Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Zeta One

1969 English psychedelic sci-fi perversity

Rating: 6/20 (Eric: 12/20; Fred: 14/20; Libby: 15/20)

Plot: Alien women from the planet Angvia kidnap earth women in order to repopulate their planet. It's told in flashback to a guy who might be James Bond.

This flick, which has a nearly incomprehensible story, is also called The Love Factor. It's a cheeky and silly sex romp from the groovy late-60s, like a Barberella where nobody involved tried very hard. There are some cool sets and costumes, but there's also a strip poker scene that goes on for about twenty minutes and goes absolutely nowhere. Although I'm not complaining about Yutte Stensgaard at all, don't get me wrong. Kinkiness abounds, but there's not much else going for this mess of a movie. It lacks the style and personality of the aforementioned Barberella and has a story that you feel like you're wading through.

Rounders

1998 poker movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A law student quits playing poker after John Malkovich takes all of his money. When an old friend just released from prison gets into a little trouble because of some gambling debts, the law student has to get back in the game to help him.

What's with that poster? I'm not sure any of the actors look exactly like their characters in this movie. It's almost like they photoshopped them all in there or cut and pasted them from other movie posters.

I love this movie and have seen it several times. It's a movie that inspired me to start playing cards, and even though it's obviously movie poker that they're all playing, it's still the most realistic Hollywood poker I've ever seen although The Cincinnati Kid ain't bad. When I saw this the first time, I loved the sleazy underbelly that these characters wallowed in, and I also loved Damon's narration, surprisingly since I don't usually like narration outside of the noir genre. I'm not sure if this movie is quoted way too often or if the screenwriter just lifted from a book of poker cliches, but the narration really helps the uninitiated understand the game.

An aside: I remember playing poker at a guy's house once, and this 20-something named Shawn strolled in with a bag of fast food. "Boys," he announced as he stacked his chips, "you better watch out. I watched Rounders today." From the right mouth, that would have been kind of funny, but Shawn was being completely serious. And then he lost something like 40 bucks.

Look at that cast! Damon's great even though I don't always like how his mouth looks in this movie. It kind of looks like it does in all of his movies. It's that one expression he makes, like tortured acceptance or something. You know the one. John Turturro is used just enough, but like a lot of his smaller roles, you almost wouldn't mind seeing a movie made with his character as the protagonist. Loved his answer and subtle shrug when answering a "How have you been?" question. Edward Norton is fantastic. There's a physicality here that is just perfect, even the way he eats a hot dog. He's just so good at creating this slimy character. "Depends on the grip" is such a great line, and his first scene where he's gambling with cigarettes in his waning moments at the prison really tell you all you need to know about the character. Martin Landau's also really good as a judge. And then there's John Malkovich, playing a fucking Russian. I'm not sure if his accent is terrible or spot-on, but I don't really care. I just know you don't want to touch his cookies. There's a note on them and everything! "Just like a young man coming in for a qvuickies." "I am still up 20 grand from the last time I stick it in you." (That one with a really awkward pelvic thrust which is my current favorite movie scene ever.) "Mr. son ov a beech, let's play some cards." "In my club, I will splash the pot whenever the fuck I please." Oh, he's just so perfect.

Casino Royale

2006 James Bond reboot

Rating: 15/20

Plot: James Bond has to beat a guy at poker in order to save the world!

