The Big Trail (1930) – DVD

June 24, 2003Posted in1930s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, Western

**½/**** Image B Sound B
starring John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, El Brendel, Tully Marshall
screenplay by Hal G. Evarts
directed by Raoul Walsh

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Big Trail is the kind of movie that comes wrapped in a big piece of butcher’s paper with the word WESTERN stamped on it. It offers the barest structural skeleton of the genre, with pioneers fulfilling their Manifest Destiny over terrain both harsh and unforgiving, and it sticks with its forward march to Oregon with only minor narrative flourishes to distract from the standard-issue myth of America. Later westerns would meditate on the nature of both the lone-wolf cowboy hero and the value of the westward expansion, but this early John Wayne vehicle is quaintly naïve in its taking it all for granted, making for great film-historical fascination when the drama and the intrigue flag.

My Friend Flicka (1943) – DVD

June 4, 2003Posted in1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Family, Western

**/**** Image A+ Sound B
starring Roddy McDowall, Preston Foster, Rita Johnson, James Bell
screenplay by Francis Edwards Faragon, based on the book by Mary O’Hara
directed by Harold Schuster

by Walter Chaw Revealing itself as a primary source for Spielberg’s E.T. (complete with scene in which a boy and his extra-species pal are found unconscious in a stream), Harold Schuster’s prototypical horse opera My Friend Flicka finds its locus in the relationship between a boy and his animal, its comic relief in a bratty little sister (Diana Hale) who can’t be trusted, and its antagonist in a stern but loving father (Preston Foster). Released to good success in 1943, the film (based on three novels by Mary O’Hara) fostered two sequels and a popular television show that banked on the syrupy good old-fashioned paterfamilias values that proliferated in TV’s late-’50s “Golden Age.” Accordingly, the film is burdened by a surplus of problem/solution climaxes and a perversely invasive score by Hollywood legend Alfred Newman that telegraphs every emotional response with a moldy insistence best described as “John Williams-y.”

Young Guns (1988) [Special Edition] – DVD

April 16, 2003Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Western

*/**** Image C+ Sound B Extras B-
starring Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen
screenplay by John Fusco
directed by Christopher Cain

by Bill Chambers I know a thing or two about Billy the Kid, having written a thoroughly researched, if thoroughly awful, 240-page screenplay about him. It was just after finishing this magnum opus that I discovered Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and realized that everything I’d tried to say had already been said much more poetically, thus exiling “For What It’s Worth: The Life of Billy the Kid” permanently to the bottom drawer. But at the time, I only wanted to outdo Young Guns and Young Guns II–a mission more challenging than you might think, given the films’ infamy as second-generation Brat Pack fodder. John Fusco’s scripts for both pictures are historically accurate, action-packed, and have a good ear for the vernacular of not only the Old West, but also the western genre. Yet the original Young Guns, especially, is miscast, directed by Christopher Cain (The Principal) like an episode of “Best of the West”, and fails to either humanize Billy the Kid or justify his lore. As played by Emilio Estevez, you get the feeling that Billy’s unhinged because he’s running low on mousse.

Johnson County War (2002) – DVD

December 9, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Germany, Television, Western

*/**** Image C+ Sound B+
starring Tom Berenger, Luke Perry, Rachel Ward, Burt Reynolds
screenplay by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana, based on Riders of Judgment by Frederick Manfred
directed by David S. Cass, Sr.

by Walter Chaw The Hallmark Channel's epic remake of Heaven's Gate–based, like that film and Frederick Manfred's Riders of Judgment, on the Johnson County Range War of 1892–does the impossible by making Michael Cimino's legendary boondoggle gain esteem in memory and by comparison. Actually a remake in subject only, legendary stuntman-turned-really bad TV director David S. Cass, Sr.'s Johnson County War (clocking in at an inexcusable 180 minutes) is a dog's breakfast of hoary western clichés, appalling film craft, and wooden performances from B-list talent.

