Bombs Away!

It had to happen at some point. In the wake of Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate, Easy Rider, M*A*S*H, and The Godfather, all films that were not expected to do well, let alone win Oscars, the studio heads finally caved in and said fuck it, give these guys as much money and resources as they want. And that’s when the Film Brats of the New Hollywood finally fell on their asses in a spectacular way.

We all know that Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie is generally thought of as the straw that broke the camel’s back, even though it’s actually a great film (and maybe now that Hopper has passed away we’ll get an in depth DVD release or even, god help us, a look at Alejandro Jodoworosky’s cut) but there are definitely worse offenders out there. The following films all have on thing in common. They failed at the box office.

Brewster McCloud is considered Altman’s first critical disaster and usually gets lumped in with Quintet and Popeye when you see the E! True Hollywood Story or Biography episode on the man, but I can tell you that Brewster McCloud ranks right up there with M*A*S*H, Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player, or Gosford Park. It’s biggest problem? It’s the follow-up to M*A*S*H and it’s way ahead of its time.

What we get is a more of the irreverent humor of M*A*S*H and the twisted genre expectations of The Long Goodbye. There is a whimsical humor to it all with the scenes of Rene Auberjonois lecturing the audience about birds as he slowly begins to turn in to one. This more innocent kind of humor as well as the detailed sets seem like a precursor to Wes Anderson as well as usual suspect Paul Thomas Anderson.

Part satire, part action movie, Brewster McCloud was never going to have an easy time meeting expectations but seen in context of Altman’s other films and it all starts to make sense. We see the first use of Altman casting his regulars with Bud Cort as Brewster, Sally Kellerman as his guardian angel, John Schuck as a Houston police officer picked to work with Michael Murphy’s super cop Det. Frank Shaft, and G. Wood as, what else, cynical and hard-assed Capt. Crandall. And of course this marks Shelley Duvall’s first appearance in an Altman film.

Oh yeah, and Stacy Keach plays a greedy old man that Brewster works for. Trust me, you just gotta let some of this stuff roll. It’s Altman in the 70’s so of course we get some deconstruction of cinema in the beginning and end credits.

It may not be perfect but it definitely ranks amongst Altman’s best films.

Alex In Wonderland. Or I Think My Farts Smell Just as Good As Fellini’s. Paul Mazursky gets a pass for acting in Stanley Kubrick’s early film Fear & Desire, but his own films have never been anything spectacular. Alex In Wonderland is his follow-up to Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice, and it sadly falls flat.

There’s an overpowering smell of incense and smugness that makes it hard to take any of it as serious as it wants to be. Easy Rider at least had some cynicism about commune hippies, but here we get Donald Sutherland talking about he really wants to make a film about “The Panthers, man!” when he’s really dreaming about dancing naked negroes on a beach. I guess because he wishes they were as free and innocent as they were in Africa or is he only comfortable with black people when they’re singing and dancing? I’m probably giving this more thought than it deserves if it weren’t or the fact that 50% of the film is made of uninteresting dream sequences. A Vietnam-type battle raging in the streets of Hollywood is inspired but it’s too little too late. This movie wants to be 8 1/2 so bad and it just can’t reach. No matter if you get Fellini himself to make an appearance it will not summon his genius. Jeanne Moreau makes a cameo somewhere but I had fallen asleep by that point.

Ellen Burstyn gets to play the thankless Wife role. Right on, man! It’s about me and how hip and far out and groovy I am! Jesus. Mazursky was on the wrong side of 40 when he made this. I’m betting he wore a dashiki on the set.

Zardoz. Holy shit John Boorman, you have my admiration for having the balls to make this your follow-up to Deliverance. Zardoz is like a 1970’s Doctor Who taken to extremes the BBC would never allow. Due to time allowances I won’t get into the plot mechanics, which you could call either high-concept or convoluted and just say that we get a pirate moustached Sean Connery in hot pants wandering the wastelands of the future. He falls in with the immortal intelligent elites who view him as a savage. And by that I mean we get Charlotte Rampling in a silky frock getting hot and bothered by the Scottish rogue.

Just when it seems that the film has been nothing but one rambling essay after another about mankind’s ability to create or destroy, we get one trippy chase scene and a doozy of a denouement that ties it all together.

You have to see Zardoz at least once in your lifetime. The greatest tragedy is that it was released in 1974 and not 1978 because if it were, we’d have had the requisite tie-in toy line.

Pulp. Get Carter is perhaps the classic British crime film. Suspenseful yet bleak, it takes the plot and prose of Ted Lewis’s “Jack’s Return Home” and combines it with a career-defining performance by Michael Caine and the environment of Manchester and industrial Northern Britain. So after the success of Get Carter, director Mike Hodges and Caine decided to work on another film that would subvert the situations of Carter. Instead of hardnosed Jack Carter, Caine would play Mickey King, a writer of lurid pulp novels. Instead of the action taking place in overcast Newcastle-upon-Tyne, it would be in the sunny Mediterranean island of Malta. The film was Pulp.

Sadly, this was not what audiences were expecting. Get Carter was such a hit and had garnered such a cult following that anything but Get Carter Part 2 was going to have a hard time finding an audience.

But it is not a film without its charms. The plot revolves around Mickey being hired by expatriate American actor Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney) to write his biography. He’s picked Mickey because his own life could be straight out of one of Mickey’s dime-store pulps. Gilbert has mafia connections, which keep him from returning to the US. Along the way Mickey runs afoul of a hit man (the great Al Lettieri aka Sollozzo The Turk from The Godfather) who is out to kill Gilbert.

The story is more comedic in nature but still retains a hardness that makes it definitely a Seventies film. While it isn’t Get Carter Part 2, it is an interesting companion piece and contrast to Get Carter.

I’m really starting to appreciate Mickey Rooney in the 70’s where he’s more than ready to play the dirty old man with some rough edges and cynicism toward his usual public image. He’s a mischievous old goat here and really makes the film.

The cinematography is grand too. Event the wide-angle shots feel claustrophobic as Mickey makes he way from editor’s offices to hotel room in Malta that may or may not contain a dead body.

The Fortune. I’m sure Mike Nichols, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson thought this was a great idea over an eight ball with Bob Evans, but man this movie is not as funny as it thinks it is. It wants to be a throw back to the screwball comedies of yesteryear but the pacing is glacial and there are so many better black comedies to watch than this. Thanks for throwing Scatman Crothers a bone but it’s too little too late.

On paper this should have worked. Warren was hot on the heels of Shampoo while Jack was just coming off of Chinatown and on his way to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Mike Nichols was one of the first directors to usher in the New Hollywood with The Graduate. But watching the film you can’t help but wonder where the talent went?

By many accounts, the film was rushed into production without a firm script in place. It was made as a favor to screenwriter Carole Eastman. She had helped make Jack’s career by writing Five Easy Pieces. But they should have let this one go.

If you want to watch two hours of Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson fight over who gets to screw Stockard Channing, than this is the movie for you.

Stay Hungry. This movie is just fucking insane. By the time you see Arnold playing fiddle in a bluegrass band your mind has already been constantly blown that it just washes over you. I can’t decide if Stay Hungry is so bad that it’s bad or so bad that it comes around to being great. You could make an argument for either case.

So this was Bob Rafelson’s first film after the break up of BBS Productions, the epitome of New Hollywood. It’s a very audacious film to say the least and wildly different from the elegiac The King of Marvin Gardens. Stay Hungry is a free for all of ego and id. It’s perhaps the closest Rafelson ever came to being at peace with the fact the he might not be a serious artiste but instead is a guy who came up co-creating The Monkees.

