Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

Director: Nicholas Ray
Writers: Philip Yordan (screenplay), Roy Chanslor (novel)
Cast: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge
Genre: Western

Johnny Guitar is currently rated at 7.7 on IMDB, a very high rating indeed. Usually only the best made films reach such dizzying heights and yet somehow Nicolas Ray's oddball film has done just that. But why?

When Joan Crawford is in the right role, she slays it. She's effective in the movie as a polished but tough as nails, savvy business woman who may or may not have slept her way to valuable insider information that enabled her to buy up worthless land in the middle of nowhere. She knows that the railroad is coming through the area, making her land very valuable. 'Vienna' (Joan Crawford) finds herself being singled out by a rival woman who hates her guts and rallies the marshal and town's folk to harass her and her friends. Accusing them of all sorts of wrong doings.

The entire film is based on ambiguity and an unusual juxtaposition of characters with 'tough guy' women slinging guns and 'pretty boy' men who dance and play the guitar as the women battle for supremacy. All this is done in a western version of a morality-concept play with enough flair to lift the pulp material to an artistic level that I'm sure no other director would have conceived of. It might be hard for the typical pop corn eating movie fan to get this experimental type of western, but the French New Wave directors like Truffaut got it...and I suspect it was their admiration of the film that has lifted Johnny Guitar from it's initial box office failure to the darling of hard core movie buffs.

Reportedly Johnny Guitar's script is an analogy of the black listing that was going on in Hollywood in the 1950s. We see the town's folks led by a virulent rancher named 'Emma Small', played to perfect by Mercedes McCambridge. She heads up lesser willed town folks into a posse of followers, who go along with her just because she's an outright loudmouth and bully with clout. The towns folks attempt to drive the 'outsider' Vienna and her 'outsider' friends out of town, and do even worse to them. All of this of course was what was actually happening with McCarthyism and black listing in Hollywood.

Johnny Guitar is like a western opera with lines that are spoken not so much for the movie's sake, but more as a message to the audiences of the time.

Director: Yimou Zhang
Writers: Su Tong (novel "Wives and Concubines"), Ni Zhen (scriptwriter)
Cast: Li Gong, Jingwu Ma, Saifei He
Genre: Drama History
Language: Mandarin


I loved Raise The Red Lantern. First off, the film has a confined world, set in the manor house of a rich nobleman and all we see is life from this one narrow and focused angle...and that appeals greatly to me. I like to step into the world of the film and spend time there with the characters, so to speak.

And of course I love period piece & historical films...and for some reason I like Chinese cinema too. I loved the way the film's cinematography felt confined and that's fitting as the young woman in the film is basically sequestered in her room in this manor estate. I liked the way the film felt controlled and claustrophobic, both the story and the camera work were synced to deliver that very effect, which then puts us into the mindset of the young woman who's lost her freedom when she marries and lives as a concubine.


The other thing I loved about this was that it was kind of like a Chinese soap opera with all the backstabbing and scheming of the four wives, I like that kind of human drama, cause it rings true. In a way soap opera type movies deliver on the human experience, which I also like.

Oh, one more thing about this movie, I like stories about women. I don't mean that in a woo-hoo type of way. Stories that focus on a female character often have more depth of humanity to them then a movie about some guy in a thriller. I'm not big into action guy flicks.

The one thing I didn't care for in this film was the ending. I usually don't like it when a film has to end on a big note, so as to make some noise. The very ending felt tacked on and Hollywood-ish.

Still I really loved this movie and it held me spell bound, which I can't say many films do.

Le Trou (1960)

Director: Jacques Becker
Writers: José Giovanni (novel), Jacques Becker (adaptation)
Cast: André Bervil, Jean Keraudy, Michel Constantin
Genre: Drama Prison
Language: French

Here we have utter cinematic realism with Le Trou, a fine example of French Realism.

If there's one thing that I've learned from my time here at MoFo it's that many movie watchers value realism and gauge a film's ability to be realistic as a yard stick. How many times have we heard people saying, 'Oh, that wasn't very realistic'. Of course realism isn't the only flavor of movie making, but it's a style that rings true to most people. So yeah this seemed really real and I dug it.

At 2 hours 11 minutes, the time flew by! I was hooked from the get go and fascinated to see the inventions that these men came up with to escape their prison cell. I loved the 'broken mirror' periscope for looking out their peep hole for approaching guards. And the half-hour glass that was made out of two bottles and a handful of pinched sand was pretty cool too.

