REEL RETRO CINEMA | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

Feb27

13 Favorite — Sometimes Offbeat — GENE HACKMAN Performances

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Feb 27, 2025

13 Favorite — Sometimes Offbeat — GENE HACKMAN Performances

REEL RETRO CINEMA: Mr. Luthor! Mr. Luthor! An APPRECIATION of the great actor, who has died at 95… By ROB KELLY Growing up in the 1970s and 80s and seeing lots and lots of movies, Gene Hackman — who has died at the age of 95 — loomed large in my pop culture imagination. The movies he appeared in could be good or bad, but he never delivered anything than a memorable performance. Fitting his on-screen persona, Hackman quietly retired without fanfare or superstar ego. It eventually just dawned on movie fans that, hey, we haven’t seen Gene Hackman in a movie in a while! By then, he had moved to New Mexico where, according to reports, he lived a quiet but quite active life with his family, away from the Hollywood limelight. In tribute to his legendary career, here are 13 great performances by Gene Hackman — starting off with the one of most interest to 13th Dimension readers: — Superman: The Movie/Superman II (1978/1981) I’m counting two movies as one performance because, as everyone knows by now, Richard Donner shot a large chunk of II and every scene of Hackman as Luthor. While the film version of Luthor doesn’t bear much resemblance to the green-and-purple-suited mad scientist seen in the comics for decades, Hackman’s riotous performance is a perfect contrast to Christopher Reeve’s earnest take on the Man of Steel. — I Never Sang For My Father (1970) “Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship.” Hackman is perfect in an early movie role as a man dealing with his elderly, difficult, emotionally distant father. — Prime Cut (1972) A tough, ugly little movie, but getting to see Gene Hackman square off against Lee Marvin makes it all worth it. — The Conversation (1974) Hackman could be big and loud, like he was in 1971’s The French Connection, but he could also turn those dials down to a whisper, like he did for Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece (in between his two other masterpieces, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II). — Young Frankenstein (1974) As the blind hermit who befriends The Monster, Hackman shows up for a few minutes, completely kills, and then departs. Maybe the greatest “cameo” of all time? — Night Moves (1975) A great, underseen crime thriller, anchored by Hackman, who...

Feb14

1990’s CAPTAIN AMERICA Movie: There’s No Shielding This Disaster

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Feb 14, 2025

1990’s CAPTAIN AMERICA Movie: There’s No Shielding This Disaster

REEL RETRO CINEMA: With Captain America: Brave New World out, dig this INSIDE LOOK at a forgotten flick and its comics adaptation… By ROB KELLY The time: Sometime in the summer of 1989. The place: The Westmont theater in (appropriately) Westmont, NJ. It was during one of my nine(!) trips to see Batman that I saw it hanging in the lobby: I had heard rumors through the comic book grapevine that a live-action Captain America movie was in production, but here was red, white, and blue proof that not only did the film exist, but that it was coming to theaters, soon. Of course, that never happened. While it did hit screens overseas, director Albert Pyun’s Captain America never did so in Steve Rogers’ place of birth (literally, metaphorically, and ironically). More rumors about the movie swirled around in fan circles, but with Batman Returns already coming down the pike, it seemed that, once again, Marvel just could not manage to get one of their characters onto the big screen. Eventually Captain America hit home video and even though the advance word was bad, I eagerly took the film home to check it out for myself. Captain America was, and is, my favorite Marvel superhero and while he’d appeared in live action a few times before (to… mixed results, let’s say), my enthusiasm for the film was still high. Then I saw it. As anyone who has watched it knows, Captain America is not good. Really not good. It’s cheap, sloppy and, most fatally, poorly written. After we are treated to an origin story for the Red Skull (who, for some reason, is Italian, not German), we follow the scientist whose Super Soldier formula turned a young Italian boy into the villainous Skull to America, where her guilt has driven her to change sides in the war. Now working for the US Government, she transforms skinny kid Steve Rogers into Captain America. The good Captain is dropped into his first mission—to stop the Red Skull—which he fails at, miserably. The Skull then straps Cap onto a rocket aimed at the White House, but Cap decides to wait until he’s just a few thousand feet away from its target to try and redirect the bomb’s trajectory. He does, and the missile lands in Alaska(!), burying Cap in the ice for...

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