A Family Thanksgiving

 A Family Thanksgiving (2010)

Starring Daphne Zuniga, Dan Payne, and Faye Dunaway

Directed by Neill Fearnley

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  D

Chinatown

Chinatown (1974)

Starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Hillerman, Perry Lope, Burt Young Bruce Glover, Joe Mantell, Roy Jenson, Diane Ladd, Dick Bakalyan, and John Huston

Directed by Roman Polanski

Written by Robert Towne

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: C

Movie Review - The Towering Inferno

The Towering Inferno (1974)

Starring Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Wagner, Fred Astaire, and O.J. Simpson

Directed by John Guillermin

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

The Towering Inferno, a frivolous action film about a burning skyscraper, is a flick that couldn't be made in a post-9/11 world.  Nor should it be.  There's an oddly prescient line at the end uttered by Steve McQueen's Fire Chief O'Hallorhan that nowadays could send shivers up a viewer's spine...

"You know we were pretty lucky tonight.  Body count's less than 200.  You know, one of these days, you're gonna kill 10,000 in one of these firetraps."

Eerie.

From the same producing team that brought us The Poseidon Adventure (a guilty pleasure of mine), Inferno is a generic disaster flick filled with characters that are placed within the plot simply to allow more deaths to occur by the film's conclusion.  The underlying plot is that architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) has built a 140-something-floor tall skyscraper and it's having its unveiling to the bigwigs in San Francisco.  However, on the night of the party, it's discovered that there is some faulty wiring in the building and, sure enough, things go haywire.

That plot is fine...but the paper-thin quality of it can't sustain itself for the film's ridiculously long running time of over 165 minutes.  The film is much too long and considering the "stars" ranging from Fred Astaire to O.J. Simpson, there aren't nearly enough celebrity deaths to whet this viewer's appetite.

Still, I have to say that despite the fact the film isn't all that good, I enjoyed it.  While not quite reaching the guilty pleasure level of The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno is an enjoyable (long) diversion if you're ever bored one afternoon.  Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, and William Holden throw in better performances than a film of this caliber deserve and they manage to make the film much more watchable in the process.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review - Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, and Max von Sydow

Directed by Sydney Pollack

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

I have a problem when conspiracy thrillers become so convoluted that the viewer is unable to follow them. As we watch, we know that there's something nefarious going on, but because of the way the film is structured, we're at a loss to explain things.  That's the issue with Three Days of the Condor, a flick that starts off quite promisingly, but falters in the last half because it falls into the trap of too many twists and tangles.

The most successful aspect of the film is Robert Redford's performance as the bookish Joseph Turner who, along with seven colleagues, has been hired by the government to study foreign texts to determine if they contain secret codes or messages.  While out getting lunch one afternoon, all of Turner's co-workers are shot down in their offices. When Turner returns and discovers the horror, he calls his government superior and soon discovers that something shady is underfoot -- a conspiracy that may lead all the way to the top of the CIA.

I was incredibly fond of this film for the first sixty minutes.  It was tense, nicely plotted, and provided Redford with a nice opportunity to slowly morph from "the nerd" to "the action star."  However, around the halfway point, there's an awkward sex scene between Redford and the miscast Faye Dunaway (whose character and romantic subplot are completely unnecessary) and things start to falter.  Backstabbing runs rampant and characters switch their loyalties seemingly every five minutes.  It grows to a ridiculous level and, in the end, it negates the powerful opening.  

The RyMickey Rating:  C