by ·Comments Off on The Searchers (1956, John Ford)

So I’ve finally watched The Searchers. For a couple years I’d heard that it was one of The Greatest Films so wanted to see it badly, but then I changed my mind and decided I probably wouldn’t like it because of John Wayne, then I stewed on that for a few years until finally it sat as maybe the movie I’d been meaning to see longer than any other.

All those expectations, and I end up liking it. Worst of all, I thought John Wayne was good, damn it all.

IMDB plot summary: “Ethan Edwards, returned from the Civil War to the Texas ranch of his brother, hopes to find a home with his family and to be near the woman he obviously but secretly loves. But a Comanche raid destroys these plans, and Ethan sets out, along with his 1/8 Indian nephew Martin, on a years-long journey to find the niece kidnapped by the Indians under Chief Scar. But as the quest goes on, Martin begins to realize that his uncle’s hatred for the Indians is beginning to spill over onto his now-assimilated niece. Martin becomes uncertain whether Ethan plans to rescue Debbie…or kill her.”

Jeffrey Hunter (Jesus in King of Kings) is Wayne’s sidekick nephew and Vera Miles (psycho, the wrong man) is the nephew’s love interest. Natalie Wood and her young sister Lana play the kidnapped Debbie. John Wayne’s iconic performance in The Searchers came the same year as one of his most hated roles ever, as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.

Very meaningful opening shot:
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Horses are neat:
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Hunter tries to temper Wayne’s anti-Indian rage:
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Indians are neat:
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Very meaningful closing shot:
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So what’s the new “movie I’ve been planning to see longer than any other”?
Sunset Blvd? Weekend? Nashville? Something I started and never finished like Crumb or Night On Earth? DVDs I bought ages ago like Benjamin Smoke and Henry V? I’m gonna go with Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes.

by ·Comments Off on Shaun of the Dead (2004, Edgar Wright)

SEPT 2006:

Funniest zombie movie ever. Funnier than “Return of the Living Dead” and “John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars”… combined! Even Katy liked it.

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UPDATE: DEC 2007

Katy might have liked it the first time, but she’s had quite enough of it now, and played computer games through most of the movie when I was showing it off to Dana this week. Well, no, obviously she still LIKES it, otherwise she would’ve either left the room or suggested something else. Dana did not immediately declare it the funniest zombie movie ever, so the screening was a partial failure. I got to watch “Heart of the World” beforehand, so I was obviously the happiest person in the room.

by ·Comments Off on No Country For Old Men (2007, Coens)

Not quite what I’d expected. Thrilling, tense, exciting movie. Brolin and Bardem are impassive Western types, TL Jones is unexpectedly the protagonist. Hardly any music. Good chase scenes in river (brolin vs. a dog) and on abandoned city streets at night (vs. bardem).

TV star Garret Dillahunt played Tommy’s deputy. Kelly Macdonald, who I did not recognize from “Tristram Shandy”, was Brolin’s wife. I knew I’d seen Brolin somewhere… he was a lead in “Planet Terror” (and in The Goonies). Stephen Root as “man who hires Wells”.

On the way home, I was pondering the storyline, decided out loud that while most movies tell you “these are some things that happened”, this movie instead says “this is the way things are.” But I don’t remember what I meant by that.

P. Nugent of Screengrab says about the Coens/Fargo:
“I tend to think of the Coens as surface guys who put an incredible amount of conscious planning into the physical details of their movies, and who are inhumanly aware of how they expect both critics and audiences to respond to their cleverness. It might sound as if I’m one of those people who sometimes badmouth the Coens for being ‘merely’ clever, but cleverness is something I’m all for; at the very least, it sure beats lack of imagination. … Fargo is a smart, impressive movie, but it is also a movie outside what I think of as their best range, and a movie that I think they made for the outside world, a movie pitched at the mainstream.”