The Films of John Sayles (1980-2002)

July 6, 2002Posted in****/****, 1980s, 1990s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Disability, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Ireland, Mexico, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Sports, Thriller, Western

Filmsofjohnsayles

Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980)
**/****
Buy DVD at Amazon.com
John Sayles's directorial debut has taken on the aura of a folk tale, the details of its genesis are that well known: With a $40,000 budget raised largely from the quadruple-threat's (writer/editor/director/actor) work for the scripts for Roger Corman's Battle from Beyond the Stars, Piranha, and Alligator, Sayles shot a film at a rented lake house with friends possessed of neither experience nor know-how and redefined the American indie movie scene. Return of the Secaucus Seven had two separate New York runs, made appearances on several year-end lists, and became a cause célèbre for snobs "in the know" deriding Kasdan's The Big Chill as a Secaucus rip-off. Twenty-some years later and the bloom is off the rose, so to speak: Return of the Secaucus Seven reveals itself to be sloppily made, overwritten, and horrendously performed (with the exception of David Strathairn and Gordon Clapp). Still, there are moments of truth in the picture that are pure: an embarrassing interlude when two old friends pass on their way to an unfortunately placed bathroom, and another during a feverish pick-up basketball sequence that steadily develops a delicious subtext. Gathering for what might be an annual reunion, the titular seven reminisce about characters who never appear, discuss past indiscretions (legal and sexual), and locate themselves on the verge of their third decade unmoored from the virulent liberalism of their flower-powered youth. Stealing the show is nerdy "straight" man Chip (Clapp), demonstrating the kind of unaffected naturalism indicative of Sayles's later work but a naturalism buried for the most part here by oodles of hanging plots, mismanaged character moments, odd editing choices, and a peculiarly literate lack of focus indicative of a brilliant novelist moonlighting as a filmmaker. 104 minutes

The Tall T (1957)

June 19, 2002Posted in1950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, Western

***/****
starring Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Maureen O’Sullivan, Arthur Hunnicutt
screenplay by Burt Kennedy
directed by Budd Boetticher

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Tall T is, on the surface, a fairly unassuming western from the ’50s: individualistic loner fights bad guys while standing up for the pioneer spirit. Why, then, did it leave me with such an awful sadness? The reason is that the filmmakers have thought about what loner individuals and bad guys and the pioneer spirit represent, and the conclusions they reach are quietly devastating. Instead of displaying knee-jerk expressions of stock responses, director Budd Boetticher and writer Burt Kennedy truly meditate on why someone would want to embody the cowboy ideal–and realize it’s an alienation so great that social life becomes all but unbearable. It’s not even a critique of the American dream, but a lament for an alternative that might lead someone out of isolation; The Tall T ultimately finds that a life of productive solitude is better than becoming gnarled in the risks of the outside world.

Bad Company (1972) – DVD

June 15, 2002Posted in1970s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Western

***½/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Jeff Bridges, Barry Brown, Jim Davis, David Huddleston
screenplay by David Newman and Robert Benton
directed by Robert Benton

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover How the mighty do fall. By the end of the '70s, Robert Benton had lowered himself to Oscar-whoring with the tepid Kramer vs. Kramer–a fact impossible to reconcile with the promise he showed in Bad Company, his smashing directorial debut. Utterly distinct amongst revisionist westerns, Benton's marvel ditches the genre's boilerplate cynicism and revels in the freedom of lawlessness; instead of a clumsy knee-jerk finger-pointer, we get the joys and sorrows of life amongst scavengers. Having more in common with My Own Private Idaho or Going Places than with the pseudo-critical genre on whose margins it skulks, Bad Company lets us roam the landscape instead of following the road to town, and in so doing makes us feel things that no mere western could possibly make us feel.

