Sometimes flashing lights seem soulful in the window, you may have seen them circle me at night
Venus (Roger Michell, 2006). The shabby container of Peter O'Toole's eighth and probably final Academy Award nominated performance. If the memory of the brilliant thespian's concillatory honorary Oscar were a little staler, the voting body may very well have given a trophy to this middling effort. The aged O'Toole, withering and wobbly, in effect plays a version of himself. He's a actor of some renowned who's rapidly approaching the point where the mortal coil will be in his rearview, dealing with the dejection of being typecast as a corpse and the struggles of an elderly body conflicting with his undiminished appetite for women and booze. There's really no movie here, just an excuse to drag O'Toole through bland scenes with his acting compatriots, his ex-wife and a bratty young woman whom he mentors while mooning over her with lascivious attention. Michell's direction is as pedestrian as it's always been. The couple of brief scenes between O'Toole and Vanessa Redgrave are the only ones that raise any interest, not because they're compelling in the context of the film, but simply due to the cinematic footnote of watching two old masters casually ushering an era of great British acting to a close.
Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976). Carpenter's career has been in such a state of unsightly disaster for so long that it's easy to overlook the value of his earlier work, when he was a splendid gut-level filmmaker. This is Carpenter's western--essentially a remake of Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo--disguised as a gritty police drama, all the better to satisfy mid-70's audiences and keep the budget in check. Carpenter keeps things lean and flinty. The story involves a largely empty police precinct building against a barrage of bullets from an especially well-armed gang. A ragtag group of civil servants and inmates try to defend themselves. That's basically it, and that's all you really need. Carpenter's script is smart, funny and just a little mean when it needs to be. Most of the acting betrays its loose, low-budget production but there is one terrific supporting performance from Greater Flint Afro American Hall of Famer Tony Burton (best known as Rocky Balboa's corner-man) who brings just the right mix of comic exasperation and indignation to his role.
The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993). The second feature from the future Oscar-winner is a reasonably simple drama. It concerns a gay couple living in New York City who orchestrate a fake heterosexual marriage to help an immigrant friend stay in the country and appease one of the men's Taiwanese parents. Complications ensue. It all plays like an early film to be sure. In particular, the elegant lyricism that would become the hallmark of Lee's visual sense starting two films later isn't particular evident here. What is already present is the deep well of human feeling that Lee and his screenwriting collaborator James Schamus infuse into everything they do. The acting may be amateurish at time, but the delicacy of the emotional storytelling still comes through.
Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg, 1973). This is Al Pacino's follow-up to The Godfather (and the immediate predecessor to Serpico) and came around a year-and-a-half after Gene Hackman's breakthrough, Oscar-winning role in The French Connection. There's a shambling story about people existed on the battered edge of life, but the clear appeal is watching a couple of fiercely talented actors sparking off one another in their edgy, recklessly inventive prime. Hackman is a hothead, always ready to push back forcefully to make up for the way life has kicked him around. Pacino, on the other hand, counters his hardship with gentle clowning. It's thrilling to see these performers challenging themselves creatively with roles that feel very different than the well-established screen personae they'd respectively develop. Schatzberg's directing is appropriately loose and lucid. It could have used a little tighter script, perhaps, as the casual nature sometimes feels directionless. Watching Gene Hackman shout out a diner order of a bottle of beer and a chocolate donut was uniquely thrilling.
Apartment Zero (Martin Donovan, 1989). soul_shear recommended this one. It only took me eighteen years to follow up on that. I'll get to Dead Ringers one of these days. Besides providing further evidence that the late 80's and early 90's was not a good time to place an ad looking for a roommate (at least if you lived in the movies), it's a serviceable thriller with some fascinating elements that don't quite gel. Donovan's screenplay with David Koepp goes beyond the basic trappings of the set-up with intriguing digressions, such as an examination of the way distance and mistrust among neighbors can rapidly turn into dangerous paranoia (in a quick subplot that I'd wager came from Koepp, who's betrayed an inclination towards Twilight Zone flavored psychodramas in other films). Even in those stretches, somewhat awkward staging can undercut the potency. Colin Firth does some nice work in an early role (before he fell into the rut of interchangeable grumpy suitors), particularly conveying the warped, wounded vulnerability of his character.