Movie Review: Iceman (1984)

A science fiction drama, Iceman has a sketched-in premise and plenty of grunting.

At a scientific base in the arctic, a prehistoric man is found frozen in ice. Anthropologist Dr. Stanley Shephard (Timothy Hutton) is summoned to assess the find, and determines the iceman to be about 40,000 years old. To the surprise of all the assembled scientists including team leader Dr. Diane Brady (Lindsay Crouse), resuscitation efforts are successful and soon the Iceman (John Lone) is up and around.

For safety he is confined to a climate controlled vivarium. Shephard starts to spend time with him and tries to decipher the Iceman's grunts to establish basic communications. But as Shephard makes progress, other scientists argue for more invasive examinations and a noisy helicopter triggers mystifying heightened anxiety.

Directed by Fred Schepisi and produced by Norman Jewison, Iceman takes a long time to thaw, and then spends its second half in a surreal state. Most of the final 50 minutes are occupied by the Iceman grunting away and Shephard staring in sympathy and occasionally grunting back. The vivarium becomes a cinematically self-destructive disaster zone draining away the rudimentary momentum built in the laborious set-up.

The script may intend to lean heavily on the real science of linguistics, but also finds a way to recruit an MIT linguistics specialist into the movie, who proceeds to contribute less than nothing to the communication attempts. Instead Shephard alone somehow deciphers the Iceman's mystical final journey, complete with dumbfounding references to entities such as The Messenger and The Trickster. Any attempts to metaphorically represent man's quest for ultimate salvation are lost within the unconvincing dialogue and stiff acting.

John Lone delivers a fully committed performance as the Iceman, while Timothy Hutton and Lindsay Crouse are predominantly stuck in snippy mode. Danny Glover and David Strathairn have underdeveloped smallish roles as tense members of the research team.

Slow, static and stodgy, Iceman sinks in the snow.

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Movie Review: Kinsey (2004)

A biographical drama about the scientist who revolutionized the understanding of sexuality, Kinsey treats its subject with well-rounded respect, revealing the man's determination and faults. The film is an efficient recounting of a unique career, suffering only slightly from some character repetitiveness.

At Indiana University in the 1930s, insect researcher Professor Al Kinsey develops an interest in researching human sexuality. In flashback, Kinsey's background is revealed. Born to a strict father (John Lithgow), Kinsey refuses to follow the path of engineering and chooses biology instead. He pursues an interest in the migration and evolution of gall wasps, and meets and marries Clara McMillen (Laura Linney). His early sexual experiences with his wife as well as his bisexuality contribute to his curiosity about human sexuality as a science. The current texts in circulation are religious and moralistic nonsense disguised as fact.

Kinsey recruits his students including Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), Wardell Pomeroy (Chris O'Donnell) and Paul Gebhard (Timothy Hutton) to form the core of a research team. Supported by university president Herman Wells (Oliver Platt) and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation represented by Alan Gregg (Dylan Baker), Kinsey and his researchers fan out across the country interviewing thousands. The research findings, first published in the late 1940s, shake the foundations of American society. The former insect professor becomes a celebrity and household name. But a backlash also awaits, and Kinsey's singular obsession with the pure science of sexuality takes a personal and professional toll.

Directed and written by Bill Condon, Kinsey clocks in at under two hours and wastes no time on padding. This is a disciplined, focused film, stylishly divulging the man, the mission and the consequences. Enough background is added to create context without getting lost in side quests. Condon captures the clever simplicity of Kinsey's observational and interview methods, and then the ground shift of awakening unleashed by the resultant research.

Al Kinsey is presented as a visionary, a pioneer and a flawed man, inheriting a lot of more from his intolerable father than he wishes to admit. The scenes of Kinsey's early life are interspersed throughout the film with a light touch, colouring childhood influences in subtle shades. Kinsey the adult becomes dogmatic about his science the way his father was about his brand of religion. After demonstrating a propensity for diving deeply into a narrow topic with his improbable gall wasp obsession, he locks onto sexuality as pure science, reducing human intercourse to a subject stripped of emotional, psychological or societal resonance.

