Screenwriter Robert Towne gifted Hal Ashby with two masterful, director-proof scenarios, The Last Detail and Shampoo. Harold and Maude and Being There are basically one-joke comedies, the latter aided to no end by Peter Sellers’ performance, the former sentimentalizing the Holocaust by placing a concentration camp tattoo on Ruth Gordon’s wrist. Other than that, the one thing Hal Ashby’s films have in common is that they have nothing in common. When people question why Ashby isn’t held in the same pantheonic regard as Scorsese, Coppola, or Cronenberg, or why his films took such a steep nosedive in the 80s, the answer is simple: cocaine. If ever a film needed a little more “Just Say No!” (and a little less defense of the eminently unwatchable Lookin’ to Get Out) it’s this, but first-time filmmaker Amy Scott insists on sugar coating the snow. (2018) — Scott Marks
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