Beginning with his 1988 breakthrough in Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham, Tim Robbins enjoyed a nearly two-decade hot streak in front of and behind the camera. Standing 6 foot 5, Robbins seldom used his size to play physically intimidating characters, but his sharp wit and vulnerability worked well in satire, screwball comedy, and straight dramas. As versatile as Robbins has been on screen, the three times he stepped behind the camera to direct, he made three very different films. Known as a hardcore lefty (even for Hollywood), many of Robbins’ films (on either side of the camera) made strong statements about society; whether the subject was the death penalty, snake-oil-selling politicians, or the wrongfully imprisoned, Robbins has often made a statement with his work.
Tim Robbins turned 66 this week. Here is my list of his top seven films.
And just as a reminder, the only list that really matters is your own.
7. Jacob’s Ladder 1990: Deserving of a much bigger cult, Adrian Lyne’s heartbreaking and horrifying film starring Robbins as a Vietnam vet mourning the death of his child and suffering from a disassociation from reality that includes hallucinations, PTSD, and an inability to parse dreams and reality, Jacob’s Ladder is a painfully haunting film that bends the brain and squeezes your chest in equal measure. Robbins has always exhibited a sizable range on screen, but here, his natural sweetness and vulnerability make the trials his character faces all the more affecting. Jacob’s Ladder is not the easiest movie to follow. It’s a puzzler that can take multiple viewings to sort out, but it is also one of those rare films that rewards repeated viewings.
6. Cradle Will Rock (1999): Painfully overlooked by critics and audiences alike, Cradle Will Rock was Robbins’ third and final film as a director. Robbins doesn’t appear in front of the camera once in the movie, but the dizzying, oft-hilarious satire of Orson Welles (Angus Macfadyen) trying to mount a staged musical based on a steelworkers strike while facing down the pressures of the industrial establishment is chock-full of great actors doing fabulous work. The cast includes John and Joan Cusack, Bill Murray, Vanessa Redgrave, John Turturro, Susan Sarandon, Jack Black, Paul Giamatti, and, good lord, that’s not even a complete list. As much fun as Cradle Will Rock is to watch, its satirical take on artists facing down the powers that be is biting in nature. Even when you are laughing at the relentlessly amusing lines that come so fast, you barely have time to finish chuckling at the last joke before the next one arrives. Despite the film’s quality, I can only imagine that it was a studio’s nightmare to promote, but it’s well worth seeking out. 1999 was an extraordinary year for film, with movies like The Insider, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club, and Magnolia among those released in that heady turn of the sun, and Cradle Will Rock clearly got lost in the shuffle. But it’s a hoot with genuine resonance. It’s a shame Robbins never got back into the director’s chair after Cradle’s massive financial failure.
5. Mystic River (2003): Due to third-act problems that require the great Laura Linney to become something of a Lady Macbeth without establishing her holding that disposition beforehand, I might be ranking Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s hit novel a little high. But if I am, it’s because Robbins (who won the only Oscar of his career–for Best Supporting Actor) gives one of the greatest sad bastard performances in recent memory. As Dave Boyle, Robbins plays a man who never recovered from being molested as a child, and when a local gangster’s (Sean Penn, who won Best Actor for the film) daughter is murdered, circumstantial evidence points in Dave’s direction. It doesn’t help that the sullen and withdrawn Dave strikes the police and Penn’s character as a strange and easy target. The film asks the heavy question of whether having an outlet for revenge outweighs the need for proof. The scene where Penn and Robbins face off for what may be the last moment of Dave’s life is painfully inevitable and played to the hilt by both men.
4. Bob Roberts (1992): In Robbins’ low-budget directorial debut, Robbins plays the title character, a conservative folk singer who decides to run for the Senate. Roberts’ outwardly cheerful persona hides a fascistic dark side that comes with a plethora of soullessly rendered dirty tricks that Roberts pulls out with sinister ease. Prescient in its depiction of how celebrity and cult of personality trumps decency and competence, Bob Roberts is a stinging rebuke of the political system and the “useful idiots” who get swept up by a clever con man who you ought to see coming but don’t. Far ahead of its time, Bob Roberts mirrors much of the current political hoodwinking going on, except in our modern age, there appears to be no need for the stealth or cleverness of Robbins’ character. A blunt instrument will do just fine. While billed as a biting comedic satire at the time, the film plays more like a horror film now. Of note: Robbins wrote and recorded the songs for the film himself. He never released a soundtrack of the music because he didn’t want the thinly-veiled hard-right ditties to be available for purchase. He was afraid that the catchiness of the recordings would be misconstrued. He was probably on to something.
