Movie review - "The Hunted" (2003) **1/2

 The last of William Friedkin's four Sherry Lansing movies came and went in theatres quite quickly but is a decent action thriller with Benicio del Toro going on a killing spree and his mentor Tommy Lee Jones being called in to track him down.

The movie's main problem is aching familiarity. del Toro is tormented and Jones is tormented and one chases after the other and there's Connie Nielsen as a plucky FBI agent and a couple of red shirts to be killed and some girl ni del Toro's past.

A few of the fight scenes in the bush are well done  - maybe the whole film needed to be set in the bush, but they capture del Toro and he escapes in the city.

This was fine. 

Movie review - "The Guardian" (1990) ***

Often called Friedkin's worst movie but Deal of the Century is far worse, and I enjoyed it. It's silly, of course, a druid sacrificing babies to trees, and random rapists who appear in the forests to die, and you can tell Friedkin was going through a custody dispute with its emphasis on the father, the untrustworthy nanny, etc (though it's not as divorced dad a movie as Rampage). Still it works on a certain level.

I loved the way the movie was shot, there's effective scenes of the house at night with a late night DJ talking (playing Aussie songs from The Triffids and Not Drowning Waving), and the tree is creepy. Memorable sequence with that architect character tracking Seagrove in the forest and regretting it.

I think the movie should have been more about the mum, Carey Lowell - who is required to scream and look dumb too much (though she is allowed to fight at the end). Seagrove should've seduced the husband (played by someone caled Dwier Brown) who should've died. 

Jenny Seagove has a high old time running around nude covered in much.  The climax is a lot of fun with Brown chainsawing the tree and Seagrove duking it out with Carey Lowell.

Full of plot holes and places it needed to be tightened but I had a good time. 

Movie review - "Rampage" (1987) **1/2

 I think William Friedkin was a dumb person who read a few books so people thought he was smart. This is about the capture and trial of a serial killer. We get scenes of the killer murdering one family (middle aged woman and her parents) then another (mother and small child) which have power to shock and Friedkin then proceeds to stack the deck in favour of the death penalty by showing the killer to be a complete psycho who giggles and smiles and kills three more guards to rub it in, and kills a kid, and calls the prosecutor at home. And the psychiatrists let him out and lie on the stand - I think Friedkin was going through a custody dispute at the time.

The court arguments and look at the legal system feel dumb, with Michael Biehn invoking the Nazis and lots of yelling. Did the author of the book on which this is based, a lawyer, have a say in those scenes?

Michael Biehn isn't much - he was effective in support movies but on his own he shouts. Deborah Van  Valkeberg has nothing to do as his wife, except cry about their dead daughter - she could have been cut out of the film, and probably should have been.

None of it feels real. I will say that the movie had a compulsiveness to it - it's not boring like The Brinks Job or Deal of the Century. It's nutty Friedkin jumping up and down and yelling at clouds. 

Movie review - "The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond" (1960) ***

 Decent A minus gangster biopic, done with pace by Budd Boetticher. I'm not a huge Ray Danton fan but he's fine. Karen Steele is bad as his dim true love. Elaine Stewart is fun as a minx. Dyan Cannon is really fun as a moll, Warren Oates strong as Danton's brother, Richard Gardner excellent as Mad Dog Coll ditto Robert Lowery as Rothstein.  It's got some "Psychology" (he pushed everyone away!) but it holds dramatically.

Movie review - "Deal of the Century" (1983) *

 Having shown he couldn't do comedy in The Night They Raided Minsky's and The Brinks Job William Friedkin showed it again with this flat satire of the arms industry. People who work in that arena are inherently unlikeable but they can be made compelling - but Friedkin directs sluggishly, Chevy Chase is miscast, Sigourney Weaver flounders.

When Wallace Shawn shoots himself it perks up briefly. That's what the movie should have been - real stakes. 

It's bad. Flat. Unfunny. You don't care. Greg Hines could be cut out of the film. Not drama. Just odd. 

Movie review - "The Exorcist" (1973) *****

 It all clicked for William Friedkin - he got the perfect material for his documentary style of filmmaking, and also casting. Ellen Burstyn is a consistently strong actor. The X factor comes from Linda Blair (likeable, relatable, heartbreaking) and Jason Miller (often overlooked but tormented, tough, smart, soulful, excellent, I appreciate they didn't play a love story with him and Burstyn).

The film works so well for many reasons but mostly this - an outlandish story is treated totally seriously. A child is ill, the mother does everything she can, the doctors try everything they can but it doesn't work. And this is primeval because when a child is injured you feel so helpless. 

The movie Burstyn is starring in looks terrible - a campus protest film! 

Book review - "Chasing the Panther: Adventures and Misadventures of a Cinematic Life" by Carolyn Pfeiffer

 I read this because I was keen to read about Pfeiffer's adventures as a producer in the 80s with Alan Rudolph, Chris Blackwell, Shep Gordon etc but there is very little of that. This memoir is mostly about her time in Europe in the 60s - as a student, then working in Italy as Claudie Cardinale's assistant, meeting people like Burt Lancaster, Visconti, Delon and Fellini, then working for Delon (being raped by one of Delon's dodgy bodyguards), then Omar Sharif as an assistant (shagging Robert Bolt), being friends with Nathalie Delon and Geraldine Chaplin, becoming a publicisit then eventually working for Shep Gordon, hanging with Robert Altman, dope with Blake Edwards. 

It's pretty interesting stuff - having Sean Connery put his hand on her leg while Diane Cilento was there, a fling with photographer Terence Donovan etc. There is heart break - a daughter (son of an affair with a married man) dies as a child, she finds true love with a journalist who dies of a heart attack. I wish there had been more on her work as producer. But I enjoyed the book.