Widescreen: The William Friedkin classic you haven't seen
The Chicago-born director of "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection" died Monday at age 87, and those two films would be enough to leave a towering legacy.
Four years after Father Merrin confronted Pazuzu, William Friedkin directed "Sorcerer" which, despite the title, has nothing to do with wizards and magic. It came and went in the summer of "Star Wars" and has since been forgotten despite a dark, different turn from "Jaws" star Roy Scheider and a scene involving a truck and a bridge that even Tom Cruise wouldn't dare to attempt.
A remake of "Wages of Fear," the film follows four criminals who come together in South America to take on what sounds like an easy job: Drive two trucks full of dynamite through 200 miles of jungle terrain.
Oh, but there's a hitch: the dynamite is unstable and could go boom at every bump in the road.
It's tense and trippy, and definitely worth the $3 rental from Vudu, iTunes and similar platforms.
From Chicago to 'Asteroid City'
"Asteroid City," Wes Anderson's latest candy-colored concoction of artful artifice, broken families, symmetrical compositions and text-filled screens, premieres Friday, Aug. 11, on Peacock.
Jason Schwartzman, whose big-screen career kicked off 25 years ago as Max Fischer in Anderson's "Rushmore," stars as Augie Steenbeck, a grieving father stuck in the title city under government quarantine with his kids, a movie star (Scarlett Johansson) and a dozen familiar faces from the Anderson troupe.
Schwartzman's bearded, cargo vest-wearing character looks a lot like Stanley Kubrick; Schwartzman told IndieWire earlier this year that a trip to the Music Box Theatre in Chicago started him down that path. While in town shooting the fourth season of FX's "Fargo," Schwartzman attended a 70 mm screening of "2001: A Space Odyssey" at the theater that "sent me down a little Kubrick rabbit hole, watching clips and documentaries and reading books," he said. Soon after, Anderson wrote to him and said he should have Kubrick in mind while preparing for "Asteroid City."
The result is a quietly heartbreaking performance in a movie that unfurls as a play within a play. It is Anderson's most self-referential film, and perhaps his most experimental. It's about the temporary families created by the short-term nature of showbiz jobs, but mostly, I think, it's about how the people around us are always more important and memorable than the seemingly monumental events of our life. (Well, that, and UFOs.) It is one of Anderson's best films.
• Sean Stangland is an assistant news editor who also recommends the Shudder documentary "Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on 'The Exorcist'," as well as the director's 2016 appearance on Marc Maron's podcast.