Liam Neeson contributes to the film's appeal, owning the role and settling quickly to embody the scientist as beady-eyed, stubborn and sure of his stance as others recoil in shock when the covers are thrown off to reveal exactly what is going on in the national bedroom. Neeson's intensity helps to ride out the more repetitious scenes, Condon overemphasizing his main character's obtusely stubborn traits. Laura Linney excels as his wife Clara "Mac" McMillan, first astounded by her husband's liberal views of sexuality and then embracing what freedom may mean to her and her marriage. Peter Sarsgaard as Clyde Martin is the most prominent of the researchers who bring Kinsey's research methods to life both professionally and personally.

Kinsey emerges as a dispassionately cold proponent of understanding human coupling for the sake of reckless exploration and personal satisfaction, and eventually pushes too hard and too fast. For all the good that the research achieved, this is a story of the quixotic renegade shoving society two steps forward but one step very much backwards: support seeps away, damage is caused within the team, and a shocked nation reaches the point of too much information. Scientific advancement can be a messy and imperfect path.

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Movie Review: Taps (1981)

A military academy drama, Taps explores themes of honour, duty and loyalty through a story of cadets who make a stand. The film is in equal measures intense and stretched too thin.

The kindly Brigadier General Harlan Bache (George C. Scott) runs the Bunker Hill Military Academy for cadets between 12 and 18 years old. Bache selects the idealistic Brian Moreland (Timothy Hutton) to be the next Cadet Major, effectively the leader of his graduating class. Moreland's cohorts include the more pragmatic Cadet Captain Alex Dwyer (Sean Penn) and the militaristic Cadet Captain David Shawn (Tom Cruise). Moreland idealizes Bache and hangs on his every word about honour, duty, and military ethos.

Two tragedies strike the school in quick succession. First Bache is stunned to be informed that the Academy will be closing within a year to make room for a money-making condominium development project. Then during a gala evening, a confrontation between the cadets and a group of local teenagers ends in a calamity and Bache suffers a heart attack. Moreland decides to take matters into his own hands: seizing the Academy's cache of weapons, he leads the cadets in a takeover of the facility, demanding an inquiry into the planned closure. With the parents of the cadets thrown into panic, a long confrontation with local authorities ensues, with the National Guard's Colonel Kerby (Ronny Cox) entrusted with bringing the incident to an end.

Directed by Harold Becker, Taps is a grim but also gripping tale of pushing too far and too soon for all the right reasons. Quickly finding and then sustaining an emphasis on the passion of young men navigating the treacherous years between boyhood and adulthood, Becker infuses the film with a serious tone that fits well with the strict military surroundings. Despite the good intentions and quality execution, at over two hours the film is too long, and the second half begins to drag with more of the same in the absence of new ideas.

The story explores earnest objectives misplaced into the wrong cause. Moreland is trained to embrace the concepts of loyalty, national service and respecting tradition, and deploys all that he has learned to defend his academy against what he perceives as an imminent existential threat. Meanwhile Shawn is on the path to red beret training where killing with ruthless efficiency is all that matters, and whatever the cause he is eager to release his inner demon. Dwyer is the conscience of the group, not as invested in cadet principles but bound by friendship to stand by Moreland's side.

Becker ties the story together with admirable efficiency, and adds expansive cinematography and visuals to allow the film to breathe deeply from the grandeur that contributes to the majestic aura of life in the military for bright and eager youth indoctrinated early into the culture.

Taps does begin to suffer from relying too much on Moreland's descent from well-intentioned leader to a young man in over his head and not knowing when to quit. There is only so much that can be milked out of Moreland's admiration for Bache, and the dysfunctional relationship between Moreland and his father deserved more than one scene.

Taps features a terrific cast of young actors. Timothy Hutton was coming out of his breakout role in Ordinary People and continues to build his quietly tense screen persona, calm on the surface but struggling to control inner beasts. Tom Cruise and Sean Penn were on the cusp of stardom and prove their credentials by drawing out the characters of Shawn and Dwyer into memorable and unpredictable members of the rebellion. Despite top billing, George C. Scott has a supporting but pivotal role and transforms into a symbol rather than a presence after setting the initial stage.

Taps may not perfectly hit every note, but still plays a thoughtfully worthwhile tune.

