Martin Landau
Abe & Phil’s Last Poker Game boasts a trio of fantastic performances, particularly from Landau in one of his finest turns in his final film, and contains just enough laughs and dramatic themes to overcome Weiner’s rookie missteps.
As a director, Atom Egoyan has increasingly shifted away from the emotionally raw content of his beloved 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter in favour of seedier, pulpier material that film suggested he had emotionally matured away from. Egoyan’s love of trash cinema informed his earlier work, but after showcasing his potential to make a drama film divorced of genre pretensions, the fact he is still preoccupied with putting an unwarranted arthouse inflection on such material feels like wasted potential. How to make trash cinema out of human tragedy without being offensive He manages to attract the attention of A-list casts and find his way back into the official selection of the Cannes official selection with most releases, purely on the strength of his earlier work, not out of a desire to honour his current sub-De Palma mindset.
