the caller

[click image]

I think Frank Langella is a really good actor. Last night he pulled off Nixon okay, considering everyone in the world is better at imitating Nixon's voice than Langella is, including people in the movie, and he did not capture the loathing-propelled rictus Nixon called a smile. Langella is naturally too serene, even when doing agitated, but there were real moments where he began to embody Nixon's ghost, and that was fairly astonishing.

Elliott Gould, of course, was the barer of the hairy butt I saw in a tiny Playboy image for a piece about sex in the movies when I was about twelve, and it had shocked me utterly, the very thought. It was so repulsive and so alluring at the same time. I named my first male cat after him, and I always try to see his movies because of this happy early trauma.

So. Here I go.

[Very good movie. Very easy to tell. Very pretty to see. Only got made because there was a Holocaust hook in it. Thankfully, light, but fucking just as meretricious anyway.]