Film Recommendation

What awful news. Billy Friedkin suddenly passed earlier this week ahead of the scintillating news that not only had he made a new movie – The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial – but that it would be premiering in competition at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. As is the knee-jerk reaction, I hit my Blu-ray holdings with a view to pouring myself a scotch and watching one of the director's many classic movies.

I had recently revisited The French Connection and been wowed by the tautness of its structure and the mounting intensity of each scene, as Gene Hackman's slightly-bent copper Popeye Doyle goes to wild lengths to nab the leader of a Marseilles-based drug cartel.