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The Outlaw Josey Wales -

This is another strong Clint Eastwood-directed Western. Having seen all of them now except for Honkytonk Man and Bronco Billy, I'd say this one coincides with the star/director's politics the most. I wouldn't be surprised if it's on lists of the best libertarian movies ever made. It's bound to appeal to all Western fans regardless of political leaning, however. It makes a compelling argument that those in government too easily get away with lying, cheating and thievery, especially against the kind of decent hardworking people who need them the most like those in Josey's company. Highlights include the Union army's "allegiance" ceremony and Josey's plea for a truce with Native American chief Ten Bears (a welcome appearance by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Will Sampson), in which he states his - and what might as well be Eastwood's - political stance. Speaking of Native Americans, it has one of the most sympathetic and fair treatments of them I've seen in a Western and in a movie in general. Besides Sampson, I very much enjoyed Chief Dan George's performance as Josey's companion and guide. With that said, those who love Westerns for the good stuff like gunfights, horse rides through scenic vistas and tough-talking grandmas (courtesy of a very good Paula Trueman) will find it here and it's all very well done. Despite its political boldness, the movie ultimately does not push the genre's envelope. I still think it's a must-see for Western lovers and would rank it as Eastwood's third best directorial effort in the genre behind Unforgiven and Pale Rider.

The Journey (1959) - 8 / 10

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The Woman in the Window (2021)

Not much to say about this but it seems like a mish-mash of other films and wasted a damn good cast. The film doesn't have any real suspense or punch just sort of trundles along. The main actors (of which there are only a few) are so pitifully one dimensional that it's surprising this was adapted from a novel as the characterisation is so weak. Ho hum.

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Russian Language Hall of Fame

Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998) -

I struggled with this film, I must admit. It's a highly surreal film, filled with multiple scenes of dreamlike and fantasy scenarios with an anything goes feel. I enjoyed several sequences as curiosities, with my favorites being Yuri encountering his identical twin in a hospital, his ride to prison, or the ending sequence. I also liked the black and white cinematography and found it to be a nice touch to the film's atmosphere. Overall, the film is certainly inventive and there's a lot of joy to be found in watching the bizarre sequences in the film. What made it difficult for me to stay on board with the film was that I felt this was often at the expense of me forming an emotional connection with Yuri or caring about his character and the various struggles he faces throughout the film. He just felt like a prop amidst all the bizarre set pieces and the film left me rather cold from beginning to end. It's a shame, because there's a lot going for this film in the way of style. I'm also curious to watch German's other films to see if I'd like this one more if I were to return to it. I didn't enjoy his approach here though, I must admit. I may rewatch it before this HoF ends though.

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That's how 30-year veteran engineer Frank (Denzel Washington) lays it out to rookie conductor Will Colson (Chris Pine) on their first day together in charge of a locomotive. You gotta do things the right way, or else, lives are put at risk. Simple as that. But there was nothing simple on the day that awaited them.

Loosely based in real life events, Unstoppable follows the two men as they try to stop an unmanned freight train that's speeding down the tracks. To do so, they have to learn to settle their differences, work around the bureaucratic and incompetent barriers of the company, and try to focus on the job at hand. The thing is that both Frank and Will are dealing with their own personal issues which might put their concentration to the test.

Unstoppable was Tony Scott's last film before his untimely death. It might not be the best film, but it more than delivers in well-executed action and tension. For a man known for directing some of the most well-known action films, it seems he led his career by Frank's rule: you're gonna do something, you do it right.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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The Daytrippers, 1996

After discovering what seems to be a love letter in her husband Louis's (Stanley Tucci) things, his wife Liza (Hope Davis), confides in her family. Before she knows it, the whole family including her mother Rita (Anne Meara), her father Jim (Pat McNamara), her sister Jo (Parker Posey), and her sister's boyfriend Carl (Liev Schreiber) loads into the family station wagon and journeys into New York to track down Louis.