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The Movies Of Timothy Hutton

All movies starring Timothy Hutton and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Ordinary People (1980)

Taps (1981)

Iceman (1984)

Betrayed (1988, uncredited)

Everybody's All-American (1988)

Beautiful Girls (1996)

Playing God (1997)

The General's Daughter (1999)

Kinsey (2004)

The Good Shepherd (2006)

The Ghost Writer (2010)

All The Money In The World (2017)

Beautiful Boy (2018)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Playing God (1997)

A poorly executed action drama, Playing God aims for a cerebral angle in the story of a flawed surgeon falling into the sphere of a criminal, but fails on every count.

In Los Angeles, Eugene Sands (David Duchovny) is a disgraced former doctor who lost his licence after his persistent drug use caused the death of a patient undergoing an operation. While buying his latest batch of drugs at a dingy bar, the emotionally down and out Eugene is in the right place at the right time to save the life of a gangland shooting victim. Eugene's heroics are witnessed by the enigmatic Claire (Angelina Jolie). Her charismatic boss is mobster Raymond Blossom (Timothy Hutton), and he quickly connects with Eugene and unofficially appoints him as his personal medic, responsible for patching up injured friends or foes as the situation requires.

Eugene learns that Raymond is involved in a dispute with Russian mobsters (including Peter Stormare as Dimitri), but wants to move into bigger illegal business deals with Chinese racketeers. Meanwhile Eugene and Claire start to develop feelings for each other, and the FBI move in to try and pressure Eugene to inform on Raymond's activities.

Flush from success on TV's The X Files, Duchovny attempted to carve out a film career but instead landed in this mess. Filmed in 1995 but not released until two years later due to negative audience test scores, Playing God trips all over itself and lands in a bloody puddle of incompetence. This is a shoddily produced film filled with barely coherent scenes, and no attempt to delve into characters, motivation, or context beyond the most superficial level.

Duchovny's contribution to the shambolic failure is not insubstantial. His approach to the role of Dr. Sands is to stand aside with an expression of drugged-out stupor, and then spring into action with life-saving medical heroics. A scene later, repeat. He may be a victim of an astonishingly bad script by Mark Haskell Smith, but Duchovny's blankness certainly does not do much to better the material.

Director Andy Wilson tries for a narration-heavy neo-noir vibe, and gets nowhere. The tone oscillates wildly between serious, comic, violent and gory, but is never actually smart or engaging. To keep the character of Eugene relevant, almost every scene has to end with someone close-to-death and needing the doctor's intervention, and the film inadvertently encourages a distracting "guess the next victim to be saved" parlour game.

Meanwhile, Timothy Hutton gradually slips into madman persona as the villain Raymond Blossom, and by the end enters full-on wild psychotic mode, fully eroding any sense of serious drama. Angelina Jolie, in one of her earlier and very forgettable roles as Claire, is given instructions to look serious and sultry without being told what exactly she is doing in the movie other than providing decoration. A clutch of faceless FBI agents enter the action late in the proceedings and just add to the overall amateurish feel.

The premise of a humiliated doctor getting embroiled in gang warfare must have seemed like a good idea on paper. Resoundingly botching the concept, Playing God is a plain dog.

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Movie Review: Beautiful Girls (1996)

A character-rich study with a focus on growing up and finding the right relationship, Beautiful Girls is a winsome slice of small-town life.

Sensitive piano player Willie (Timothy Hutton), now based in New York City, return to his snowy small hometown of Knights Ridge, Massachusetts, for a high school reunion. Willie reconnects with his old school buddies who never left town, and are now all in their late twenties: Tommy (Matt Dillon), Mo (Noah Emmerich), Paul (Michael Rapaport), Kev (Max Perlich), and Stanley (Pruitt Taylor Vince).

Tommy ("Birdman") was the school football star, and he never grew up. Now running a small snowplow company, Tommy is seeing Sharon (Mira Sorvino), but carrying on an affair with his married high school sweetheart Derian (Lauren Holly). Mo is happily married to Sarah (Anne Bobby), and is the most settled of the group. Paul is also a snowplower and has not moved beyond the supermodel pin-up phase nor learned to deal with real women. He is having trouble letting go of former girlfriend Jan (Martha Plimpton), who is now dating someone else. Kev is Tommy's sidekick, while hardworking Stanley ("Stinky") is operating his own restaurant.

