Note:
Excluded from consideration were actor-directors (Woody Allen, Buster Keaton,
et al.) and actors who are also strongly identified for their work as directors
(Clint Eastwood, Erich von Stroheim, et al.).
1. The Night Of The Hunter (1955, dir. Charles
Laughton)
One
of the great directorial one-offs in movie history, Charles Laughton's noir
classic fuses the stark traditions of German expressionism, Southern gothic,
and Grimm fairy tales to suggest the Biblical struggle between good and evil.
As a fire-and-brimstone preacher who charms a naïve widow to get to her late
husband's stolen loot, Robert Mitchum had never used his imposing stature and
deep, seductive voice to such dangerous effect; his confrontation with Mother
Goose Lillian Gish feels like an Old Testament showdown. The film was enough of
a flop to ensure that Laughton would never get behind the camera again, but it
continues to cast a long shadow; it was the direct inspiration for the "left
hand/right hand" bit in Do The Right Thing.
2. The Hired Hand (1971, dir. Peter Fonda)
Ever
wonder what it must be like inside Peter Fonda's head? Fonda's hallucinogenic
Western–which finally resurfaced a few years ago after decades in
obscurity–offers a Being John Malkovich-like tour of his brain, especially during
the opening section, which extends Easy Rider's hazy, freaked-out
imagery. Though Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography is expressive throughout, the
film eventually settles into a quiet, subtle character study about a cowboy
(Fonda) who returns home to his wife (Verna Bloom) after abandoning her seven
years earlier. The visual symbolism gets to be a bit much–Christ is evoked at
one point–but Fonda successfully marries traditional Western tropes with the
experimental inclinations of the times.
3. Little Murders (1971, dir. Alan Arkin)
In the late '60s and early '70s,
Second-City-trained comic actor Alan Arkin was the go-to guy for a certain kind
of dark, absurdist comedy, probably because in real life, he wasn't too
different from the deadpan neurotic he was often asked to play. In 1971, Arkin
made his feature-filmmaking debut with an adaptation of Jules Feiffer's bizarro
play Little Murders, about a romance between the emotionally numb Elliott Gould
and the eternally sunny Marcia Rodd in a New York that's fast becoming a war
zone. As a director, Arkin hangs back and watches the madness, resisting the
temptation to sweeten Feiffer's acid satire in any way. The result is more
brutal than funny: a journey inside Arkin's sad-sack soul.
4. Quiz Show (1994,
dir. Robert Redford)
Though
his directorial output mainly consists of middlebrow snoozefests like The
Legend Of Bagger Vance, Robert Redford brought glamour and crackerjack timing to
this dazzling morality play about the quiz-show scandals of the '50s. After his
appearance in All The President's Men, it's only fitting that Redford should tell one
story of national innocence lost before Watergate. His shrewdest choice was in
casting Ralph Fiennes, a golden-haired aristocrat in the Redford mold, as the
gentile champion of the rigged game show Twenty One. Redford's close
identification with Fiennes feeds into the character's tortured relationship
with his intellectual father (Paul Scofield) and allows the audience to be just
as seduced into liking him as the millions of TV viewers who kept him on the
air.
5. Reds (1981,
dir. Warren Beatty)
Warren
Beatty has only directed four features, but they've all been ambitious and
accomplished to some degree, from the brisk screwball of Heaven Can Wait to the technically
dazzling Dick Tracy to the incredibly chancy, awkward political comedy Bulworth. But he brought it all
together for 1981's Reds, an engrossing four-hour behemoth about the idealist vision
of Russia's October Revolution and the political realities there and in the States.
Beatty, who also scripted, stars as a radical American journalist who travels
with disciple Diane Keaton to Russia in time to witness the revolution. They
later come back to America hoping to inspire a similar uprising. Beatty's
liberal credentials have never been in question, but Reds differs from the current
wave of leftist political films in its sober treatment of the limits of
ideology. Also, Jack Nicholson does a wicked Eugene O'Neill.