Great paragraph from E. Kuersten from his year-end roundup in Bright Lights:
“The Coens love circles… who doesn’t? In NO COUNTRY, locks come flying off in all directions leaving beautiful round holes in which to have light issue, peeping tom doors of perception through which one is able to read at least one thing: a circle! The hula hoops in HUDSUCKER, the hair cream tins in BROTHER; the hubcaps in MAN WHO WASN’T THERE… What do they mean? Exactly! Take ZODIAC, the amazing police procedural that disappears into the same plot void which drowned the old LEBOWSKI. Again, all you’re left with in the end is the shuddering realization that “Hurdy Gurdy Man” is the scariest song ever written. And then in the other corner, you’ve got Tommy Lee Jones playing more or less the same character in both NO COUNTRY and IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH, that is to say, the leather face of America as it looks off from the Medusa-eye view of the circular zodiac watch screen and crumbles to dust. There’s no easy answers, not no more.”

UPDATE: Watched again April ’08 under slightly adverse conditions. Not as caught up in the tension of the thing this time. I admire it as a technical achievement, great acting and direction, but I’ve been veering more towards Black Book because BB has all of those things as well as Something To Say. I’m not sure that No Country is saying anything valuable, and I’m not sure that the Tommy Lee Jones bits pondering the death of decent human behavior offers enough food for thought to outweigh the rest of the film’s constant reveling in human misbehavior.

MAY 2025: I ain’t reading anything above because my early posts are terrible and I was an idiot, but I had a good time watching the beautiful blu-ray of this great movie.

by ·Comments Off on Anything Goes (1956, Robert Lewis)

Bing Crosby is a broadway star and Donald “Melvin” O’Connor is a TV star, and they are cast as co-headliners in a big broadway play and set loose to find a leading lady. Hilarity ensues! You see, Melvin finds hot French dancer Zizi Jeanmaire and Bing finds blonde singer Mitzi Gaynor (Les Girls, South Pacific), then each guy falls for the other guy’s girl. Meanwhile, Mitzi’s dad (Phil Harris, who voiced Baloo in Disney’s Jungle Book), in a kind of unimportant side plot, is going to be arrested for not paying taxes on his gambling winnings when the cruise ship lands in America. Big ol’ whatever on that part.

Bing and Melvin show their compatibility by riffing on “You Gotta Give The People Hoke” with some lightly bearable prop humor, then Mitzi gives us the title song and Zizi does “I Get a Kick out of You”. They all sing Katy’s fave “You’re The Top”. Melvin and Mitzi bond on the ship’s deck to “It’s Delightful/Delicious/De-lovely” while Bing yearns for Zizi with “All Through the Night”. Out of nowhere, Melvin does a cool dance in the children’s play room, bouncing balls to the beat of “You Can Bounce Right Back”, and Bing does a fakey swami bit with “A Second-hand Turban and a Crystal Ball”. Those last two songs (and “Hoke”) somewhat suck, and not coincidentally were the three numbers not written by Cole Porter. We close on the second year of their hit Broadway show with all four performers doing “Blow Gabriel Blow” and the no longer jailed father in attendance, how sweet.

Katy’s pick, we both enjoyed. Bing and Mitzi seem to be better singers than dancers, and Zizi and Melvin vice versa. Playful little movie with mostly good music, doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would’ve been a huge smash hit.

Prop comedy:
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Zizi:
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Mitzi & Melvin:
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“a second hand turban and a crystal ball”
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by ·Comments Off on Velvet Goldmine (1998, Todd Haynes)

We rented this on the drive home from “August Rush”. It had a dual purpose: Katy could watch another, hopefully better movie where Jonathan Rhys Meyers sings, and I could try again to join the growing legion of Todd Haynes fans before seeing “I’m Not There”.

Given a second chance (first time it totally lost me), it’s an interesting movie with an awesome look to it. Good music but not my favorite (I never got glam – the music’s not exciting when you take away the clothes). Another thing I noticed this time is how the story is a big ol’ ripoff/tribute to Citizen Kane, with Christian Bale in the reporter/interviewer role.

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Jonathan RM is an illegal bootleg of David Bowie and Ewan McGregor is a semi-legit Iggy Pop.

Toni Collette (of nothing I’m likely to see except maybe “the dead girl”) plays RM’s wife and I got her confused a lot, and Eddie Izzard (of “across the universe” and his own bad self) is RM’s manager.

What is going on?, most of the time, still, especially towards the end, but with the lovely glammy visuals, who cares either? RM and Iggy Pop have a hot affair and half-fuel half-wreck each other’s careers, and there’s booze and such. I felt really on top of things while watching this, but just a few days later I’m lost in a drug haze of cool shots and floaty feathers and got nothing to say.