As Willie catches up with the lives and loves of his buddies, he meets and befriends his neighbours' daughter, precocious 13 year old Marty (Natalie Portman), and contemplates his future with long-term New York girlfriend Tracy (Annabeth Gish). The town's wisemouth hairdresser Gina (Rosie O'Donnell) dishes out advice to anyone who listens, while Stinky's stunningly beautiful cousin Andera (Uma Thurman) arrives in town, and causes a stir among the guys.

A film with no heroes, villains, central romance, irony or glib humour, Beautiful Girls is simply about people trying to assemble the puzzle of adulthood. With echoes of Mystic Pizza (1988), Beautiful Girls excels at creating rounded, flawed characters worth caring about. Director Ted Demme, working from a fine script by Scott Rosenberg, quickly establishes the guys, the girls and the complex dynamics between them, bringing the tapestry of life to the quiet streets of Knights Ridge.

The film glides easily between the no less than 16 friends and relatives who make up Willie's ecosystem, and just as Willie drops into the lives-in-progress of his friends, the film catches all the relevant stories mid-stream. Paul is struggling to cope with Jan leaving him behind, Tommy is caught between the devoted Sharon and the lusty Derian, while Mo and Stinky are just getting on with lives that have traded glamour for maturity.

The catalysts are the outsiders and newcomers. Young Marty brings an inquisitive mind and an open heart into Willie's life, their chats developing into a credible crush that is intellectually impossible but emotionally real. Andera, with her big-city outlook and no nostalgic attachments to Knights Ridge, sees things for what they are, piercing through Paul's amateur attempts at making Jan jealous, immediately reading Tommy's immaturity, and finding in Willie the one man worth nudging towards the right side of the commitment fence.

To drive the narrative forward, Rosenberg does allow the members of Willie's circle to quickly open up and talk through their issues. Guys like Tommy and Paul may be stuck in teenage mode and unable to grapple with what it means to be men, but they are nevertheless not shy about talking through their thoughts, emotions and viewpoints. This ability to share is at odds with the often emotionally stilted reality of relatively immature guys.

The performances from the ensemble cast strike a perfect tone, the characters all translated into real people navigating the choppy waters of small town living and mismanaged expectations. Hutton, Dillon, and Rapaport form the strongest bond at the heart of the many friendships, but Natalie Portman, all of 14 during filming, steals the movie with a stunning performance, finding the thin edge between child and adult, smart but not sassy, sensitive but not sentimental. Her relationship with Willie becomes a trigger for a better future: he sees himself through her eyes as a man worth living up to the name. The most beautiful girl, as it turns out, is also the youngest, and her beauty radiates through her belief in tomorrow's possibilities.

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Movie Review: Ordinary People (1980)

A drama portraying a family tearing itself at the seams, Ordinary People slowly burrows its way through a post-tragedy crisis that is more than ordinary people can handle. The film shines thanks to a patient script that gives up its secrets at a deliciously slow pace, and a collection of terrific performances.

Conrad Jarrett (Timothy Hutton) is a withdrawn teenager from an upper middle-class family in suburban Chicago, active in choir and swimming but dealing with a failed suicide attempt and suffering through a dysfunctional relationship with his cold-hearted, emotionless mother Beth (Mary Tyler Moore).

Conrad's brother Buck, a more outgoing, vivacious personality, died in a boating accident, and Conrad could not do enough to save him. Conrad blames himself for Buck's death; Beth does not help matters by also blaming Conrad for Buck's death. Conrad's dad Calvin (Donald Sutherland) is caught trying to nurture his suicidal son back to mental health and dealing with his wife's emotional paralysis.

Conrad's fortunes start to improve thanks to therapy sessions with Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch), who connects Conrad with the causes of his distressed emotions and encourages him to express himself. A burgeoning relationship with fellow choir singer Jeannine (Elizabeth McGovern) also helps Conrad to come out of his shell. With her son confronting the past more positively, Beth has nowhere to hide and is forced to face her own attitudes towards her family.

