Pollack's 'Films Always Felt Like Best Pictures'

Sydney Pollack was a throwback, Desson Thomson writes in the Washington Post. He liked to say he didn’t have a style, and it was true—he "made movies in what seemed like every conceivable genre—thrillers, westerns, epics, actioners and comedies. But his formula was pretty much the same: Cast great actors as even greater characters."

"I haven’t broken any new ground in the form of a film. My strength is with actors,” Pollack once told Roger Ebert, who writes in the Chicago Sun-Times that the mere mention of his films stirs “smiles, affection, nostalgia, respect.” And Xan Brooks notes in the Guardian that in his recent acting gigs, "Pollack was more captivating in front of the camera than he was behind it." (More Sydney Pollack stories.)