Best Robert Redford-Directed Film

on the other hand this is the worst streak ever:

The Horse Whisperer
The Legend of Bagger Vance
Lions for Lambs

i agree, 'ordinary people' is actually pretty good. haven't bothered with most of these though.

Quiz Show is worth checking out and the Milagro-Beanfield War is, well, OK if you've spent any amount of time in the San Luis Valley of Colorado/New Mexico.

Ordinary People (like Dances with Wolves/Goodfellas) carries around the albatross of having beaten Raging Bull for best picture. Thirty years later, I should go back for another look.

I can get with Scorsese over Costner, but the Scorsese-Redford matchup for their respective films is a draw.

I want to say something about your mother and elephants, but I'm sure your mother's a wonderful person.

(Tasteless--just kidding!)

A River Runs Through It

As one of my all-time favorites, I'd be foolish to not vote for it here.

Timothy Hutton is phenomenal in OP -- one of the few deserved Oscars of the last thirty years. He's so perfect as a Sensitive Youth that he killed the prototype.

I want to say something about your mother and elephants, but I'm sure your mother's a wonderful person.

Much better than Raging Bull.

Quiz Show

If QS dropped the end-of-the-innocence crap (goodness me! You mean people LIE?!), it would be one of the better literate scripts of recent years.

I've been counting down my favourite films with some friends, and surprised myself by ending up with two Redfords in my top 20 (The Candidate and President's Men--neither directed by him, I know). I just don't think much of him as an actor; even in those two films, I'd say he works because his essential blandness suits the characters.

Yeah, he's a bore.

river runs through it is a kewl movie. either that or Quiz Show imo

ive always had a weakness for him as an actor too - hes like comfort food for me, all square and WASP-y and projecting decency - i know kael never cared for him, but she always had it in for those types

but she loved Joel McCrea!

voted for The Legend of Baggy Pants

i've avoided the coppola/redford gatsby all my life because the thought of RR as gatsby kinda horrifies me.

I remember looking forward to The Milagro Beanfield War when it was coming out but was disappointed when I finally saw it. Had to drive three hours away to see it too and since I had no car or driver's license at the time, it was not an easy task. Haven't seen it since. Maybe I should try again.

Voted for Ordinary People, I have always thought it was a really good film. I remember really loving A River Runs Through It at the time but haven't had a craving to watch it again.

Can I add...mmmmmmmmmRedford....drool....

Ordinary People is incredibly effective in Hutton's scenes with Sutherland. And incredibly campy whenever Mary Tyler Moore pushes french toast down the garbage disposal. It gets my vote.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-inN5zKYUFHA/Ta41MtRpwxI/AAAAAAAABwA/ZG9iyQNp1KM/s1600/optimized-redford-hutton-ordinary_puffer+vest.jpg

Let's not forget: Hutton is smokin' hot in this too.

and naturally Sutherland was the only major cast member not to get an Oscar nom.

Woulda tried to find some room for one of Hutton's two bitches in supporting actor too.

They named the virile son Buck!

I love this movie.

NOW NOW I WILL ASSURE YOU THAT IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT

http://movieactors.com/photos/ordinary92.jpeg

http://movieactors.com/photos/ordinary83.jpeg

BARK BARK BARK (RUFF RUFF RUFF?)

I have never seen Ordinary People. I will never see Ordinary People.

Just having read the reviews when the movie was first released convinced me that this is precisely the sort of drama I most loathe, wherein maladjusted people and their maladjusted children expose their maladjusted souls for two hours in a nice suburban house filled with Ethan Allen furniture.

I voted for A River Runs Through It, which at least had the decency to be based on a well-written novella.

What a boring run of films. With his fame he could have directed almost anything he wanted, and these were the projects he chose.

OP is far better than American Beauty and The Ice Storm.

And Raging Bull.

Yep.

I remember talking to Scorsese backstage, just before the 1980 Academy Awards, when he was really worried about losing to Ordinary People: "Don't think about that. I mean, he's a fuckin’ middleweight, you're a heavyweight. It’s impossible, it'll never happen, so why go crazy thinking about it? It’s not normal." In the end, he was right.

Allowing again that I'm going by memories across 30 years, I'd take American Beauty and The Ice Storm in a minute, and would take [i]The Squid and the Whale[i] ahead of all of them.

whoa, you chilled with marty?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Sutherland rocks the house in Ordinary People. i bloody love Sutherland.

also just *how much* was Good Will Hunting ripped off from OP?! i mean i like GWH plenty but sheesh...

