Michael Cimino, a writer-director whose career saw the highs of winning two Oscars for his 1978 picture “The Deer Hunter” and the lows of 1980’s infamous “Heaven’s Gate,” has died in Los Angeles at age 77. The cause of death was not immediately known.
His career can be seen as a case study and cautionary fable, one of the ultimate tales from the now venerated era of 1970s Hollywood, in which bracing films of deep emotional currents were made with all the resources of major studios. “Heaven’s Gate,” rightly or not, would become symbolic of the sort of excess and unchecked ego that the modern business of moviemaking would work to rein in.
Born in New York, Cimino graduated from Yale with a degree in art. He began his career making commercials, and after moving to Los Angeles went on to share screenwriting credits on 1971’s ecological science-fiction film “Silent Running” and 1973’s Dirty Harry sequel “Magnum Force.”
His feature debut as a director would be with 1974’s “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,” which starred Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges. A counterculture-influenced blend of heist picture, road movie and buddy comedy, it earned Bridges an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.
It was Cimino’s second film, 1978’s “The Deer Hunter” which established him as one of the most vibrant voices of the moment with a story that captured the impact of the Vietnam war on the lives of small-town Americans.
The cast featured Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, John Savage and John Cazale in a story of a group of friends from an industrial Pennsylvania town and how their lives are torn apart by the Vietnam war, both for those sent overseas and those who stayed behind. Scenes in which Walken plays Russian Roulette in Southeast Asia became instantly iconic, symbolic of the maddening pressures that set upon men at war.
“The Deer Hunter” would garner nine Oscar nominations and win five awards, including statues for Cimino for best director and best picture. Cimino would also win directing prizes for the film from the Golden Globes, the Directors Guild, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and others.
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(Mary Altaffer / AP) The success of “The Deer Hunter” set the stage for Cimino’s ambitious “Heaven’s Gate,” starring Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, John Hurt, Sam Waterston and Walken in a tale that pits immigrant homesteaders against powerful cattle barons in late 1800s Wyoming. The film’s troubled production and skyrocketing costs were covered relentlessly in the press.
Initially budgeted at $11.5 million, the film’s budget would spiral to more than $35 million, and its release was delayed a full year as Cimino sifted his way through millions of feet of footage. The film’s fate seemed sealed even before it opened to ruinous reviews and became a notorious box office disaster. Steven Bach, a former executive at United Artists, the studio behind the film, would go on to publish a making-of account as the 1985 book “Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of ‘Heaven’s Gate.’”
It would be a long five years until Cimino released another movie, 1985’s “Year of the Dragon.” Starring Mickey Rourke as a New York City cop battling Chinese gangs, the film came under criticism for its depictions of the Chinese immigrant community.
In a 1985 consideration of Cimino following the release of “Year of the Dragon,” Times critic Charles Champlin summed up the filmmaker as someone struggling to come to terms with his own message, grasping for what he wanted to say amidst the swirling, lavish visuals he was able to put onscreen.
“Cimino may yet make the film he absolutely wants to make,” Champlin wrote. “Few film makers have greater abilities to construct arresting images and to carry the viewer along on tides of action. But films that do what Cimino seems to want them to do are meldings of style and substance, disciplined and coherent.”
After “Dragon,” Cimino would make three more features, 1987’s Mario Puzo adaptation “The Sicilian,” starring Christopher Lambert, 1990’s “Desperate Hours,” which reunited him with Rourke, and his final feature 1996’s “Sunchaser,” starring Woody Harrelson. In the subsequent years he continued to write and published a number of books in France.
A 2012 restoration and subsequent re-release of “Heaven’s Gate” allowed Cimino to see his masterwork undergo a critical reevaluation. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter published early in 2015, Cimino expressed happiness that the film was being seen anew and accepted at last by audiences for its sweeping intimacy and audacious vision of the American West.
Yet, a headstrong iconoclast to the very end, Cimino added, “I never needed vindication. I knew what I had done.”
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(Steve Wilkie / AP) 6/20
Korath (Djimon Hounsou), Att-Lass (Algenis Perez Soto), Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Bron-Char (Rune Temte) and Minn-Erva (Gemma Chan) in “Captain Marvel.”
Read the review.
(Marvel Studios / handout) 7/20
Isabelle Huppert and Chloe Grace Moretz star in the thriller “Greta.”
Read the review.
(Jonathan Hession / AP) 8/20
Reunited for a family wedding, former lovers played by Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem find themselves embroiled in a kidnapping in “Everybody Knows,” directed by Asghar Farhadi.
Read the review.
(Teresa Isasi / AP) 9/20
A tropical island boat captain (Matthew McConaughey) and his much-abused ex-wife (Anne Hathaway) enter a vortex of rough justice and fancy riddles in “Serenity.”