Where else can you see The Dude, Freddy Kruger, The Terminator, Mama Gump, T.C. From Magnum P.I. and Scatman Crothers all in the same film? And who’s that? It’s Helena Kallianiotes reprising her role as the Over-the-top Bulldagger from Five Easy Pieces only this time she’s not a hitchhiker; she’s a karate teacher! Not to mention Joe Spinell as a mobster (what else would he be?) and even Ed Bagley Jr. even shows up as a country club good ole boy. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

This movie just can’t settle on what it wants to be. Does it want to be a straight drama about a young man from an old money Southern family (Bridges) who’s tired of doing what’s expected of him so he falls in with the lower class people from his gym (Arnold, Sally, Bobby Englund and T.C.)? Or is it about a young man falling in with sleazy mobsters who want to buy up fitness centers in downtown Birmingham, AL just to tear them down to build skyscrapers? Or better yet, is it about a body builder pussy hound, who sometimes likes to wear bondage masks while he works out, (Ahnold) who uses his perky girlfriend (Sally) and the rich kid from the gym (Bridges) to find him some high-class poon?

Well the simple answer is all of the above. Which brings Rafelson full circle with the zany style of The Monkees. The big finale features contestants from a Mr. Universe contest running wild in the streets to save the gym while striking impromptu poses for bewildered onlookers. That shit could have only happened in The Monkees or just maybe the end sequence of Blazing Saddles.

There are so many crass and tasteless things jumping off in this film that I lost count but I was certainly entertained.

Back on Track

Johnny Cool - Where has this film been all my life? Henry Silva, Elizabeth Montgomery, Telly Savalas, Sammy Davis Jr. and many more star in this gangster film. Silva gets a rare starring role as Johnny Cool, the adopted son of ex-pat American mobster John Colini (the venerable Marc Lawrence) who fakes Johnny's death and recruits him to be his enforcer. It all plays with a Donald Westlake-esque precision as we meet the various members of The Syndicate, headed by the ruthless Vince Santangelo (Telly Savalas with hair!). Other Syndicate members included Mort Sahl and Jim Backus in non-comedy roles. Sammy Davis Jr. shows up and blows everyone else off the screen as a craps player who Johnny goes up against in a backroom casino. But the pressure is on when the other mobsters start betting on him to beat Johnny. Joey Bishop makes a cameo too as a car salesman to round out the Rat Pack connection.

Elizabeth Montgomery (pre-Bewitched) plays Dare Guinness, a woman who hooks up Johnny only to be beaten and raped by mobsters looking for him. It's actually quite astonishing that the subject of rape is brought up and not entirely obfuscated in a film from 1962. Montgomery is a great dramatic actress and it shows here.

The biggest surprise is that this is all directed by William Asher who is more known for directing 60's sitcoms, Beach Movies, and comedies like It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. He's great as a suspense/thriller director here. Who knew?

Born to Kill - Classic if flawed Film Noir starring Lawrence Tierney and Claire Trevor. Having only known Tierney for his roles in Reservoir Dogs and Prizzi's Honor, it's amazing to see him young, fit, and with a full head of hair. He was good looking guy! His look reminds me of Phil Hartman, which I was not expecting.

But this is Claire Trevor's show just as much as it is Tierney's. She plays Helen Brent, a divorcee who is tied by fate to Tierney's brooding and violent Sam Wild. And Sam is drawn to her too. They're both damaged goods and they can't help it. But Helen is engaged to a nice and normal young lawyer named Fred, so Sam decides to marry her sister. Meanwhile, Sam is being trailed by a detective on the case of a double murder he committed in Reno. Needless to say, things do not turn out for the best as Sam and Helen keep attracting each other and more danger.

This is great even though one of its main flaws is that every female character remarks on Sam's debonair and irresistible charm like he's Cary Grant instead of Lawrence Tierney. Tierney just isn't cut out for "ladies man charm" but is perfect as a killer kept in check only by his ego and belief that no one is "making a monkey" out of him. Tierney was a genuinely strange dude. A real loose cannon and Hollywood legend for his hard living and short temper. So I can forgive the whole "suave" angle to the character and anyways, Claire Trevor saves it all by playing Helen Brent as someone crazy enough to fall for a psycho like Sam. She's drawn like a moth to a flame and knows it's bad for her but can't help it.

Rounding out the cast are Elisha Cook Jr. as Marty, Sam's enabling pal who is willing to kill for Sam. Esther Howard plays the drunken and slatternly Mrs. Kraft, renter of a woman that Sam kills in the first reel, and she's great in this. She's an actress on that Susan Tyrrell level; she's all too real at playing a desperate woman that it doesn't feel like an act. At all. Walter Slezak plays a sleezy but erudite private detective named Arnett hired by Mrs. Kraft to find Sa.

He Walked By Night - Film Noir that turns out to be the template for Dragnet. It even has Jack Webb in a small role as a police lab technician. And like Dragnet, this is a story based on actual events where only the names have been changed to protect the innocent and all that. They actually say it in the narration. But don't let that stop you or start you. 

This is a pretty cool thriller about a thief named Roy Martin (played by Richard Basehart) who is stopped by an off-duty police officer demanding to see some ID, so of course Martin shoots the cop and runs away. It happens that Martin is also an electronics expert and can monitor police radio frequencies. Which I imagine was ingenuitive in 1948. Basehart gives a great performance that really draws you in and root for this desperate criminal. I'm sure the producer's intent was for us to side with the police, since so much of the film focuses on them, but Basehart makes an irresistible anti-hero.

It all ends with a thrilling chase through the then-new Los Angeles storm drainage tunnels and even predates the production of The Third Man. John Alton is the cinematographer, so we're in good hands there. It's all chiaroscuro and sculpted shadows, even in the interior scenes, which in some Film Noirs can tend to be the more mundane and "straight-up" shots.

The Domino Principle - By 1977 the Paranoid Thriller was perhaps a bit too familiar. The Domino Principle certainly thinks it can get by with bad cinematography, bad acting, and a paper thin story to still reel in the Parallax View crowd. It's directed by Stanley Kramer and stars Gene Hackman, Richard Widmark, and Eli Wallach. It should have been so much better!

It begins with a few minutes of opening narration (who was doing opening narration in dramatic films in 1977? No one.) about how crazy the world has become and how one man can be turned into an assassin if his life has gone horribly wrong. And with that we're introduce to Vietnam war vet Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman) who got caught with a murder rap when he killed his lover (Candace Bergen) Ellie's abusive husband. One day Tucker is visited by Mr. Tagge (Widmark) who offers him a deal; he'll be released from prison if he will assassinate someone for the government. Tucker will do it on one condition, that his cell mate Spiventa (a surprisingly pervy Mickey Rooney) is released too. I've no idea how long Tucker has been in jail at this point of the story but he must have a fondness for Spiventa's fascination with talking about pussy, because Mickey Rooney sure mentions it enough.

So they get released but the government agents kill Spiventa once they're out of San Quentin. This makes Tucker sulk and moan for about 45 minutes and drags the film down into the doldrums. Even when he's reunited with Ellie, Tucker is a moaning bastard and the audience has to sit through Vaseline smeared shots of Popeye Doyle fucking Murphy Brown and it isn't pretty. Not by a long shot. Candace Bergin has a horrific hair-do that has to be a wig. I'm surprised to see Bergin play the thankless "girlfriend" role who cries and whines about how much she's scared for her man.

Eli Wallach shows up as a mysterious General and Eddie Albert (Junior) plays an arrogant young agent who antagonizes Tucker; sometimes just to be a prick for being a prick's sake.