This film had a lot more laugh-out-loud moments, mainly courtesy of Anne Meara's overbearing Rita. At once desiring attention, seeking connection with others, and hyper-sensitive to the actions of everyone around her, her dialogue--both in delivery and the writing of it--is outlandish and at the same time, perfect. "So he's a man with no hands and the head of a dog?!" she exclaims, as Carl talks about a painfully allegorical novel he's written. As the film goes on, Carl begins to lean more and more into Rita's approval, and the two become a bizarre echo chamber of caring and compliments.

I also enjoyed the way that Liza's journey to find her husband included two different stereotypical meet-cutes. In the first, Liza speaks to an author (Campbell Scott) at her husband's agency, who tells her about a poem in a soft-spoken way that, in another film, would easily signal the beginning of a romance. Later, Liza finds herself shopping with a nice young man (Andy Brown) who has taken her family in after Rita faints. Liza accidentally knocks over some apples and the two pick them up together. The final encounter, though, is not so fun. Liza finds herself in the middle of two older women, bickering as they divvy up the remains of their recently deceased mother's apartment. As they squabble over who gets to take the Tylenol with codeine--"You took the sleeping pills! We're splitting the Tylenol with codeine!"--the whole thing begins to feel very sad.

And the final third is the only place where I really began to take some issue with the film. For the first two thirds, the way that the film leans on archetypes--the overbearing mother, the rebellious younger sister, the pompous intellectual, the silently-suffering father--but it all kind of works because the writing is pretty crisp and the actors do a great job with their delivery.

But in the last act things turn more serious, and certain characters begin to be portrayed as more nakedly villainous. It is hard to talk specifics without spoilers, but I felt that when certain archetypes become negative, it starts to feel a bit questionable. One character, in particular, has just not been given the same depth of character development. This is also one of those films that takes place in New York but every single person is white, which . . . um.

For the most part this was really charming. I was not the biggest fan of the way it turned more heavily to drama in the last act, but I would highly recommend it. There's also a fun, small turn from Marcia Gay Harden as a woman Liza meets at a party.

I didn't think Sons was a bad show or anything, but it never really clicked with me, even during its supposedly "good" seasons, as it just felt too desperate to be "edgy" all the time for me to able to connect with it. It feels like Shawn Ryan was able to filter out (most of) Kurt Sutter's worst tendencies when he was working on The Shield, but when he went solo, they all came spilling out (sort of like when Vince Russo was writing for the WWF under Vince McMahon, versus his time running WCW on his own, you know?). As it is, this is the only scene I can remember really remember impressing me, since it had a genuine emotion to it...



...an emotion that the rest of the series lacked. Anyway, as for Sheridan's films, I think I have the opposite opinion on them, in that I feel his screenplays for Hell Or High Water & Sicario are just as strong as the one he wrote for Wind River (maybe even stronger in the case of Water), but I still felt that the latter was the best-directed of that trio; I mean, I wasn't demanding Hell Or High Water to be as stylish as Drive, as there are plenty of ways for films to be stylish in relatively subtle ways (like the way the Coens merely emphasized the lengthy stretches of silence in No Country, to compare it to a fellow Neo-Western), but the overall aesthetic of that film just felt kind of flat, and lacked the sense of tension it needed. I mean, sometimes a flatter aesthetic can work, like in the case of something like Moneyball, where the quality of Sorkin's writing combines with the more everyday nature of the story to make the film engaging on the whole, but HoHW needed a different approach, IMO. As for Villeneuve, he's a really good director otherwise, sometimes even a great one (like with Arrival), I just felt his style was the wrong fit for that particular film.

That was part of the point of his characterization in Panther, though:

I'm not sure what you mean by "scrawny" presence, but if you meant that he lacked in presence, I have to think that that's kind of an odd thing to say, since a pretty wide consensus of people (myself included) expressed the sentiment that he left a bigger impression in his role than the actual star of the film did.


