Hal (2018)

HAL  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Amy Scott
A documentary on Hal Ashby, the shaggy-bearded, pot-smoking filmmaker who turned out some of the most influential movies of the 1970s, battling the studios he worked for every step of the way. "Harold and Maude", "The Last Detail", "Coming Home", "Bound For Glory" and "Being There" are all Ashby films, all made within a period of about seven years when he was at his creative peak, and a time when a director with a reputation for reckless independence could still make films more or less on his own terms within the system. The era didn't last, and Ashby's work fell off in the decade that followed, but for a few years there, he was as good as anybody around, and his movies prove it. Ashby died at 59 in 1988.