Oh yeah. Lots of shit gets blown up. For no reason at all. For a clandestine government agency you'd think they'd be more adept at covering their tracks. Oh wait, this is a movie so they people producing the film might just be blowing shit up for kicks.

Which is too bad because the film starts well. The recruitment of Tucker is not as cut & dry as I mention above. There are a number of scenes of Tagge psychoanalyzing Tucker that are actually intersting and well acted by Widmark and Hackman. But try as they might, they can't keep this turkey afloat. The film really fails at never establishing why they need Tucker to work for them and who he's supposed to kill and why that would be important. As it stands, it's hard to care about any of this. Seems like they made this film so the crew could visit San Francisco and Mexico and have a good time.

Five Months In Review

Ah, the blog. I haven't forgotten about you, I swear. I am happy to report that I have pared down the backlog of movies on the DVR to a mere 75% full.

This is an accomplishment I feel very proud of. Really. Because I've watched a shit ton of movies in the last few months. Since the last time I've written anything, DirecTV found it in their hearts to give us a few free premium channels so I've now found my viewing options increase by ten. The good thing is that I've at least knocked the DVR list down to enough space so Jean can record all of our regular shows without wondering if we'll run out of hard drive space.

Sadly, I still haven't got around to watching Citizen Kane or Greaser's Palace which occupy the very bottom of the list. One day. You really need to be in the right mood for a Robert Downey Sr. film. And I don't want to try and watch Kane late at night, which is when I usually have the time to watch this stuff.

So let's get to it! These will all be pretty short but to the point.

The Classics

Journey Into Fear - Great WWII espionage thriller starring Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles and the rest of The Mercury Players. The craziest thing is that it only clocks in at around one hour and ten minutes. They sure packed a lot into a film in the good old days. Rumors abound that RKO cut plenty of material out, but it doesn't make it a bad film at all. If anything, the brevity of it is refreshing. A rare "old film" that feels modern today. The chase scene around the hotel window ledge is thrilling and the camerawork is incredibly innovative for the 1940's.

The Lady From Shanghai - Welles stars and directs as an Irish sailor (with a questionable accent) caught up in a web of intrigue surrounding an unhappily married couple played by bruised violet Rita Hayworth and the great shifty and bug eyed Everett Sloane. Extra points go to Glenn Anders as the scheming and sleazy George Grisby. A cliched set-up but done right by Welles and Company. The hall of mirrors ending is mesmerising

The Harder They Fall - Only in the 1950's could a film about the backstage world of boxing be a mainstream Hollywood production. Humphrey Bogart stars as a down on his luck press agent hired by Rod Steiger to promote a talentless but physically impressive South American boxer. Steiger steals the show anytime he's on screen. The story is interesting as it uses the world of boxing to comment on how people in power try to manipulate popular opinion through the media. Or at least that's what I got out of it.

The Big Sleep - Bogey & Bacall. We all know the drill. But is it any good as a Chandler adaptation? Well yes and no. They do get away with implying at the sex scandal and blackmail plot of the book. And the snappy patter is certainly there but for my tastes it veers into being arch, especially when any villains are threatening Marlowe. There's not much threat to it and it just sounds like snappy dialogue that isn't very menacing. But this is definitely better than the other old school Hollywood versions of Chandler's novels. Then again, I think The Long Goodbye is the best Chandler adaptation (as opposed to slavishly following every word) and certainly Elliott Gould is the definitive film Marlowe who speaks in snappy banter that's really disguised Shit Talk and allows himself to get pissed off and tell off his client or the cops from time to time. But for most people The Big Sleep is the definitive (read "cliched") version of Chandler to the point that it's the short-hand version whenever Film Noir or Hard Boiled Detective genres are parodied or satirized (see: Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid).

White Heat - Top of the world Ma! Damn right! Cagney's return to the Gangster genre is another definitive and/or cliched point in film making but it roars along and doesn't take any prisoners. And the weird Gay Subtext between Edmond O'Brien as an undercover cop infiltrating Cagney's gang is screamingly obvious. I hope audiences of 1949 caught on to it.

The Big Heat - Classic Film Noir directed by Fritz Lang. Honest cop Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) uncovers corruption while investigating the apparent suicide of a fellow cop. He soon finds out nearly the whole department is on the take from the town's head mobster Lagana. Gloria Graeme plays Debby Marsh, girlfriend of Lagana's main enforcer Vince Stone (Lee Marvin) who burns her face with hot coffee when Debby is seen talking to Bannion in a nightclub. The Big Heat could be considered a precursor to the Paranoid Thriller of Post-Watergate America. The unnamed city the story takes place in could be Chicago or it could be Cleveland or Omaha. It's left ambiguous and supports the idea that this could be happening anywhere in America.

The Naked City - Now this is couldn't happen anywhere BUT New York City. Truth be told, I almost wish the whole film was like the opening ten minutes; a documentary-like peek into the lives of New Yorkers. But the police procedural story is just fine if a little slow for my modern eyes. Barry Fitzgerald bears a striking resemblance to Patton Oswalt, so it's fun trying to imagine this starring Patton instead. The final chase scene on The Willamsburg Bridge is remarkable. I don't think a lot of films used locations like The Naked City did in 1948. Director Jules Dassin treats the location shots as something new and exciting an that excitement can still be felt today.

Night and The City - Jules Dassin goes from the streets of NYC to London in this Film Noir gem. Richard Widmark stars as Harry Fabian, a hustler who tries to make it in the pro wrestling business after he meets an old school wrestler Gregorious and his protege Nikolas. But Gregorious' son Kristo is not pleased as this will cut into his hold over the wrestling biz of London. Googie Withers and Francis Sullivan play a husband and wife team that own the nightclub that Harry hangs out in and they too get caught up in Harry's schemes. A Film Noir that has nothing to do with detectives or femme fatales. Kind of. Googie Withers' Helen Nosseross could be considered a femme fatale but she doesn't really bring about Harry's downfall and her husband Philip is left alive at the end of the film. Like The Naked City we get a broad spectrum of a city's underworld although in that film not every character mattered or played a part int he story as a whole. Night and The City makes great use of all of its players.

Pick Up On South Street - Samuel Fuller's excellent B-film that really is an A-picture. Fuller tailored the part of pick-pocket and three time loser Skip McCoy for Richard Widmark and Widmark knocks it out of the park. Jean Peters plays Candy, a woman used by a Communist agent to transport stolen microfilm to another agent. Which sounds completely bonkers and cliched, but Fuller makes it work. And man, Jean Peters is incredibly beautiful in this. Thelma Ritter co-stars as Moe, an underworld informant who leads the police to Skip. A film that really works despite the influence of production-codes and censorship on part of the studios and government.

D.O.A. - Hey! It's Edmond O'Brien again and this time he isn't trying to make time with Jimmy Cagney in prison. I have a confession to make. I watched this around midnight or 1am and while I was kept up by the interesting camera work in the opening shot and the Wow Man Crazy Hep Cat Dig Those Negroes Playing Jazz! club scene, the rest of D.O.A. was kind of tedious. The camera work becomes a lot more static and reminiscent of 1950's TV more than anything. The extensive talking head scenes put me to sleep. Sorry Film Noir buffs, I really wanted to like it. Not sure if I'll run a the chance to reevaluate it soon.

Diabolique - I'd never seen Henri Georges Clouzot's suspense masterpiece before but of course was familiar with the premise and the 1990's Sharon Stone remake. Paul Meurisse plays Michel Delasalle with the perfect mix of charm and bastardry. The next to last twist is especially gruesome. Who knew fake eyeballs could be so unnerving?

