Maltin on Movies

Liam Neeson needs no introduction; his work over the past five decades speaks for itself. What you may not know is what a charming man he is…or how dedicated to his craft he remains after all this time. He says he still finds acting a source of wonder and discovery. His latest film, an action thriller called Absolution, opens today. Is it a great movie? Not in the same class as Schindler’s List, or even Taken, but worth seeing if only to watch the man at work. Leonard and Jessie feel lucky to have spent some time with him.

The meanest-looking man on screen, the star of Robert Rodriguez’s Machete and its sequels, is perhaps better known Trejo’s Cantina and other food emporiums have revealed the truth: despite his violent background he has reinvented himself as a good guy and plays that role extremely well, onscreen and off. (He also headlines a new streaming movie, Seven Cemeteries.) Leonard and Jessie enjoyed meeting him (via Zoom) and hearing the story of how he accidentally broke into movies and wound up working with some of the biggest names in the business.

David Stenn has a good “day job,” writing scripts for television (like The L Word and Boardwalk Empire) but his passion is film history. He has funded restoration of films long thought lost or unavailable, including a recent “find” featuring Clara Bow. He is also the author of two definitive biographies, Clara Bow: Running Wild, first published in 1988 and Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow. They are both “must-read” recommendations, along with his passion project, a documentary called Girl 27 that is now available free of charge on YouTube. And if his face or voice seem familiar, it’s because he appears regularly on Turner Classic Movies.

Can it really be ten years since Whiplash put filmmaker Damien Chazelle on the map and earned J.K. Simmons his Best Supporting Actor Oscar? We interviewed the versatile actor in 2017 and his stories are worth hearing again. By the way, he remains a good luck charm for writer-director Jason Reitman, with a juicy role in his new movie Saturday Night. And Whiplash is also back on theater screens.

As the cofounder of Boston Light and Sound, Chapin Cutler has built movie theaters from the ground up and transformed unlikely spaces into pop-up cinemas. He’s been responsible for 70mm showings of new films by Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino and so much more. He and his wife Deborah run a family-oriented operation and populate their staff with diehard movie nerds who truly care about how a film looks and sounds. Leonard and Jessie are longtime friends and admirers of their work and welcomed this opportunity to ask him questions they never posed before.

Jon Burlingame knows everything worth knowing about music for film and television. He teaches the subject at USC’s Thornton School of Music, keeps up with current events and newcomers to the field for Variety, and has just published his seventh book, Dreamsville: Henry Mancini, Peter Gunn, and Music for TV Noir (BearManor Media). Like all of his work it is authoritative, well-written, and fun to read. Leonard and Jessie are longtime fans and friends and couldn’t think of a nicer way to spend an hour.

Haley Joel Osment should need no introduction to moviegoers of any age. He made an indelible impression in The Sixth Sense 25 years ago and became an overnight star, working with the likes of Michael Caine and Robert Duvall in Secondhand Lions and Steven Spielberg on A.I. Articifial Intelligence. After a break from filmmaking he returned to the scene as a versatile young character actor, appearing in such shows as The Boys, The Kominskey Method, and What We Do in the Shadows. He’s currently part of the ensemble in Blink Twice and hopes to do what Zoë Kravitz did: write and direct. As bright as he is unpretentious, Haley seems to have what it takes: Leonard and Jessie are rooting for him to succeed.

Our guest has been acting for most of her life and her credits include such memorable movies as Swingers, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Boogie Nights, Bowfinger, and The Hangover. In her latest film (which debuts today on demand), Place of Bone, she plays a tough, implacable frontier woman who wields a rifle with authority and intends to protect her teenage daughter at any cost. In October we’ll see her second effort as writer, director and star, the romantic comedy Chosen Family.

If you don’t think sound editing and mixing is a creative process, think again! Our guests are both nominated for Emmy Awards for their work on the Apple+ miniseries Masters of the Air—and they might be identified as Masters of the Ear. They have created a soundscape that is the equal of a major Hollywood feature, as you’d expect in a high-profile show executive produced by Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Steven Spielberg. Mike Minkler is also a third-generation soundman with three Oscars to his credit—so far—and was Leonard’s first guest when he started teaching at USC twenty-six years ago. Jessie is as impressed with our guests as her Dad.

Colm Meaney makes a vivid impression whenever he appears on stage, screen, or television. (His latest, Duchess, debuts on digital today, August 9.) More people probably know him from the two Star Trek series in which he appeared—The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine—but we remember him best as the father in The Commitments and its follow-ups The Van and The Snapper. Leonard and Jessie were pleased to find that he shares our fondness for that trilogy from Irish writer Roddy Doyle as well. But there’s little he hasn’t done, from John Huston’s final film The Dead to Con Air  and an episode of The Simpsons where he played (what else?) a quintessential Irish bartender. He spoke to us from his getaway home in Majorca, Spain!