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western #14, 'hang 'em high.' [another day, another movie.]

By • On • In another day. another movie., scott • 1 min read

With a title like Hang ’em High, I figured this would be a story about Clint Eastwood’s characters hanging a bunch of ‘bad guys.’

Instead, it was far more ambiguous and intelligent than that. A wonderful film to watch after suffering through True Grit.

It was a great rumination on the relationship and differences between justice and vengeance, and most of the characters were a realistic mixture of good and bad. It was strong across the board, and there isn’t much more to say than that.

This was also the first film I’ve seen featuring the stunningly beautiful and heartbreakingly tragic Inger Stevens.

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western #13, 'true grit.' [another day, another movie.]

By • On • In another day. another movie., scott • 1 min read

Wow. Just… wow. I don’t know how to say this nicely, so I won’t. This movie was fucking terrible.

Acting. Directing. Writing. Across the board, just awful. It felt more like a late 60’s television show more than a late 60’s movie. Wayne won an Oscar… ugh.

I’m not giving any more commentary than that. This movie has wasted quite enough of my time, thank you very much.

I can’t wait until the Coen boys redeem it for me later this year, as I wholly anticipate they will.

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western #12, 'shane.' [another day, another movie.]

By • On • In another day. another movie., scott • 1 min read

Another classic of the genre that I’d never seen before.

I was so impressed with how good it was. Such a great story, well directed and acted. Jack Palance was great in his small role as the gunslinger for hire, and Alan Ladd was fantastic, all 5’6″ of him.

It was so great. I was stunned by the emotional nuance and complexity, as well as how charged some scenes were.  I really wasn’t expecting much going into it, and early on I was a little worried. But it really was a fantastic film. Tragic and beautiful.

It’s pretty rare, even in 2010, to find a film that leaves questions open for the viewer to decide. Yet, in 1953 Shane engages questions of violence, conflict, love, the value of human life and morality with subtlety and ambiguity. All that can’t be debated in the film’s message is that we make choices, and there are consequences, and usually life isn’t fair.

The climax of the film is so quiet and unassuming.

Ah, so good. For me this was the biggest surprise so far. I expected a generic Western. Instead I found genuinely moving storytelling.

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western #11, 'unforgiven.' [another day, another movie.]

By • On • In another day. another movie., scott • 1 min read

This is the first of the Westerns we have watched so far that I actually owned, so, obviously I liked this one going into it.

Eastwood responds to the Western genre that helped make his career. Even going so far as to say it basically encapsulates everything he feels about the genre.

It is slow and taut, filled with great characters played brilliantly by gifted actors.

If Cooperstown was for actors instead of baseball players, Gene Hackman would only have to screen The Royal Tenenbaums and Unforgiven back to back and he would have my vote to get in without any further conversation.

It doesn’t deal with the Native American issues, but it pulls back the curtain a bit on the rest of what lies implicit in the Western genre.

As is the case with much of Eastwood’s directorial work, the story turns the myth of redemptive violence on its head. There is always a cost.

Great movie, all around.

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western #10, 'the professionals.' [another day, another movie.]

By • On • In another day. another movie., scott • 1 min read

This movie is pretty well-loved. It was even nominated for several oscars.

I thought it was ridiculous. It didn’t even make any sense. The plot was asinine and absurd, and two of the four “professionals” were basically non-characters. There was one guy who seemed to come along because he knew about horses. At one point he used binoculars to count how many horses the enemy had. That’s right, his expert knowledge of horses helped him count the horses, he also added that there were two donkeys. The same character also tried to trick the Mexican bandits holding him hostage by hinting to his buddies using a coded sign for danger, a good idea, aside from the fact that the code was designed by the Mexican bandits holding him hostage.

The conclusion of the film basically just finally lets the characters do what any reasonable person would have done much earlier on. The closing moments made everything that happened before them, especially the loss of life, completely needless.

Oh yeah, and Jack Palance played a Mexican revolutionary… let’s just say his ability to speak another language convincingly left a lot to be desired.

Nonsensical.

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western #9, 'the magnificent seven.' [another day, another movie.]

By • On • In another day. another movie., scott • 1 min read

This movie wasn’t exactly bad. It was fine.

It’s just that when Leone adapted Yojimbo it was a gifted artist stealing from an even more gifted artist (which, while this was a more blatant example, seems to be what most art is), but in this case, adapting Kurosawa’s masterpiece into a misc. American Western is blasphemy. It’s nothing short of reshooting Citizen Kane with the cast of MTV’s The Hills.

They took a movie that was an amazing benchmark of visual storytelling, and they said “Hey, if we changed the ronin into cowboys and the peasants into poor Mexican farmers, we could make a pretty good movie.”

Dumb.

It was filled with scenes that didn’t make any sense out of the original context, mostly because they didn’t seem to be trying to make sense. Example: When one character blames his fellow gunmen for being the reason farmers care so much about their crops. Wha?

Eh, that’s ok. We’ll always have Kurosawa.

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western #8, 'seven samurai.' [another day, another movie.]

By • On • In another day. another movie., scott • 1 min read

Holy shit, this movie was magnificent! Everything about it was nothing short of amazing.

There is no possible hyperbole when praising Kurosawa. This is only my third film from his catalogue, but I am just blown away by his ability to visually tell a story. The stuff he was doing in the 50’s… it’s just unbelievable.

