The Donald Sutherland essentials

by Cláudio Alves

I don't know about you, but I love to find which people share the same birthday as me. That's especially true of artists who I admire. It's not like sharing a birthday means a whole lot, but it's nice to know that there's something in common between you and one of your idols. In my case, birthday twins include the cinematic genius Wong Kar-Wai, the fabulously talented Diahann Carroll, the eternal gangster James Cagney, Weekend star Tom Cullen, Best Supporting Actress nominee Barbara O'Neil, Sibyl director Justine Triet, and, of course, this piece's focus, the great Donald Sutherland. Our special day was just yesterday. 

Despite never having been nominated for a competitive Oscar (he received an honorary in 2018), Donald Sutherland can be counted among Hollywood's most respected thespians. With a career spanning from the 1960s to now, full of memorable hits and influential classics, complex performances, and scene-stealing turns, Sutherland is an actorly institution all by himself. In honor of his 85th birthday yesterday, here goes a list of some of the movies anyone must watch if they're fans of the actor… 

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1991: Robin Hood Prince of Thieves

by Lynn Lee

- Locksley…I’m gonna cut your heart out with a spoon!

-Why a spoon?

-Because it’s DULL, you twit, it’ll hurt more!”

If you remember anything about Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, it’s probably those lines.  Or, more generally, Alan Rickman’s scrumptiously hammy turn as the villain who bellows them.  Or perhaps you remember Kevin Costner’s complete failure to master anything resembling an English accent.  If you’d just as soon forget Costner ever played Robin Hood, you’re not alone: consensus opinion generally holds that Rickman was the only good thing about the movie, which received tepid reviews at the time of its release and hasn’t exactly aged into a classic. 

It’s worth noting, however, that a lot of people really liked Prince of Thieves at the time...

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"Here We Go Again..." on this very day two years ago!

Awww, it's Meryl loving on Cher in Mexico City on this exact day (July 17th) two years back... 

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Inception's dreamy femme fatale

by Cláudio Alves

It's a bit strange for me to be writing a celebratory piece about Inception on the movie's 10th anniversary. I've always considered the picture to be a tad overrated, undeserving of the titles of life-changing masterpiece or perfect action movie that I've seen people bestow upon it. Aside from a deadening first hour of exposition, my main issue has always been a matter of imagination or lack thereof. The world of dreams and the human unconscious is so rich in possibility, that it's disheartening to see Christopher Nolan bend it to fit the model of a heist picture.

Even the set design reflects that. There's much talk of impossible architecture, but what we get is modernist lines as far as the eye can see, bellicose fortresses and concrete cityscapes without a hint of surrealism. Notoriously, Satoshi Kon's Paprika, an anime hallucination with a lot of similarities to the Nolan blockbuster, is a good example of how the oneiric world of dream-sharing can be used to explode the rules of cinema. Still, has previously stated, this is a celebratory write-up and, while Inception's creative limitations may be frustrating, it would be a lie to say they are devoid of value.

After all, the most interesting character in the whole flick is an archetype of crime pictures and film noir. She's a trope, an old character type that has deep roots in men's fear of complicated women. She is Marion Cotillard's Mal…

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1991: Judy Davis in "Barton Fink" and "Naked Lunch"

Before each Smackdown, Nick Taylor looks at possibilities for an alternate ballot...

Barton Fink and Naked Lunch are two 1991 films with more in common than you'd expect. Both follow writers - one a lifelong devotee of the trade, one quite new to it - who are suddenly plucked from their old lives and dropped into entirely alien worlds, with few reliable sources to guide them. Both tackle the incredibly mundane ache of loneliness and toil of their work, albeit against obstacles like axe murderers and global drug conspiracies. Both are directed by major auteurs and styled to the fucking nines, making their settings as accessible as they need to be while fulfilling some impenetrably strange narrative conceits. And both serve as vivid showcases for the talents of Judy Davis, 1991’s NYFCC winner for Best Supporting Actress, who unfussily acquits herself to two very different, aesthetically demanding milieus. Her brainy, abrasive persona and preternatural expressiveness are cannily utilized in both films, and Davis emerges as an essential element of their respective successes despite her minimal screen time...

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