Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Glenda Jackson, Oscar-Winning Actress Turned Politician, Dies at 87

      by

      Ms. Jackson was a two-time Oscar winner who walked away from a successful acting career to become a member of the British Parliament, before then returning to the stage.Glenda Jackson, the two-time Oscar winner who renounced a successful film and stage career in her 50s to become a member of the British Parliament, then returned to the stage at 80 as the title character in “King Lear,” died on Thursday at her home in Blackheath, London. She was 87.Her death was confirmed by Lionel Larner, her longtime agent, who said that she died after a brief illness.On both stage and screen, Ms. Jackson demonstrated that passion, pain, humor, anger, affection and much else were within her range. “I like to take risks,” she told The New York Times in 1971, “and I want those risks to be larger than the confines of a structure that’s simply meant to entertain.”By then she had won both acclaim and notoriety for performances in which she had bared herself physically and emotionally, notably as a ferocious Charlotte Corday in Peter Brook’s production of Peter Weiss’s “Marat/Sade,” and as Tchaikovsky’s tormented wife in Ken Russell’s film “The Music Lovers.”And she had won her first best actress Oscar, for playing the wayward Gudrun Brangwen in Ken Russell’s “Women in Love” (1969); her second was for her portrayal of the cool divorcée Vickie Allessio in “A Touch of Class” (1973).Ms. Jackson pivoted to politics in 1992, and was elected as the member of Parliament representing the London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate for the Labour Party. After the party took control of government in 1997, she became a junior minister of transport, only to resign the post two years later before a failed attempt to become mayor of London.She did not run for re-election in 2015, declaring herself too old, and soon returned to acting.Throughout her career, Ms. Jackson displayed an emotional power that sometimes became terrifying, and a voice that could rise from a purr to a rasp of fury or contempt, although her slight physique suggested both an inner and outer vulnerability.Her notable roles on the big screen included her depiction of the troubled poet Stevie Smith in Hugh Whitemore’s “Stevie” (1978) and as the needy divorcée Alex Greville in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (1971). On Broadway, she won praise as the neurotic Nina Leeds in O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude” in 1985 and a best actress Tony for her role as A, a woman over 90 facing mortality, in Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women” in 2018.Glenda Jackson as King Lear in the play “King Lear” at the Cort Theater in 2019.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara Krulwich/The New York TimesMany of Ms. Jackson’s performances provoked shock and awe with their boldness, none more so than her “Lear” in 2016. Though she had a reputation as a dauntingly confident actress, she admitted to having attacks of agonizing nerves before going onstage, and at London’s Old Vic, these were particularly acute.“I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was arrogance or just insanity,” she recalled of preparing for the most demanding of male roles in what she called “the greatest play ever written.” Her performance after 23 years away from the theater drew wide acclaim.“You’re barely aware of her being a woman playing a man,” Christopher Hart wrote in The Sunday Times of London. “It simply isn’t an issue.”Glenda May Jackson was born on May 9, 1936, in Birkenhead, near Liverpool in northwest England, the eldest of four daughters of Harry, a bricklayer, and Joan, a house cleaner and barmaid.Soon after her birth her parents moved to the nearby town of Hoylake, where home was a tiny workman’s house with an outdoor toilet, a cold water tap and a tin tub for a bath. The war increased the family’s privations. “We used to eat candle wax as an alternative to chewing gum,” she remembered. “The big treat was a pennyworth of peanut butter.”With her father called into the Navy, Glenda became increasingly crucial to an all-female household, something that explained, she said, both her defiant feminism and her “bossy streak.” She also proved bright and diligent, winning a scholarship to West Kirby County Grammar School for Girls. But she did not flourish there and left at 16. She was, she recalled, undisciplined and unhappy, “the archetypal fat and spotty teenager.”She was working at a pharmacy store and performing onstage as a member of a local theater group when, in 1954, she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, which had begun to encourage the enrollment of working-class students, including Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole. (Ms. Jackson remained convinced that she was plain, even ugly — a belief later reinforced by the academy’s principal, who told her that she could become only a character actress and “shouldn’t expect