I don't know if I'd expect James Bond enthusiasts to really dig this one. It's a James Bond movie and all, but there's an awful lot of poker in it. The poker is exciting and almost realistic, like ESPN poker, and if there's one person I'd rather not slow-roll during a poker game more than Christopher Lee, it'd be James Bond. License to kill and all. But it happens here which might make terrorist-funder Le Chiffre (that's "the fart" in French, I think) a really nasty villain. Being slow-rolled is more excruciating than the testicle torture that happens later in the movie. Le Chiffre isn't a classic Bond villain though he does weep blood. The poker's fun and all, but there are plenty of action sequences including an intensely choreographed round of fisticuffs in a bathroom that actually made me grunt a few times prior to the really cool opening credits that suffered from a really-not-cool Chris Cornell theme song (all Bond movies should have loungy female vocals for the theme song, right?) and a climactic set piece with a sinking building that is equally cool and ludicrous. The best scene of the movie is a foot-chase through a construction sites that is one of the most thrilling things I've seen in a while, party-Chan and part-parkour. Wowser, does this stuff look dangerous! Daniel Craig is a fine James Bond. I like the ruggedness although I'm not sure Craig's acting is very good. But he can handle the action hero parts of the role adequately, and his Bond is one who gets hurt quite a bit and is in very real peril throughout the adventure. He also screws up, and this story is a real learning process for him. He's humanized, kind of artificially. A shower cuddling finger-lickin' scene seems almost tacky, especially with the gross piano music. I'm really unsure if I want my Bond to be this human actually. I do like the rapport between Craig/Bond and Eva Green's Vesper Lynd. Cool movie even if it feels like something more modern than a James Bond movie. I look forward to finding out where Craig takes this character.

Five Easy Pieces

1970 character study

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Bob takes a break from his meaningless and directionless life of odd jobs to return to his former life with his well-to-do family of musical geniuses because Dad's dying. After a visit of a couple weeks, he returns to his directionless and meaningless life.

If this movie was made today, Nic Cage would have to play Dupea. And although he's one of the finest actors to ever grace the silver screen, he's not touching what Jack does here. Nicholson's performance is otherworldly, transcendent. This character-in-limbo study works for me, mostly because of that performance. The movie's driftless, just like his character, but Nicholson holds this whole thing together, gives it this chewy center. I could watch him attempt to order toast for hours, but that most famous scene in this movie isn't the only place he shines. His road rage is complete genius, all intensity and random shouting. "Why don't you flash your lights so we can see what else you got for Christmas?" And when his barking turns to a piano solo? Unforgettably beautiful. There's also a Nicolas Cage-esque freakout in a car, and his demonstration of Vegas rehearsal piano playing is so nutty. It's truly a virtuosic performance. I also enjoyed Billy Green Bush despite his dumb name as Dupea's buddy Elton. He's got a great southern chuckle which he demonstrates during some bowling alley antics and after pulling something out of his nose. He's also the reason I get to use my "ill-fitting underpants" tag, and, unless I heard incorrectly, he called Jack a "shit ass" at one point. One little detail that I like: during the scene where Jack visits his sister in a recording studio, you can hear the sound of a rewinding tape, backwards piano as a clue to what we're supposed to be looking for in Jack's character. I like that. Five Easy Pieces, a movie with a title I won't pretend I understand, also has arguably one of the best endings.

"Her name's Twinky."
"Twinky?"
"Yeah, cause she's so Twinky."

That's not the ending, you shit ass.

Cool Hand Luke

1967 movie about Christ eating eggs

Rating: 19/20 (Dylan: 13/20)

Plot: The titular ex-war hero is put in jail for what seems to be an absurd length of time for cutting the heads off parking meters. He doesn't like jail all that much and tries to escape over and over again.

Dylan and I are going to work our way through a big list of prison escape movies, and this is the first. So far, all this little prison break film festival has done is prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I have a gay son. I mean, how can you watch Joy Harmon as "Girl Only in the Movie to Wash a Car and Show How Horny Inmates Can Be" washing that car and give this only a 13/20. That extended scene sure extended me! That's just one of a whole bunch of memorable scenes in this. The boxing match, the egg scene ending in Newman striking a Christ pose, the chain-gang rushing to finish the road, the "Night in the Box" speech so fantastically parodied in Toy Story 3, the famous "failure to communicate" line that I borrow all the time to use in my classroom, a little Dennis Hopper, a little Harry Dean Stanton, a little of Kokomo Indiana's own Strother Martin (a man who taught Charlie Chaplin's children to swim), Newman singing "Plastic Jesus" in a scene that nearly jerked tears from me. You also get one of the coolest "bad guys" of all time with Sunglasses Man, a character the Coens would later lift for O Brother. One of those late-60's counterculture in-praise-of-nonconformity flicks that I like so much with the added Christ figure angle, another of my favorite motifs. Add a terrifically cool Newman performance and you've got something pretty special.

