Chip Kaufmann’s Pick:
WUSA (1970)
Throughout cinema history there have been a number of movies that were ahead of their time. There are movies that flopped when they were first released and found an audience many years later. Then there are those movies that are waiting to be rediscovered. WUSA is such a film.
When it first appeared in 1970, Paul Newman had just come off the biggest success of his career with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Fans who expected more of the same were shocked and disappointed, for WUSA is the complete opposite of Butch being more in keeping with movies like Hud and The Hustler.
Newman plays a laconic drifter who winds up working for a patriotic radio station in New Orleans. He doesn’t believe in their right wing rhetoric but it keeps him in drinking money. He hooks up with fake preacher Laurence Harvey and then takes up with another drifter (Joanne Woodward). The other principal character is Peace Corps dropout Anthony Perkins who is unknowingly used by the Right Wing powers he despises.
What made WUSA so disturbing then and so forward looking now is not just the rise of talk radio but the total apathy and amorality of Newman and most of the other characters. Coming 2 years after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, Robert Stone’s screenplay (based on his novel A Hall of Mirrors) was too much of a downer. Unlike M*A*S*H, which was released at the same time, there isn’t an ounce of comedy to be found.
The film is full of fine performances from up and coming performers like Cloris Leachman and Wayne Rogers to old pros Pat Hingle and Moses Gunn. The right wing rally which comes near the end of the film could have taken place yesterday not 45 years ago. As for the rhetoric, well certain radio personalities and a certain news network could be quoting it verbatim.
WUSA is not without its faults. It occasionally loses its way and some of the writing is heavy handed but as a time capsule of the late 1960s that unfortunately looks forward to several aspects of the 21st century, it makes for compelling viewing and is ripe for rediscovery.
Michelle Keenan’s Pick:
The Drop (2014)
In my humble opinion one of the most overlooked movies last year was The Drop. Based on the short story “Animal Rescue” by Dennis Lehane (and adapted for film by Dennis Lehane) The Drop is a highly satisfying crime drama with a slightly dented moral compass at its center.
Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy) is a quiet, seemingly dull-witted bartender at Cousin Marv’s, a Brooklyn watering hole and cash drop site for the Chechen mob. Marv (James Gandolfini) still runs the bar, but was muscled out of ownership by the Chechens. Together Bob and Marv run the place and navigate the tension in a neighborhood that seems to wax nostalgically for a bygone era.
Bob is the narrative voice and the story’s rudder. He is soft-spoken and reserved. He attends mass daily and lives alone in the house that is obviously the home where he was raised. When he finds a badly abused pitt bull puppy in a neighbor’s trash can one night, it seems his loner routine is about to get sacked by man’s best friend and the pretty neighbor, Nadia (Noomi Rapace / Prometheus, Girl With The Dragon Tatoo). Soon however a local creep, and apparent psychopath, lays claim to the dog, to Nadia and to an unsolved murder from a few years back. Meanwhile the bar is robbed one night, leaving Marv on the hook with the Chechens for $5,000. With that, the wheels are in motion, building an intense, yet quietly simmering drama.
The Drop marks Belgian director Michael R. Roskam’s US debut. Roscam, who most notably directed 2011’s Oscar-nominated Bullhead, sets just the right tone to the film. Adding a wonderfully disturbing level of suspense to the proceedings is Bullhead’s lead actor Matthias Schoenaerts as Eric Deeds, the aforementioned psychopath. Naomi Rapace is another unusual but solid casting call. Tom Hardy as Bob will be a revelation to many. Hardy is a chameleon of an actor, best known to American audiences as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, Fresh off his brilliant turn in Locke, he gives yet another performance that shows the depth and breadth of his talent.
Sadly, The Drop marks Gandolfini’s swansong. On the surface Gandolfini seems like just another version of Tony Soprano, but as with everything else in The Drop, the story isn’t about what’s on the surface. Marv is deceptively layered and vulnerable and [as always] Gandolfini brings a deceptive nuance to the character.
The Drop is a well crafted, ensemble effort. Unfortunately Roskam’s subtle directional reserve may have some thinking it’s not as great as it could have been, but it’s exactly that tone that made this movie work for me. It’s a moody, slow burn that draws the viewer in. Give it the time to let it unfold and it will quietly surprise you.
Rated R for some strong violence and pervasive language.