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by ·Comments Off on August Rush (2007, Kirsten Sheridan)

A cutesy, saccharine drama with lots of insulting business about fate thrown about, and Robin Williams as Fagin with a soul-patch.

Freddie Highmore (Charlie of the Chocolate Factory) wants to find his real parents, runs off to the big city chased by a well-meaning but barely-in-the-movie Terrence Howard (Glitter, Big Momma’s House) in search of his parents (Keri Russell of Waitress and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who hadn’t been in any bad movies until this one), who only met once and don’t even know that they are parents. Along the way, Freddie is helped/hindered by Williams (of too many bad movies to list).

Hardly any romance in the movie, so not even Katy was happy… just a rooftop hookup then some happy glances at end of film (complete with a shout-out-to-god skyward glance by Freddie). Robin has violent mood changes, Keri smiles too much, Rhys Meyers has a rock music career (in a plot thread as underdeveloped as Terrence Howard’s character)… wait, in fact the whole movie was underdeveloped. How did it spend two hours telling this story without even telling any part of it properly? Even August’s relationship with black 13-yr-old talented guitarist friend Leon is underdeveloped, as is Keri Russell’s whole star-cellist thing.

Director Kirsten Sheridan is Jim’s daughter and is my age. Writer Nick Castle directed “Major Payne” and “The Last Starfighter”. Composer Mark Mancina usually does Disney cartoons and action flicks. The kids come out of this one pretty okay, and if anything, this is a step up for Robin Williams.

by ·Comments Off on Track of the Cat (1954, William Wellman)

Another bizarro Western from the same year as Red Garters and with some similarly fake-looking sets/backdrops, but this time it’s not done on purpose. To be fair, much of the film is shot in a national park and looks fine.

More of a family drama than any kind of Western. Mitchum plays an unlikeable guy who’s strong-arming his family for lack of anyone else to strong-arm. He lives with Ma and Pa, middle brother Arthur, young brother Harold, sister Grace and 100-year-old Indian servant Joe-Sam. Neighbor Gwen comes over and wants to marry Harold and get him out of his dysfunctional nowhere household. But then, Mitchum and Arthur go hunting and a wildcat kills Arthur. Mitchum goes out in search of it, but loses his food by accident, then goes hungry and mad, running off a cliff to his death after a few days.

A strange idea for a movie, but stranger still is the fact that a third of the movie seems to take place in the snowy wilderness with Mitchum (the titular tracking of the cat) and the rest is screamy family drama, with Grace trying to help Harold escape, Pa always drinking, Joe-Sam being generally creepy and Mitchum hating on everyone. What kind of a Western is this? I’d heard the movie was bizarre, but it doesn’t feel bizarre while watching it (camera, sets and acting style are all pretty regular) until you stop and think about what is happening.

Katy hated the movie because she played video games while listening to it, so she hears the yelling and bitterness but doesn’t watch the tense/serene snowy bits in between. I liked it, but couldn’t imagine putting it on my top-100 all-time faves list or anything like that.

This was the year before Mitchum stunned in Night of the Hunter (that and Out of the Past being far likelier candidates for personal top-100 status).

Sister Grace starred in Shadow of a Doubt, girlfriend Gwen was the younger sister in Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, and young brother Harold was one of Tab Hunter’s first roles. Tab later had his own TV show and appeared in Grease 2. Ma was a professional Ma-actress, playing Ma in Make Way For Tomorrow almost 20 years earlier, Ma Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Ma Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. She’s also in Baron of Arizona. And damned if 100-year-old Indian Joe-Sam wasn’t played by Alfalfa from Our Gang.

by ·Comments Off on Red Garters (1954, George Marshall)

IMDB user writes “ham-handed satire”, but I didn’t find it ham-handed at all. It’s somewhat a Western parody, but it’s not that the characters are unbearably macho (they’re actually kinda sharpshooting sissies, but that’s because it’s a 50’s musical) just that they follow “the code of the west”. There’s certainly not much Western about the look of the movie, which way out-fakes Track of the Cat in its deliberately artifical sets and backdrops. The movie was originally shown in 3D, so reportedly with the fakey sets it was supposed to feel like a stage production.

