Tag Archives: Donald Sutherland

Jun 21 2024
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Donald Sutherland was incapable of being dull.

Donald Sutherland, above, as Vernon L. Pinkley in The Dirty Dozen (1967), where it all began. 

The classics are numerous, the performances consummate and … just unusual and weird in an unearthly way. He excelled at the oddball, and even when he played it straight you kept watching to see twitches of strangeness. Famously, he was never nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award. But what the fuck do they know? Roberto Benigni won that accolade. I mean, wow ….

Also, for years I thought that Donald Sutherland was Irish. He wasn’t.

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Mar 13 2021
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Art, Britain, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, United Kingdom, World War Two, WWII

The Eagle Has Landed (1976) is a middling affair.

You standard old-fashioned wartime thriller which acts as a serviceable but inferior companion piece to The Day of the Jackal (1973), you’re aware of the outcome but the suspense is in getting there. Unfortunately, the exposition in this one is intriguing enough but by the halfway point it’s a snore. And then Larry Hagman appears as an inexperienced American colonel and it descends into silly comedy which I suspect today wouldn’t survive a pre-production script cull; we all know assassination attempts are no laughing matter.

Thank the heavens for Donald Sutherland. This is another case of Donald Sutherland being hired because only he can play a Donald Sutherland type. He’s fabulously nuts in everything and his career appears to be a personal mission in walking off with the movie. His supporting roles always suppose a spin-off picture with him at the fore. He even made the stinker that is Virus (1999) almost bearable.

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