Ordinary People gains its impact from an emotional mystery structure, the equivalent of arriving at an accident scene and finding the survivors walking around in shock. What happened and why it happened is slowly revealed over the course of the compelling film.

Robert Redford displays remarkable maturity for a debut directorial effort, sprinkling clever little touches and interesting angles throughout the film without drawing unnecessary attention to himself. He provides the canvass for his four stars to shine, which they do thanks to an understated script by Alvin Sargent and Nancy Dowd.

Timothy Hutton makes a stunning start to his screen career as Conrad Jarrett, hollow eyes not trying to hide internal anguish as he struggles through the minefield of emotions within and surrounding him. Unfortunately for Hutton, this was a case of an acting career starting at the very top, complete with an Academy Award, and heading rather rapidly downhill, as he never found the suitable roles to build a lasting movie legacy.

In a brilliant stroke of casting, TV comedienne Mary Tyler Moore reveals herself to be a frighteningly effective dramatic actress as Beth, a woman who has wrapped her heart in several sheets of ice as she goes through the motions of being a mother and wife while internally seething about the unfairness of the loss that has befallen her. And Moore's flawless performance leaves no room for doubt that with Beth, the unfairness is all about her personal loss, and not the trauma that has befallen her family.

Sutherland and Hirsch have more straightforward yet still interesting, nuanced, and complex roles, Sutherland as the dad trying to save the functionality of his family, and Hirsch as the empathetic Dr. Berger, helping Conrad to navigate the dungeons of his mind.

There is a fifth, less prominent but still impressive role in Ordinary People, Elizabeth McGovern making her debut as Jeannine, and shining as a catalyst for positive change while avoiding most of the attractive girlfriend cliches.

Ordinary People won the Academy Award for Best Picture, but has the misfortune of being perceived as the undeserving winner from the year that Raging Bull was robbed. In truth, Ordinary People is an extraordinary film, and 1980 was a relatively rare year in which two films deserved the label of best film.

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Movie Review: Everybody's All-American (1988)

Everybody's All-American tries hard to be an epic love story between life-long soul-mates Gavin Grey (Dennis Quaid) and Babs Rogers (Jessica Lange). As suggested by its clumsy title, it succeeds only partially, mainly because there is a gaping hole where the foundations of the love story should have been established. The movie skips over any early defining moments that glue the two characters together. As a result, the emotional impacts of the struggles, fights, and reconciliations that rock their relationship are significantly weakened.

Football player Gavin "The Grey Ghost" Grey is a college star who leads Louisiana State University to a legendary Sugar Bowl victory in the 1950's. His professional career with the Washington Redskins through the 1960's is a bit less glamorous, and he encounters personal tragedy with the murder of his college friend and team-mate; financial woes; and ups-and-downs in his marriage to his college sweetheart Babs.

The story of Gavin and Babs, much like the movie, generally hums along in third gear. Everybody's All-American never risks a truly horrible moment thanks to the talent involved, and yet rarely strikes any truly memorable high notes.

Dennis Quaid goes through 25 years as Gavin Grey without much alternation to his physical appearance, except for some belly fat in later years. He provides two modes for Gavin: the charming, self-effacing hero or the half-drunk somewhat angry husband.

Jessica Lange does better as Babs, and works her character's struggle between proper Southern manners and bold real-world ambition quite well. She conclusively earns her top billing in the movie.

Timothy Hutton is along for the ride as Gavin's nephew and awkward third point in a clumsy love triangle -- his main purpose appears to be announcing the changing years with new hair styles and facial hair, since Gavin obviously kept the same barber for 25 years.

There is an interesting but poorly developed sub-plot involving the character of Narvel Blue (Carl Lumbly), a black friend of Gavin's who gets involved in the Civil Rights movement. For all their good intentions, the scenes involving Blue seem to belong to a whole different movie, perhaps starring Sidney Poitier.

Taylor Hackford directs Thomas Rickman's script from Frank Deford's novel with a split focus on attempting to recreate either the grand romance of his classic An Officer And A Gentleman (1982) or the turmoil of his flawed Against All Odds (1984). He misses both targets, of course, but while Everybody's All-American is never remarkable, it is certainly watchable.






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