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Yeah, it's a comedic revisionist western. And an awesome film.
"It was Little Horse; the boy who wouldn't go on the raid against the Pawnee. He had become a "heemanee" for which there ain't no English word."
High Noon
Warlock
Rio Bravo
Stagecoach
Shane
Winchester '73
Destry Rides Again
Yellow Sky
The Ox-Bow Incident
Johnny Guitar
I can draw up a longer list of suggestions for you if you'd like:
Stagecoach, it's the first of the Wayne/Ford films.
The Calvary Trilogy, perhaps the definitive Wayne/Ford films.
The Searchers, Ford and Wayne turning the genre on it's head.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valiance, Ford, Wayne and Stewart showing all of their tricks.
The five Westerns Anthony Mann did with Jimmy Stewart. Winchester ’73, The Naked Spu, and The Man from Laramie are my favorite three but any of the five are great.
Shane. Shane is perhaps the definitive Western.
High Noon. Beside being one of the greatest classic Westerns, it was the first film done in real time.
Rio Bravo, which is Howard Hawks responce to High Noon. This is gonna sound odd but Dean Martin does an amazing job in that film.
Hud, is actually outside the classic western period both in film period, and time but is still one of the great Hollywood Westerns. And you can't go wrong with a good Paul Newman film.
No hype or buzz.
This was supposed to be Joaquin Phoenix's comeback movie but somewhere in the shuffle it turned over to John Cusack for the lead.
I understand Edger Allen Poe is generally credited with the creation of the detective story as we know it today but there's something remarkably...hackneyed about having the police enlist Poe in the hunt for a serial killer. Especially as modern serial killings didn't really become a thing the western world bothered to look into or specifically care about until about 40 years after Poe's death. All this doesn't even get into the idea that police at the time would make the connection that this killer is copycatting Poe's stories.
Fifty bucks says there is absolutely no chronological order to the killings with the stories- IE, having killings happen years before the stories they are based on were actually published. That sort of thing. No disrespect to industrial-age law enforcement, but I kind of highly doubt that a) the investigator in charge of these killings would all be the same person, and b) that there would be someone in the police department at the time who would be so well-read on Poe to recognize which murders were based on Poe and which were just people killing people in especially nasty ways. There wasn't a whole lot of forensics in the 1830's is all I'm saying.
...
The Raven apparently was already dumped in the UK. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 23 percent.
Anyway the movie is one of those ones where there aren't really any major problems, it's just lacking in certain areas. Actually it reminds me of, say, Season 2 Angel or something. As Vern pointed out, it feels a lot like Constantine (the bastardized movie, not the comic) only goofier. In conclusion, I'd give this one a miss, if by some chance you happened to come across it.
I never really had a problem with Depp's performance in that film, since he's obviously affecting an over-the-top caricature of Hunter S. Thompson (a person who was good friends with Depp, and who Depp has played twice on film), but the film, for all of its devotion to the source material, is just a narrative bust, which isn't a criticism Terry Gilliam is unfamiliar with.
It blurts out its central theme of examining the fallout of the mid-1960s counterculture at the end by having Depp recite aloud a passage from the book saying just exactly what the whole point of the exercise is, but there's very little in its 2-hour running time that coalesces around a central message.
Actually...not so much. There's quite a few documentaries of Hunter from back in his prime when he was still considered a young celebrity, and Depp's work isn't as exaggerated as you'd think.
The trouble with Fear & Loathing the movie is that it simply can't pack in all the allusions, cultural artifacts, and sobriquets that the book was able to do. Different strengths for different mediums and all that. Gilliam managed to capture the book's overall tone, but not its true anatomy. More is implied than explained, and so the movie is uncomfortably overshadowed by the most actively portrayed event, the Lucy subplot. Which probably had a lot to do with why the movie wasn't nearly as successful, seeing as it portrayed two older, unattractive men with questionable hygiene and copious drug history try to get rid of a 14 year old girl that's living in their hotel room.
As such, you kind of have to have read the book already as a companion piece for reading into the movie. Which doesn't excuse the failings of the movie to do it on its own, but...
And man, am I tired of having to do that so much lately.
