I See Dead People (no. 2)

[koganbot]

Look, this is really sad. No list of all-time great movies whose top ten includes only movies I've already seen can be credible.* Or if it is credible, this is a sad world. Not to denigrate my own tastes, judgments, and habits, but round '78 I decided that I didn't have the time or money to watch a lot of movies. And in 1999 I made the decision, I can either be a writer or someone who owns a TV set, but I don't have time for both. So not a lot of movies made in the last 35 years have unfolded (or unspooled or whatever) in front of my eyes.

Not that I've seen nothing in that time. Likely any movie with Steven Seagal that appeared on cable in the late '80s got viewed by me. But in general I no longer have my explorer's hat on.

I'm sure the Sight And Sound poll included gobs of people excited by right now, but obviously there was no consensus in it, no "Here's a movie that's changed the game" or "Here's the flick that called out to everyone."

Strange: visit a local lending library and you'll see just the opposite, the past a bare flickering shadow, westerns all but nonexistent, everybody relaxing into the here and now.

In any event, what's the next movie you're gonna see? Here's mine, if I can find it streaming somewhere for free (was taken down from mysoju):

Watch on YouTube

*Unless the list is entitled Frank's All-Time Top Ten Movies (Restricted To Movies That He's Actually Seen).

Comments

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[koganbot]

Ever given thought to westerns? I think an average hack oater from the '40s and '50s has more going on than does even well-scripted and well-acted mega-blooey like Star Wars, Star Trek 2, Iron Man, and ilk. (But then, the only Cameron I've seen is Terminator 2, and the only Spielberg I've bothered with that's remotely sf is Jurassic Park; overall, I haven't given modern superheroes and superspace much of a look.)

oaters on my dial!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

haha these 14 westerns are all lined up on my TiVo:

brokeback mountain*
the cowboys
custer of the west
the far country
jesse james
johnny guitar
lone star*
the man from laramie <-- this is the one i'm in the middle of
the man who shot liberty valance
red river
rio bravo
the sheriff of fractured jaw
the warlords
warlock

*both relatively recent

Re: oaters on my dial!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

wait the warlords is a hong kong film about the qing dynasty so not strictly speaking a western

Re: oaters on my dial!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

watched all of laramie, just started jesse james -- tyrone power and henry fonda, depicting the james gang as noble robin hoods against the robber barons of the railroad

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I've seen a few westerns, but never really "got" the traditional genre and never really clicked with neo- subversions/extensions of it (via spaghetti westerns, Sam Peckinpah, and later ones). I did order and then transfer to American DVD (it was UK) "Two Rode Together" based on a comment you made about it in the last Dead People post, but still haven't watched it.

Favorite westerns I can think of:

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Red River
McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Westerns I like but don't love:
High Noon
The Wild Bunch
Hud
No Country for Old Men
The Misfits

"Meh"sterns
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Giant (<--not sure if this counts)
Dances with Wolves
The Robert Rodriguez Mariachi series
3:10 to Yuma (remake)

Would welcome recommendations

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

One I forgot in the first category: Once Upon a Time in the West, one of my favorites, and also good for teaching film analysis. (That would be a separate list.)

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[koganbot]

Here's a list, not a best-of, but rather to back up my contention that there's a lot to even the average hack oater. These for the most part are way better than average, but they're average in the sense that they're bread-and-butter product aimed at the guy, or kid (I assume it was almost always a male), who says to himself, "I want to see a western; what's playing?"

--The Tall T, w/ Randolph Scott, dir. Budd Boetticher, story Elmore Leonard, script Burt Kennedy. Taut emotional chess match between Scott and bad-guy Richard Boone.
--Buchanan Rides Alone. First Scott-Boetticher western I saw, strangely light-hearted, more poker than chess, my mouth was half agape all through (Sarris, The American Cinema: "Constructed partly as allegorical Odysseys and partly as floating poker games where every character takes turns about bluffing at his hand until the final showdown, Boetticher's Westerns expressed a weary serenity and moral certitude...").
--Day Of The Outlaw w/ Robert Ryan, dir. Andre De Toth. Screenplay is fairly awful at the start, characters telling us and each other several times over what Ryan's issues are and what the plot's going to be. Then the outlaws show up and the story becomes something else, still with some comically bad overacting on the part of a set of horny meanies, but then the film goes out into the elements and becomes a pulverizingly stunning struggle, evil feeling terribly evil, one of the great things I've seen. Wouldn't be surprised if this was hovering around in Altman's mind as he created the climax to McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
--Ride The High Country, w/ Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott. Early Peckinpah, as if he saw Day Of The Outlaw and thought, "I can take those scummy bad guys and make them credible."
--Man Of The West, w/ Gary Cooper, dir. Anthony Mann. My favorite Mann western is probably The Far Country. This one, in contrast, I saw early and barely remember — but what I do recall is how exhaustingly physical the conflicts and shootouts are.
--Ride Clear Of Diablo, w/ Audie Murphy, Dan Duryea. This movie actually is grade b, but it's what inspired the comment in my Dan Duryea essay that there's rarely a boring western, 'cause the genre demands "there be some confusion between good and evil, that the good-guy hero must be hardened and twisted a bit by the violence he has to commit." (I did eventually see the whole thing, though in the essay I only commented on my initial partial viewing.)

