Have you guys seen the documentary The True Cost? It’s on Netflix. I watched it last night.
The film vividly highlights the global effects of a fashion industry on meth – an industry that pushes fast fashion with a furious fervor for more: more clothes, more stores, more stuff, more profits. Though it is often repetitive and redundant in making its point, the film’s point is an inconvenient and albeit important one.
Three Days of the Condor (1975) is a stand-out thriller among the great crop of movies made in the “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” era of filmmaking in the late 1960s and the 1970s. It stars Robert Redford as a CIA operative (codename “Condor”) working in a branch of the agency that researches foreign books that might contain hidden codes and messages.
After Redford steps out to get lunch, he returns to the office to find all of his coworkers murdered. The movie unfolds over three days as Redford tries to find safety and to get the truth about why his department was wiped out. He can trust no one, especially his bosses at the CIA.
Leonard Nimoy will always be known best for Spock, but his underrated performance in the 1978 alien invasion paranoia thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of my favorites. In it, he plays celebrated pop psychologist and best-selling author Dr. David Kibner.
I’m a sci-fi geek. Not a total one, though. There are a lot of things I’ve just happened to miss, like The X-Files, Comic Con and everything on the SyFy channel (I don’t have cable), but many movies from the genre are on the list of films I could watch over and over again. Star Wars (the original trilogy, please), Alien, Aliens, Blade Runner, The Terminator (1 and 2), The Fly, Total Recall, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Scanners, Gattaca, Showgirls… I could watch these sci-fi movies anytime, anywhere. I never get sick of them. The film that is probably at the top of that list is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
At the annual glam-a-palooza that is the Cannes Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter was expectedly on hand to photograph some film industry notables posing on the Croisette. In the original gallery published on THR, a handful of really handsome images of some of the guys caught my eye. I’m sharing them here. The photos were shot by Fabrizio Maltese.
Online custom suit maker Indochino sent out an email detailing the fabric, materials and construction of their suits. Not only were they being very transparent about the construction of their merchandise, but that the email was an obvious response to a growing number of men who are actually interested in this information.
Two for the Road (1967) arguably produced Audrey Hepburn’s best, bravest and most mature performances ever put on film, and yet it is one of her least famous movies.
Klute was the first film in what many cinephiles call director Alan J. Pakula’s “paranoia trilogy” (the others were The Parallax View and All the President’s Men). It stars Donald Sutherland as detective John Klute, who’s investigating the disappearance of a family friend named Tom Gruneman. The trail leads him to Manhattan, where Tom was a possible client of a few call girls in the city. One of the call girls is named Bree Daniels, indelibly played by Jane Fonda.
Not only does it take us through an exquisitely photographed tour of 1958 Italy, The Talented Mr. Ripley takes us on a thrilling journey that begins with a borrowed college blazer and boils over into a cunning and deadly game of identity theft.
“I always thought it’d be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.”
I actually attended the New York premiere of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Matt, Gwynnie and Jude were there for the glamorous red carpet show and screening at MoMA, but what I remember most was the movie itself. My friend turned to me not even twenty minutes into the film and whispered “I love this movie.” I couldn’t have agreed more, and all of us in the theater seemed to be equally swept away by an incredible story, marvelous performances and gorgeous visuals.
There is a scene in American Gigolo in which Julian (Richard Gere) takes a little taste of cocaine from his nightstand and turns to his closet and dresser drawers to pick out his clothes. With “The Love I Saw in You Is Just a Mirage” by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles playing on his stereo, he lays out jackets, shirts and ties in various combinations as he carefully considers the evening’s ensemble. It’s immediately obvious that he performs this ritual every time he gets ready to go out. It’s glorious.
American Gigolo is the first movie I can remember that depicted a masculine and reasonably sophisticated male character actively taking care and pride in choosing and wearing his clothes. Maybe the only movie. Written and directed by Paul Schrader and also starring Lauren Hutton, this 1980 noir-ish crime drama is about a successful Los Angeles male escort to older women (Gere) who gets pinned as the prime suspect in the murder of a wealthy client in Palm Springs. His liaisons have entangled him at the crossroads of the dark underworld and those who wield political and financial power, and he gets in over his head. In a role originally offered to (and turned down by) John Travolta, Gere turned his performance as Julian into a defining career move.