Timothy Hutton would have kicked Matt Damon's ass in that baaa-hr scene involving knowledge of Howard Zinn.

Fiennes and Scofield's chocolate cake scene is a beauty.

blew his wad early

"Fiennes and Scofield's chocolate cake scene is a beauty./
Blew his wad early."
-Frederick Seidel

"if you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you"

all that stuff about the Reuben sandwich

very well done

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Off topic, but did Redford dye his hair? I always assumed he was a natural blond, but I just watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and he appeared to have some serious highlights going on.

Great scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S7LHB1kWd0

oh i never saw this poll. quiz show is the film i have watched more than any other, i think. i love it deeply.

Yeah, I really liked Quiz Show.

jeezus, talk about middlebrow filmmaking. (has it over Out of Africa in casting Brit actors as Americans for snob inoculation)

More convincing accents. And brows.

Damn, had I seen this poll I would have put Quiz Show up there. One of my most-watched comfort movies, especially for the scene Alfred posted. A great screenplay. Lots of crisscrossing ideas about class, ethnicity, privilege, success and family - the corrupting effect of TV is the ostensible theme but probably the least interesting and perceptive of the lot.

Sneering at middlebrow just for being middlebrow, even when it's done well, is a bore.

I did like Ordinary People, when I was 12. At the time, Robert Redford's assistant was the daughter of my grandfather's wife. Also, below is Judith Guest's house - it's six blocks from my mom's. A book like Ordinary People could only be written in a place like Edina, where this is.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=judith+guest+edina+44th+street&hl=en&ll=44.919011,-93.345055&spn=0.000819,0.001963&sll=44.949698,-93.235442&sspn=0.180905,0.588812&client=safari&t=h&fll=44.919512,-93.344771&fspn=0.000819,0.001963&z=19&layer=c&cbll=44.919032,-93.3449&panoid=nCZb2qwQyvGBdvhX6vKZDw&cbp=12,355.28,,0,13.43

ARGH. [Insert pine-obscured Tudorbethan stockbroker's house HERE]

Scofield was so good in both this and The Crucible.

A River Runs Through It has two great natural assets, the Montana landscape and Pitt. Otherwise you better love fly fishing and Presbyterian sermons.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Norman Maclean as a kid!

“…it's earnest, it means to improve people, and it lasts a lifetime.”

It’s not fair to quote Kael to put down Ordinary People--she was even tougher on Raging Bull. But I watched it again for the first time in 32 years, trying to keep an open mind, and I was as indifferent this time as I was then. And just as adamant that it should never have won Best Picture.

I’ve been reading 1973 Nervous Breakdown, which spends a lot of time on the Louds, and The Exorcist, and lots else as manifestations of the disintegration of the family, and I was able to see it as very much a ‘70s film, how it and Kramer vs. Kramer and An Unmarried Woman belong to the end of that cycle. So that was interesting. But it does move at a snail’s pace, and people are constantly explaining things. Even when they can’t find the words, the camera stays there until they do, and then they explain. Or else you’re telegraphed an accidental revelation, like when Hutton lets loose with his Freudian slip in Hirsch’s office. The only performers I liked were Elizabeth McGovern and Mary Tyler Moore. Thought the film was kind of cruel to her.

I’ve seen Raging Bull so many times that I promised myself not to watch it again for the rest of my life. But if I can step back to the effect it had on me many years ago, to me it’s not even close as to which is the better film. Melvin and Howard would have been a much better choice in 1980--it wasn’t even nominated. Coal Miner’s Daughter would have been a better choice. Probably The Elephant Man, too. Haven’t seen Tess.

I promised myself not to watch it again for the rest of my life

Me too.

I realize we mean the complete opposite. There are certain films where I just cross a line and have to say, "Enough."

Not sure if I knew this, and if I didn't, really not sure why I didn't figure it out, it's so obvious: according to The Invisible Bridge, Bill McKay in The Candidate is based on Jerry Brown.

(I know--no Michael Ritchie thread.)

Thought The Company You Keep was pretty good in a very old-fashioned, workmanlike way. There's a big scene towards the end between Redford and Julie Christie that's rather pat, and Redford's performance is nothing--really nothing, not even his style of nothing that sometimes worked perfectly in the '70s. But as a gloss on Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, not bad.

