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I recently watched The Quick and the Dead, which is a Sam Raimi movie. I'm not sure how to describe it. I enjoyed it a lot but I'm not sure how to describe it. It's got that je ne sais quoi that most Raimi movies have, full of dramatic zoom-ins at unusual moments. One thing I'm quite interested in is neo-westerns, of which I can only say I've seen a few and would be keen to check out more, which essentially take western storytelling and visuals and put them in the late 20th and 21st centuries. No Country for Old Men is a good example; Hell or High Water is another. One that I particularly like is a movie directed by Walter Hill (who has said that all of his movies are "westerns") called Extreme Prejudice, starring Nick Nolte as a grizzled Texas ranger. It's also something of a tribute to The Wild Bunch.
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Nov 20, 2018 21:21
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The Quick and the Dead is basically a love letter to the genre by Raimi, but he made sure to maintain his own identify as a director as well. All of the characters are cartoon versions of the ones you've seen in classic Westerns, most prominently Hackman playing a villain who's basically like "what if Little Bill from Unforgiven was just pure evil".
Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Nov 20, 2018 |
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Nov 20, 2018 21:27
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Wheat Loaf posted:One thing I'm quite interested in is neo-westerns, of which I can only say I've seen a few and would be keen to check out more, which essentially take western storytelling and visuals and put them in the late 20th and 21st centuries. No Country for Old Men is a good example; Hell or High Water is another. One that I particularly like is a movie directed by Walter Hill (who has said that all of his movies are "westerns") called Extreme Prejudice, starring Nick Nolte as a grizzled Texas ranger. It's also something of a tribute to The Wild Bunch. I’m pretty sure Carpenter has said that Escape from New York is his take on westerns, but he also has Ghosts of Mars, which is not a good or great movie, but you can have some fun with it. There’s also the classic vampire western Near Dawn, starring Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton, and directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
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Nov 20, 2018 21:40
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The Quick And The Dead is a lot of fun, but would have been better with a different lead. Sharon Stone can be good (Casino, for example), but she wasn’t the right kind of anchor for that story in my opinion.
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Nov 20, 2018 21:41
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Assault on Precinct 13 is a gritty 70s remake of Rio Bravo Ghost of Mars is a wonky 2000s Assault on Precinct 13
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Nov 20, 2018 22:19
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Fart City posted:The Quick And The Dead is a lot of fun, but would have been better with a different lead. Sharon Stone can be good (Casino, for example), but she wasn’t the right kind of anchor for that story in my opinion. It should not have been some soft-lookin city gal. Also her line readings suck out loud, I can't understand why she spends most of her time either sounding close to tears or completely flat. It doesn't work, she is a beautiful woman but she doesn't have that smoldering charisma to pull it off. She needed to be more of a scrapper. I fuckin' love the Quick and the Dead, as a collection of scenes it's absolutely nuts and I maintain it's a gigantic influence on the Red Dead games. There's a bunch of NPCs in those games that come right out of tQ&tD
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Nov 20, 2018 22:25
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Who would have been good instead of Sharon Stone? (Other than Jodie Foster.)
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Nov 20, 2018 22:31
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Wheat Loaf posted:Who would have been good instead of Sharon Stone? Jennifer Jason Leigh? (I haven't seen The Quick & The Dead. It's my last Raimi, I think, besides that Oz movie.)
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Nov 20, 2018 22:33
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Franchescanado posted:Jennifer Jason Leigh? Sigourney would’ve been dope. Jamie Lee Curtis would’ve been good too.
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Nov 20, 2018 22:34
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FreudianSlippers posted:Assault on Precinct 13 is a gritty 70s remake of Rio Bravo The cop genre as a whole could be a subset genre of the modern western. Fort Apache, The Bronx evokes western imagery with it's title alone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El5dcMII4QI
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Nov 20, 2018 22:39
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Having mentioned Jodie Foster, I would like to recommend the 1994 feature-length adaptation of Maverick to anyone who hasn't seen it. It had a great cast which included Lethal Weapon era Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, James Garner, Alfred Molina and James Coburn, an amusing script by the late William Goldman and Richard Donner in the director's chair. It began life as a feature adaptation of The Wild, Wild West with Shane Black tipped to write, but that fell through. There were loads of movie adaptations of tv shows from the 60s in the 90s (Addams Family, Beverly Hillbillies, Brady Bunch, Flintstones, Mission Impossible, Fugitive, Saint, Avengers and many more) and they ran the gamut of quality but this was one of the best.
