Robert Altman’s 1984 film Secret Honor. It’s a shame this film is largely forgotten because Philip Baker Hall’s portrayal of Richard Nixon is nothing short of mesmerizing.
Gizmo! and Brother Can You Spare A a Dime? Both omnipresent on HBO in the late 70s, and feel like they’ve vanished from the face of the earth. Both delightful.
Also: I thought The World According to Garp felt like it would be an all-time classic when it came out. Now it’s ignored and only has a bare-bones DVD release. Mystifies me.
I just thought of the limited-run filmed plays in the '70s, some of which wound up at suburban multiplexes. Three I remember are "The Iceman Cometh," "The Man In the Glass Booth," and "Rhinoceres." Also, one not in that series but also a filmed play, "Give 'Em Hell, Harry, " with James Whitmore as Harry Truman.
Standup Guys - 2012 Apparently, my wife and I liked this much more than the critics. But .. Pacino doesn’t eat the scenery, Arkin isn’t constantly falling into a shtick .. and Walken just melts into the character. We both thought it was very enjoyable.
Another movie that was a frequent staple of HBO programming in the 1980s - It Came From Hollywood. In this case, it’s been forgotten for an understandable reason - the cost of relicensing the movie clips has prevented any home video editions. You can watch an unauthorized upload on YouTube, though.
Prior to Ted Turner buying up all the old studio archives, there used to be a number of films that seemed to be regulars in local late night/weekend syndication - One that comes to mind offhand was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I remember as a kid it always seemed to be airing somewhere on almost a weekly basis. As before, once Turner got his hands on them, and TV stations went to infomercials, almost everything made prior to 1970 just seemed to disappear from public view overnight, and subsequently from the public consciousness as well.
I liked "Popeye" quite a bit when I saw it in its first week of release in 1980, but then again I was just ten years old. I caught it again a year or so back and it certainly isn't the dreadful career-killer folks were calling it at the time of release. I think the cast is still solid and those sets are absolutely wonderful, as is the soundtrack. I imagine if HBO ran this ad nauseam in the 80's it would be better remembered today. I think "the critics" were not impressed with Robin Williams as an actor, and only saw him as Mork from a crass, puerile sitcom and nothing more.
The Ninth Configuration (1980), written and directed by William Peter Blatty (author of The Exorcist) and starring Stacy Keach. A creepy little psychological thriller about soldiers losing their minds. Lots of unsettling weirdness and some neat plot twists. Great ensemble cast.
I love this movie, and, you're right - no-one ever mentions it, but I am not sure they ever did! It is so obscure it does not even have a trailer.
Good movie. There's an interesting shot in it. I may not be remembering this with 100% accuracy but the gist is correct. Walther Mathau is seen walking up a flight of stairs. The next shot shows him entering a room. But he looks completely different. What had happened was Mathau got sick and lost a lot of weight. It's very noticeable.
True, the commentary mentions that. He had a heart attack and lost almost 40 lbs. Luckily his overcoat obscured that.
Proving once again how subjective film appreciation is. "The Long Goodbye" got good reviews on release and I love it. I've long been a Chandler fan and have read all he has done many times. I had no problem with Altman's re imagining. I've also long been an Altman fan. "MASH", "Brewster McCloud", "McCabe ...", "Nashville", "Three Women", "The Player", "Shortcuts", all personal favorites. He's got some stinkers but so do DiPalma, Mann, Lumet and just about everybody. Working in feature film sound editing and design for over 30 years I know we owe him a debt of gratitude for revolutionizing on set recording with his multiple mic technique. He changed things. There's a reason the best actors and actresses wanted to work with him, especially actresses as he was pretty successful at directing them to Oscar nominations. True he's not for everybody, maybe why I like him so much. Gawd I love "The Long Goodbye" ...
I wonder if you love it as much as I detest it!) Anyways, I do like some of his films. I've seen most of them, and they mostly seem like misses. It seems to me his idiosyncracies are better when they serve stronger narrative. Not completely linear story telling, but at least an impulse to go forward. That's why California Split works - those guys just keep bouncing like pinballs, and it has real energy. But I also think Altman is often overshared by his own b.s. - If you want I can dig up an interview with IIRC Lou Lombardo, the editor of McCabe, saying the 16 track audio dialogue system was messed up and Altman tried to characterize the symphony of mumbling as intentional. There is dialogue in McCabe that should be heard clearly (and I'm guessing Warren Beatty wasn't happy with the how the dialogue on the film was obscured). I really would like to see a 'remixed' McCabe with clearer dialogue So, yes, an idiosyncratic talent. I'm glad he served as a corrective to conventional Hollywood, but I think he was only successful about 1/3 of the time, and a filmmaker that self indulgent, willfully cynical, intuitively resourceful should have had a higher batting average. And the cat offends me, and I think Chandler would have vomited at the thought of Marlowe having a cat. Why not give Ahab a puppy, Jay Gatsby a gerbil, and Richard the Lionhearted a salamander?
It is awful. There’s one musical number I remember, “Question Me an Answer,” that is a musical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. The premise is that Bobby Van sings an “answer” and a classroom of children respond by singing the “question,” or something along those lines (shades of Jeopardy!). The song doesn’t work and it’s incredibly grating.
Since discovering Robert Altman as a filmmaker, I can find something to enjoy in nearly every one of his pictures. The Long Goodbye does take a while to get off the ground, but when it does it's fantastic. The ending comes out of nowhere too. Another one that takes a while to unfold is Three Women, which is now one of my favorites. Sissy Spacek and Shelly Duvall are tremendous. Watching certain Altman films with the subtitles can help. I didn't understand half of what was happening in Gosford Park until I did this. It even brings out nuances in McCabe And Mrs. Miller I had missed because they're so buried in the mix. One to avoid is Quintet (1979) with Paul Newman, mainly because it's excruciatingly dull. I got through it exactly once and it was a chore. A buried gem in Altman's catalog is Images (1972), starring mostly-forgotten British actress Susannah York. Another is Secret Honor (1984). Philip Baker Hall's performance as Nixon is a tour-de-force. Of Altman's later works, Pret-A-Porter (1994) and Dr. T & The Women (2000) are quite underrated, as is his second-to-last film The Company (2003), which is short on plot but contains many exquisite sequences of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet (and I'm definitely not a "dance" person).
We rented Iceman this year, wife never saw it. Lee Marvin caught some **** for his version of Hickey, but I liked it a lot. Robert Ryan was perfection; he only lived a short time after it wrapped. Knowing he was dying really gave his performance oomph. We went to see Rhino with Zero in hs. It went way over our heads, Godot would have been a better choice. I think A Delicate Balance was also in that series
A pretty cool film from 1981 is Road Games starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis. It's an action/suspense thriller in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock films.
Once you lose the confidence of the studios you've got a tough climb ahead. After Black Dahlia failed to set anything on fire he's been forced to rely on European money to get the few pictures he's done since made (I was surprised to discover he had one out in 2019, Domino, that I had never heard about, and I read a lot about movies), and the couple I've seen have been very much the personal projects he once did between blockbusters. Those were always too quirky to expect much of a boxoffice but generally seemed to find their audience, and if you know the director could be exciting viewing. Without those rousing successes in between, though, I suspect it's hard to keep your own confidence up long enough to continue what anyone could call a career the likes of which he had. Shame, because when he was on there weren't many as dazzling, passionate and complex as he can be.