Good Redford career profile (mostly as actor) in Film Comment for quasi-haters like Alfred:

Pollack speaks about their long relationship: “In some ways, he’s been the alter ego for me . . . I believe he’s played the same character [and] I’ve sort of watched that guy grow up and get older . . . He’s really essentially this unpossessable, unattached individualist, who believes there’s some utopian way for him not to have to bend to the needs of a structured society.”

Pollack seems to be speaking about Redford himself as much as the characters he plays; he may have envied the actor’s non-conformism. Still, he was genuinely devoted to his star. “There’s something mysterious about Redford. You have the feeling that, if he had ten dollars, five stays in his pocket. I mean, he would give you five dollars, but he’s not giving you everything; and that, I think, is a great deal of his appeal . . . He’s a withholder.”

He also said: “Redford sometimes gets attacked for not messing himself up . . . but he’s not a character actor . . . You want Redford to be a hero, that’s the way he’s most fulfilling for the audience.” But is it? Hill saw him more as an antihero. Abraham Polonsky, who directed him in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (69), perceived something else altogether: “Redford . . . is very good at playing parts where he fundamentally is defeated in everything he wants.” According to Elisa Leonelli, Redford “from a young age was able to see the hypocrisy in American society.”

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/robert-redford-profile

Redford's legacy as a star-producer is likely more significant than as a director .. finally caught up with Downhill Racer tonight, for which he hired James Salter to write and Michael Ritchie to direct (his feature debut).

Of course, Beatty was doing a similar thing already, but on the Downhill Racer Criterion, Redford says his struggles getting it made -- and Paramount ultimately giving it a dump release -- probably led him to starting Sundance.

(RR hired Ritchie late in the game after Roman Polanski left to do Rosemary's Baby)

There were a couple of posts on Truth when it came out--not sure what thread...I'm not even that big on The Insider, and this is several steps in the direction of flat-out deification. Dennis Quaid and Topher Grace very clunky, Elisabeth Moss totally wasted; early on, she's saddled with the "You mean to tell me that the President of the United States..." line. Stacy Keach is good. The best you can say for it is that it kept me interested.

The most recent entry in a lengthening series of films in which Cate Blanchett shakes like an epileptic while swigging white whine.

I didn't really know what to say about her. Sometimes I thought it was a poor performance, sometimes I thought it was just a poorly written character, now and again she'd have an effective moment. Redford was doing Mount Rushmore stuff the whole way.

turned 80 yesterday

Rewatched Ordinary People last night. Sutherland def gives the best performance; even Judd Hirsch (the worst, both the character and his shtick) is OK in his one scene with Don. Hutton is fine and cute, as is Elizabeth McGovern. I can see why Hutton got the part; some of his line readings and physicality reminded me of young Redford.

Some of the editing is nice, especially at the main boring WASP parents party. (I wonder if the funniest line is in the novel, where mom tells grandma that Conrad's shrink is "probably Jewish, maybe just German.")

As for MTM, the movie was sold so much on her SMASHING HER IMAGE that few people noticed that she's a caricature much of the time. Redford cannily uses a couple very brief flashbacks of Beth with her hair down (in love with her husband, and her oldest son) so the audience can say That's Our Mary!

I'm sure someone has written a thesis about how consecutive Oscar winners (this and Kramer vs Kramer) were predicated on father-son bonding enabled by the absence or presence of an indifferent/monstrous mother.

I still have only seen the top 3 finishers in this poll.

also anyone who thinks this is better than Raging Bull is cuckoo for cocoa puffs

Quiz Show - what a great movie, great cast full of character actors, Redford doesn't get in the way of the story, that closeup on Ralph Fiennes' face as the question he knows the answer to is read...

He's okay.

lol

The Legend of Bagger Vance 2

3 more and it would be a five bagger

I’ve seen _Raging Bull_ so many times that I promised myself not to watch it again for the rest of my life

It was Urban Cowboy I was thinking of when I wrote that (also 1980, also had something to do with a bull).

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Urban Cowboy, Raging Bull.

It's hard to think of a director with a less exciting body of work overall, and yet the top 2 here are among the best cases for Oscar-friendly MOR filmmaking

How does MTM's performance in Ordinary People stack up next to Flirting WIth Disaster? Avoided it at the time and still haven't seen it.

Her character in FWD would eat her character in OP with lunch and a glass of malbec.

ha!

More interested in what James Brolin's character would've done on Connie's swim team

Connie Selleca?

Connie Sellecca even