ORIGINAL POST: Saturday, September 27, 2008
Here is my list of BEST and WORST Paul Newman films.
BEST
Somebody Up There Likes Me (1954). Bio-pic of middle weight boxing champion Rocky Graziano.
What A Way To Go! (1964). A very obscure but hilarious movie which is a delicious send-up of Hollywood style and greed. Shirley MacLaine stars as a women who wants to marry for love and the film follows her life through her four marriages. Each one of her poor husbands become fabulously wealthy before dying in some freak accident, leaving her an increasingly rich (and frustrated) widow. Dick Van Dyke, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum and Gene Kelly star as her husbands.
Harper (1965) William Goldman scripted this hard-boiled detective flick based on Ross MacDonald’s “Lew Archer” novels.
Cool Hand Luke (1967) What can you say? One of the all time great films with one of the most famous lines … “What we got is (a) failure to communicate.”
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Another all-time classic. Newman and Redford together for the first time. another William Goldman script. Great line: "I got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocules."
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) Not for everyone, but I love this very odd movie with Newman playing the notorious frontier hanging Judge Roy Bean.
The Sting (1973) Newman and Redford in one the greatest crime caper movies ever! Newman's poker game scene is still one of the best.
Slapshot (1977) Love it or hate it … savagely funny.
Absence of Malice (1981) Newman is great in this crime story as Michael Colin Gallagher who finds himself persecuted in the press by a pretty reporter and extracts his subtle revenge.
The Hudsucker Proxy (1993) One of the best (and overlooked) movies by the Cohen brothers. Must be seen to be believed. Wacky, wacky wacky … Plot includes a corporate takeover, the invention of the hula hoop and the Frisbee.
Nobody’s Fool (1994) Newman is great as down-on-his–luck small town handy man Donald J. “Sully” Sullivan, who drinks too much and works too little.
WORST
The Silver Chalice (1954) Newman’s screen debut was this costume drama. It was so bad Newman took out an ad in Variety magazine to apologize for its awfulness.
WUSA (1970) One of the all time awful movies, a supposed “comedy” that is more political correctness than a movie.
Sometimes A Great Notion (also known as Never Give An Inch) (1971) Based on Ken Kesey’s terrible novel, this was made into an even worse film. It is only notable because it was the first movie shown on HBO when that cable channel debuted in 1973.
The Towering Inferno (1974) One of those Irwin Allen produced “disaster” movies that were all the rage in the mid-70s after the success of The Poseiden Adventure.
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976) A typical Robert Altman over-the-top mess. The most over rated director in Hollywood history.
When Time Ran Out (1980) The last of Irwin Allen’s disaster epics is by far the worst … which is saying a lot. The best things about the film are Jacqueline Bisset’s breasts.
Message In A Bottle (1999) A movie based on another Nicholas Sparks novel. ‘Nuff said.
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