Updated RankingThe Sterile Cuckoo (1969)
★ ★ ½ Young love. She’s as deeply passionate as he is frustratingly passive. They’re perfectly matched until there’s trouble and then his coldness threatens to break her spirit. This is all about Liza Minnelli, in a performance that starts at about an ‘11’ and deepens into the hidden gem of her great career. She’s as unforgettable as her co-star (Wendell Burton) is completely forgettable. This is unlike anything else by Pakula, suggesting an alternate career where he’s a 2nd tier Mike Nichols. I now imagine Klute with Minnelli instead of Jane Fonda.
Klute (1971)
★ ★ ★ - Good Pakula is in command of this one, with the patience, atmosphere and paranoia that makes for a solid introduction of what he brings to cinema. I prefer more thrills, but I have dozens of films that do that, so I won’t rewatch this as much, but it’s really well-made.
I also want to rewatch Klute (1971) to see if it belongs in my Horror/Thriller 1000.
It does not. Mostly a drama with a couple of mildly thrilling scenes, not a thriller with tension and scares.
The Parallax View (1974)
★ ★ It’s bold to make an assassination film that gives credibility to wild conspiracy theories. There’s a lot of tonally great photography by Gordon Willis, but there’s also tedium broken up by a dose of silliness. This isn’t a film you expect to have a wild barfight, or a Blue Brothers style car chase. The suspense is drawn-out, making you uneasy over the unknown, but what about the sequence that ends in an off-camera explosion where the camera holds on empty pavement until it shakes when the bomb goes off?