Terror In A Texas Town - This just sounded crazy from the TV listing. Here's what imdb has listed. "A Swedish whaler is out for revenge when he finds out that a greedy oil man murdered his father for their land." What? Yeah. Sterling Hayden speaking with a really unconvincing Swedish accent-yaaaaaa. And his weapon of choice for showdowns in a whaling harpoon! The film on a whole isn't completely terrible. It was written by Dalton Trumbo and deals with the venerable subject of land grabbing in the Olde West. It's got some great actors in it. Sebastian Cabot plays Ed McNeil, the money grubbing dirty dealing bastard who either buys people's land or kills them for it. You can tell he must have loved every minute as this character. Playing his hired gun enforcer Johnny Crale is Ned Young who gives Johnny some motivation of being full of self-loathing and thinks his best days as a gunman are behind him. And he's dressed head-to-toe in black. So he's not overcompensating one bit, no sir. A unique Western for sure. Not for everyone, but I'm a die-hard Sterling Hayden fan.

Burt Reynolds

Lucky Lady - Who knew that there existed a film that was one part homage to the Good Old Days of Film and one part love triangle between Burt Reynolds, Liza Minelli, and Gene Fucking Hackman? Not me. Not me. This is a weird one. Liza and Burt are American ex-pats living in Mexico making a living working in a nightclub and running immigrants across the border. Somehow Gene Hackman is stuck in Mexico and tries sneaking back into America with Burt's crew and customers. When that fails, Gene decides to run booze to the U.S. with Burt & Liza. Somewhere along the way they fall foul of John Hillerman and his gang. Yes. Higgins from Magnum P.I. running a gang of aquatic bootleggers. And the always magnificent Geoffrey Lewis shows up as a Coast Guard captain hellbent on catching bootleggers. I can see what Stanley Donnen is going for here. Burt is most definitely playing the "Clark Gable" role while Hackman is kind of a "Spencer Tracy" type and Liza is the "Judy Garland". But there the throw-backs end and the three-way-sex innuendos begin and things stop working. The good news is that Burt is on form here and actually "acts" which isn't quite the case in our next film...

Fuzz - Norm MacDonald must have seen this flick a few times because his Burt impression is on the money. Gum chewing and smirking and laughing all the way through this supposed hard-nosed detective story taken from one of Ed McBain's many 87th Precinct books. I've never read any of them so I don't know how well those recurring characters are portrayed here but just on a subjective experience, they seem like a bunch of idiots. The film feels like they're trying to go for the irreverence of M*A*S*H (and look, Tom Skerritt plays a cop in this!) and maybe Dragnet. Yul Bryner plays The Deaf Man, the criminal mastermind from the books who taunts the cops. But going by Fuzz, The Deaf Man isn't all that smart since the "crime wave" of the film is pretty lame. Oh yeah, Raquel Welch is in this too as a female cop new to the force but she hardly interacts with anyone. Strange.

Rough Cut - Another throw back the old days of film starring Burt as a roguish and charming thief living in England. David Niven co-stars a police detective about to retire who wants to catch Burt in his final case. This time it's a Don Seigel production but he's let down by cinematographer Freddie Young, which is strange because Young frequently collaborated with David Lean in the 60's. Maybe the lighting grips were just bad on this one? Every scene is lit horribly. Like they only had had three hard lights with no modifying devices at all. How do you make Lesley-Anne Down look bad? Burt assembles a crew to rob a Dutch diamond wholesalers. So they had me there. Patrick Magee is the ex-Nazi pilot they get, but he's kind of wasted here, but then again, you can't expect a Clockwork Orange or Barry Lyndon style performance from Magee in a Burt Reynolds picture... So, not very essential but serviceable like most Don Seigel films. For a Post-Smokey & The Bandit Burt film, Burt does a good job here and even does a few bad Cary Grant and Bogey impressions.

Deal - This seems like some 20-something rich kids got a bunch of money to make a lame remake of The Color of Money but with Poker instead of Pool. I deleted this thing after 30 minutes. The Burt Factor is good as he plays the washed up old mentor but the kid playing the apprentice isn't and the whole lifestyle portrayed here is of spoiled frat boys, so not a character that will gain my sympathy. And the kid can't act. And Poker is played the fuck out.

60's & 70's

Ice Station Zebra - While I didn't have many nice things to say about The Magnificent Seven, I have got to give props to John Sturges on this one. Patrick McCoohan shows us how James Bond should have always been played as British spy David Jones who is on board a U.S. submarine enroute to the South Pole to check on a station that has been attacked. Yes there are a lot of cliches to the plot but the performances are what sell it. Rock Hudson is great as the sub commander James Faraday and Ernest Borgnine plays Russian defector  Boris Vaslov perfectly.

The Bride Wore Black - Francois Truffaut's sketchy tribute to Hitchcock, kind of. There are some gigantic leaps of disbelief to take here. Raoul Coutard reportedly fought with Truffaut about how to shoot this and going by what we got, Truffaut should have listened to Coutard. Shit is just flat and over-lit for most of the film and I'm willing to bet that wasn't Coutard's idea. So Jeanne Moreau plays Julie, a woman whose husband was killed on her wedding day. She then goes out to exact revenge upon the five men who were responsible for it. And she murders or causes their deaths in very odd ways. Oddest is the man who she traps inside a closet and then duct-tapes the door frame shut so that he suffocates. Somehow. Because he couldn't kick a door down or perhaps just get oxygen through any number of ways. The shit just don't make sense. The film improves when Julie becomes a model for the artist she seeks revenge from and that story becomes more fleshed out than the others that are more like vignettes. Not my favorite Truffaut film and to be honest, I'm not a large admirer of Truffaut to begin with.

Bad Company - I can't recommend this film enough. Robert Benton and David Newman of Bonnie & Clyde fame wrote and Benton directed this film about a group of young men fleeing conscription into The Union Army during The Civil War and living by their wits. Barry Brown plays Drew Dixon, a young man from an upper class family that has already lost two sons to The Army so they send Drew out on his own to go West. But he's a trusting and naive kid so on his first trip to a town he gets bamboozled by Jake Rumsey (Jeff Bridges) and soon enough falls in with Rumsey's crew of misfits. The story has the same kind of sad inevitability of Edward Bunker's novel Little Boy Blue. By the end of the film Drew and Jake have been held up by a gang of real outlaws (led by David Huddleston featuring Geoffrey Lewis and Ed Lauter) and betrayed by their own friends and each other. Cinematographer Gordon Willis was just off of The Godfather and his talents are on display in every frame. I'm buying this on DVD for sure. And it's the first time The Dude and The Big Lebowski are on screen together!

Performance - Nicholas Roeg's mind bending look at identity filtered through London gangsters and hedonistic freaks. James Fox plays Chas, a cold-blooded gangster on the run who takes refuge renting the basement flat of Turner (Mick Jagger). Anita Pallenberg co-stars as Turner's lover Pherber. I'd heard about this film for years and it doesn't disappoint in how creepy and cool it is. The gangster plot of the first half of the film is magnificent and James Fox is incredibly cold and arrogant as Chas and when he goes on the run, he dyes his hair bright red and become a Punk precursor nearly 10 years early. Performance is a must-see for anyone interested in where Mick Jagger's head was at during The Rolling Stones peak-era of Beggar's Banquet through Exile On Main Street.

The Wicker Man - If you ever wanted to see a film that featured Edward Woodward as a Scottish policeman, Christopher Lee in a dress, pagan rituals, and few jaunty song and dance numbers, this if for you. My friend Ben described this film as such and by god he was right on the money. I always assumed this was a straight-up horror movie since it's always located in Horror section of every video store ever, but it is definitely more than that. Lots of great British/UK character actors abound as well as Britt Ekland and the Teutonic Ingrid Pitt.

