I have said before that Westerns, in general, are not my type of film. I know a lot fo people grew up watching endless western movie on televisions, but that was not my childhood film experience. Even from an early age I tended towards science-fiction and horror as my preferred movies.

In my collection of DVDs and Blu-ray I have but three westerns and it is no surprise that they are considered to generally anti-westerns in tone and story.

High Noon is a classic of American Cinema. It is the story of one man, Will Kane, and his dilemma caught between duty, honor, and love. These are timeless themes, expertly handled albeit in a cynical setting and plot.

Five years before the opening of the story the setting, Hadleyville, is a violent dangerous town run by a near psychotic criminal, Frank Miller. As people often says during the film, and ‘You know what kind of man Frank Miller is,” clearly they have read the Dark Knight Returns.

With a small army of experienced gunmen acting as deputies, Marshall Will Kane, Gary Cooper, cleans up the town sending Miller to prison to hang for murder. With the town quite, prosperous and a place with families and children thriving, Kane, ready to give up his violent career and marry his fiancé Amy Fowler, Grace Kelly, a Quaker and a devout pacifist is about to turn storekeeper instead of lawman. Word suddenly arrives that elements of Miller’s old gang are hanging about the train station and are mightily concerned about the arrival of the noon train. Concurrently a telegram arrives, not only had Millers execution been converted to prison time, Miller’s now been pardoned. (Apparently comic book writer make the kind of bucks that can buy pardons.)

Kane feels his duty compels him to stay and deal with Miller wt all, as the new Marshall will not arrive in town until the next day. Nearly everyone in two disagrees. Amy stands by her faith and belief that violence is not an answer and refuses to wait around and find out if she will be wife or widow. Kane’s deputy, Lloyd Bridges, thinks this should be his moment to shine and become marshal, Kane old love, and also an old flame of Millers’ Helen Ramirez, Katy Juardo understands Kane, but burnt as a jilted woman she refuses to render any assistance.

With the clock ticking towards noon, Kane finds fewer and fewer friends at his side. A town cowers as the murderous men approach. High Noon is the story of a man pleading for help and finding no one willing to give any.

High Noon is a very cynical story. At heart people are no damn good and will turn on their friends to save themselves. In part it is an allegory for the Red Scare and witch hunts of the period. The writer had been through the wringer as an unfriendly witness before the HUAC and learned that many of the people whom he had counted on as friends deserted him when times became tough and dangerous. Whether you agree with this assessment of humanity or not the film is near perfect and powerful in the dramatic tension. Filmed with a stark black-and-white palette this is not a lovely western composed of sweeping vistas and awesome nature, but rather this is a setting that is bright, washed out, and dry. Running in nearly real time, the story start 10:30 and ends with the arrival of the noon train, about the same amount of time as it takes to watch, the story piles on tension and reversals with very little action until the final reel.

Even if Westerns are not your cup of teas, or coffee, or vodka, or whatever is in your cup, this is a movie everyone should see at some time.

This is going to be a short Sunday Night Movie post — I think — as my fingers are hurting and it’s been a real day for me.

Anyway I had today off — doctor’s appointment — and so I knew that length was not a factor in whatever film I selected last night, however my mood was quite up in the air making it hard to settle on a film. I stood at the case, sliding potential DVDs and Blu-rays out a bit, so they stood out from the rest, and when I had then all ready I’d decided from the smaller set. At least that was the plan. The moment i looked at Spider Man 2 I knew that was the film for last night. A film serious enough to feel meaningful in the dramatic points, light enough to suite my mood, and competent enough that I knew I would enjoy the full ride.

Of the three Spider Man film this is easily my favorite. It doesn’t have the heavy lifting and predictable structure of an origin film. (Really nearly all superhero origin movies have the same three part structure. 1- Introduce hero and background, see the powers come to the fore, 2-the hero speeds around the scenes tackling bad guys far below his pay level and rescuing people and cats, 3-a big bad equal to the hero arrises and we have the real test which of course the hero passes so we can get on to sequels.) With that work out of the way Spider Man 2 could concentrated on the story that they wanted to tell. Of course Spider Man 3 is a pile of chaotic plots and characters that is full of sound and fury and goes nowhere. (I own it on blu-ray but only because it came package with the  PS3.)

I loved everything about Spider Man 2, the production design, the special effects, the fights, the characters, the performances except the ending, that  bugged me a bit. Spoilers ahead.