Special note: I will not have any problem at all if any of my children are homosexuals. I just wanted to get that out there.

Funny Man

1994 horror-comedy

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Max beats Christopher Lee in a poker game and wins himself a mansion inhabited by a mischievous guy wearing a rubber mask and a ridiculous codpiece. The titular funny man begins harassing the new owner and his family and some random hitchhikers, including Velma and a black Yoko Ono, who show up.

First off, Christopher Lee's name might be on top of the poster, but he's in this movie for about five total minutes. So if you're going to check this out because you're some kind of weird Christopher Lee completist, be warned. The bulk of Christopher Lee's work is at the beginning during a poker game, my favorite part of the movie. Not only did it have a line that is one of my favorite things to say at the poker table ("Shit or get off the pot."), there was a bit of dialogue that I'm going to start saying in every single poker game I find myself in--"I've seen amputees with better hands than this." In my opinion, by the way, Max gets what he deserves in this movie because he slow-rolls Christopher Lee in the hand where he wins the house, and you just don't slow-roll Christopher Lee. The jester demon thing that inhabits the house is irritating. I did like his entrance--all loud percussive music ending in a thumbs-up of all things. That was pretty awesome. Funny Man isn't funny at all which makes the title not only misleading but an outright lie. He urinates on a van and plays soccer with a severed head, so sure he's the type of troll-faced demon jester you'd want to have at your parties, but he's more obnoxious than he is funny. And he repeatedly breaks the fourth wall which I'm sure the makers of Funny Man think is clever. The violent gags probably wouldn't please fans of the genre, although I did sort of enjoy seeing the character dressed as Scooby Doo's Velma get hers. The story seems pieced together, just gag stapled to gaggy gag, choppy and poorly paced.

Lifeboat

1944 Hitchcock movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A black guy, a nerdy guy, a guy who likes dancing, a guy who doesn't like to wear a shirt, a snobbish socialite, a young woman, and maybe a couple people I've forgotten about survive the sinking of their ship. Tension mounts when they pick up one of the Germans who torpedoed their ship. They debate what to do with their "prisoner" but soon realize they may have to rely on his expertise to save them from their predicament.

I was skimming a trivia page for Lifeboat and came across this nugget: Members of the crew noticed that Tallulah Bankhead was performing sans underwear and brought the issue to Uncle Alfred's attention. Hitchcock answered, probably while chewing on marbles, "I don't know if this is a matter for the costume department, makeup, or hairdressing." I told my wife this, and she asked (with that scrunched-up face she makes some times), "Are you putting that in the blog?" I said, "Of course!" She suggested I start writing cleaner and "get rid of the randiness." So that brings us to the first shane-movies poll of 2011! Please leave your answer(s) in the comments. Do you:

A) want less randiness
B) want a lot less randiness
C) want more randiness
D) want a whole lot more randiness, randiness of Mary Poppins proportions!
E) want nothing but randiness
F) want no randiness at all
G) want the exact same amount of randiness
H) want the same amount of randiness but desire some diversity in the randiness
I) have no problems with randiness as long as it's not too gross or read too close to dinner time
J) have problems even remembering any shane-movies randiness in previous entries
K) have no problem with randiness as long as it's in an entry about randy old Uncle Alfred's movies
L) just want me to write about the movies and not go on and on about randiness
M) want this to be the randiest blog in the history of the Internet
N) think I should start having give-aways like some blogs my wife reads


Quick note: Two movies in a row to start this year with a compound word for a title. Although I'm not sure Timecrimes is a real word.