to work much before you’re 40.”)The schooling prepared her for what became six years in provincial repertory.In 1958 she married Roy Hodges, a fellow actor. Regional stage work meant periods of unemployment, odd jobs and poverty for the couple, and Ms. Jackson later admitted that she had shoplifted food and other essentials that she could conceal under her coat.Her big break came in 1964, when the director Mr. Brook brought her into an experimental group he was assembling for the recently formed Royal Shakespeare Company. He later recalled her as “a very curious figure — a hidden, shy and yet aggressive, badly dressed girl who seemed resentful of everything.” But in an audition, she had left him mesmerized by “the sudden plunges she took and by her intensity.”Mr. Brook cast her in “Marat/Sade,” which transferred to Broadway in 1967, leading to a Tony nomination for Ms. Jackson’s Charlotte Corday.But she disliked the experience, which, she said, left the company “in hysterics — people twitching, slobber running down their chins, screaming from nerves and exhaustion.” Nor did she enjoy the three years she spent with the R.S.C., though her roles included a sharp, shrewd Ophelia in Peter Hall’s revival of “Hamlet” and several characters in Mr. Brook’s anti-Vietnam War show, “US.” She was not, she decided, a company woman.Such did her reputation as a “difficult” actress begin. She was regarded as aloof and egoistic, and could be contemptuous of actors she found lacking in commitment, bellicose in rehearsal rooms and unafraid of challenging eminent directors. Gary Oldman, who starred with her in Robert David MacDonald’s play “Summit Conference” in 1982, called her “a nightmare.”Yet Trevor Nunn, who wrangled with her in rehearsals, later called her “direct, uncomplicated, honest, very alive.”“Of all the actors I’ve worked with, she has a capacity for work that’s phenomenal,” Mr. Nunn said. “There’s an immense power of concentration, a great deal of attack, thrust, determination.”Motivated in part by her dislike of Hollywood glitz, Ms. Jackson did not attend either of the Academy Award ceremonies for which she was honored as best actress.What mattered more, she said, was “the blood, sweat and tears” of creating a role. For her Emmy-winning performance in the television serial “Elizabeth R” (1971), she learned to ride sidesaddle and to play the virginals, and mastered archery and calligraphy. She also shaved her head — all to add authenticity as her queen evolved from youth to crabbed old age.Subsequent stage roles included Cleopatra in Mr. Brook’s revival of “Antony and Cleopatra” for the R.S.C. in 1978, Racine’s Phèdre at the Old Vic in 1984, Lady Macbeth in a disappointing “Macbeth” on Broadway in 1988, and the title character in Brecht’s “Mother Courage” in 1990.Though she won awards for “Stevie,” including one for best actress from the New York Film Critics Circle, and received good reviews for her work in the television movie “The Patricia Neal Story” (1981) and Robert Altman’s “Beyond Therapy” (1987), her later screen work was generally less successful.With characteristic candor she was often withering about her own efforts, calling her performances in the film version of Terence Rattigan’s play “Bequest to the Nation” (released as “The Nelson Affair” in 1973) and as Bernhardt in the movie “The Incredible Sarah” (1976) “ghastly” and “lousy,” respectively.She brought that candor to Parliament in 1992, when she declared, “Why should I stay in the theater to play the Nurse in ‘Romeo and Juliet’?”Most scripts she had been sent were poor, she said, and contemporary dramatists were not writing good roles for women. Moreover, she said, she had a hatred of a Conservative government which, inspired by “that dreadful woman Margaret Thatcher,” seemed to be dismembering the welfare state the Labour Party had created after the war.In Parliament, Ms. Jackson took an interest in homelessness, housing, women’s rights, disability issues and, especially, transportation. After resigning from her transport post, she was a Labour backbencher, joining those who opposed Britain’s part in the Iraq war in 2003, declaring herself “deeply, deeply ashamed” of her government and calling for Prime Minister Tony Blair’s resignation.Ms. Jackson and Mr. Hodges divorced in 1976. In later years she shared a London house with her only child, the political journalist Dan Hodges, and his wife and children. She preferred, she said, to remain unmarried, explaining that “men are awfully hard work for very little reward.”Ms. Jackson also shunned the trappings of celebrity, dressing inexpensively, using public transportation and relegating her Oscars to the attic. She was, she admitted, a solitary person with not many friends.But she did perhaps fulfill her own ambition: “If I have my health and strength, I’m going to be the most appalling old lady,” she said. “I’m going to boss everyone about, make people stand up for me when I come into a room, and generally capitalize on all the hypocrisy that society shows towards the old.”Emma Bubola More

