RIP Robert Redford

Robert Redford gone where a River / rivers run through...

The Man was 89. Once ”The Golden Boy” of Hollywood...No liftings, just traces of life...

One of my top childhood heroes, he was an absolute star in that times "commie" Romania, together with Paul Newman, John Wayne and Burt Reynolds, the stars of those early 70's. RR, as a Rolls Royce of acting and old Hollywood grace and elegance. 

From early prats in Barefoot in the Park and The Chase, to stardom: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, All the President's Men, Three Days of the Condor, to his activist years and Sundance, to the last parts in All is Lost (one of my favourite RR performances), The Old Man and the Gun and last in that Marvel film (2019)...

Never won an Oscar as an actor, but as a director, in 1980 for Ordinary People. That film is now quite forgotten, but at the time it helped build an Indie genre later on. A raw model for Brad Pitt and tons of others he helped more in the capacity of director, producer and festival founder (Sundance). Even though he directed 9 feature films he will be remembered more as a Classic Movie Star. 

Downhill Racer, The Candidate, The Hot Rock, The Great Waldo Pepper, The Great Gatsby, The Electric Horseman, Jeremiah Johnson, Brubaker, The Natural.

Liked him in lesser films like Sneakers, Legal Eagles, Havana, The Last Castle, The Clearing. 

One of my favorite later parts parts of RR is Nathan Muir in Tony Scott's Spy Game (2001). His pairing with Brad Pitt as his mentor in CIA was a very touching one. 

He made serious topics like grief and political corruption resonate with the masses, in no small part because of his own star power. (The NY Times)

The Long Walk (2025)

"Walk or Die"

Francis Lawrence never struck me as an auteur director. The Long Walk is his closest to a a personal filmmaking effort.

Constantine was probably his best flick, the man directed tons and tons of music videos, a sh***y version of I Am Legend, Red Sparrow, four Hunger Games, those probably qualifying him for this film. 

Stephen King's novel The Long Walk was published in 1979 under the name Richard Bachman, same as The Running Man, Rage, etc. 

It is set in a dystopic America, as in Hunger Games or recently in Civil War, in which young men participate in a race, without stops, until one remains. Same principle as Turkey Shoot or The Running Man (which was remade this year).  You have to keep walking at 3mph, steadily. You get only three warnings, one erased per hour if you march on.

The camera moves and moves and moves all along with the protagonist. The whole film is in movement. Belgian cinematographer Jo Willems, who worked with Lawrence on his Hunger Games films and Red Sparrow shot the film anamorpically on 2.39.1. The whole thing was shot in Manitoa, Canada, for 20 mill. $. 

The ensemble young actors are convincing, it helps they are not known. They are all called by their numbers. Cooper Hoffman (#47 / Licorice Pizza), David Jonsson (#23, Alien: Romulus), Garrett Wareing (# 38/ God is a Bullet), Charlie Plummer (#5 / All the Money in the World). Mark Hammil does a career best villain as The Major. Judy Greer is the only woman in the cast, as Cooper Hoffman's mother. The racial aspect, white, black, white, white, Asian, Indian. Let's say that is not the "woke" or globalism problem, welll, no Mexicanos, hispanics. 

Problem is the language, they all swear non stop, I guess they said, oh, it's Rated R so we can swear all the time we want. But f**k every three words is gratuitous to say the least, and they all talk the same swearing game, the boys as well as the major.

Script by J.T. Mollner (Strange Darling), the lastest on a series of aborted adpatations, from George A. Romero to Frank Darabont. 

Pulsing and dramatic score by Jeremiah Fraites, end titles have a country/Americana song composed for the film by   Shaboozey & Stephen Wilson Jr.- Took a Walk (not on the soundtrack). A rendition of Oh My Darling Clementine is sung by the boys at Mile 260 !!!

Reminded me of the WW2 war films, Sidney Lumet's The Hill (1965) in particular. And as they were running, of the final run of Black Hawk Down. 

7 out of 10 / 3.5 out of 5 !!!

*would've been more but I'd cut 15 min from the 108 min. running time, it loses its rhythm and has repetitions, most of the 50 "walkers" are just extras (in King's original there were 100 participants). 

The premise is as absurd as it gets and you got to believe it, also the lenght of the march is beyond belief... 

Highest 2 Lowest (2025) .

"All Money Ain’t Good Money"   (David King)

Highest 2 Lowest is Spike Lee's reimagining of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 masterpiece High and Low, based on Ed McBain's book, The King's Ransom. It's about a kidnapping gone wrong and a moral decision and dillema of a rich man on the edge of losing all his money. The 1st act is slow as in Kurosawa'a original (the script for this is credited to the Japanese master and his collaborators, the film itself is dedicated to him).  Then the pace changes and it becomes energetic until the end. 

