Thunderbuck

Easily the best movie Sandler's made in... well, a long time.

Sandy Wexler is an utterly abrasive loser, and if there's a problem with the movie at all you spend the first half hour wondering if you can actually stand to hear that nails-on-chalkboard voice for the duration. The movie really IS too long and might have had some time trimmed from the setup, but once you get past that? Well...

Jennifer Hudson is fantastic. She's funny, and charming, and classy, and the songs she sings in this Hollywood fable are very, very good. There are some funny bits, and some clever twist casting and cameos.

It's a bit uneven, but fun and totally worthwhile.

Great. Really great. Deserves wider recognition, because as a study of power and populism it's up there with "Citizen Kane".

No, Elia Kazan didn't have Orson Welles' dazzling technical brilliance (though there's a wonderful natural feel of being onstage with the performers throughout), but he was very much an actor's director and brings some spectacular performances to the screen here.

I'm a child of the early '60s, so I grew up with The Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry RFD, and Matlock. I'd experienced many, many stories on TV with Andy Griffith, and he was a comfortable, familiar presence. Maybe the best compliment I can pay this film and his performance in it was that I quickly forgot he was Andy Griffith at all.

Griffith's character of "Lonesome" Rhodes is honestly a performance for the ages. He's by turns charming, pitiful, and terrifying as he quickly ascends from an Arkansas county drunk tank to become a powerful media presence. The story is plotted conveniently but Griffith is utterly believable through the entire climb.

Though Rhodes is the focus of the story, there's a great surrounding ensemble, too. The great Walter Mattheau has a strong supporting role as one of Rhodes' writers who eventually becomes disillusioned, and Patricia Neal is fantastic as the reporter who brings attention to Rhodes to begin with and tries to follow him all the way up. The performances are all amazing.

Some personal speculation: I understand that Kazan was very demanding on Griffith during shooting, and that Griffith's experience on set was dark and difficult. His subsequent, more prosaic television career may well have been shaped by a desire to atone for his performance here.

Kazan did this movie following his classic "On the Waterfront", and perhaps it's overshadowed unfairly. It's a great story of power, populism and corruption and deserves to be known more widely.