Race With the Devil - Peter Fonda & Warren Oates star as buddies on a road trip with their wives in a RV who accidentally witness a pagan ritual killing in rural Texas. One of those again. Like The Wicker Man, they soon realize that everyone in the town is part of the cult and out to get them. Loretta Switt and Lara Parker co-star as the wives but really all they get to do is scream and cry. There's a kind of an implied wife-swapping thread in the beginning that never really gets picked up. It definitely plays the 1970's Paranoia card but damn, this movie is ridiculous. Good for a laugh but by no means Oates or even Fonda's best work.

The Hospital - George C. Scott plays the depressed and suicidal Doctor Bock who is fed up with the level of incompetence on display at his hospital. Diana Rigg (who is incredibly beautiful here) plays the slightly hippie-dippie daughter of a patient who lives on a Sioux reservation who reinvigorates Bock. Oh yeah, there's a murder plot in here too between Scott's angry rants about the world. No surprise that this was written by Paddy  "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!" Chayefsky of Network fame. So it's all a bit over wrought but still an interesting look into the world of medicine.

Days of Heaven - I hate say this did NOT live up to the hype. I've heard so much about Terrance Malick's poetic visual style over the years but I guess my idea of a "poetic film making" also requires the director to care as much about the actor's performances as he does about shots of wind blowing through fields of grass. Not to be a dick but anyone can film a sunrise and sunset and get beautiful images. The problem for me with Days of Heaven is in the cast. Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, and Sam Shepard are all so blank that it's hard to care about them or elevate them to enigmas. And it's not that I don't "get" non-linear narratives (and actually this film is incredibly linear with regards to sequence) but rather I've seen it done by others much better. Bertolucci, Antonioni, Godard, and Fellini for instance. So yes, the film is beautifully shot and I get the arc of tragedy and religious analogy but I just don't like the acting. And the narration by little Brooklynese scamp Linda is fucking annoying.

Frances - Grim grim grim biographical film of Hollywood tragedy Frances Farmer. Jessica Lange gives a brave and moving performance as Frances goes from small town teenager with a surprisingly philosophical refutation of religion to Hollywood actress to Hollywood pariah to traumatized mental hospital patient. The only trouble with the film is that Frances Farmer was never lobotomized in real life nor raped by hospital staff. So the power of that part of the story is hard to keep but at the time that was what was written about Farmer's life and accepted as fact.

Serpico - Jesus, maybe I'm a dick but by the end of the film I was rooting for the cops on the take to shoot Serpico's self-righteous ass. This could have only been made like it is in 1973. Bit of a let down. If you love watching Al Pacino scream a lot and knock you over the head with what a Right-On and With-It kind of guy he is for a cop, this is for you.

The Nickel Ride - I'll say that while Fox Movie Channel is no Turner Classic Movies, they do play some obscure picks from time to time like this 1970's neo-noir about a low level Los Angeles mobster Cooper, played by Jason Miller of The Exorcist fame. So it's like a companion piece to The Friends of Eddie Coyle but even more bleary eyes and jaundiced. If you can believe that. It was shot by Blade Runner cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth and it shows. Gorgeous stuff. Southern Gent Bo Hopkins plays Turner, a strange cocaine cowboy hit man sent to confound and confuse Cooper and us as to what his intentions are. Rounding out the cast is John Hillerman (again! I keep picking stuff he's in) as Cooper's higher up in the mob as well as other great character actors who play Cooper's pals in the neighborhood. Not the most clearly told story as it starts to veer off in to dream sequences and hallucinations on Cooper's part, but a very worthwhile and forgotten film.

The Outfit - Another long lost (as in still only available on VHS) but not forgotten 70's noir adapted from the great Richard Stark "Parker" novel. Reportedly this was Stark aka Donald Westlake's favorite adaptation and portrayal of Parker, here named "Earl Macklin" and played by the always great Robert Duvall. There are a few changes to the book made, but ultimately this is the most faithful rendering of a Parker story I've seen. It's certainly better than the 80's attempt at Slayground which jettisoned most of the book's plot and dialogue. But back to The Outfit. It's directed by John Flynn of Rolling Thunder fame and he does a great job of keeping the suspense and matter-of-fact brutal humor of Westlake intact. The only real criticism I can give is that the film fails to make the most of Timothy Carey as "Menner" the mobster responsible for killing Macklin's brother. Gone too are the vignettes of Parker, I mean Macklin letting other independent professional thieves know that it's open season on The Outfit. But those are small things, and really, I'm sure they did their best with old Timothy Carey on-set. The man had a reputation for being eccentric with good reason.

Dillinger - Warren Oates can do no wrong in my book. He's charming and dangerous in John Milius's version of the Dillinger legend. Of course not every historical event is accurate, but then no one would ever be able to make a fast-paced and interesting film if they were slavishly keeping to reality. This distills the Dillinger myth just right. When holding people up Warren Oates gives it his all when he tells them that he's making them famous for being robbed by John Dillinger. And guess who makes an appearance? None other than Geoffrey Lewis! So do Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Dreyfuss and Mama Michelle Phillips. Proof once again the importance of Roger Corman and AIP in developing talent. You can tell this was sold on the popularity of Bonnie & Clyde but Milius doesn't try to make Oates and Phillips a sexy couple like Beatty & Dunaway but rather goes for something else; telling a damn good John Dillinger story.

Big Bad Mama - Another AIP film trying to cash in on Bonnie & Clyde but going less hard boiled and more trashy. As in TRASHY. As in creepy sex scenes between Angie Dickinson and William Shatner trashy. A good drinking game for this movie would be to shotgun a beer after every tit flash. You'd be buzzed in 20 minutes and wasted by the end. I'm not sure if I ever want to see William Shatner speaking with a southern accent again, but at least I can die knowing I have. This movie is good fun.

Magnum Force - The first sequel to Dirty Harry and the first attempt to humanize and soften the fascist aspect of Harry's vigilante justice. Screenplay by Michael Cimino and John Milius, which is notable for Milius's own political leanings, which tend to be independent right-leaning. I mean, he is the inspiration for the character of Walter Sobchak. So we find Harry up against a cadre of new vigilante police officers who have support from higher up in command. So they've co-opted Harry's stance and taken it to extremes. Which is a good way to go with the premise and which starts to build the foundation of the whole franchise. Playing the rookie cops are David Soul, Robert Urich, Tim Matheson, and Kip Niven with Soul and Matheson given the majority of screen time, and who plays a better cocky young bastard better than Tim Matheson? Evidently only David Soul.

The French Connection - I'd never seen this all the way through! It's good; don't get me wrong but it's a bit murky and sloppy too. I can see why it won the Best Picture award over A Clockwork Orange since it's a bit more palatable to 1971 audiences but minus the famous chase scene the cinematography and editing leave much to be desired. Of course Gene Hackman is great and Roy Scheider too. I do love the scene where they dismantle the car looking for the smuggled heroin. And hey, William Friedkin gets to indulge his Francophile habits here with the scenes in French.

The Night They Raided Minsky's - A pretty obscure early film from Friedkin that revolves around a vaudeville theatre. Not sure if I ever need to see it again, but it is interesting to see Elliott Gould, Britt Ekland, Norman Wisdom and Jason Robards in the same film.

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry - Peter Fonda, you beautiful bastard, good job! Adam Roarke and Susan George too! What other movie will you see a helicopter chasing a car? That isn't done with CGI? And it all predates Smokey & The Bandit by three years! What it lacks in southern culture it makes up for in crazy dialogue and performance.