But yes, the movie is little more than a tone-poem to that specific place and time, which is great for a little while, but for a feature film a little more narrative cohesion is needed.
And damn, I wish I could look forward to seeing Terry Gilliam's films. I fear that we're past any point of hoping for better from him.
I'm really interested in seeing it, but I can't imagine actually watching it all in one theatrical screening. I can't even watch the current 229 minute version all at once.
The new cut? I am so very excited. That movie is astonishingly great.
And thanks TychoCelchuuu and Thomamelas for the recommendations. Only a couple of those were on my list.
Yeah, that is a good label for it. There some great comedic moments
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speaking of epic gangster movies, I have something shameful to admit: I have never seen the Godfather films in their entirety.
I'm thinking I should get them (well, just the first two from what I've read here and elsewhere) along with a couple of the Westerns from the above lists with my tax return this weekend
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I know it's weird to say this about a nearly 4-hour movie but the few problems in the film come from parts that are rushed. There's a point at which the film starts jumping too fast and I hope the 40 minutes is there (and not in the kid portions, which are already pretty great).
As a side note I found out a few months ago that I'm actually related to the kid who plays De Niro's character when he's young. Cousin twice removed or something.
It's the
And Chief Dan George who plays the chief is also brilliant in another revisionist western, The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Also went to see The Deep Blue Sea (no not the shark movie) earlier this week at the theaters, it was a really good movie. Only thing I knew about it going into the theater was that it was a love affair movie in post-WWII setting with Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. Tom Hiddleston was honestly all I needed to know to get me to go see the movie
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EDIT: And I forgot why I originally came to this thread tonight. I just back from Cabin In The Woods and... holy hell. That was not what I was expecting.
I am ready.
Steam: DigitalArcanist | XBoxLive: DigitalArcanist | PSN: DigitalArcanist | Backloggery: Houn
I love the Mann/Stewart Westerns. Stewart always brought a little madness to all of his roles, but Mann was able to really bring out the dark side of that. It wasn't often that you saw the vengeful side of Stewart.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention the same guy who directed Catwoman did this movie but don't hold that against him.
Winchester '73 really shows that side well. If you want to see Stewart portray the Andy Griffith type sherrif in more of a comedy setting, I recommend Destry Rides Again.
As a matter of fact, I still need to watch The Naked Spur and Broken Arrow. I have The Rare Breed, Winchester '73, Destry Rides Again, Shenandoah (not so much a western as a Civil War movie to me,) The Man From Laramie, Night Passage, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Far Country and Bend of the River. I also have How the West Was Won, with Stewart in it, but that wasn't just him. That was more a gathering of big name stars. There are probably a few other westerns that had him that I'm missing also, but John Wayne had so many, I had to skip some.
John Wayne is great in True Grit, but True Grit is not great for it. Know, however, I don't care much for the Coens' film, either, despite their being among my favorite directors.
Broken Arrow isn't bad. It's not his best western, but it is rather interesting in that it's a fairly fair portrayal of Native Americans. It doesn't show them as a monolithic group, but as individuals. Same with the whites in the film. But there is a huge black mark from the fact that there isn't actually Native American actor in a major role.
It's worth mentioning that Depp spent several weeks (months?) living with Hunter S. Thompson to get into character. Because Raul Duke, the story's focus, is essentially a fictionalized version of Thompson himself, muttering and all. It's been said that portions of Fear and Loathing are autobiographical, to some extent. So the way Depp looked, spoke, and acted were all legit.
Now, could they have, I dunno, maybe added subtitles on the DVD/Blu-Ray versions? I think that might have been helpful.
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Wow, that was crap. It was so much crap that I invented the word "crank", meaning "like crap, but worse".
Crank 2 was crank.
^ This so hard. I liked the movie, but I would have liked it better if I hadn't had to keep rewinding and deciphering.
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I think I need to watch Grand Prix again, even if it is from the 60s, it at least has absolutely fantastic racing scenes.
Me neither. I figured it was just, you know, good acting.
twas a let down. no doubt.
I like it but this is all entirely true
I was really obsessed with that part of history/culture in high school and it never completely left me but like... it's not a cohesive film in any normal sense.
That's one of the movies I've never understood the hate for. It was certainly generic, but it was still entertaining.