robert redford

Three Days of the Condor

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Turner in front a bridge on the Hudson River

The Bourne movies lifted a lot of their MO from Three Days of the Condor, one of the key political conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s. Behind the scenes the way the film was financed – sold before it was even made – would change the way the film industry worked in the 1980s, but Sydney Pollack’s loose shooting style and fast edits intercutting action with depictions of slickly professional characters doing what they do, that looks even further into the future. This is also peak Robert Redford, who plays a desk jockey for some branch of the secret service who goes out to lunch one day and comes back to find that everyone … Read more

Downhill Racer

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Chappellet in helmet and goggles

Roman Polanski was meant to direct Downhill Racer but producer Robert Evans diverted him on to Rosemary’s Baby instead. So here’s Michael Ritchie’s pass at the same material. The former TV director does a good job, and let’s face it Rosemary’s Baby needed Polanski. Good jobs are done all round in fact. Mostly by Robert Redford, actually acting against type for once rather than just smiling and looking handsome, playing a skier who is part of the US effort to bust apart European dominance of winter sports. The thing about Redford’s Dave Chappellet, though, is that he’s not a team player. Nor, depending on how you look at it, is downhill skiing really … Read more

Quiz Show

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John Turturro, Hank Azaria and Ralph Fiennes in Quiz Show

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 10 September The “Coughing” Major, 2001 On this day in 2001, Charles Ingram, a former major in the British army, won £1,000,000 in the UK TV gameshow Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. But before the payout could be made, accusations were already flying that he’d been tipped off as to the real answer to various questions by two plants in the audience – his wife, Diana, and a friend, Tecwen Whittock – who would cough when the right answer was read out. Ingram did not cough himself, nor was he any longer a major, but tabloid newspapers, preferring a story … Read more