Hombre (1967) – DVD

June 3, 2002Posted in1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Western

***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Paul Newman, Fredric March, Richard Boone, Diane Cilento
screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
directed by Martin Ritt

by Walter Chaw Paul Newman’s Hombre is his fourth and final “H” film of that decade–a quartet that includes The Hustler, Harper, and another of his six collaborations with Martin Ritt, the fantastic Hud. Each (and feel free to lump Cool Hand Luke and Paris Blues in with this esteemed crowd) features Newman as an outsider influence, a catalyst for change and a hero testing the boundaries of acceptable social mores (as was much of the cinema of the ’60s), made all the more shocking for his matinee idol good looks and all-American cool. Newman, arguably the biggest and best star of the Sixties, was the quintessential anti-hero for a dissenting cinematic age, and he brought that brooding outcast sensibility to what was perhaps the quintessential outsider role: a half-breed in a western in Ritt’s 1967 film Hombre.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)

May 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Family, Theatrical, Western

**½/****
screenplay by John Fusco
directed by Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook

Spiritby Walter Chaw Earning major points for its revisionist understanding of the impact the rail had on the spoiling of the West (briefly positing its equine hero as one part Burt Lancaster from The Train and one part William Blake), DreamWorks’ return to cel (albeit computer-assisted) animation is the surprisingly dark and unintentionally twisted Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. The film is an endlessly disquieting Oedipal construct in which Spirit’s absent-from-pre-birth father is the former king of a herd of wild horses, the mantle of which the virile Spirit, with his mother doe-eyed at his side (!), assumes to the tune of a newly-penned anthem from dinosaur Canuck rocker Bryan Adams. I waited with baited breath to see how mama’s foal Spirit would break his new Oedipal split (hot filly Rain) to “Jocasta,” but the picture fumbles the potent moment with a coy mane flip and a sexy-quick gallop.

A Lady Takes a Chance (1943) + Flame of Barbary Coast (1945) – DVDs

January 27, 2002Posted inAuthors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Musical, Romance, Western

A LADY TAKES A CHANCE
**/**** Image C+ Sound B-
starring Jean Arthur, John Wayne, Charles Winninger, Phil Silvers
screenplay by Robert Ardrey
directed by William A. Seiter

FLAME OF BARBARY COAST
**½/**** Image B- Sound B
starring John Wayne, Ann Dvorak, Joseph Schildkraut, William Frawley
screenplay by Borden Chase
directed by Joseph Kane

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Such is the enduring celebrity of John Wayne that there exists a market for even his most humdrum and lacklustre vehicles–a rule which the current DVD releases of A Lady Takes a Chance (1943) and Flame of Barbary Coast (1945) proves to perfection. Here is a pair of the Duke's least iconic roles, both of which hinge on their incongruity with their star's western legend: using the actor as a found object to be installed in some alien landscape, they force him to struggle with a fish-out-of-water intrigue before coming to the conclusion that his place remains at home on the range. As such, they're of importance only to superfans and tangentially interested buffs–they're interesting as trials-by-fire for Wayne iconography but only marginally tolerable when taken on their own terms.

American Outlaws (2001) – DVD

December 31, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Western

*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A
starring Colin Farrell, Scott Caan, Ali Larter, Gabriel Macht
screenplay by Roderick Taylor and John Rogers
directed by Les Mayfield

by Walter Chaw Thinking that Oscar-winner Kathy Bates had reached a career nadir as a Bible-thumpin’ mama in Adam Sandler’s deplorable The Waterboy, colour me surprised to note that Ms. Bates actually plumbs a new depth in reprising that performance for Les Mayfield’s painful American Outlaws. The “Dawson’s Creek” Western also marks the second time that Terry O’Quinn has been in Young Guns and Timothy Dalton in The Rocketeer, leading me to conclude that I have wasted altogether too much of my life watching terrible movies.

The Claim (2000) – DVD

July 14, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, DVD, France, Romance, UK, Western

***½/**** Image A Sound A
starring Wes Bentley, Milla Jovovich, Nastassia Kinski, Peter Mullan
screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce
directed by Michael Winterbottom

by Walter Chaw Cold and barren as the winter’s landscape it inhabits, Michael Winterbottom’s exceptional retelling of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge is the delicate and maddening The Claim. It’s told in undertones and sidelong glances, gathering its strength from the inexorable tides of fate and the offhand caprices of nature that reflect the essential chaos at the centre of every man’s character. Hardy stated about The Mayor of Casterbridge that “it is not improbabilities of incident but improbabilities of character that matter,” and the subtitle of the novel is, consequently, “A Man of Character.” Though it’s possible to take the subtitle as ironic seeing as the titular main character is guilty in the first chapter (an incident related in the film as a flashback) of an act that is at the very least heinous, both novel and film are earnest in exploring the sticky gradations of morality without value judgment.

