As for Beatty, “Reds” is his bravura turn. He got the idea, nurtured it for a decade, found the financing, wrote most of the script, produced, and directed and starred and still found enough artistic detachment to make his Reed into a flawed, fascinating enigma instead of a boring archetypal hero. I liked this movie. I felt a real fondness for it. It was quite a subject to spring on the capitalist Hollywood movie system, and maybe only Beatty could have raised $35 million to make a movie about a man who hated millionaires. I noticed, here at the end of the credits, a wonderful line that reads: Copyright copy MCMLXXXI Barclays Mercantile Industrial Finance Limited. John Reed would have loved that.
Folks online are criticizing Boots Riley because his new film was produced by Megan Ellison, the daughter of Larry Ellison, and they see this as an ethical lapse.
It made me think of Roger Ebert's review of Reds, a reminder that the movie business - all art, really - requires patronage.