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Laramie is a Mann: the overall story is flabby bcz it divides its attention too much without effecting connections between Fonda's character (which is sketchy: he's seeking the man responsible for his brother's death and er that's it)* and the Waggoman family, a blind rancher with two sons, one a sadistic dimwit, the other adopted, seemingly level-headed, but deeply angry about being overlooked and undervalued. This triangle is interesting, and Fonda's arrival sets all the oedipal wasps a-buzzin, but Fonda functions more as catalyst than as interraction. There's also a very underpowered love element -- basically it gets along at a nice clip and has several terrific setpieces, of sudden scrambling unglamorous violence, but no space to do more than dab in the characters. Plus the Apaches, as abstract (not to say racist) cipher of pure lurking evil.

*Fonda is always interesting, because -- as Manny Farber semi-said -- he's so concave of body and bearing, but this is a bit too much "Fonda being loveably Fonda": you don't quite believe his revenge-fueled drivenness, which is sentimentalised when it's actually psychotic.

the elvish curse of CGI

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

inc.one very minor scene where my mouth-dropped open and i thought "how the FUCK did these guys set-direct the sky?" -- a sun-and-cloudscape dazzlingly beautiful and dramatic simply for fonda to ride desperately across in front of, along the skyline

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[koganbot]

Laramie is the only Mann western where I actually got bored, though I remember it so poorly that I didn't even recall that Fonda was in it. From your description, I'd imagine that with the right script, and a different conception of the part by the director, this'd be perfect for Fonda. I remember an Andrew Sarris appreciation of Fonda where Sarris stressed the potential for violence that Fonda brought to Tom Joad. Fonda was the wrong age and had the wrong image, but I imagine he could have done a more stressed and taut and truly dangerous Dirty Harry than we got from Eastwood. Also think with a different director and script he'd have done the same for High Noon (I'll confess that I've only seen bits and pieces of that "classic" [derided by many] on TV). Did see — again, only a bit and a piece — a movie where he played a bitter sheriff who did the town's dirty work largely unappreciated by the people he was protecting. I forget the title.

An actor where whole hunks of what he actually did onscreen don't match his image. Of course he was an excellent bad guy in Once Upon A Time In The West; but a coiled, distressed, possibly out-of-whack good guy might have been the best vehicle for his talent for feeling and causing pain.

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Basically I felt that the idea for the characters and the character structure is set out like chesspieces -- and it's not a terrible idea -- but then no game gets started that sets up any tension (= interest). At 100 mins It's actually the shortest Western in my line-up (this is actually why I started with it), and really doesn't dwell on any element or scene for very long at all, but overall it still feels static, without momentum or interesting revelation. (Admittedly I'd spoilered myself on who the actual villain was by reading up in advance, but it was in any case pretty meh, and they did next to nothing with it. I agree about Fonda -- perfect for the role if they'd thought it through and written it out -- but we just don't get enough of him.

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Will see if I can get my hands on these.

One reason I don't watch many films lately is that I suspect that TV has finally (definitively) taken over the role of "oaters" -- there are so many excellent, dependable shows of no great import (not just the "quality" stuff, which I tend not to like as much) that I rarely take a chance with an OK-seeming movie. But at the same time, I'm far more likely to enjoy a movie with low expectations and good execution than with high expectations that's overly pretentious or precious or bloated etc. etc.

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[koganbot]

Found an episode of Maverick up on YouTube today. It was rather satisfying, with its twists and its emotions. And in the closing credits the director was listed as Budd Boetticher.

I wouldn't bet on it staying up long, but here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig3f0k2EP2c

According to Wikipedia, Boetticher directed the first three episodes of the series. Don't know who scripted this episode ("Point Blank"), but it fits well Sarris's description: "Constructed partly as allegorical Odysseys and partly as floating poker games where every character takes turns about bluffing at his hand until the final showdown, Boetticher's Westerns expressed a weary serenity and moral certitude..." Pretty good description of Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford, too.

(Also making this its own post.)

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I do recommend Minority Report, but I have a soft spot for the pure weirdness and "this-shouldn't-work-but-does"ness of A.I.. Cameron is severely overrated, pretty sure T2 is the only Cameron I still like enough to own/watch again (except maybe the first Terminator, and maybe Abyss).

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Aliens?

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I like Aliens, but have never been a big fan of the series overall.

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

(Basically, whenever I want to watch an Alien film, I'm more likely to watch John Carpenter.)

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Sure: was just wondrin if Aliens counts as a non-overrated Cameron. (Alien3 is my favourite of the actual series.)

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I think Aliens is overrated within the Alien series (I often here it cited as the best one), but it's certainly good. Haven't seen it in ages, but as I recall Alien3 was the most "appropriate" alien movie, in the sense that its bizarreness/OTT-ness matches some of the absurdity/borderline-camp of the premise (apparently Prometheus does this pretty well, from someone who saw it -- he told me it's pretty hardcore body horror stuff!) I still kind of want to see the flop by Jeunet (Resurrection). Aliens is like the Nolan Batman -- takes itself a little too seriously, difference being Cameron is a better action director. (Carpenter is a lot better at taking his material seriously without making it straight-up humorless. I'm relatively new to classic Carpenter, but it seems like The Thing makes the whole Alien series redundant.)

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Key (but I feel significant) diff is that The Thing has no GURLZ! Carpenter is never humourless, tho he can be pretty boring...