    • 63 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Extraction 2’ Review: No Escape

      by

      Chris Hemsworth returns as an Australian mercenary in this bloated, banal action sequel.“Extraction 2,” a drab, brawny sequel starring Chris Hemsworth as an Australian mercenary, offers a turgid shadow of the type of crowd-pleasing escapism that action blockbusters used to provide.The shaky foundation of the director Sam Hargrave’s movie is a trite script by Joe Russo: Recovering from near-fatal wounds he incurred on his previous mission, Tyler Rake (Hemsworth) wakes from a coma. He retires to a quaint cabin in the woods, a gift from his comrades Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) and Yaz (Adam Bessa). It’s a quiet life, surrounded by a dog and chickens, until a mysterious man (Idris Elba) offers him a job: Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) — Rake’s ex-wife’s sister — and her two children are being held captive in a Georgian prison by their abusive mobster father (Tornike Gogrichiani). Regrouping with Yaz and Nik, Rake devises a plan to save them.Foregoing any semblance of a story after its initial setup, “Extraction 2” can be separated into three distinct, noxious action sequences. The most elaborate, lasting an interminable 24 minutes, sees Rake infiltrating the facility housing the family, then fleeing with them past claustrophobic cells, through a crowd of prisoners determined to murder them all, and, finally, onto a runaway train.Edited less-than-seamlessly to look like a single shot, the scene attempts to one-up a similarly elaborate chase from the previous film. But such long sequences require a director and their cinematographer, in this case Greg Baldi, to be cognizant of the story bodies can tell through motion (think Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” and John Woo’s “Hard Boiled”). Hargrave lacks such feeling and grace; he merely plants explosions in view of a spinning, swirling, ducking and diving camera in the misplaced hope of building tension.This movie sacrifices character development — what’s Nik or Yaz’s back story? — in favor of bloated, banal combat scenes. Hargrave tamps down the hints of attraction between Nik and Rake before the two can strike an ember, and leans on narrative shortcuts — including incoherent flashbacks showing Rake’s deceased son — to reach for an unearned pathos. Hemsworth and Farahani do their best to rise above the saccharine material, grasping for human moments amid the vacuous melees. But burdened by its bluster, “Extraction 2” is merely a loud, blithering mess masquerading as fulfilling escapism.Extraction 2Rated R for strong, bloody violence throughout. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Blackening’ Review: Race Against a Killer