Convoy - Sam Peckinpah goes Altman-esque in this post-Smokey & The Bandit car picture based on C.W. McCall's song. It has no business being as good as it is! Kris Kristofferson plays "Rubber Duck" as a truck driver who crosses the line with nasty lawman Sheriff Lyle Wallace (Ernest Borgnine) which leads to a cross country chase and rebellion by the truck drivers of America. Rubber Duck is helped along the way by rich girl on the run Melissa (played by a very tan and Jehri curled fashion victim Ali MacGraw). The supporting cast are great and as I've said before (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid post) Peckinpah is a skilled director at more than just action sequences.

Smile - I recorded this just because Bruce Dern was in it. I soon found that this was part of Robert Wuhl's night of co-hosting on TCM and he picked this film because he saw it on the early days of cable so many times. It's directed by Michael Ritchie (The Altman of Wisconsin). It's a character study of small town hosting a beauty contest and yes, there are plenty of tits and ass and some character arcs are a little heavy handed, but it's a great insight into 1970's America. On the strength of Bruce Dern's role in this movie, he NEEDS to play Michael Scott's dad on The Office immediately. The ensemble cast is amazing. Barbara Feldon gives a great performance as the den mother for the contestants who is navigating a dysfunctional marriage. Geoffrey Lewis strikes again as an overbearing organizer for the contest. Annette O'Toole, Melanie Griffith, and Colleen Camp play contestants. Conrad Hall shot it, so it looks great. Highly recommended.

The Big 80's

HEALTH - Altman's high concept ensemble comedy revolving around a health conference and their election of a new president. So it's a bit of a goof on health nuts and the 1980 presidential election. Lauren Bacall plays an old Hollywood actress prone to blackouts who is running on name recognition and sound bites against Gelnda Jackson's uber-liberal and possibly lesbian candidate. Carol Burnett and James Garner play an estranged couple who meet up and hook up by happenstance during the convention. It's a bit erratic and not the most acclaimed Altman film but it's worth a look.

Britannia Hospital - Last in the loose trilogy of Mick Travis films by Lindsay Anderson that began with If... and O Lucky Man! starring Malcolm MacDowell. Although Mick Travis only plays a side role in this satire of Thatcher-era Britain. The real star is Leonard Rossiter at his uncomfortable and best as the hospital's chief of operations. He's preparing for a visit from Queen Elizabeth II and trying to silence protests of the Idi Amin-like general who is being treated there. The other plot is that of Prof. Millar (wonderfully mad Graham Crowden) and his team who are looking to create new life which might entail using old body parts. It's not for everyone, that's for sure. I watched it with my British friend Ben who was able to elucidate for me what some of the targets of satire were. So this is very of its day. And where else can you see Mark Hamill smoke a giant joint?

The Survivors - Another good social commentary Michael Ritchie film this time focusing on bumbling loser Robin Williams and his brush with fame when he disrupts a robbery in a restaurant by desperate professional criminal Jerry Reed. But Jerry's got plans for Robin and his pal Walter Mathau who just wants to be left alone. Somewhere in there Robin joins a militia and things get crazy. Good fun this one.

Tempest - Overly pretentious "modern" adaptation of Shakespeare's play done up in 1980's New York with John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Molly Ringwald, and Susan Sarandon. It's a good idea and might have worked but it's just very heavy handed and overly serious and then from time to time just goofy, like any scene with Raul Julia as "Kalibanos". I don't know. I don't know my Shakespeare that well so maybe this is an incredibly faithful-to-the-tone film.

Tough Guys Don't Dance - Sweet jesus, you'd think Norman Mailer could direct actors speaking his own fucking dialogue better than this. What a train wreck. Not even Lawrence Tierney can save this turn from floating to the bottom. It's worth viewing just to see how ba d a film can be. Maybe someone can invent a drinking game for it. But if you had to take a shot for every horrific Foghorn Leghorn Suthun' Accentuh spoken, you'd be hammered in 20 minutes. Did Macho Man Norman Mailer think that Ryan O'Neal's house and just about everyother set should be done up in pussy-assed pastel colors? I know it was the 80's but this film is like watching a Cosby sweater for two hours. Everyone involved needs to have their heads examined. Isabella Rosellini is wasted. Angelo Badalamenti's soundtrack is too. Ryan O'Neal is a personality vacuum. Who thought he'd be a good lead for this? Norman Mailer, you stand guilty of fucking up your own book.

52 Pick Up - Grim and gritty Elmore Leonard adaptation that gets the Noir aspects right but ditches Leonard's signature humor for the most part. While the sets and music and clothes are all very 1986, there are some strong performance from Roy Scheider as the blackmailed factory owner and John Glover as the sadistic blackmailer. Look for cameos from real-life porn actors Ron Jeremy, Herschel Savage, Tom Byron, and others.

The Pick Up Artist - Robert Downey Jr. plays charming young school teacher who gets caught up with Molly Ringwald and her alcoholic father Dennis Hopper who owes money to gangster Harvey Keitel. So we get some high-concept 80's action on what I always thought was a character piece on Robert Downey Jr. and his love of women. Weird mash up of stories. This is written & directed by James Toback who at least is skilled enough to juggle these two ideas well. Feels like the studio wanted the action stuff, but maybe that was Toback's vision all along.

8 Millions Ways to Die - Very 80's thriller based on a book by Lawrence Block. Hal Ashby supposedly directed this but this is from his darkest drug days before he died so it's not up to the standards of Harold & Maude, Being There, Coming Home, or The Last Detail. Jeff Bridges plays an alcoholic cop who gets kicked off the force who still tries to bust up a coke ring led by the scenery chewing Andy Garcia. Rosanna Arquette plays the sassy love interest. Not everyone's best work.

The 90's and Beyond

Crash - I wonder why Stanley Kubrick went ahead with making Eyes Wide Shut when Crash pretty much does it all much better and creepier. Not to say that stories are similar; they aren't really, but as far as a film that has Name-Stars revealing sexual fantasies and living them out, James Spader out does Tom Cruise by miles. Cruise never even has sex in Eyes Wide Shut. While I do think Eyes Wide Shut is a great film and we're always lucky to have another Kubrick film around, Kubrick was treading on Cronenberg and David Lynch's territory and didn't completely succeed.

But enough of that eh? Crash is adapted from J.G. Ballard's scathing comment on modern society and our obsessions and fetishes of fame and technology. So perfect material for Cronenberg to cover. Crash is a haunting and eerie journey. One crazy fact: Cinematographer Peter Suschitzky in addition to working many times with Cronenberg also shot The Empire Strikes Back!

Barton Fink - It had been years since I'd since this and it still holds up as the Coen Brothers' oddest film. As this is a Coen Brothers film, every part is cast perfectly and every part adds to the whole.

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane - Guilty pleasure this is and the Fox Movie Channel has been showing it nearly every other day for months. And I'll be damned if it doesn't hold up well as a fine example of the Bruckheimer/Simpson school of hyper-stylized action films. And Andrew Dice Clay is fucking hilarious as Ford Fairlane, and while it's all cheesy, he really does give Ford a vulnerable side and makes him sympathetic. And who doesn't love Ed O'Neill in this? Wayne Newton too! Fuck it, take my film connoisseur license away, I love this movie! You couldn't look for a better time capsule of 1990 anywhere.

Love & A .45 - Low grade Tarrantino-lite indie from 1994 that has plenty of charm but not enough plot or interesting characters to pull it all off. When future archaeologist want to find what an Indie Film from the 1990's looks like, they couldn't find a much better example than this.