The movie? Well, John Steinbeck wrote it, based on Hitchcock's idea, and Hitchcock directed it. For a 40's movie that takes place entirely in a boat (Hitchcock experimenting again with a one-setting movie), it sure manages to seem realistic. I like that Hitchcock wasn't afraid to take a tense situation and throw in some comic moments. There are a lot of characters for one lifeboat, and I wish they could have been developed more. This is the type of movie that forces the viewer to put themselves in the situation of its characters and imagine making the same choices though, and it is a story more about the situation than the individuals involved. I really liked Walter Slezak as the enigmatic German, always calculating and with motivations that don't entirely make sense to me. Odd ending, one that made me wonder if Hitchcock was messing with me. Speaking of the director, you've got to look close for his trademark cameo, but it's a clever one.

The Man with the Golden Arm

1955 drug movie

Rating: 16/20 (Mark: 12/20; Amy 11/20)

Plot: Frankie Machine, a poker dealer just released from prison, dreams of drumming in jazzy night clubs to make ends meet and take care of his injured and whiny wife. He's got a friend who is half-man/half-turtle, a new suit, and his own brushes. He's also got the scrumptious Kim Novak. And pretty eyes. Oh, and a heroin addiction. I almost forgot about that one. When things don't work out with his drumming aspirations, mostly because he's not very good, he decides to become a James Bond villain and forges a gold cast around his left arm to use as a bludgeon.

I liked the way the camera moved in this one, a sneaky bit of style that never got in the way of the storytelling but added a little cool to the proceedings. Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak are fine; Eleanor Parker ain't; and there's an odd assortment of supporting characters who give this a quirky flavor, including a sluggishly-sauntering pedestrian extra with a hat who I swear I saw in nine different scenes. As a drug movie, this is understandably a little dated, but I still like it twice as much as most modern drug movies. Yeah, Requiem for a Dream, I'm looking at you. I thought the scene with Frankie Machine fighting through withdrawal rang true and liked the amount of edginess that they were allowed to have in this mid-50s production. This movie might also wind up winning the 2010 shane-movies award for "Best Use of a Dummy" which I'm sure would make Otto Preminger pee on himself in his grave. This movie goes on a little longer than it should, and I'm not sure I bought it all, but I definitely liked it a little more than I expected. Bonus point for some nice poker scenes.

The Cincinnati Kid

1965 poker movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The kid's the best five-card stud player in town. He knows it and everybody else knows it. But he can't become The Man until he beats The Man, the venerable Lancey Howard. He gets his chance when The Man rolls into town with his big bankroll. The kid's pal The Shooter, recognized as one of the best and most trustworthy dealers in the business, sets up the game, but breasts, betrayal, and bad beats might stand in the way of him reaching his top.

When the cards are a-flyin', this is a terrific poker movie, probably the best I've seen, with realistic tension, great character acting, and a real understanding of how the game works. The women are beautiful (Tuesday Weld and Ann Margret if you're keeping score) and the men are cool. The smoke-strangled hotel rooms and oily dives serving as the setting for the poker games set a mood and the camera work brings the audience right into the heart of the game. It's good stuff. In fact, there's so much goood poker in this that it might be a turn-off to people who don't know the game. For me, there might be a bit too much going on between hands, but I do like how some of the side plots, namely Shooter's financial struggles and tension with his flirtatious wife, work their way into the picture's central themes. Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson are both great in this, complimenting each other well as rivals with enormous respect for one another. Really, the performances in this are great from top to bottom.

No Limit: A Search for the American Dream on the Poker Tournament Trail

2006 dorkumentary

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Their romantic relationship has failed. Their fledgling film company is failing. So they decide to try to capitalize on the new interest in poker and make a documentary about it. Susan, who claims to be a good player with previous tournament success, joins several tournaments, while Rob the filmmaker, a guy who knows absolutely nothing about the game, documents it on film. With a little luck, they might be able to save their company!