3. Dead Man Walking (1995): Robbins’ second turn behind the camera would be his most successful–critically and commercially. In telling the real-life story of Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon, who won the Oscar for Leading Actress for her performance), a devoted Catholic nun and strong opposer of the death penalty, works to help a man (Sean Penn) come to terms with his state-sanctioned fate. Robbins’ film walks one hell of a tightrope: Penn’s Matthew Poncelot is never shown to be less than guilty for the brutal rape and murder of two teenagers that he committed over a decade before while under the influence of drugs. He is very much a guilty man. The difficult question the film asks is whether the eye-for-an-eye process of capital punishment is a moral one. As Prejean and Poncelot get to know each other, the latter lets his guard down, takes responsibility for his actions, shows remorse, and reaches acceptance before his final walk. Dead Man Walking is a brutal sit. You are always aware of the ticking clock counting down Poncelot’s life. In some ways, Dead Man Walking plays like a thriller, even if the end is never in doubt. It’s a bold film that takes the position that murder is murder, whether administered in the darkness of the woods by a criminal or under the shroud of legality by the state. Everyone should see Dead Man Walking once. But I understand if a second viewing would be too much to take. That may well be the point.
2. Bull Durham (1988): Ebby Calvin “Nuke” Laloosh (one of the all-time great character names) is a minor league pitching phenom for the Durham Bulls who often spars with his career minor league catcher Crash Davis (a perfectly cast Kevin Costner). The two men scrap on the field, as Davis tries to harness Laloosh’s talent and massive ego, and off the field, as they both compete for the attention of a beautiful baseball junkie named Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon, whom Robbin’s would partner with in real life for more than a decade), who every season takes a player under her wing and to her bosom. Writer-Director Ron Shelton (who played in the minor leagues himself) mixes screwball comedy with a coming-of-age film. What’s unique about the latter distinction is that it’s not just the young Laloosh who needs to mature so that he can reach his full potential; it’s also about Davis and Savoy coming to terms with the fact that they are both reaching an age where dreams end, and real life begins. In the pantheon of the greatest baseball movies ever, I would state that there are three that rise to the tip-top of the food chain: Moneyball, Field of Dreams, and Bull Durham. Put them in any order you like, and you would not be wrong. At that level of greatness, it’s just about taste.
1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994): There have been many successful, and even classic, adaptations of Stephen King novels that have made their way from page to screen. The Shining (although King hates it, but alas…Kubrick), Misery, Stand by Me, and It all come to mind. But it’s hard to think of a more perfect film made from King’s fiction than The Shawshank Redemption. One of the most challenging kinds of films to make is the fable. They often end up being too soft, too cloying, and too sentimental. Director Frank Darabont’s take on King’s novella “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” somehow walks right up to that saccharine line without ever stepping over it. Shawshank, a drama about the wrongly convicted Andy Dufresne (Robbins in his career-defining role), who suffers Job-like trials behind the walls of the Shawshank prison, is much more significant than its basic description. It becomes more than just a story of survival and escape but of a deep and meaningful friendship between Dufresne and fellow prisoner Ellis Redding (Morgan Freeman, in a peerless performance). It’s also a story of hope and how holding onto such can be grueling but necessary to sustain life and see a future. The last fifteen minutes or so of the film are some of the most pensive ever committed to the big screen. And when the “happy ending” comes, it’s not only hard-earned and well-deserved; it is shot by Darabont and his cinematographer (the legendary Roger Deakins) in a most unusual way: the camera pulls away from the two men as they reunite. It’s as if Darabont has decided that you, the audience, have seen enough. This final moment belongs to them. It’s an extraordinary choice that I can’t imagine being made and being made all the better for.
Postscript: Where’s The Player?! Where’s Short Cuts?! What about Arlington Road?!, Or even The Hudsucker Proxy? Yeah, I know, and I hear you. To answer each, The Player is a great film, but something about it always felt distancing to me. Short Cuts has so many characters, and even though Robbins is among equals among a jaw-dropping cast, the real star of that film is Director Robert Altman. Arlington Road is a great thriller that I wish more people had seen, but despite ending with the full courage of its convictions, I couldn’t squeeze it in. As for Hudsucker? Robbins is terrific in what far too many people consider a lesser Coen Brothers movie, but that film belongs to Jennifer Jason Leigh.