Fall Time - Or this. Another Tarantino-lite neo-noir crossed with Twin Peaks set in a 1950's small town where three friends plan to pull a practical joke bank robbery intersects with a real robbery perpetrated by Mickey Rourke and his gay lover Stephen Baldwin. And Sheryl Lee figures in on the heist too and she is the best thing in this movie. If you've ever wanted to see David Arquette shot to death (and who hasn't?) than get out and see this film immediately. This would be so much better with a re-edit since the cutting between Stephen Baldwin holding the boys hostage at the cabin and Mickey Rourke interrogating Jason London is bad. The camerawork is great though.

Factotum - I did my best but this was just awful. Turgid. Plodding. "Indie" in all the worst ways. I just kept an eye out for Minneapolis and St. Paul locations after a while. There must be a better way to make a film out of a Bukowski story. Oh wait, there is. It's called Barfly.

Holy Smoke - Jane Campion loves a naked Harvey Kietel. And who doesn't? What's funny is that Kate Winslet's family are portrayed as such venal and provincial middle-class burghers that you're left to wonder if she was better off living in India with a Hindu-cult. Maybe. But the scenes of Keitel and Winslet battle of wills is remarkable.

Extract - In 1993, who would have guessed that Mike Judge would be one of the best American writer/directors of the 21st Century? His eye for the mundane and average world of today and then holding up a distorted reflection of it makes him The Luis Bunuel of Middle America. Is that too bold? Well, it's true. Extract is the spiritual sequel to Office Space. It could be taking place just down the road of the office park from Innotech.

Jason Bateman does his thing as he's beset on all sides as Joel, the owner of a flavoring company, that is trying to sell to General Mills after factory worker Step Wilkinson is involved in a workplace accident that robs him of one of his testicles. Oh, that old story. Mila Kunis plays "Cindy", a grifter out to encourage Step to sue the company so she can take the money from him. And it gets better than that as Bateman's sexual frustrations with his wife Suzie (Kristen Wiig) lead him to hanging out with his old buddy Dean (Ben Affleck in fine form) who's a bartender at the local Marriot. Every character is a great reflection of America today. We all know people like this. Gene Simmons has a great bit role as Step's sleazy lawyer and David Koechner steals the show as Joel & Suzie's passive/aggressive neighbor from hell who has a heart attack when they finally tell him to get lost.

Big Fan - Patton Oswalt stars as sad sack and die-hard NY Giants fan Paul Aufiero. The kind of fan that is a regular caller to sports radio shows. One night he and his friend Sal follow Giants star Quantrell Bishop to a strip club and try to hang out with him and his entourage. Which only gets them beat up. Paul now has to face the dilemma of pressing charges against Quantrell which will get him suspended for the rest of the season, therefore ruining the Giants season. What's really inspired about this film is that Paul takes the third option; he uses his powers of stalking to find the bane of his radio show existence, Philadelphia Phil and pulls a nasty prank on him. And since Philadelphia Phil is played by the greatest East Coast Chooch performer of our time, Michael Rappaport, who can blame him?

The Devil's Rejects - Rob Zombie knows how to make a great horror film. This was way better than I thought it would be. Not so much based on Gore Horror as it is on Sadism. Sid Haig gets his time in the spotlight after years of bit player parts and holy shit is he great as creepy clown Captain Spaulding. William Forsythe brings the rage as Sheriff Wydell, the lawman with a grudge against Spaulding and his two psychotic kids, Otis and Baby. Geoffrey Lewis shows up as the father of a family that Otis and Baby terrorize in the first half of the film, and he's great as always. Man, that dude is a great actor. Danny Trejo and Diamond Dallas Page play bounty hunters out to get Spaulding and Family and I would pay top dollar to see a film all about them. Like Grindhouse, it's a very post-modern yet loving take on 70's and 80's b-films. Hands down, my favorite scene is when Wydell and his men realize that Captain Spaulding uses aliases that are references to Groucho Marx characters. So what do they do to try and anticipate his next move? They bring in the local Bumfuck, Texas town's movie critic who looks just like Gene Shallet and can't shut the fuck up about his theories about everything. Perfectly mad and out of nowhere.

Quantum of Solace - Daniel Craig is a bad ass James Bond but I definitely felt like this was a continuation of the story from Casino Royale, which I haven't seen, so I was scratching my head at some of the dialogue. Oh well, it's a Bond flick so it's all very well produced. Not one for the ages, but then again there hasn't been a "classic" Bond film since Roger Moore's day. I don't think I could see Alan Partridge re-enacting The Quantum of Solace in its entirety, theme song and credits included.

Documentaries

Lynch - Ostensibly this is a documentary about the production of David Lynch's latest film Inland Empire but really it's more of an anecdotal sketch of Lynch and his life's story. We don't even see filming of Inland Empire until about an hour into the film. But it is interesting to see that Lynch's direction for actors isn't as vague as we've been led to believe over the years. He can also be a bit of a prick on-set too, which was surprising.

Manufactured Landscapes - A look at the process of Edward Burtynsky's photography of factories and landfills produced by our modern technological society. The film follows Burtynsky from Chinese factories that stretch for miles to chemically polluted dumps where recycled electronics wind up. Sobering and austere look at what progress has done to the earth and the people living on it.

Visual Acoustics: Julius Schulman - A very fun film about and starring the renowned architectural photographer. Lots of insight into how he fell into photographing architecture and anecdote about his dealing with legendary Modernist architects. Well into his 90's, he still has strong feelings and ideas about what makes good architecture.

Way Out West

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Kris Kristofferson stars as Billy the Kid and James Coburn as Pat Garrett, Billy's old pal who is now a sheriff sent to bring Billy to justice. Which is a tough job. Bob Dylan also stars as Alias, a young drifter who joins with Billy and his men.

Some great flourishes, such as a quick shot of kids playing on a scaffold, swinging on the rope that Billy is to be hung from. When Billy is in custody a deputy is offended that he refuses to read the Bible and sing songs of Christ, so much so that the deputy kicks Billy out of his chair and holds a shotgun in his face until he says he repents. Great scene and it's the back cover of Bob Dylan's soundtrack album. After finding a pistol in the jail's outhouse, Billy shoots the deputies and makes a break for it. What's funny is that no one in the town tries to stop him. They see him as a hero.

The point of view is that Billy is a maverick outlaw, living truly free while Pat is a compromised man, owned by the rich landowners like Mr. Chisum of New Mexico who see Billy as a threat to their prosperity. But Pat wants to grow old and live a long life and has to make the hard choices to achieve that goal and if he has to track down his friend, he will.

Slim Pickens plays Sheriff Baker, a fellow lawman helping track down Billy, and gets one of the finest scenes in the film. Riding with Pat to question some known criminals in town the shooting starts immediately. Hit and critically wounded he makes his way towards a river to die in peace while "Knocking On Heaven's Door" plays in the background. He looks at his wife/deputy with sorrow and remorse as the sun begins to set. A magnificently understated scene.

As things play out to the inevitable conclusion, we get glimpses into Pat Garrett's singular methods of detection and police work, namely finding a saloon whore that he knows Billy is a regular for and having an orgy with her and three or four more girls. That was just how they did things back then.

Eventually Pat finds Billy hiding out on a ranch and ambushes him in the night. Since this is a Peckinpah film, it's highly stylized and not exactly keeping with recorded history. But that's why it's a film. The implied friendship between Pat & Billy is also considered not a fact but all the weight of the story comes from it. If they had changed the names of the characters and said this was outright fiction it'd be the same thing just without attention grabbing names attached.