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Nov 20, 2018 22:42
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Basebf555 posted:I agree with all of your points but for me The Searchers was my first Ford film, and even though I didn't "get it" in full context until a few years and a few viewings later, the grandeur and scope of the whole thing won me over instantly. So I think if there's one thing about it that makes it a good entry point, it's that Vistavision format where the vivid colors of Monument Valley just fill the screen and if you have a decent home set-up it really is an eye opener on blu ray in a way that the earlier stuff filmed in the Academy ratio aren't. Yeah, there's no denying that it's a stunning film. And I don't mean to imply that you need to have written a dissertation on Westerns to appreciate The Searchers. Ford was above all a gifted storyteller, and that shines through even if you're not familiar with the texts he's referencing. It's just that if you want to understand why critics place it on a pedestal above anything else, it helps to understand what it's drawing from. Wheat Loaf posted:Who would have been good instead of Sharon Stone? 
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Nov 20, 2018 22:51
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I'm not sure Sharon Stone really was the problem there, more that the movie itself is designed to give you a parade of interesting characters played by amazing actors and then you have the main protagonist who is mostly just a blank slate mystery woman. I think in the scenes where Stone is actually required to display intense emotion she does pretty well.
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Nov 20, 2018 23:22
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The part where the dude says "you're pretty...." and she replies "you're not" should have been a "you brought two too many" level burn, but instead it goes nowhere IMO. Just stuff like that, it's particularly weak when you're up against Hackman's Evil Smirk and Leo's Regular Smirk.
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Nov 21, 2018 00:00
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I bounced off The Searchers, and most John Ford movies, cause I can't stand his sense of humour, and a good chunk of The Searchers are those awful Irish comedy bits he puts in so many of his films. I like Clementine, Lincoln and Grapes of Wrath much better, because when he is mythologising american heroes he doesn't feel the need to stop the movie dead on it's tracks to have some Irish slapstick.
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Nov 21, 2018 00:04
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I watched The Wild Bunch for the first time ever last night and JESUS loving CHRIST. I mean I've seen Peckinpah movies before and I know his ultra-violent for the time style. I saw this Python sketch years ago and laughed my rear end off, but I have a fresh understanding of it now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmcrreUVBeo Watching this nearly 50 years after it's release shocked the hell out of me, especially that opening robbery. I'll need some more time to process it, but for a movie about a bunch of fairly horrible people doing horrible things, I was transfixed the entire way and the ending was the only ending it could be. "We want Angel" indeed. I also appreciated how sympathetic the film was to the Mexican Revolution, I wasn't expecting that going in.
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Nov 21, 2018 00:15
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FreudianSlippers posted:Assault on Precinct 13 is a gritty 70s remake of Rio Bravo I've never bought this line, they're very VERY different from Rio Bravo, unless you count less than 5 minutes from the finale, shot and presented in a very different way from Carpenter's movies.
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Nov 21, 2018 01:47
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X-Ray Pecs posted:I've never bought this line, they're very VERY different from Rio Bravo, unless you count less than 5 minutes from the finale, shot and presented in a very different way from Carpenter's movies. Remake is probably not an appropriate term for what they are, it's not like Carpenter was following Rio Bravo beat for beat. The whole "remake" thing probably just came along after years of Carpenter emphasizing how much of an influence Westerns and Rio Bravo in particular had on his films in various interviews.
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Nov 21, 2018 01:52
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"Quick and the Dead is a cartoon western" is the best way to describe it. It is absolutely a Raimi film with his signature exaggerated reality going on. I didn't mind Sharon Stone in the film, but I think it wasted Russel Crowe's character. Thankfully everyone else going full ham makes up for it, and Leo dies.
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Nov 21, 2018 06:39
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Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a good modern western from Peckinpah. It's up there with the Proposition, Predator, Do the Right Thing, and Wake in Fright as one of the sweatiest movies ever made.
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Nov 21, 2018 21:18
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FreudianSlippers posted:Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a good modern western from Peckinpah. I've had that movie on my radar for a good while now and it's never popped up on any streaming service that I'm aware of. Might have to give in and blind buy it on blu ray. Edit: or maybe DVD since it looks like OOP blu rays are going for like $75. Yikes
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Nov 21, 2018 21:31
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It's like 20 bucks from Arrow Video on Blu but I'm pretty sure that's region locked to Europe so unless you have a open region player DVD it is.
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Nov 21, 2018 21:39
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Another Peckinpah that I haven't seen DID just show up on Prime though, The Ballad of Cable Hogue. Looking forward to watching that tonight. Although I can never see Jason Robards without imagining him in the title role of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, it's so bizarre to think about that role being played by anyone other than Kinski. Life half the movie was filmed with him before he got dysentery. We also lost out on Mick Jagger being in the movie due to Robard's illness. Anyway, I think Westerns are probably Robard's natural home, he fits very well into that setting.
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Nov 21, 2018 21:51
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FreudianSlippers posted:Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a good modern western from Peckinpah. Bud you forgot Body Heat.