Seven Samurai is poignant, sweet, sentimental, brutal, hilarious, and filled with depth and wisdom. It was absolutely stunning, this story of tender warriors, protecting the innocent, some making the ultimate sacrifice willingly.

The acting was also fantastic. It was brilliant across the board, but none more so than in the case of our old friend Toshiro Mifune. He exhibited an amazing ability to act hilariously insane and unhinged, and then suddenly become the emotional anchor of a moment, sometimes in the same scene.

This movie was spellbinding. I really can’t believe how good it was. I genuinely felt for each character, even though each was developed with a wonderful subtlety. I have no clue as to the backstory of most of the characters, outside of the fact that they were ronin, and yet Kurosawa’s skillful writing and directing, coupled with amazing performances simply worked each character into my heart.

It was around three and a half hours long, and I was sad to see it end. Easily my favorite movie so far.

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western #7, 'the good, the bad, and the ugly.' [another day, another movie.]

By • On • In another day. another movie., scott • 1 min read

This movie was great. I loved it!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, or, Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, or, Blondie, Angel Eyes and Tuco. Whatever you call it, it was fantastic filmmaking all around.

The characters were lots of fun, enjoyably acted by the three primary leads, and Leone was at the top of his game. Not to mention, Ennio Morricone composed the most iconic score in the history of the genre.

It was actually a prequel of sorts, set before the events of A Fistful of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More.

I just wish there was a way to see the further adventures of The Man With No Name and Tuco.

The film was more of an epic than the other two in the series, covering more territory in the American West, and setting itself in a larger context revolving around the end of the Civil War, which went on for a time in places like Texas even after Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

There isn’t much else to say, aside from the fact that, like Yojimbo, I should have watched this movie a looooooong time ago.

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western #6, 'the searchers.' [another day, another movie.]

By • On • In another day. another movie., scott • 1 min read

The Searchers is another movie praised quite highly by AFI. Not only was it #12 on the ‘100 Years, 100 Movies’ list, they also selected it as the greatest Western of all time.

Directed by John Ford, it was released almost twenty years after Stagecoach.

The Positives: Visually, The Searchers was really impressive. Ford clearly took great pains to find remarkable shots and angles, and it was most certainly a beautiful film from that standpoint. There were moments where I found myself enjoying the film in spite of myself, which is no small praise.

The movie, up until the last ten minutes or so, was also far more ambiguous about racism than Stagecoach. Much of the racism was named and some even condemned in the text of the film.

There was also ambiguity in the morality of the characters. Wayne’s character was a thief with legitimate rage issues, and they never apologized or demonized it, they just let the character be. That’s something I didn’t expect, and it was refreshing. 

The Negatives: For one, I’m decidedly not a John Wayne fan. I wonder if perhaps it is just different sensibilities in different eras, but to me all of his characters just seem drunk most of the time. His long, drawling speech coupled with his clumsy and awkward gait and movements just come across as being a lush, not an everyman.

Also, while I commend Ford for even attempting to address the racism in society and film, he ultimately failed. The racism was so deep that even the attempt to condemn racism was racist. For goodness sake, the main villain of the film was a Commanche war chief played by a German man painted a bronzish tan color… that’s right, a painted German guy.

Also, any ambiguity the film lets sit in the air during the movie falls apart during the climax, when all the white people kill off all the Indians and live happily ever after. Hooray!

It was almost as if Ford was saying, ‘Hey racism makes me uncomfortable, it’s downright sad even. But, they are savages, so what are you really going to do about it? If they refused to become “Americans” like us, they needed to be dealt with eventually.’

I guess for me, it doesn’t really matter how well a movie is made when its messages are this ugly, whether that was the intent or not.

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western #5, 'for a few dollars more.' [another day, another movie.]

By • On • In another day. another movie., scott • 1 min read

It would seem the Man with No Name and the Masterless Samurai are even more connected than I initially thought. There was already the obvious connection, in that The Man with No Name was created as an adaptation of the Masterless Samurai. However, it seems to me the similarities extend into their sequels as well.

Sanjuro, the second film featuring the character from Yojimbo, was only supposed to be a straight adaptation of a novel called Peaceful Days, but after the success of Yojimbo, the studio decided to have Kurosawa bring the character back sooner rather than later and worked his character into the center of the film.

It felt to me like the same thing happened with the second movie to feature The Man with No Name.

For a Few Dollars More felt to me like the story of one man’s revenge, and that man was not The Man with No Name. Instead, he moved back and forth in the story, like we were following him in and out of the real story that was happening.

It was if Leone simply realized he had struck gold in Eastwood’s character and wanted him in the movie, even if he didn’t have much reason to be there.

The result was that I didn’t really care much about Eastwood’s character in this one. I still loved him, he’s Clint Fucking Eastwood. Yet, in A Fistful of Dollars, all of the best scenes, the ones with the most weight, were scenes featuring Eastwood front and center. That wasn’t so in the second one.

The film was a bit more scattered as well. There were flashes of brilliance, for one, the duel during the climax was pretty great all around, directing, acting, etc. And during a showdown at the beginning, Morricone was off his ass in all his composing glory, working organ music in with… well , you’ll just have to watch it if you haven’t seen it. It was pretty amazing. Outside of those flashes of brilliance, it was pretty straightforward, and at times even dull.

However, I can’t wait for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!

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