I was surprised the film didn't venture into high drama and conflict between the five cooped up men. Even though I usually like lots of personal drama in a film, this time around I was glad that the film was purely focused on the details of escaping. Le Trou puts the viewer into a tiny prison cell (where everyone is so polite!) and lets us participate in the audacious escape.

I enjoyed this one!

This was my second time watching Anatomy of a Murder. I'd originally seen it in the 8th HoF, here's a link to my old review

I watched Anatomy of a Murder again and was so impressed I thought that I'd write a fresh review! I loved the way Otto Preminger handled the film. I know a lot of people love or hate a movie solely based on it's story content. Story matters to me too, but there's other elements that equally impress me.

What impressed me with Anatomy of a Murder was the relaxed pacing of the film, with scenes that took the time to include many little extras. Those extra little gestures and moments made me feel like I was there watching the events as they happened. Right at the start when James Stewart arrives home, the film takes it's time setting up the kind of man that Stewart's lawyer is. It does this by following him around his house as he completes simple little task like cleaning the fish he caught and putting them away in his fridge. The fridge is stacked full of fish! That take your time approach to film making is something I love and tells us important but small details. And this attention to detail continues all the way through the trial, which then made the trial seem very real too. Anatomy of a Murder is one of the few courtroom movies that I think is superb.

I loved the title credits by the graphic design artist Saul Bass. It's easy to recognize his work in 50s-60s films. They have this certain style that captures the era. Loved the jazz score too by the great Duke Ellington. And what's cooler than casting the Duke as 'Pie Eyed' and giving him a scene with Jimmy Stewart! The frosting on the cake is that Stewart's country loving lawyer also loves jazz. Now that's cool.

James Stewart is the man! One of my all time favorite actors and he's excellent here. Walter O'Connell the older booze hound lawyer was good too. Along with Eve Arden they both help to lighten the mood so that the film doesn't get to heavy and down trodden. That's important so that when we get to the lengthy trial our pallets aren't already over taxed. Sort of like having a cracker in between wine sampling.

This time around I did like Lee Remick, she's an enigma. Is she a trashy woman who falsely accused a man of rape to keep from being beat to a pulp by her brooding husband? Or is she just an innocent flirt who's wanting to have some harmless fun? You decide...And that's what I love about this film, it never force feeds an answer to you like many films would. Anatomy of a Murder can be interpreted different ways, and that's the difference between art and a commercial.

I still didn't like the Judge in the first couple minutes, he just seemed a bit flat in his acting, but then something clicked and I got it! The judge like Eva Arden (the secretary) is meant to lighten the mood so that the battling lawyers look all the more fervently bombastic. The judge is the calm between the two storms....I loved the way the lawyers did their jobs in this movie, with their fast talking, jury tainting methods, with oodles of showmanship...and armed with reference materials from past trial precedents so as to kick the oppositions ass, ha!

James Stewart was so smooth in this, he's perfectly cast...and so was George C. Scott who was very intimidating. Loved the scenes where he's grilling Lee Remick and is smack dab in her face...Very intense and effective cinematography.

Loved the way the movie wrapped things up in the last scene...And that's exactly how the real murder case, that this movie was based on ended too.

Director: Sam Mendes
Writer: David Self
Cast: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Daniel Craig, Jude Law, Liam Aiken
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller


I seen Road to Perdition some 15 years ago and I always remembered it and that I liked it...and that's saying a lot as I must have watched many 1000s of movies since then. I didn't remember the story line on my second time watching, but I did remember the 'feel' of the film. To me a film's ambiance is as important as the story. I just love the slower, more relaxed style of film making which permeates the film. That style might seem like an odd choice for a gangster film, but that introspective view is what makes Road to Perdition something special. I actually prefer this to The Godfather.

Anytime Tom Hanks is in a movie I usually like it. The guy knows how to pick good film projects! I've not seen all of his films but I've seen enough of them to know it's close to a sure thing that if Hanks is in a film, I'm going to like it.

Jude Law made a good-bad guy and he's style of acting fit the tone of the movie as did Paul Newman. Both actors played it lower keyed and that then worked well for the style of the film.

There might be a story element in the film that I could say I would have done differently and that would be the final ending, but I'm starting to learn that no film is perfect and it's what a person makes of the experience that matters.

Director: Sean Baker