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Showing posts with the label George Roy Hill

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #32: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) is that rare Western that goes off the beaten path, at one point quite literally by leaving the American West behind. It is also sometimes cartoonishly funny as outlaws use too much dynamite to blow up a safe, jump off a cliff to evade a posse, and have to learn a new language in the middle of a bank robbery. At its core it is the story of two friends who, despite the occasional argument, stay together until the end. The first time I saw the movie was more than a decade ago when if I wanted to watch a classic movie I had to rent it from a store. It was not the best cinematic experience since the disc was scratched and the image kept jumping in the first minutes, but eventually it got better. I recently rewatched it on Disney +, since Disney seems intent on owning everything, and was pleasantly reminded of what a fun movie this is. It is not Blazing Saddles in terms of silliness, but it’s certainly not Unforgiven in terms of violence either....

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #127: The Sting

It’s never fun to get conned, but you have to admit it is loads of fun to see professional con artists at work. Whereas today any moron with a laptop can exhort money from gullible people by pretending to be a Nigerian prince in need of quick cash in return for a fortune, there was a time when a good con required a team of expert hustlers, hours of preparation, and one devious plan B in case the whole thing went up in flames. George Roy Hill’s The Sting (1973) depicts such a con featuring one of the best on-screen duo in movie history: Paul Newman and Robert Redford, reuniting with Hill a few years after working on another classic, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).   When watching a movie about a con job, it is almost as though the filmmakers are the con artists and the audience is the mark. The objective of the screenwriters and the director is to have the con artists in the movie pull off their job without the audience knowing exactly how they are doing it. If the...