The film premiered in Cannes this year, out of competition (with Denzel Washington receiving an impromptu Palme d'Or for his 1st !!! visit to the Croisette) and it's an Apple+ film-for streaming with limited release in the US by A24. 

Denzel in his 5th collaboration with Spike plays a music mogul, "the best ears in the business" David King (the King from King's Ransom, in Kurosawa's film is Kingo Gondô as played by a magnificent Toshiro Mifune).  His second, friend and driver is Paul, a great restrained and dry humored performance by Jeffrey Wright.

Shot by Matthew Libatique, who went back to back in NY locations with Aronofsky's Caught Stealing (in cinemas now, go and see) in glorios widescreen. Libatique worked before with Lee on four films, including another NY flick, Inside Man .

H2L is a colorful love letter to Spike's beloved New York., Manhattan, Brookyln Bridge, Puerto Rican parade, Yankee stadium. 

Complete with 2 lengthy train /subway chases that quotes and hatsoff s Friedkin's legendary The French Connection. 

Also lots of art, from Basquiat to sports memorabilia and a lot of Muhhamed Ali stuff, to a painting entitled "Billie, Lester, Fats and Duke" by Frederick J. Brown. This painting was featured in "The Spike Lee 'Creative Sources' Exhibition" at the Brooklyn Museum. The title refers to prominent jazz musicians: Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Fats Waller, and Duke Ellington.

The soundtrack is a symphonic Howard Drossin score, then rap songs by A$AP Rocky (in the film Yung Felon) and some James Brown mean rhythms. 

The opening credits are shots of new NY buildings getting to King's skyscraper penthouse / terrace on classic musical Oklahoma's  Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', sung by Norm Lewis. A live performanced of Eddie Palmieri's Orchestra and Aiyana-Lee Anderson (as newcomer singer Sula) playing the title song (cos you goota too ;). Read comments and reviews about the worst score - I don't get if they meant the score or the songs, but personally I find the score excellent and a breakthrough-Drossin worked as an orchestrator for Spike's regular Terence Blanchard and with Lee since The 25th Hour, also with RZA and making videogames music. 

Might be Lee's most commercial film 'til Inside Man and the disastrous Oldboy and it's uneven but flavoury.

Revisited Kurosawa's film this spring and it's a timeless masterpiece! Lee's version plays more like a cover song, in color and with vivid wipes and tumult. 

6 out of 10 / 3 out of five !

Kurosawa's 1963 High and Low is a 9/10 for me ! Could've been a Ten tho ;)

Inside Man (2006) English

 Inside Man – Inside Spike Lee’s Cap

Alin Ludu Dumbravă, Șapte Seri / April 2006

"Small country, a few tables." (Gheorghe Dinică)

And no hats. I think almost every passionate cinemagoer here (a small, somewhat dysfunctional minority, like the great bustard in Bărăgan) knows Spike Lee — “that Black guy with glasses and a cap” — from that Orange Wednesday commercial, where he pitches a baseball movie. “Their colors were white and blue — can’t it be orange?” they give him a corporate cap: “Hey Spike, you forgot your hat!” Classic Orange Wednesday commercials (no, not the ones with hobbits with weird voices; no, Orange doesn’t pay me).

What was I writing? Ah, yes… Spike Lee’s cap. Hobbits. Baseball. Because here, this breed of cinema wanderer — let’s call him the inside man, like in Spike’s film, which he made after they refused to fund that other baseball movie — expects not to have the credits cut, popcorn dropped on his head, or get called by fools during the screening. He wants the film projected correctly, with care (I can already hear the muted curses of projectionists who just want peace, since “the equipment dates back to Ceaușescu”), yet he’s actually an outside man, getting roughed up regularly, like in the joke about the bear and the rabbit: “Why don’t you have a hat, man?” — Bam!

But let’s get back to Spike’s film — the second to hit our screens after 25th Hour; the guy’s been making films since the ’80s! Inside Man is his first truly commercial movie, with the biggest budget, A-list stars, studio financing and marketing. A film about (fake) heists, hostages, New Yorkers, and even… Albanians (a Romanian actress — Florina Petcu, see her photo on IMDb — plays an Albanian), without baseball or caps (Denzel wears a fedora).

With stars like Clive Owen, Denzel Washington (his fourth Spike Lee film), Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, and Willem Dafoe. A strong opening credit sequence, flawless cinematography, sharp editing, and a Terence Blanchard score. Like Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible, a commercial concession, Inside Man is intelligent, subversive, and acerbic. Add Spike Lee’s personal touch, racial undertones, and his unmistakable New Yorker flavor in the tense post-9/11 climate — humor and energy included.

More interesting for the cinemagoer than the movie about the guy in white-and-blue baseball gear. “Hey Spike, you forgot your hat!” Paraphrasing: “No hat? Take a Koprol!”

Directed by: Spike Lee
Starring: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Willem Dafoe