      by

      With more jokes than jump scares, this comedic horror film is as tartly amusing as it is provocative.There are two games at play in “The Blackening,” a comedic horror film with more jokes than jump scares. The first is the titular race-baiting board game with the grotesque Jim Crow-style figurine that Morgan (Yvonne Orji) and her boyfriend, Shawn (Jay Pharoah), discover as they explore the cabin they have rented for a reunion of college friends.The rest of their crew will arrive soon for a celebratory Juneteenth weekend of recreational drugs, card playing and — once they learn where Shawn and Morgan have disappeared to — trying to survive the night, initially by answering trivia questions such as: Which Aunt Viv was better on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”?The other game is the tartly amusing one the director, Tim Story, and the writers, Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins (on whose viral sketch comedy skit the film is based), invite viewers to play. It tests our familiarity with horror tropes while messing with the variegated verities of Black identity. The film’s marketing come-on, “We Can’t All Die First,” winks at the notion that when there is a Black person in a predominantly white horror film, he or she is sure to be the first lamb (Black sheep?) to the ensuing slaughter. What, then, if all the characters are Black?Looking like a charred version of the Creature From the Black Lagoon and wielding the whitest weapon on earth — a crossbow — the movie’s masked killer has an answer for that. Beaming in from an antique TV monitor, he offers the friends a lose-lose, if philosophically fertile and futile, proposition: Sacrifice the Blackest among you and the rest go free.The ensemble embodies the affection as well as the prickliness of friends who may not have seen each other in a while, but know each other well and may still harbor a resentment or two. Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) has not been honest about her ex, Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), with her gay best friend, Dewayne (Perkins, the co-writer), and he’s hot about it. In a film that features card playing — it could have been bid whist but it’s spades — Nnamdi throws down the race card most often, making King (Melvin Gregg), who’s married to a white woman, and Allison (Grace Byers), whose father is white, bristle ever so slightly.And then there’s Clifton (Jermaine Fowler), a mildly passive-aggressive nerd whom no one quite recalls inviting. Shanika (X Mayo) runs into him at a convenience store while evading the clerk, who seems to be following her and looks like he didn’t quite make the cut for “Deliverance.”The quandary of what “Blackest” means puts this movie squarely in the company of others that have used genre tropes to make sense of race in America. (Yes, “Get Out” gets a nod.) It is a deft gesture to have the question turned on its head as the characters leverage what they think of as their whitest credentials.“The Blackening” comes with a horror movie’s requisite skittish and stalking camerawork, its creaks and breath-holding hushes, its gore and payback. But it is the friends’ flee, fight, freeze — or throw under the bus — banter that makes the film provocative fun.The BlackeningRated R for pervasive language, genre violence and drug use. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Review: ‘Cadejo Blanco’ Goes Inside the World of Guatemalan Gangs

      by

      In this film a young woman searching for her missing sister infiltrates a gang, but the focus is diffuse and the promised thriller never materializes.The description of “Cadejo Blanco,” directed by Justin Lerner, reads like a thriller: After her sister disappears, a young Guatemalan woman infiltrates a gang to try to find her. But there are few thrills in the film, which moves slowly and with too much ease through the world of Guatemalan gangs. It’s beautifully shot and gives an authentic view of street life there, but the characters’ journeys are not sufficiently developed, and the resolutions feel unearned.The film kicks off in Guatemala City with Sarita (Karen Martínez) being dragged out for a night of clubbing with her free-spirited sister, Bea (Pamela Martínez), who had the ulterior motive of meeting up with her boyfriend Andrés (Rudy Rodríguez). Sarita leaves the bar early, and the next morning, discovers that Bea never came home. Sarita suspects Andrés, who is a gang member, so she travels to the coastal town of Puerto Barrios to befriend him and find Bea.But Sarita’s mission to find her sister seems quickly forgotten, as the film’s focus shifts to the day-to-day interactions of the gang members. Perhaps this is intentional. The director cast predominantly nonprofessional actors in the film, among them real-life gang members from Puerto Barrios. Many of the cast members had a hand in reworking the script to better reflect their lives and daily vernacular. But this authenticity was not enough to make up for the shoddy storytelling. Had the film leaned more intentionally into the interior lives of its characters rather than positioning itself as a thriller, it may have been a more satisfying watch.Cadejo BlancoNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 75 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Happer’s Comet’ Review: Live by Night

