Cool Hand Luke (1967) watch a long
Added 2025-08-16 18:00:51 +0000 UTCCOOL HAND LUKE! An inspiration to us all!!
Enjoy this awesome reaction!
xx
ames
Comments
Im so glad you loved it and appreciated it at the level you did. It is an amazing film.
Stacy Provenzano Eccleston
2025-10-11 00:26:23 +0000 UTCJust love this film. Paul is just superb in this. George Kennedy is one of those actors that always delivers. Love him to bits. RIP Lalo Schifrin he really did some fantastic film scores. It's interesting that in the end Boss Godfrey is vulnerable for the moment after he is attacked and not just cool, calm and reflective with his aviators. Just goes to show that the system is just people too. Unfortunately common sense usually flies right out the window and people who are different struggle to conform to the stupidity that is so plainly obvious.
Teemu Laitinen
2025-08-17 16:43:16 +0000 UTCTremendous reaction by Ames. I mean, we all knew she was gonna go gaga for this one, but she in no way disappoints! I'm sure nobody cares, but on the off chance somebody gets something out of this, here's my 2 cents on Cool Hand Luke. I love Cool Hand Luke. It's, of course, one of Newman's most iconic roles and best loved movies, but it always lives up to it. What's always confounded me, however, is its reputation amongst so many people as a sort of "feel good" movie. I mean, goddamn, this is a passion play! A defiant and angry bummer masterpiece! Brutal and unrelenting in its message that, for the nonconformist, you're doomed to a life of unending pain, both psychic and physical, and misery, both psychic and physical. Even the egg scene, something everyone remembers as wonderful and funny, is actually repulsive and tortuous. Society, and maybe even God himself, can't abide swimming upstream. Minutes before he's killed by the man with no eyes, Luke lets the Big Man Upstairs know that he's onto his game--God made him what he was, and does nothing but punish him for it. When's it gonna end? How 'bout now, Luke. BLAMMO! It's as tragic as it is inevitable. The supporting cast is splendid and memorable, and George Kennedy deserved the supporting Oscar he won, and the the journeyman Stu Rosenberg's direction is steady, Lalo Schifrin doing his groovy late '60s thing and Conrad Hall, a giant of a DP, does wonderful Connie Hall stuff here, but this movie sinks or swims on Newman's performance. No other lead actor of the time (and certainly not our time) other than Newman (maybe Sidney Poitier?) could have done what he does here. The reason people remember CHL warmly is 99% Newman (and .5% Jo Van Fleet and .5% Kennedy), one of the greatest movie stars in the history of cinema at the absolute height of his powers. What he does is almost a magic trick--and I don't mean that derisively. Bleak as this message of this movie is, he uses every bit of his vulnerability, sensitivity, charm, swagger and handsomeness to keep our attention from what the movie is actually doing with its other hand. It's his defiant, resigned rebel smile that we hold onto, even though the movie tells us we should know better. But that's not to say that all Newman does is grin and look good while taking a punch. Luke has one hell of an arc, and Newman earns it. BTW, it always both warms my heart and amuses me that so many 1st time viewers love the banjo scene. Newman didn't care for his performance in that scene. He didn't sing or play any instruments but learned the banjo picking as best as he could, but was really hard on himself that he couldn't do it better, despite a TON of practice. In fact, he thought that all the concentrating on the music took away from his acting in the scene. So, everyone loved it but Paul, and I think we are right, but while he was, by that point, the biggest movie star in the world, he was still an actor first, God bless him. Newman always said that he wasn't a born actor, like his wife, Joanne, and possessed precious little natural talent, but, embarrassed that early on his looks got him roles he didn't feel he earned and wasn't good in, he worked his ass off to become a good actor. And it's true. Nobody ever thinks it of him, but he was a late bloomer. He was starring in several mostly forgettable movies in the early 50s as a guy in his late 20s, but (with apologies to Somebody Up There Likes Me, which was fine) it wasn't until 1958 with the release of the two Southern Gothics, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Long, Hot Summer when he was 33, that he became a bona fide star. Yup, Paul freaking Newman had to grind! (And, grisly as it is to say, he got a little lucky, as no one's career benefited from James Dean's untimely death more than Newman's.) Making the most of whatever natural gifts you get and then working extraordinarily hard is probably a pretty good recipe for success in any field. One last thing, like so many movies that embed themselves into the popular imagination, this is chock full of GREAT character actors. A nod to all those great faces appearing her: Dennis Hopper, Joe Don Baker, Harry Dean Stanton, Strother Martin, Ralph Waite, Wayne Rogers, Clifton James, Anthony Zerbe , Morgan Woodward, Luke Askew--Some of them were stars in their own right, others merely worked constantly and a few were just dependable "that guy" faces, but they are always so welcome when they appear.
VivendoBem
2025-08-17 11:14:45 +0000 UTC
