Posted during Cannes Film Festival on 5.17.15: “Gabriel Clarke & John McKenna‘s Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (FilmRise, 11.13) is a fascinating time trip but mostly a sad, bittersweet mood piece about failure and a movie star swallowing his own tail. Clarke and McKenna have certainly made something that’s heads and shoulders above … Read more
Yesterday afternoon I caught Gabriel Clarke & John McKenna‘s Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans — in part a fascinating time trip but mostly a sad, bittersweet mood piece about failure and a movie star swallowing his own tail. Which I found affecting as hell. Clarke and McKenna have certainly made something that’s heads … Read more
Chad McQueen, the son of Steve McQueen who, like all sons of Hollywood superstars, shouldered a certain spiritual burden, has passed at age 63. He lived 13 years longer than his famous dad, who departed in 1980 at age 50. I interviewed a hung-over Chad nine years ago at the Beverly Hills hotel. The topic … Read more
Ford v. Ferrari director James Mangold may not want to admit this but his film, which roars into highly pleasurable third-act overdrive during its depiction of the 1966 Le Mans race, owes a huge nostalgic debt to Steve McQueen‘s Le Mans (’71). Shot in the summer and early fall of’70, Le Mans was an all-around … Read more
I sat down a couple of days ago with John McKenna, co-director of Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans, which I saw and greatly admired in Cannes six months ago, and with Chad McQueen, the late superstar’s actor-producer son. We convened in the Polo Lounge inside the Beverly Hills hotel, and sure enough a … Read more
Joe Eddy‘s Chasing Bullitt played at last year’s Dances With Films but at no significant festivals since. (Am I wrong?) Do the math. However, the casting of Andre Brooks as Steve McQueen is physically spot-on; ditto Augie Duke as Neile McQueen. I can sense trouble, but I want to see it anyway. My longstanding McQueen … Read more
Last Friday 124 feature-length documentaries were submitted for Oscar consideration. A short list of 15 will be revealed in early December (less than five weeks hence), and the final quintet will be announced when all the Oscar nominees are announced in mid January. And of course I’ve been slacking on this front so here’s a … Read more
As mentioned I caught two Peter Bogdanovich movies last night — one a nimble, old-fashioned Bogdanovich-directed screwball comedy and the other a documentary that doesn’t feel well-ordered or smooth enough. But despite its faults, the doc — One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich and the Lost American Film — is far more affecting. Because it’s a … Read more
In my 5.21 post about the just-concluded 68th Cannes Film Festival being one of the weakest in recent memory, I forgot to menton or more precisely re-mention my immense satisfaction with (a) Kent Jones‘ Hitchcock/Truffaut, which press-screened twice during the festival but which I’d seen in Paris on Monday, 5.11, and reviewed the next day; … Read more