      by

      The writer-director Tyler Taormina shot this highly experimental feature, which mostly takes place after dark, during the most restrictive phase of the pandemic.Except in its final shot, “Happer’s Comet” takes place entirely at night. But if it weren’t for occasional glimpses of clocks, discerning the precise time would be tricky. There are plenty of people out and about, performing quiet, personal, often inexplicable tasks in an unidentified pocket of suburbia. (The film was largely shot in Smithtown, Long Island.)One person records the sounds of crickets and trains on a cellphone. Another does push-ups in a closed auto body shop. Still another tries to reach a human being on an automated phone system, but all of the agents are currently busy. The only dialogue in this movie comes from external sources, like the phone system or televisions. The characters never speak, and they are never named. It may say something about the film’s foreboding mood — it’s been described as Lynchian, and the opening shot appears to nod to “Blue Velvet” — that one of the figures who looks sleepiest is driving (and drifting over the yellow line).Motion becomes a motif: As “Happer’s Comet” progresses, it becomes difficult to keep track of how many of its subjects have donned roller blades or skates. They glide through the area almost ritualistically (or somnambulistically).The writer-director, Tyler Taormina (“Ham on Rye”), shot this highly experimental feature during the most restrictive phase of the pandemic, apparently with a crew of two.Taormina has taken the problem of having to look at the same thing every day and turned it into an aesthetic — staring at, and listening to, ordinary sights to the point where they become eerie and unfamiliar. (The sound design on a cornfield makeout session gets in way closer than movies normally do.) Sometimes wearying, sometimes pointlessly cryptic, “Happer’s Comet” nevertheless has a distinct way of viewing the world.Happer’s CometNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 2 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 63 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Maggie Moore(s)’ Review: Body Trouble

      by

      Tina Fey and Jon Hamm fail to invigorate this listless murder mystery about two victims who shared the same name.“Some of this actually happened,” we are advised at the beginning of John Slattery’s second feature, “Maggie Moore(s).” At least it’s a variation on the groaningly familiar “based on a true story,” even if both claims are equally meaningless.Degree of truth aside, this comedy-thriller succeeds as neither. Top-heavy with big names (Tina Fey, Jon Hamm) and set in a nondescript small town populated primarily by sad sacks and losers, the movie struggles to get out of second gear. A terrified woman flees a hulking hit man, her body later discovered by a police chief named Sanders (a hammy Hamm) and his pragmatic deputy (Nick Mohammed). Days earlier, another woman had been found, burned to a crisp in her car. Two murdered women, two sketchy spouses, one shared name: Maggie Moore.Suspicions aroused, Sanders begins a desultory investigation. Distracted by the recent death of his wife — whose loss he medicates by reading his sappy scribblings aloud to a rapt writing group — Sanders seems drained and becalmed. Any plot momentum, then, is due solely to Micah Stock and Christopher Denham’s heroic efforts as the weaselly husbands of the murdered Maggies, though their comedic vigor is undercut by the sheer bleakness of Paul Bernbaum’s script. Desperately unhappy people are rarely a laugh a minute.Or, for that matter, convincing lovers. So when Sanders sidles into a relationship with Rita (Fey), a chatty casino employee, their scenes are never believable as anything other than Hamm and Fey doing a particularly boring bit.“I’m trying to be a little more spontaneous these days,” Sanders confesses to Rita at one point. “I hear the ladies really like that.”With dialogue this dreadful, even Jon Hamm would struggle to score.Maggie Moore(s)Rated R for inappropriate language, unsavory behavior and unconvincing sex. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Flash’ Review: Electric Company