The Magnificent Seven (1960) [Special Edition] – DVD

July 13, 2001Posted in1960s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Western

**/**** Image A Sound B Extras A+
starring Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson
screenplay by William Roberts
directed by John Sturges

by Walter Chaw Based loosely on Akira Kurosawa’s seminal The Seven Samurai, The Great Escape director John Sturges’s wildly uneven The Magnificent Seven vacillates from superbly choreographed (if stagy) action sequences to moments of sublime dialogue, and to extended character-enhancing business that grinds the film to a complete halt no fewer than five times. It has aged poorly in four decades, losing a great deal of modern appeal in a way that Sergio Leone’s adaptation (and extrapolation) of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, the “Spaghetti Western,” A Fistful of Dollars, never has.

All the Pretty Horses (2000) – DVD

May 7, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, Western

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A
starring Matt Damon, Henry Thomas, Lucas Black, Penélope Cruz
screenplay by Ted Tally, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
directed by Billy Bob Thornton

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The difference between Cormac McCarthy's novel All the Pretty Horses and its current, honourable film adaptation is a matter of weighting. There's nothing in the movie that doesn't happen in the novel, and the film's golden, sun-burnished look is gentle and humane. The film loves its wayward characters and sympathizes with their plight, but when it's over, it turns out to have merely been a story–a series of events with a dramatic payoff. The body is always imperilled, but the soul is never touched; it never puts together the motives the characters have in protecting their honour and desires, and it never suggests that there are powers beyond their control that force them to make decisions. While All the Pretty Horses is always friendly and never dull, there is a certain letdown in its refusal to make connections to larger forces and its clumsiness with the novel's very powerful symbolism–which, however questionable it might be, has a lesser dramatic force than its literary namesake.

Wild Wild West (1999)

July 2, 1999Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Western, Will Smith

*/****
starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Salma Hayek
screenplay by Brent Maddock, S.S. Wilson, Peter S. Seaman, and Jeffrey Price
directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

by Bill Chambers If you don't think Kevin Kline in drag is funny, wait 'til you see Will Smith in drag–it's even less funny. By the time Jim West (Smith) had disguised himself as a belly dancer to retrieve his captured comrade Artemus Gordon (Kline) from the clutches of evil Dr. Loveless (Kenneth Branagh), I was unequivocally bored with Wild Wild West, the new summer action-comedy from Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld. Is the Old West really a breeding ground for slapstick, anyway? If your answer is yes, you're probably thinking of Blazing Saddles, but Blazing Saddles was a parody of the western genre that also satirized the social climate of 1974, not a nineteenth-century romp in and of itself.

Desperado (1995) [Deluxe Widescreen Presentation] – DVD

June 25, 1998Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mexico, Thriller, Western

**/**** Image A Sound A
starring Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Joaquim de Almeida, Steve Buscemi
written and directed by Robert Rodriguez

by Vincent Suarez With 1993’s El Mariachi, director Robert Rodriguez wowed critics and arthouse audiences with his sheer talent and passion for filmmaking. Shot on a budget of merely $7,000 and with a cast and crew of Rodriguez’s friends, El Mariachi was a gleefully amateurish work of pure cinema. Upon garnering awards and praise at the Sundance Film Festival, Columbia Pictures agreed to distribute the film and finance Rodriguez’s Hollywood debut. Which prompted one to ask what Rodriguez could accomplish with a real budget and real talent at his disposal. Desperado (1995) provided the answer to that question: not much. Essentially a remake of El Mariachi, Desperado is full of the glitz and flashiness that one would expect of a visceral filmmaker like Rodriguez but has none of the heart or joy of El Mariachi. It’s a “cool” movie that leaves the viewer feeling…well, cold.