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Nov 21, 2018 22:01
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City Slickers is a too-often forgotten western that i dug as a kid and still enjoy Man Who Shot Liberty Valance deserves a better writeup than I'd give it. Probably has a good one in the archived thread
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Nov 22, 2018 03:03
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poo poo, I just watched jarmusch's Dead Man and it was great. More of a spirit journey than a western, it was a real treat.
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Nov 22, 2018 05:59
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got any sevens posted:poo poo, I just watched jarmusch's Dead Man and it was great. More of a spirit journey than a western, it was a real treat. hell yeah
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Nov 22, 2018 06:16
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got any sevens posted:City Slickers is a too-often forgotten western that i dug as a kid and still enjoy Here’s a good video about The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance https://youtu.be/vDN4L7cAQf0
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Nov 22, 2018 06:18
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got any sevens posted:poo poo, I just watched jarmusch's Dead Man and it was great. More of a spirit journey than a western, it was a real treat. If you're into spiritual journeys disguised as westerns, check out El Topo next.
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Nov 22, 2018 12:45
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I randomly watched The Great Silence last year on tv without knowing anything about it and it really stayed with me. The winter setting is fairly unique for a western and I was honestly shocked by how merciless the ending was. The music is also really good.
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Nov 22, 2018 14:59
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Hello, please watch Lonely Are the Brave. Here’s a wonderful write up Alex Cox did on it: http://nytimes.com/2012/07/29/movies/kirk-douglass-film-lonely-are-the-brave.html
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Nov 22, 2018 15:31
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The Lusty Men is great. Mitchum and Susan Hayward elevates the rodeo drama into a compelling tale of passion corrupted by thrills and greed.
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Nov 22, 2018 15:33
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Captain Jesus posted:I randomly watched The Great Silence last year on tv without knowing anything about it and it really stayed with me. The winter setting is fairly unique for a western and I was honestly shocked by how merciless the ending was. The music is also really good. It's the best example of lawful neutral/evil I can think of in a movie.
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Nov 22, 2018 20:26
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If you're ever in southern Spain (I lived there for a year) and a western fan, it's well worth paying a visit to Tabernas in Almeria. There are three former - and occasionally still active - western film sets there in close proximity that are now tourist attractions: Mini Hollywood (aka Oasys), Texas Hollywood (aka Fort Bravo) and Western Leone. Mini Hollywood was first built for For A Few Dollars More, Western Leone for Once Upon A Time In The West and Texas Hollywood, as far as I've been able to find out, was set up for the spaghetti western boom in general but used in The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, along with many others. The bank at El Paso from FAFDM is a centrepiece of Mini Hollywood, and it's great fun* wandering around all of them and finding a building or setpiece or camera angle that you've seen on screen. * Warning: spouses may not agree with definition of 'fun'.
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Nov 23, 2018 17:07
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Which version of Three Godfathers is the “canonical” one? I watched the 1936 one and it was pretty good, easily the best Christmas Western I’ve seen.
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Nov 25, 2018 04:06
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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:Which version of Three Godfathers is the “canonical” one? I watched the 1936 one and it was pretty good, easily the best Christmas Western I’ve seen. The John Wayne one was directed by John Ford, so that one wins. Though his 1926 silent Three Bad Men is wonderful. It's the story of 3 outlaws who decide to look after a young woman whose father is killed in a raid by a different group of bandits. What got me is how good Tom Santschi's performance is, but also how John Ford's work seemed to be created in anticipation of John Wayne. Like, Ford had all the elements in place, but he needed Wayne to arrive as a leading man to complete the formula. I highly recommend it, it's got great performances, some pretty good humor, and it's clearly where Far and Away got it's scene of the settlers lining up and waiting for a canon shot before racing to claim a piece of land. Here's a still from the movie: 
SimonCat fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Nov 25, 2018 |
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Nov 25, 2018 18:23
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Just watched The Homesman, with Hillary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones. I have a high tolerance for grim movies, but this was really goddamn grim.
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Nov 26, 2018 05:32
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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:Just watched The Homesman, with Hillary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones. I have a high tolerance for grim movies, but this was really goddamn grim. Mostly just one particular moment, which I absolutely did not see coming and it was a complete gut punch. Don't watch The Homesman if you don't want to be bummed out.
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Nov 26, 2018 16:06
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Basebf555 posted:Mostly just one particular moment, which I absolutely did not see coming and it was a complete gut punch. Don't watch The Homesman if you don't want to be bummed out. Honestly, outside of a couple of moments it felt like a 2 hour parade of human misery to me. It’s definitely a good movie though. Briggs returning to the Fairfield Hotel was great.
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Nov 26, 2018 18:53
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I was primed to love The Ballad of Buster Skruggs but for me it just fell flat. I was pretty shocked, usually the Coens are money in the bank for me but not this one. Just not enough time to get to know any of the characters, and too many of the stories were depressing as hell.
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Nov 27, 2018 20:22
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