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cynthia-flynn
Reviews
Foul Play (1978)
Fear, then laughter, then fear again, only to laugh so hard it hurts.
From the beginning when Chevy Chase flirts with Goldie Hawn you get the idea it is going to be offbeat but nothing prepares you for the gems in this movie. The friends, the good guys, the bad guys, even a snake are not always who they seem to be. The target even more of a surprise in a movie that includes Japanese tourists, an albino, a dwarf, a bible salesman, an orchestra conductor, the pope, and the most straight laced librarian in San Francisco. Chevy Chase is the copy you expect from a movie set in San Francisco but nothing else is.
Never have I seen anything like the scene between Ms. Roberts and Mr. Meredith. But there is still a car chase and an opera with a final scene more dramatic than you realize until the sound of one man clapping makes you laugh again and realize how well this whole thing was put together. Take a second curtain call at the end. You all deserve it.
The Sting (1973)
a caper, so well acted, so well written...you'll see
The pair was younger when they first hit movie gold together but never better as Paul Newman and Robert Redford head a tremendous cast in a story that deserves them. From the first glimpse of Newman, the phrase growing old gracefully lets you know he won't be outrunning anybody like his younger partner. The older trusting conman goes for one more for the sake of an old friend's widow. The set up roles out a cast of characters until the good guys and the bad guys get a complicated enough story going that you begin to believe, and it breaks your heart. But the cast, oh that cast, the secret signal, the costumes, the accents, the props and the girls on the carousel. Eileen Brennan is a gem, Harold Gould so perfect and Robert Shaw so hateful.
Paul Newman was one of the greats of American film, so good looking he really had a lot to prove before he was taken seriously. But then we found he had stopped taking himself so seriously, just his craft and the other things he believed in. That is what makes this movie so darn good, it is why people went to the movies during the depression. They left happier than when they went in, I sure did. This is the perfect movie for our bad economic times. Download it, rent it, buy it, but enjoy.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Paul Newman never better, grand fun
The test of time will code this as a classic, not only for the lead pair of Paul Newman and Robert Redford for the first time, but a tight story with great dialogue and a magnificent cast of character actors. Grand fun, but the moral tale does not disappoint as the fun loving bandits are run out of the country by the owner of the Railroad who has taken it personally that they pick on his train. Katherine Ross adds grace and wisdom after you have already realized these guys are not near as smart as they are cleaver and charming. See if you can find Cloris Leachman in a small part and remind yourself that it is Newman and Redford that stole your heart not two scruffy train robbers who lived undocumented lives on which this story is hung.
Remind yourself that it looks that easy when Fred Astaire dances too. The pair are masters and while I stand by my rating, it would be hard to pick between this movie and the same actors in "The Sting." Both works of art.