On the other hand, if you meant that he wasn't super-intimidating onscreen, I can agree with that to a certain extent, but I think that's because MBJ just has too much natural charisma radiating off of him to be particularly unlikeable, but he was really good at being vulnerable, which was essential to that performance, and helps to balance it out in the end. To compare it to another role in a Superhero movie, it's sort of like Michelle Pfeiffer as Selina Kyle, a performance I've seen you praise before; on the one hand, for one reason or another, she wasn't super-convincing when she had to play that character as the bumbling, socially-awkward nerd she was early on, and it's possible Annette Bening might have done a better job with that aspect of the character if she had ended up playing her as originally planned, but Pfeiffer was still superb at other aspects of the character, like when she got to show off her true skills with the tug-of-war between fierceness and vunerability that she juggled so well later on, which were the more important aspects to capture in Selina anyway, IMO.

I was referring to Without Remorse, of which he is the star.

Oh, okay; thanks for the clarification. I guess that means you do like him as Killmonger, huh...?



= )

This was pretty good but I thought a big step down from the director's Black Rain and Vengeance is Mine. I just wasn't riveted after the first 15 minutes despite the quality of the storytelling and acting. It's one of those movies that had me giggling when I wasn't sure I was supposed to be.

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The Last Full Measure - (2019)

34 years after a Vietnam Air Force man saves 60 infantry soldiers in 1966 by giving his life, one man fights Washington bureaucracy to make sure he's awarded the Medal of Honor before his parents die. Then it takes another 23 years of torture to get this out of development and to the screen. Flashbacks to Vietnam are good, as are some of the heartfelt performances of mentally damaged ex-soldiers. The script is extra cheesy though, and the sweet, tearful ending looks and sounds like something an old Zucker Bros comedy would poke fun of. I loved the old cast - Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, Peter Fonda, Christopher Plummer and Diane Ladd - some of them in their last performances. I kept on imagining it was a documentary, and the hero of the story had literally saved Ed Harris, Peter Fonda....etc*. Just to amuse myself.

5/10

* Then they'd say, "also saved that day were Jack Nicholson, Charlton Heston, Christopher Reeve, Sean Connery, Dean Martin, Gene Hackman..." and on and on.

Eh, I agree with MKS here. TBH, I would have preferred to see Jordan and Boseman switch roles in that movie.

Yeah; I've seen a lot of people say that too, and while I more or less agree with it, the casting issues still weren't enough to keep me from enjoying BP on the whole anyway.

Speaking of Unstoppable Thief, did you ever see this?:

The Faculty (1998)

25th Hall of Fame

BlacKkKlansman (2018) -

More than happy to watch this film again as it's one of my favorites of the 2010's. One thing I like about it is how it provides middle ground to both races. This extends to the police as one of the cops is corrupt and even the black characters such as Ron's love interest Patrice, who believes all cops are racist. Speaking of her, the love interest sub-plot doesn't feel tacked on as her character adds a lot to Ron's arc such as her differentiating views on the police which challenge Ron's own beliefs and how she requests for him to fight to grant power for all people, not just his race. I also really enjoyed the acting. Even though John David Washington wasn't as experienced of an actor as Denzel Washington, he was able to capture the energy and subtlety of his father in this role. I also like how there's so many memorable scenes in this film. For example, the various suspenseful moments or Lee humorously mocking the KKK in various scenes (like a scene of them having an over-the-top positive reaction to The Birth of a Nation) are great. In fact, even a simple scene of Felix and Connie lying in bed where they talk about how their marriage has been enriched throughout the years has darker implications since they list the KKK as one of the main reasons for this. While some people call Lee's films convoluted due to all the ideas he crams in them, they shouldn't find that issue here as the thematic montages are cleverly woven into the film, giving a bookend structure to it. The opening minutes detail the U.S.'s long history with racism, and the conclusion to this timeline serves as a chilling reminder that despite what Ron accomplished in this film, we've yet to see an end to racism and the fight still goes on. It's a bold and striking message which any director who'd turn this story into Oscar bait wouldn't dare to go near. Overall, it's an excellent film and I'm glad I got to rewatch it for this thread.

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