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Reb Randall comes to town on the day they’re burying his brother, the much-hated Robin Randall. Reb doesn’t tell anyone who he is, just hangs out waiting to find out who killed his brother. Becomes friends with a fake Mexican who confesses to the killing, but wait, it turns out he was drunk and missed Robin, who was actually killed by the town’s self-professed coward (Robin killed the coward’s brother I think).

There’s no other killing, just some loving and lots of singing. Local song and dance sensation Calaveras Kate is sweet on town giant Jason Carberry, our hero is sweet on Carberry’s ward, and the Mexican fella falls for the daughter of a stuffy east coaster who has come to town to check up on things, having heard about the lawlessness of the wild west. The west is tamed at the end (with no help from the east-coaster), the code is thrown out, and it looks like a triple wedding on the horizon.

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You wouldn’t think it from a plot description, but Kate is the star here and gets to sing most of the songs. Nobody here is an especially convincing actor, but the songs are nice and the movie’s just cool/weird enough to forgive all that. It’s also kind of awkwardly funny and half-heartedly romantic. Just good fun to watch a low-key (but quality) nearly-forgotten musical from back when it was okay for white people to play any race and school shootings were treated as light comedy. This was made three years before my other favorite white-people-with-painted-faces Western, Run of the Arrow.

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Above, L-R:
Calaveras Kate: a very white Rosemary Clooney, also a singer who hardly did any other acting, appeared in White Christmas and Radioland Murders… George’s aunt.

Stuffy east-coaster: Reginald Owen of the ’38 Christmas Carol, who played the awesome butler in Double Harness.

Jason Carberry, who somewhat runs this town: Jack Carson from a bunch of films, always third or fourth-billed. This same year he was #3 man in A Star Is Born and Axelrod & Robson’s Phffft.

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Above:
Our hero’s Mexican friend: Gene Barry, who played Dr. Clayton Forrester (!) in the original War of the Worlds, cameoed in the Spielberg remake, and starred in his own TV series through the 60’s. He does a good job singing in a low voice with a fake hispanic accent with his face painted brown.

Stuffy east-coaster’s pretty, black-haired young daughter: Joanne Gilbert, who was only in a couple other movies, including Gena Rowlands’ debut film The High Cost of Loving in ’58, directed by Rosemary Clooney’s husband José Ferrer.

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Above:
Our nameless hero: Guy Mitchell, a singer who hardly did any other acting.

Jason’s ward, Latina Susana: TV actress Pat Crowley

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Above:
Nonviolent coward who turns out to have killed our hero’s brother in the end: Buddy Ebsen, Holly’s ex-husband in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Jason Carberry again

Goofy desexualized Indian woman: Cass Daley, an unmistakably white singer/comedian.

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by ·Comments Off on Annie Hall (1977, Woody Allen)

Steve says it doesn’t hold up anymore, and Katy was dismayed to find that Woody is a shrill & neurotic whiner and Diane Keaton isn’t much better… and on top of that, they don’t even stay together at the end of the movie! What is up with that? That’s not romantic. How then can it be #4 on the AFI’s list of all-time greatest comedies and the #125 top all-time film on the IMDB?

I’ve always loved this movie, but last time I saw “Play It Again Sam” (with the same three lead actors as this movie) I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed “Annie Hall” last night, so maybe that one’s due for another viewing. Or maybe I should stop rewatching comedies I used to like, so I can remember them as being funnier/better than they really are.

I mistook Shelley Duvall for Sissy Spacek, but they’re the same age so now I don’t feel as bad about that. Marshall McLuhan’s cameo was funny even before I knew who he was, and even now I only know who he is from reading some articles about “Videodrome”. Jeff Goldblum, who cameos at a party scene having forgotten his mantra, previously appeared in two Robert Altman films and “Death Wish”. Almost-co-star Tony Roberts is only recognizable from other Woody Allen movies. I didn’t recognize Paul Simon as a Hollywood hot-shot who flirts with Annie.

Wow, never noticed this before. Annie Hall was co-written by Marshall Brickman, who also co-wrote Manhattan, Sleeper, and Manhattan Murder Mystery, which are all my favorite Woody Allen movies. Coincidence? Can’t be. DP Gordon Willis shot eight Woody Allen movies including this one between Godfathers 2 and 3. He also shot the movie I am lately obsessed with, Pennies From Heaven.