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REDMOND NEWS SERVICE: MY OWN TOP TEN MOVIE PICKS
10)
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT / This film, starring the late, great Rod Steiger and the barrier-busting Sidney
Portier was a brilliant illumination of racial tension in the South during the 1960's. Steiger in the role of a racist Southern
sheriff and Portier as a Philadelphia police detective temporarily marooned in the hostile environment of Klan Country in
the deep south each give powerful performances. Steiger in particular conveyed the complex emotions of a man who is struggling
to overcome a lifetime of reflexive racism as he slowly comes to admire the intelligence and courage of this uncompromising
stranger who has suddenly entered his life. By the end of the film when he stands at a train station bidding farewell to his
new-found friend and mutters the simple words, "Virgil, you take care now, ya hear" he is a changed man. An unforgettable
moment in an unforgettable film.
9) COOL HAND LUKE / Another great sixties-era
film. Just a small story really about a lost soul in the south who is the victim of his own self-destructive whimsy, but a
powerful tale filled with memorable scenes and memorable characters. One great moment in the film occurs between Luke, played
by Paul Newman, and the actress Jo Van Fleet, who plays his mother. Luke is in prison, working each day on a chain gang in
some hell-hole down south, when he's told he has a visitor. It's his aging and ailing mother, dying of cancer, who is propped
up in the back of a pickup truck. Luke is allowed five minutes to go talk to her and the things that are said between them
that fall somehow within and around the few sparse lines of dialogue speak volumes about the fragile yet enduring power of
close human relationships. They both know they will never see each other again, that this tawdry meeting under awful circumstances
is the last time she will see the son she brought into the world or he will see the woman who gave him life, but they dance
slowly around this reality with nuanced language that only they can understand. It is a gut-wrenching scene. And then she
is gone and Luke returns to the stark reality of his failed life. Luke, himself a charismatic figure with a haunting spark
of life in his eyes, becomes the idle of the huge menacing convict played by George Kennedy, who had earlier in the story
pummeled him into a bloody mess with his fists. And who among us who has seen this film can ever forget the great character
actor Morgan Woodward's vivid portrayal of "Godfrey, the walkin' boss." Known by the convicts as "the man with no eyes" his
Mount Rushmore face never shows any emotion, his eyes are never seen because of the mirrored sunglasses he wears day and night,
and he never speaks a word to anyone, preferring to communicate only with hand gestures while supervising the chain gang of
working convicts as they perform their assigned duties on lonely country roads. The only sound Godfrey ever makes is the heavy
crack of a high caliber rifle, which he fires with deadly accuracy. Cool Hand Luke was an instant classic when it was released
and remains a great film today, with a timelessness that few films ever achieve.
8) DR.
STRANGELOVE / Cooper and I agree on this one. This was the most brilliant spoof of the Cold War ever filmed.
The uniquely entertaining and talented Peter Sellers played three distinct roles in this film and each one was memorable.
George C. Scott as the gung-ho General Turgeson was hilarious. Informed by the bizarre, wheel-chair bound Dr. Strangelove
(played by Sellers) that the Soviets had access to his invention, a Doomsday Machine that could destroy the entire world,
and that nothing could stop it once it had been activated, an envious General Turgeson blurts out the famous line, "Damn,
I wish we had one of them Doomsday machines!" The one actor that 'Coop didn't mention was the late Sterling Hayden, who
played lunatic General Jack D. Ripper, a man with an insane glint in his eyes who keeps babbling about how the Russians want
to steal our "precious bodily fluids" and decides to launch a pre-emptive military strike on his own initiative. Hayden, a
wonderful actor who doubted his own talents, later confessed that the insane glassy-eyed look he displayed in the film was
the result of his own intense fear of forgetting his lines of dialogue while shooting the movie. Dr. Strangelove is a great
film classic of the Cold War era.
7) THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR / Okay,
I know this movie has a funny title---it makes sense when you see the film---but it's based upon an actual set of circumstances
in a small community in the Southwest and I truly love this movie. Robert Redford directed the film with a light touch, allowing
the story to unfold at its own speed and the actors to really inhabit their characters to the point where they seemed so comfortable
inside the skins of these citizens of Milagro (Spanish for 'miracle') that they appear to have truly become the people they
portrayed. I won't even go into any details about the story. I just urge everyone reading this to go out and rent a copy of
this film as soon as you can. The cast includes Rubin Blades, Sonia Braga, Melanie Griffith, and Christopher Walken, among
many other fine actors. This film quite literally has a touch of magic to it---there is a ghost character who appears within
the film but is seen only by the audience and by an old man within the story named Amarante---and it does everything that
a film should do; it tells a good story, with interesting characters, gives you some laughs, some moments of pain and sorrow,
and ultimately leaves you feeling uplifted by the resolution. More than that you cannot ask of a film. [Special Note: After
viewing this film in a theatre when it was first released I was so impressed that I wrote a letter of praise to Robert Redford.
He responded with a short hand-written note telling me how much it meant to have his work appreciated in that way.]
6) PATHS OF GLORY / Perhaps the greatest anti-war film ever made. This gem of a movie was filmed
by Stanley Kubrick back in 1957 and starred a young and vigorous Kirk Douglas as a French Army officer caught within the sinister
machinations of ruthless and ambitious generals who are willing to sacrifice the lives of their own men in order to advance
their own careers. [Kirk Douglas, by the way, produced the film himself because he was so moved by the story that he felt
compelled to see it filmed.] Based upon an actual incident during World War I, the bleak moonscape of the battlefields and
the eerie sound of incoming artillery shells is something that resonates in the mind long after you've seen this film. I first
saw 'Paths of Glory' late one night on television back around 1962 when I was fourteen years old and I can still remember
the impact it had upon me. Compared to today's movies it was quite short, running only 89 minutes, and it is filmed in stark
black and white. But it gets right to the point and its indictment of the horrors of warfare is driven home with a rare power.
With all due respect to my friend Mike Cooper, if you want to see Kubrick at his best you can skip 'Full Metal Jacket' and
go right to 'Paths of Glory.' Compared to this film, all other war films appear to be half-hearted and compromised in one
way or another. [Special Note: World War I seems so long ago now that we forget what a catastrophic event it was in European
history. Perhaps the most barbaric episode of warfare in the history of mankind, the horrors of World War I battlefields surpassed
anything that has happened before or since in terms of sheer brutality. If you don't believe me, consider this: On July 1,
1916, the first day of the First Battle of the Somme, the British suffered 75,000 casualties with approximately 19,000 of
those dead. The battle dragged on for four and a half months until mid-November and by the time it ended there were ONE MILLION
TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND dead soldiers on the battlefields of the Somme River Valley. Thousands upon thousands of them simply
slipped into the mud and were never found again. As the first fully mechanized war, with the use of machine guns, thousands
of huge artillery pieces, and tens of thousands of tons of poison gas, it created a carnage that was beyond human imagination.]
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