Read the review.
(Graham Bartholomew / AP) 10/20
Capping the trilogy started with “Unbreakable” (2000) and the surprise hit “Split (2017), Shymalan’s treatise on superhero origin stories brings James McAvoy, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson together for a plodding psych-hospital escape.
Read the review.
(Jessica Kourkounis / AP) 11/20
Stephan James and KiKi Layne play Fonny and Tish, expectant parents in 1970s Harlem in the new James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
Read the review.
(Tatum Mangus / AP) 12/20
Washington D.C. power brokers Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) and Lynne Cheney have a date with destiny in Adam McKay’s “Vice,” co-starring Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld.
Read the review.
Nomainted for: Best Picture, Best Actor for Christian Bale, Best Supporting Actor for Sam Rockwell, Best Supporting Actress for Amy Adams, Best Director for Adam McKay, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Hair and Makeup,
(Matt Kennedy / AP) 13/20
Queen Anne’s (Olivia Colman) court wrestles with the question of how to finance a war with France. Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), the Duchess of Marlborough, uses her wits, her body and the queen’s bed to coerce Anne into raising taxes on the citizenry in order to keep the off-screen battle going. Then the unexpected arrival of her country cousin, Abigail (Emma Stone), a noblewoman fallen on hard times. A dab hand with medicinal herbs, Abigail quickly rises above servant status to become the queen’s new favorite. Game on!
Read the review.
Nomainted for: Best Picture, Best Actress for Olivia Colman, Best Supporting Actress for Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, Best Director for Yorgos Lanthimos, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design,
(Atsushi Nishijima / AP) 14/20
This image released by Fox Searchlight Films shows Olivia Colman in a scene from the film “The Favourite.” (Atsushi Nishijima/Fox Searchlight Films via AP) (Atsushi Nishijima / AP)
15/20
A high-powered ad agency executive (Tika Sumpter, right) takes in her ex-con sister (Tiffany Haddish, center) in “Nobody’s Fool.”
Read the review.
(Chip Bergmann / AP) 16/20
Risk-prone 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic, left) shares some of his angst with one of the local LA skateboarding idols, Ray (Na-Kel Smith), in writer-director Jonah Hill’s “Mid90s.”
Read the review.
(Tobin Yelland / AP) 17/20
An Atlanta teenager (Amandla Stenberg) deals with the death of her friend in “The Hate U Give,” director George Tillman Jr.’s fine adaptation of the best-selling young adult novel.
Read the review.
(Erika Doss / AP) 18/20
In “First Man,” Ryan Gosling reteams with “La La Land” director Damien Chazelle to relay the story of astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon.
Read the review.
(Daniel McFadden / AP) 19/20
A grown-up Christopher Robin returns to the Hundred Acre Wood and his best friend Winnie the Pooh.
Read the review.
(Laurie Sparham / AP) 20/20
Dax (Lil Rel Howery) gave up playing basketball after getting a crucial buzzer-beater whapped out of the sky by his nemesis, Mookie (Nick Kroll). Now Dax coaches Harlem street ball and has sunk his life savings into the Rucker Classic tournament. Uncle Drew (Kyrie Irving) holds the key to Dax’s redemption.
Read the review.
(Michael Phillips / HANDOUT) 1/21
“Ye” isn’t so much a musical statement as a 23-minute, seven-track therapy session. Read the review
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune) 2/21
The new album embraces her individuality more explicitly than ever, both more autobiographical and more politically and socially direct than anything she’d recorded previously. It’s a rawer, less elaborate work than its predecessors, yet still hugely ambitious. Read the review
(Jean-Baptiste Lacroix, AFP/Getty Images) 3/21
On her seventh studio album, “Golden Hour” (MCA Nashville), the singer-songwriter doesn’t get hung up on genre. She’s made a style-hopping pop album that infuses her songs with a relaxed spaciousness while muting, but not ignoring, her country roots. Read the review
(John Konstantaras / Chicago Tribune) 4/21
After years of small, carefully articulated recordings and one-man shows, Moses Sumney has finally released his long-gestating debut album, “Aromanticism” (Jagjaguwar), and it’s as resistant to instant categorization as his earlier work. The self-produced album is strikingly, starkly intimate — it sounds like the loneliest place on Earth, wherever that might me (an island, a cave, someplace in the listener’s head). Read the full review.
(Jagjaguwar / handout) 5/21
“American Dream” is a breakup album of sorts but not in the traditional sense. This is about breakups with youth, the past, and the heroes and villains that populated it. It underlines the notion of breaking up as just a step away from letting go — of friends, family, relevance. Read the review.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune) 6/21
Chuck Berry‘s surprise announcement last October that he would release his final studio album this year was made all the more poignant by his death March 18 at age 90.