6. Quick Change (1990,
dir. Bill Murray and Howard Franklin)
Okay,
so Bill Murray only co-directed this clever heist comedy, but his unmistakable
cynicism leaves enough of an auteurist mark to make it plausible that he was
calling the shots. The central joke is a good one: Robbing a New York City bank
is easy, but getting off that gridlocked and irrational little island called
Manhattan proves impossible. The film's manic energy, provided mainly by the
perpetually rattled Randy Quaid, plays off nicely against Murray's laconic
presence, which keeps it from going too far over the top. It doesn't get much
better than the robbery scene, but there are laughs peppered throughout, and
plenty of first-rate support from the likes of Geena Davis, Jason Robards, Phil
Hartman, Stanley Tucci, and Tony Shalhoub. Suggested double-bill with Dog
Day Afternoon.
7. Deep Cover (1992,
dir. Bill Duke)
The
imposing, bald character actor Bill Duke has a pretty undistinguished
filmography–his The Cemetery Club may be the whitest film ever directed by a black
filmmaker (close second: Forest Whitaker's Hope Floats)–but the harrowing Deep
Cover is
major exception. Truth be told, much of the credit belongs to screenwriter
Michael Tolkin (The Rapture, The Player), who has a knack for placing characters
into sticky moral quandaries. Tolkin's story follows a policeman (Laurence
Fishburne) who goes undercover to take down a Columbian drug kingpin and has to
make horrible compromises to protect his identity and rise to the top of the
food chain. This entails actually selling drugs and eliminating the
competition, which poses a question: What's the difference between him and a
drug dealer?
8. Dead Man Walking (1995, dir. Tim Robbins)
Make
no mistake: Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking, the true story of a Louisiana nun (Susan
Sarandon) who serves as a spiritual advocate for a death-row inmate, comes out
clearly against the death penalty. What makes it great is that it presents a
stiff challenge to that point of view first: The inmate (Sean Penn, in perhaps
his strongest performance) is unquestionably guilty of raping a girl and
murdering her and her boyfriend, his views are often abhorrent and unrepentant,
and the victims' families are given full and sympathetic consideration in their
wish for him to die. In the end, the film does question the purpose of institutionalized
killing, which offers neither closure nor any other constructive possibilities,
but it doesn't trample the other side of the argument. Dead Man Walking advances a perfectly
balanced argument, but far from being an editorial page writ large, it
functions just as well as drama.
9. The Apostle (1997,
dir. Robert Duvall)
Not
since, well, Robert Mitchum in The Night Of The Hunter has a man of the cloth
possessed righteousness as questionable as Robert Duvall's preacher in The
Apostle.
Part snake-oil salesman, part true believer, he's so volatile that he takes a
softball bat to his wife's lover's head, but his slow journey toward redemption
leads him (and viewers) to a grace. Duvall fussed over this project for 15
years before it finally got off the ground, and the long gestation period paid
off, not only in a central character of great complexity, but as a remarkably
naturalistic and never-condescending portrait of evangelical Christianity in
the Deep South.
10. In The Bedroom (2001, dir. Todd Field)
Though
he had a significant role in Nicole Holefcener's fine indie comedy Walking
And Talking,
Todd Field generally disappears into his roles like a good character actor,
with notable turns as Ashley Judd's prospective boyfriend in Ruby In
Paradise
and Tom Cruise's pianist buddy in Eyes Wide Shut. Perhaps being out of the
spotlight allowed him to study the process more intently, because Field's debut
feature, In The Bedroom, exhibits the sort of maturity and control that most
experienced filmmakers never develop. Befitting a film directed by an actor,
the performances are peerless, especially Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek as a
New England couple whose brittle marriage starts to crack when their son (Nick
Stahl) meets a tragic fate. Their domestic crisis comes to a head in an
unforgettably explosive confrontation, but even that scene is leavened by an
unexpected comic grace-note. The final third, which could stand as a
self-contained short about the perils of retribution, is particularly strong.