, they spend most of their time talking to people, phoning people, typing, scrawling in notebooks, chain-smoking and drinking coffee. In our current period of misinformation politics and double-think social media, the 1970s seem relatively straightforward and innocent.
You wonder if this film could even have been made now: there are no tech giants, no billionaires dictating how people communicate, no car chases, no shootings and no “love interest” – just two writers trying to uncover the truth.
Excellent body-swap comedy from Disney.
A mother and daughter switch roles, with comedic results. Jodie Foster plays the daughter, while Barbara Harris plays the mother. There’s plenty of silly slapstick, as pretty much everything goes wrong for both of them, but the film also makes some interesting points about gender roles (Annabel realises that her idealised father is actually a chauvinist pig) and the expectations of US society in the 1970s.
Foster is fine enough at playing her own mother, but Harris is superb as her own daughter – really making you believe she's a teenager trapped in an adult's body.
There’s a superb theme song, too – "I’d Like to Be You for a Day" – although there's some confusion about whether or not it's sung by the two female leads.
Directed by John G. Avildsen, it’s an amazingly low-key film, very little of which is actually about boxing. Mostly it’s a rather sad saga of a man struggling in the world. He finds love in the form of his friend’s sister Adrian (Talia Shire), who, like him, suffers from low self-esteem.
It’s extremely gritty. You see a lot of Stallone wandering around, seeming a little lost, in run-down parts of Philadelphia. You end up rooting for him as he seems such a sweet and needy character.
Burgess Meredith (The Penguin from the 1960s Batman TV series) plays his coach, and Burt Young plays his desperate and downtrodden friend Paulie.
Numerous big-budget sequels would follow, but the impressive restraint of this original would never be repeated.
The music is lively and the concert scenes seem convincingly “real”. The couple have chemistry and charisma. It was a wise move to cast two genuine singers to play these two performers, as they seem so natural on stage.
I like the fact that John Norman Howard’s untimely demise in a high/speed car crash can be interpreted as a reckless accident or a suicide, depending on how you choose to read the character and the emotional/chemical state he’s in. Unlike the 2018 Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga film (in which there’s no doubt that he’s a tragic addict who kills himself), this more nuanced version has the confidence to allow some ambiguity – rather than spelling everything out for you – and I admire that quality. In the same way, the managers in this film (whose roles are handled well by Gary “Buddy Holly” Busey and Paul Mazursky) aren’t simplistically ruthless or exploitative. They seem much more like real people with real conflicts.
Joan Didion had a hand in writing it, which may account for the refreshingly intelligent approach.
Josey Wales sees his family killed and sets out to get revenge. Along the way he meets some colourful characters, who join him despite his “wanted man” status. As bounty hunters track and trail him, you wonder if he can ever truly be free.
It’s superbly cast all round. Every character is perfectly drawn – especially Chief Dan George as Lone Watie. There’s a quietly comic aspect and a tenderness to his manner that makes him hugely appealing.
I like the way Wales uses his spitting as a form of punctuation during his various encounters and conversations. That tic forms a sort of running joke that gets funnier as the film progresses.
The landscapes look beautiful and even the music is strong, although you do wish they had booked Ennio Morricone to compose the soundtrack.
While it starts out as a simplistic tale of revenge, the film goes on to become something so much broader and richer. I'm looking forward to watching it again.
Cybil Shepherd and Jodie Foster are excellent as Betsy (the campaign volunteer for a presidential candidate) and Iris (a child prostitute), while Harvey Keitel is suitably creepy as Iris’s long-haired pimp.
It’s beautifully filmed: you could freeze almost any frame and make a poster of it. And Martin Scorsese’s subtle handling of tension was never better judged.
The original score by Bernard Herrmann makes a compelling, noirish film even more so.
You can interpret it as a film about PTSD or a story about isolation and loneliness.
Disturbingly, this classic was an influence on John Hinckley Jr., who in 1981 attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in order to impress Jodie Foster.