“Chuck” (Dualtone/Decca) very much sounds like a career capstone, a thank-you to the people who mattered most to him — from his wife of 68 years, Themetta “Toddy” Suggs to the fan in the second row at one of his concerts.
Read the full review.
(Michal CizekI/ AFP/Getty Images) 7/21
Sir the Baptist, aka William James Stokes, is the son of a preacher, and his major label debut, “Saint or Sinner” (Atlantic), has one foot on the street and the other in a church. Read the review.
(Alyssa Pointer/Chicago Tribune ) 8/21
So is there really something about Harry? The 10 songs edge toward ‘70s revivalism rather than 2017 hip-hop-EDM-urban-contemporary stylishness, a move presaged by One Direction tracks such as “Four” and “Fireproof.” Producer Jeff Bhasker specializes in freshening up retro-leaning sounds with artists such as Kanye West, Jay-Z and Mark Ronson-Bruno Mars (“Uptown Funk”). In addition, Bhasker co-wrote nine of the 10 songs with Styles, along with a small team of hired guns. Read the full review.
(Columbia Records / AP) 9/21
The title song from “Deliverance” is Grade-A late-period Prince, 3-plus-minutes of piano-organ interplay and sanctified backing vocals that impart an anthemic gospel feel. Read the review
(Bertrand Guay, AFP/Getty Images) 10/21
The self-released “Drogas Light,” Lupe Fiasco’s first album since severing ties with Atlantic, brought hope that it might rekindle the spark and freshness of his 2006 debut, “Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor.” Instead, it falters beneath its own cynicism. Read the full review.
(Kevin Winter / Getty Images) 11/21
“Nothing Feels Natural” doesn’t come off like a new band’s first statement. It sounds fully formed and wickedly confident, the work of four people who had to get a few things off their chest. Read the review.
( The Washington Post/Getty Images) 12/21
“Black America Again” (ARTium/Def Jam) arrives as a one of the year’s most potent protest albums. The album sags midway through with a handful of lightweight love songs, but finishes with some of its most emotionally resounding tracks: the “Glory”-like plea for redemption “Rain” with Legend, the celebration of family that is “Little Chicago Boy,” and the staggering “Letter to the Free.” Read the review.
(Nuccio DiNuzzo / Chicago Tribune) 13/21
Warpaint’s unerring feel for gauzy hooks and slinky arrangements germinated over a decade and flourished on the quartet’s excellent 2014 self-titled album. But the band has always nudged its arrangements onto the dance floor — subtly on record, more overtly on stage — and “Heads Up” (Rough Trade) gives the group’s inner disco ball a few extra spins. Read the review.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune) 14/21
Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he’s really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave’s songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, “Skeleton Tree”, his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. Read the full review.
(Carl Court / Getty-AFP) 15/21
On “Here” (Merge), the band’s first album in six years and 10th overall, the front line of Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley once again trades songs (four each) and lead vocals, over sturdily constructed pop-rock arrangements. But the band has taken some subtle evolutionary turns to where it’s now a faint shadow of its “Bandwagonesque” incarnation. Read the review.
(Ross Gilmore / Redferns via Getty Images) 16/21
Now “Schmilco” (dBpm Records) arrives, a product of the same recording sessions that produced “Star Wars” but a much different album. Though it’s ostensibly quieter and less jarring than its predecessor, it presents its own radical take on the song-based, folk and country-tinged side of the band. Read the full review.
(Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune) 17/21
“Blonde” is a critique of materialism with Frank Ocean employing two distinct voices, like characters in a play, a recurring theme throughout the album and perhaps its finest sonic achievement. A party spirals out of control, the music rich but low key, a melange of organ and hovering synthesizers. Ocean uses distorting devices on his voice to add emotional texture and to enhance and sharpen the characters he briefly embodies. The upshot: They’re all little slices of Ocean’s personality with a role to play and they each sound distinct. Read the full review.
(Jordan Strauss / AP) 18/21
On their new album, “Existentialism,” the Mekons turn their audience and the recording space into accomplices for the band’s high-wire act. Read the full review.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune) 19/21
“Lemonade” is more than just a play for pop supremacy. It’s the work of an artist who is trying to get to know herself better, for better or worse, and letting the listeners/viewers in on the sometimes brutal self-interrogation. Read the full review.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 20/21
In contrast, “Junk” (Mute”), M83’s seventh studio album, sounds chintzy — a bubble-gum snyth-pop album that indulges Gonzalez’s love of decades-old TV soundtracks, hair-metal guitar solos and kitschy pop songs. Read the full review.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune) 21/21
Kendrick Lamar’s “Untitled, Unmastered” is presented as an unfinished work, though it rarely sounds like one. Read the review.
(Matt Sayles/Invision/AP) 