      by

      In the latest DC Comics blowout, Ezra Miller suits up as the speedy superhero alongside special guests like Batman (hello, Michael Keaton).The Flash, the latest DC Comics superhero to get his very own big show, isn’t the outfit’s usual brooding heavyweight. He’s neither an old-style god nor new (a.k.a. a billionaire), but an electrified nerd who joined the super-ranks by accident, not by birthright or by design. Out of uniform, he is a normie, a goof and kind of endearing. He’s really, really fast on his feet, you bet. But what makes him pop onscreen is that when things go bigger and grimmer here, as they invariably do in blowouts of this type, he retains a playful weightlessness.That’s a relief, particularly given how the movie tries to clobber you into submission. Big action-adventures invariably give the viewer a workout, smacking you around with their shocks and awesomeness, though it sometimes feels as if contemporary superhero movies have taken this kind of pummeling to new extremes. That may be true, though movies have long employed spectacle — pyrotechnics, lavish set pieces — to bait, hook and bludgeon the audience so it keeps begging for more. If the bludgeoning feels more inescapable these days, it’s partly because the major studios now bank so heavily on superhero movies.“The Flash” is one of the more watchable ones. It’s smartly cast, ambitious and relatively brisk at two and a half hours. The story tracks Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) and his superhero persona, the Flash, as he whooshes, wrapped in tendrils of lightning; traverses space-time continuums; and tries to exonerate his father (Ron Livingston), who’s in prison for killing Barry’s mom (Maribel Verdú). As is usually the case with superhero movies, the story is nonsensical and convoluted — it’s no wonder a character uses a tangle of cooked spaghetti to try to explain a major plot point — but not calamitously so. The overall vibe is upbeat.Some of that liveliness comes from Miller, a tense and almost feverishly charismatic presence. (Their well-publicized offscreen troubles hang like a cloud over this movie.) Some of the Flash’s appeal, of course, is also baked into the original comic-book character, “the fastest man on Earth,” who first hit in 1940 (via creators Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert) and was revamped (by Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino) in 1956. Five years later in Issue No. 123, these versions of the Flash (there are others) discover that they exist on two seemingly separate Earths, an idea this movie, well, runs with by introducing parallel DC Comics realms.It’s a conceit that pays off the second a shambolic Michael Keaton makes his entrance as a graybeard puttering about a near-derelict Wayne Manor. Having hung up his Bat-suit in his reality (while DC has repeatedly rebooted the franchise in ours), Bruce appears to have entered the Howard Hughes chapter of his cosseted life when Barry drops by. Long story short, the two rapidly join forces, dust off the Batcave tech, furrow their brows and suit up, as other members of the DC stock company join the party, including Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons), General Zod (Michael Shannon) and Supergirl (Sasha Calle).The entrance of these company players are timed like special-guest appearances — ladies and gentlemen, Zod the Zaniac! — and they’re obviously meant to delight true believers. To a degree, they also feel like they’ve been brought in to shore up the Flash during his first stand-alone outing. Cramming the screen with established names to hedge their expensive bets is an old-fashioned studio gambit, whether in a 1920s musical revue or 1970s disaster flick. Whatever the rationale here, the results are amusing, and it’s especially nice to see Keaton, who first played Batman in Tim Burton’s 1989 film. He seems to be having a good time, and when he looks in the mirror approvingly, it’s easy to share in his self-admiration.Working from a script by Christina Hodson, the director Andy Muschietti keeps these pieces greased and quickly moving, though he almost blows it as soon as the movie begins. It opens with an unfunny protracted bit in which Barry, who’s late for work, orders a sandwich from a pokey server. (That the first villain in the story is a service worker is a choice.) While the guy readies the order, Barry turns into the Flash to help his world’s Batman (an uncredited Ben Affleck) dispatch some villains. It goes as expected — bam, splat — but then a hospital wing collapses, and newborn babies go flying, hurtling toward the street.It’s a creepy setup that Muschietti milks for laughs that become queasier and ickier the longer and the more gleefully flamboyant the scene plays out. It’s absurd, outrageous, digitally fabricated and needless to say the Flash will save the day. The problem is that Muschietti, who has a talent for fraying your nerves with images of child endangerment (as he showed in the “It” horror flicks), is so obviously pleased with these airborne babies that he keeps showing off (turning a microwave into a bassinet), which drains the sequence both of its outlandish comedy and of any tension that might make the Flash’s heroism resonate.The movie more or less recovers, settling into its lively groove, even if the Flash remains a curiously uncertain presence. Surrounding him with bigger superheroes may have made branding sense, but the net effect is that the movie never persuasively establishes the Flash as a confident stand-alone entity. That may make the question of Miller playing him in the future moot. Who knows? Last year, Miller apologized for their behavior and said they were seeking treatment for “complex mental health issues.” I liked “The Flash” well enough while watching it. But thinking and writing about it and everything that has gone down has been dispiriting — real life has a way of insinuating itself into even better-wrought fantasies.The FlashRated PG-13 for superhero violence. Running time: 2 hours 24 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      Cormac McCarthy Movies: Stream These 5 Film Adaptations