The entire film is about the tension in the duality of Peter Parker/ Spider Man and the choices Parker has to face to resolve that tension, both as a hero and as a man in love. All well and good, handled well with drama, pathos, and comedy. At the end of the film Doc Ock has fashioned a fusion reactor that is self perpetuating and will soon go critical, break contained, and level half of New York City. Ock, return to a non-madness frame of mind tell Parker that there is no way to stop it now that is it self regenerating., then reverses himself and says that the fusion reactor, the power of the freakin’ sun, can be drowned in the Hudson River like a unwanted puppy. Ock sacrifices himself insisting he will not die a monster and taked the reactor into thr river himself, saving the city but dying in the process.

Keeping with the duality theme of the script the resolution should have turned on Peter Parker’s brilliance. For example, when told that the reaction cannot be stopped, Parker might have suggested making a breach in the contained to create a rocket, and that way the reactor could be quickly dispatched far from the city, exploding harmlessly up high. Doc Ock can still be the one to fly the thing, dying a man and not a monster, but it would have taken both Peter Parker’s brilliance and Spider Man’s abilities (beating Doc Ock back into his senses) to save the day. A nice unification after the division that Peter/Spidey  had gone through in this plot.

Other than that I have no fault or problems with this very fun superhero film.

So last night , after a weekend of science-fiction and horror discussions, I was in the mood for a classic Universal horror film and gravitated instantly towards my all time favorite of those films, Creature From The Black Lagoon. Creature is a marvelous film that still holds up remarkably well today, 56 years after its initial release. (1954) With two enormous chili-dogs I settled in for a pleasant night of chills and entertainment from the classic film.

The story is simple, A scientist find a unique fossil far up the Amazon river. It is incomplete, but suggests a whole new order of amphibian life.He consults with fellow scientists and they launch an expedition to hopefully find the rest of the curious fossil. Of course what they find is so much more than a fossil, a living specimen of the new amphibian order, the Gillman, know to us primarily as The Creature.

So much of this film seems to recall King Kong for me. The isolated locale, the native myths, the somewhat sympathetic portrayal of the monster, the monster’s fascination with a beautiful woman, all echo the themes that we can find on Kong, while exploring them in a different and more personal setting. Continue reading →

Last night I was in the mood for adventure, for the sort of film that pumps the blood, sets the imagination running, and is filled with heros and villains. Quickly sorting through my growing collection I settled on the 2002 version of The Count Of Monte Cristo. (I specifically did not call this a remake. A remake is where you go and use an earlier film as your source material, sometimes using the exact same script for production. A new version ignores other production in favor of the original source material)

I must admit that I have always been drawn to the ‘righteous fury’ moments in films. The particular moment in time when the hero (in general) is exacting a long due moment of justice. In Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan when the Enterprise rises up behind Reliant it always sends my heart racing.  The Count Of Monte Cristo is really just one long build to those ‘righteous fury’ moments. It is populated with wonderful characters set amid dazzling backgrounds and fascinating history.

This version stars Jim Caviezel as Edmond Dantes a good, moral, but hopelessly naive young man. Edmond has as his best friend Fernand Mondego, played by the terribly talented Guy Pierce, a weak drunkard of a man with a bitter and frustrated nature that Edmond is blind to. Between the two men is the lovely Mercedès Iguanada, played by Dagmara Dominczykv, steadyfast, loyal, and intelligent Mercedes is on love with edmond constantly rebuffing Fernand’s improper advances. The triangle would have stood unbroken save an ill-fortune voyage of Edmond’s ship that sees the captain stuck down and Edmond making an emergency landfall upon Elba. Elba prison to the exiled Napoleon. Abused edmond’s nature Napoleon uses the young man to send a message to his loyal supporter, landing edmond in a dread prison. illiterate, friendless, and with the world believing him to be an executed traitor Edmond must find a way for the justice he needs.

So it looks like I will get to my Sunday Night Movie feature after all! Anyway after a spate of fairly serious and heavy films I was in the mood this sunday for fare that was lighter and just fun to watch. It had been a piece of time since I last pulled out my DVD of The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension so between time and mood this was the perfect film for me.

Buckaroo Banzai is a film that has a very idiosyncratic response in people who see it. Either people fall in love with this stranger quirky movie and quote it for years, or they scratch their heads and wonder how anyone could like something so utterly stupid. There seems to be almost no middle-ground reaction.

This film is at heart a pulp adventure, much along the lines of say a Doc Savage story, if you are familiar with those books. The titular character, Buckaroo Banzai is at once, a physicist, a surgeon, and a rock star. On all these fields he is perhaps the best. He has surrounded himself with a talented team of characters at the Banzai Institute. They combat evil, improve mankind lot in the world, and play concerts to adoring fans. If this is all too over the top for your, then this movie is not for you. It has the feel not only of a pulp adventure, but also of someone role playing game writ large and with credible actors playing the parts. Continue reading →