As I've read up on the making of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid it sounds like one of the most intense sets ever. Final cut was taken away from Peckinpah and the film was not a great success. In 1988 Turner Entertainment released Peckinpah's director's cut which is what I assume I saw since this was recorded from TCM.

For Peckinpah's reputation as an action-only director, this film seemed like it had been directed by Robert Altman since the attention to peripheral characters was so great and the dialogue was just as biting and real to the era as it was in McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

Great film. Proving once again that in the case of Westerns, I certainly fall on the revisionist/anti-Western and Spaghetti Western side.

Monte Walsh

Another good revisionist Western starring Lee Marvin as the title character and Jack Palance as his good friend and fellow longtime cowboy, Chet. It's a good little film about how the West was done. Monte comes to grips with the fact that he's getting a little long in the tooth for cattle rustling and in fact, the world might no longer have much need for his ilk anymore.

Chet retires from the cowboy life and marries a widower who owns a hardware store. But tragedy strikes when their friend Shorty robs the store and kills Chet in cold blood. Monte eventually finds Shorty and avenges Chet's death.

Monte aims to settle down with longtime lady-friend, French call girl Martine Bernard (Jeanne Moreau) only to find that she has died, succumbing to tuberculosis. The film ends with Monte realizing that his way of life is soon to be extinct.

Bittersweet and well done. There are some excellent scenes involving the cowhands living on the ranch, eating the cook's terrible food and how they try to get revenge on him and how he gives it right back to them. Lee Marvin is great as Monte, all hangdog eyes and trying to find hope in a changing world.

The Magnificent Seven

The pace: glacial. The outcome of the film: obvious if you have seen Seven Samurai. The Mexicans: all speak with Professional Actor accents. Which is the most distracting thing ever. When Eli Wallach plays a more believable Mexican than real Mexicans...that's not good. These guys sound like they just got done doing cameos on Bewitched or The Beverly Hillbillies.

Even better are the attempts to explain away Yul Brynner's Russian accent by claiming his  character Chris is a Cajun (what?!). I guess the hard part about watching this was that I've seen Seven Samurai and while that tips the scales at 3 hours, The Magnificent Seven felt even longer somehow.

Again I know this heresy is really just a matter of taste and I am squarely not a fan of most traditional Westerns. And the fact that this film is 50 years old and was meant for a different standard of audience expectation.

The cast are quite good. Brynner is Brynner no matter what he does. Steve McQueen is great, if kept to the sides sometimes (because Bryner was also a producer on the film and didn't want to be overshadowed). Charles Bronson is good, if a little too flat as the dude who teaches the villagers how to fight and befriends the kids as a gentle giant. James Coburn does his thing. Brad Dexter is really great as Harry Luck who dies saving Chris. Robert Vaughn is great as Lee, the one member of the seven who suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and wrestles with his feelings that he is a coward.

And then we have Horst Buchholz taking us back to Outrageous Accent Landia again as his German accent doesn't really work for a character named "Chico". And he's not a very good actor either. They might as well have gone for it and got Sal Mineo if they wanted him.

The Magnificent Seven Ride!

Now this is more like it. The fourth and final film in the "Magnificent Seven..." franchise has little in common with its progenitor other than the character of "Chris" this time played by the great Lee Van Cleef must collect six other dudes to help a town in danger.

This is a different animal for sure and more to my liking than the original. With Van Cleef in the lead it's more like a Spaghetti Western crossed with The Dirty Dozen.

At this stage in the Magnificent Seven Mythos, Chris is now a Sheriff of a town and married. But not for long. Asked to help rid another town of a bad hombre named Juan De Toro (played by a dude named Ron Stein of course). Along the way his wife is brutally murdered so Chris decides to enlist five convicts and the journalist who has been following him around writing his life's story to defeat De Toro. Playing some of the seven are Young Gary Busey, Ed Lauter, and Luke Askew, the hitchhiker from the hippie commune in Easy Rider.

In the town, De Toro has killed nearly all of the men, simple farmers who couldn't defend themselves. Only the women are left. Upon arriving, Chris makes the unique decision that each one of his men should take on three women to defend. And stuff. To cheer him up over his wife's death, Chris takes the hottest of the widows, Laurie, played by Stefanie Powers, for himself. The old dog. Long story short, obviously they kill De Toro and his men and save the day. And Chris runs off with Laurie, even though his wife was only raped and murdered days ago. That's just how they did things in those days.

It's all a bit more violent and haphazard than the original ...Seven but that's not a bad thing. Definitely flawed but in a charming way. It stands in stark contrast to the overly polished original film.

Sabata

Now this is more like it. A straight up Spaghetti Western that is epic and over the top. Lee Van Cleef stars as the ruthless gunslinger and anti-hero Sabata who comes to a small town that is being clandestinely sold out by it's ruling elite. He teams up with fat drunken Civil War vet Carrincha (Pedro Sanchez) and his acrobat (!) friend Alley Cat. Sabata also receives help from the shady Banjo, a man he knows from the past who is living in town making a living as a musician but is really a gunslinger for hire. Pulling the stings is Stengel, the blonde and effeminate mastermind behind the plot to rob the town.

That's the bare bones of the story but there are a lot of double crosses to be had as well as a lot of memorable set pieces. As soon as you see some dudes tumbling and leaping 30 feet in the air you know you have left reality and are now firmly in the land of Spaghetti Western. And there are lots of disguised guns and weapons. The great things about Spaghetti Westerns are how over the top they go. They just go for broke.

It's cool to see Van Cleef play the Clint Eastwood-type lead role and he does it with great style. But you knew that already, right? Lee Van Cleef is the patron saint of Spaghetti Westerns. His angular face, squinting beady eyes, and take no shit attitude were made for the screen.

Adios Sabata

Sabata director Gianfranco Parolini had begun work on a new film about another gunslinger named Indio Black, played by Yul Brynner, but during that time Sabata had become a great success. So they just changed a few lines of dialogue and they instantly had a sequel to Sabata ready to go. The only difference being who was playing Sabata.

This time Sabata comes to a town in Mexico while it is under the rule of Maximilian I of Austria. Pedro Sanchez is back as the fat loudmouth sidekick character. Instead of Alley Cat doing leaps and bounds, we have a dude who uses a hacky-sack-like ball that he kicks with such force that he can take people out with it. I'm not kidding.

Sabata and crew are hired to steal Austrian Colonel Skimmel's gold and free the town from Austrian rule. Lots of plot twist ensue and hidden or disguised weapons are used. Very similar to the plot of Sabata but that's not a bad thing. Brynner is actually quite good in this. His monotone voice works in his favor as he's supposed to be mysterious and hard for his opponents to get a read on.

So that's it for now. I've never been much of a Western fan but all of these films had their moments. I'm certainly more of a fan of the Spaghetti and 70's Anti-Westerns and that probably has more to do with my age (32) since Westerns were pretty much dead when I was young. THE WEST was nothing reverent to me as it would have been to other generations so take all opinions here with a grain of salt pardner and don't take no wooden nickels neither.

All of this said, I would LOVE to see a Magnificent Seven film done by Robert Rodriguez where it's seven Mexican gunslingers coming to the aid of a Texas or Arizona town over-run by opportunistic and racist white men. It writes itself. Obviously Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin would be in it. Maybe Tommy Chong could be the wisecracking comedy sidekick. Throw Antonio Banderas in too, even though he's actually a Spanyard. He was great in Desperado.

I was going to try and watch The Wild Bunch and Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia too, but that'd set things back by another two weeks at least. I'll save those for a Warren Oates Fest and pair it all up with Cockfighter and Dilinger.