      by

      The Coens and Ridley Scott are among the directors who took big swings at the novelist’s work. The distinctive writer left his mark on the big screen.By turns terse, poetic and baroque, able to find the essence of human nature in the bleakest of circumstances, Cormac McCarthy, who died Tuesday, was widely considered to be one of the greatest novelists of his generation. His writing, with its Western landscapes, noir-inflected dialogue and biblical inclinations, proved to be catnip to filmmakers, including the Coen brothers, Ridley Scott and Billy Bob Thornton. Here is a look at how this most distinctive of writers left his mark on the big screen.‘All the Pretty Horses’ (2000)Rent or buy it on most major platforms.Probably the gentlest of McCarthy’s Border Trilogy novels, this film adaptation tells the story of John Grady Cole, a young man who high-tails it across the border to Mexico, where he falls in love with a wealthy rancher’s daughter (Penélope Cruz), runs afoul of her family and the law, and navigates the horrors of prison life. Yes, this is gentle by McCarthy standards. Matt Damon, riding the success of “Good Will Hunting” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” plays Cole as a sensitive lad dumbstruck by love. Cruz, a native of Spain, does her best as a south-of-the-border lass. Thornton directs with lyrical respect for the source material, if not a whole lot of grit or imagination.‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007)Rent or buy it on most major platforms.The Coen brothers return to the Texas noir roots of their first feature, “Blood Simple,” for the most successful McCarthy adaptation to date. It won Oscars for best picture, directing and screenwriting, as well as Javier Bardem’s supporting turn as one of McCarthy’s nihilistic villains, an implacable killing machine who speaks in riddles and engages his prey in fatal rhetorical jousts. But the heart of the movie, about a briefcase full of money and the in-over-his-head opportunist (Josh Brolin) who pilfers it, is Tommy Lee Jones as a small-town sheriff who wants out of the game, which seems to get more sinister and incomprehensible by the minute. He is the old man of the title and the author’s surrogate, a poetic soul just trying to wait it out until it’s all over.‘The Road’ (2009)Stream it on Tubi, Vudu and Freevee.The novel that brought McCarthy’s world to a wide audience (and won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize), “The Road” redeems a postapocalyptic hellscape with the pure love of a father (played by Viggo Mortensen with heartbreaking intensity) for his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee, already a young actor of uncommon instincts). It’s a gray land of digitally enhanced wreckage, peopled by cannibals and other desperate survivors played by the likes of Robert Duvall, Michael K. Williams and, in a brief but indelible and terrifying performance, Garret Dillahunt. John Hillcoat directs like he means it. “The Road” is up there with “No Country” as one of the purest visual distillations of McCarthy’s prose.‘The Sunset Limited’ (2011)Stream it on Max.Sometimes McCarthy likes to take a couple of characters, wind them up and just let them riff on what it all means. His 2022 novel, “Stella Maris,” fits this bill, as does this HBO film version of McCarthy’s play “The Sunset Limited,” about a God-fearing ex-con called Black (Samuel L. Jackson) and the secular humanities professor, called White (Tommy Lee Jones), whom Black saves from jumping in front of a subway train. Confined to Black’s apartment, they thrust and parry, Black offering a brand of streetwise divinity, White stewing in his own suicidal juices. Both actors clearly relish the opportunity to speak McCarthy’s dialogue, and who could blame them? This is some of Jackson’s best work, allowing him to return to his theater roots with a high-wire act of philosophy and feeling. Jones’s direction is workmanlike, but that’s all this material really needs.‘The Counselor’ (2013)Rent or buy it on most major platforms.Ridley Scott directs the only original screenplay on McCarthy’s résumé, an unfairly maligned and misunderstood blast of criminal nihilism that carries the noir direction of “No Country” to its apotheosis. Michael Fassbender plays a glib lawyer whose taste for the finer things gets him in deep with a Mexican cartel. Other players come and go, including Brad Pitt, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Bruno Ganz and Cameron Diaz, who has an amorous encounter with a luxury car that you will never unsee. This is McCarthy and Scott having infectious fun with humanity’s dark side, including two bravura murder scenes notable for their cruelty and creativity. More