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The Big Trail - (1930)
How much you like
The Big Trail might depend on how cynical you're feeling on the day you watch it. I mean, it's typical "Out West" stuff, with a hero, raised by Indians and an expert at just about everything, who woos the girl, finds and kills the villains that murdered his friend, and sees a whole caravan of settlers to their paradise. That hero is played by a 23-year-old John Wayne (discovered by John Ford and recommended), who is devilishly handsome at that young age, but who'd struggle to get parts in A-pictures for nearly the rest of the 30s. I found the movie so very entertainingly active and exciting, with a comedic impulse that had me guffawing out loud - it spoke to me. For a film of it's age, it's quite impressive - and one John Ford threw Raoul Walsh's way, but the latter kept it to John Ford standards. Just a rugged, adventurous, no bulldust western of the highest order despite it's age. Be prepared for some real scenes of both people and horses nearly killed - apparently Walsh would not stop shooting for anything, and a few choice moments of real trouble are up there on the screen.
I can't end it there with this film though, because I thought it worth mentioning how much it wants to have it's cake and eat it too. These "settlers" are often at odds with Native Americans, but Wayne's Breck Coleman, raised by them, often has a powwow or two with the "good Indians" (part of a myth created around the time the Western and cinema itself was in it's infancy) and promising not to settle on
their land. I don't know where it stands concerning the rest of colonization, but it seems a bit suspect that a film concerning settlers tries to be so fair to Native Americans. It kind of distracts us from what's happening here. Still, I don't know. It's just an early adventure - and very early "talkie" Western. We get everything in this - blizzards, floods, river crossings, Indian attacks, the passing of impassable terrain, hell-hot deserts, buffalo and the like. There's a colour, widescreen version - but I'm not sure if it exists anymore (it was supposedly breathtaking.) I really liked this - it was really 'alive', and you get the feel that this is being made on a scale never attempted before. I'll remember it for a long time.
8/10
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The Survivor - (2021)
Jewish Boxer Harry Haft (a nearly unrecognizable Ben Foster) slowly opens up to the press about his experiences in Auschwitz, where he was forced to fight fellow inmates in matches where the loser is shot. He tells this story in the hopes his pre-war love sees the articles and contacts him. When that doesn't work he sets up a suicide bout with champ Rocky Marciano. Slick direction from Barry Levinson can't hide the fact that we never really get close to getting inside Harry's mind. We know he's damaged, determined to find someone in an almost naïve, child-like belief they could start up again from where they left off, and it gets tough after that. He has that Neanderthal Jake LaMotta feel about him, and Ben Foster gives him way too much of a swagger in his concentration camp scenes. The story of Harry Haft is a true one - but Levinson's film is always slightly off-track and it feels way too hard to become emotionally involved with it's characters, all of whom aside from Harry are one-note - even his eventual wife Miriam (Vicky Krieps). It's fine looking, and using black and white for the Auschwitz scenes work - they're chilling, but not as chilling as
Son of Saul or
The Auschwitz Report (two recent Auschwitz films) are. This was decidedly average.
6/10
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Avengers : Infinity War - (2018)
Rewatch - Incredible what Marvel did here. I never would have believed I'd be this enthusiastic about watching a Comic Book Superhero film, or like it as much as I do. This and
Endgame will go down as modern classics, and we may never reach these heady heights again. We had a great build-up, but the payoff with those two films was kind of miraculous.
9/10
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Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - (1999)
Okay - so this was a film. When I put it on, I thought I was going to get a straight-up recorded stage version, but this low budget, straight-to-video version was my strange introduction to the 1972 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Imagine my surprise when I notice the likes of Richard Attenborough and Joan Collins in the cast. Maybe I hallucinated this - it feels like maybe I did.
7/10