One must of course be willing to go a certain distance, however grumblingly, with the movie's chosen premise: the mixture of baseball lore and Arthurian Romance preserved from the Bernard Malamud novel. But the road downward from Arthurian Romance to the latest issue of Baseball Digest is not short and …
If Clint Eastwood’s barely reformed killer was Unforgiven, Robert Redford is unrepentant in this love letter to…Robert Redford. He plays a friendly old-timer who’s just a lovable rascal at heart, a man serenely happy in his work — which happens to be bank robbing — and supremely gifted at slipping …
Robert Redford's directorial debut, an adaptation of the Judith Guest best-seller, comes out with an emotional plea in favor of hugging. That practice, especially if done in fine cardigans, is seen as a balm to the psychological scars of a guilt-ridden teenage boy (Tim Hutton, who, like his father Jim, …
Isak Dinesen's life as a coffee grower in Kenya, before, during, and after World War I, is almost the stuff of an Edna Ferber novel. The adapters' leeriness of vulgarity (but not of sheer bulk) prevents it from being that, and prevents it from being very exciting or eventful in …
Way back in 2015, Disney subsidiary Pixar released The Good Dinosaur, a boy-and-his-dog story that flipped things by making the big green lizard into the lost little boy and giving the dog’s part to a feral human child. Here, Disney flips Pixar back into conventional mode, returning the feral human …
Robert Redford's tardy exposé of the TV game-show scandals of the late Fifties has the common drawbacks of the docudrama. The drama, as such, is already well documented (foreknown, foregone), and, to the extent that it remains tied to the facts of the case, is perforce not terribly dramatic (formful, …
A gentle snore on the subject of two Montana brothers raised by a Presbyterian minister to reverence fly-fishing and God but fly-fishing more. Like the prior two movies that Robert Redford elected to direct and not to appear in -- Ordinary People and The Milagro Beanfield War -- this one …
From producer Oprah Winfrey, comes this insightful and celebratory documentary about screen legend, director, and civil rights activist, Sidney Poitier. Directed by Reginald Hudlin, featuring candid interviews with Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Robert Redford, Lenny Kravitz, Barbra Streisand, Spike Lee and many more, the film is also produced by Derik …
Happy-go-lucky espionage caper about a motley team of security experts (aging Sixties activist, conspiracy theorist, black man, blind man, young man) who are hired -- blackmailed, actually -- by generic Bad Guys to steal a little "black box" that contains a master key to every computer code in the U.S.A. …
Last day at the office of a retiring Company man, or CIA agent to you laymen, Robert Redford. He has just learned that his prize protégé, Brad Pitt, has gotten himself arrested on an unauthorized mission in China, and is scheduled for execution in twenty-four hours. His superiors, mindful of …
Sidney Pollack's spy thriller caters to an intellectual's tender ego, as innocence, book-learning, and beginner's luck are called upon to fend off an army of cold-blooded CIA agents and free-lance assassins. The solitary, hounded hero appears to be comfortable with thriller literature, art photography, and the New York Times, while …
Clint Eastwood is under his own direction in the role of a recently on-the-wagon and unrepentently womanizing newspaperman, busily trying to prove a condemned man's innocence on the day of execution. The detective work is pretty sketchy, pretty shaky. But the plotting of the movie takes a backseat to its …
Truth is, Oscar season is upon us and Robert Redford’s banking that his portrayal of journalist Dan Rather in Truth will set him free to take home a best supporting Oscar award. Cate Blanchett is always worth watching, even when her character as Rather’s producer never rises above that of …
Warm, moist relationship thing about a battered woman who, with her eleven-year-old daughter in tow, seeks sanctuary on the Wyoming ranch of her unwelcoming former father-in-law and his crippled old ranchhand. Almost as formulaic as a Lifetime Network movie, right down to the relentless hothead boyfriend, the alternative hunky lawman, …
Puff piece on the exciting and demanding and rewarding field of TV journalism. The names of the savvy veteran and his protégé, eventually husband and wife, has-been and star-is-born, tell you all you need to know: Warren Justice and Tally Atwater. (They are acted, with soggy chemistry, by the former …