The most entertaining thing about this is watching the annoying woman lose tournament after tournament, blaming it all on really bad luck when it's completely obvious to anybody with even a rudimentary knowledge of the game that she just really sucks. I was rooting against her from the middle of her first tournament (which lasted an entire two hours, by the way) on until I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of her World Series experience. The abundance of whining pounces all over a few interviews with poker pros that are almost interesting, making the whole thing nearly unwatchable. A really terrible waste of time.

Hard Eight

1996 drama

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Professional gambler Sydney is hungry, so he goes to a diner. He meets a down-and-out curly-headed guy and decides to help him. He takes the kid under his wing and becomes a father figure to him. Later, he meets a waitress and helps her out, too. The curly-headed guy and the waitress get married but during what can only be described as the worst honeymoon ever, they need Sydney's help once again. Ghosts from Sydney's past come back to haunt him and threaten the relationship he's built with the curly-headed guy.

This movie should lose a full point for having too many names as it's apparently also known as Sydney. Regardless of the title, it's a sort-of dopey, too-cool-for-its-own-good drama. I thought the performances were pretty wacky. There was something too nonchalant about Philip Baker Hall in the title role (obviously, he plays "Hard Eight"), and John C. Reilly looked out of his element. Samuel L. Jackson always borders on wacky. Gwyneth Paltrow is pretty good though. There are a lot of moments when the story drifts off course, and a twist in the film's second half really doesn't add a damn thing to the story. I hope I'm objective here. I don't want to penalize this because it doesn't come close to reaching the level that P.T. Anderson will in his later work. This should have been better, and I'm sure the director would agree. Philip Seymour Hoffman has a tiny part in this (back when he had to L's in his name), but I'm not sure whether or not it's a character winter rates would want to be.

The Killers

1946 noir

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A pair of fairly rude hit men arrive in a sleepy town to take out the Swede, a gas station worker. An insurance investigator named Reardon interviews faces from the Swede's past and gradually unravels the mystery.

The opening scene of The Killers, in which the menacing hit man look for the Swede in a cafe, is so entertaining. The hit men are interesting fellows, and come across as those types of smart-ass hired killers you can only find in a movie like this. This is based on a Hemingway short story, and I wonder how much of his dialogue was used. It's a well-written script, and the way the story unfolds through flashbacks of various characters keeps the mystery alive until the very end as the deceased gets into deeper trouble the deeper you get into his back story. Burt Lancaster's first role, and I'm not sure it's all that memorable. It's more the story and the way it's told with The Killers. In fact, the narrative's structure is maybe why I think this seems a little more modern to me than a lot of its 1940's cousins. I'm also impressed with the cinematography. It's got all those noirish shadows and two long unbroken shots early in the movie that are really amazing.

Up

2009 movie

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 17/20; Dylan: 11/20;Emma: 18/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Lonely widowered Carl Fredrickson is about to be shipped to an old person's home because he's a menace to society. Instead of losing the home his wife and he constructed out of memories and love, he decides to transport it to a waterfall in South America, both as a way to escape the retirement home and to fulfill a promise he had made to his Ellie a long, long time ago. Unbeknownst to Carl, a boy scout has accompanied him. They make it to South America where they run into exotic birds, talking dogs, and a childhood hero with a zeppelin.

I fully expected this movie to end in what I thought was a predictably unpredictable way. Instead, it threw me off by unpredictably ending in a predictable way. The movie is better with my ending, I think, and I'm sticking with my slightly different "reading" of this one. I can't really say anymore about that without spoiling things. Lovable characters, solid animation (not as stunningly sharp as Ratatouille though), and a quirky little story add up to another Pixar win. Like Wall-E, I think the action bits go a bit too far (that's part of my "reading" though), but the humor works throughout with lots of visual and verbal gags and the colors and details make this a feast for the eyes. It's also a very touching film, managing to make me weep within the first ten minutes which is probably a new record. Lots of little details are going to make this a movie that you can return to again and again although, like Ratatouille, a large chunk of this one is more for adults than children.

Note: I did not see the 3-D version of this movie. 3-D is for suckers.

Disorderlies

1987 comedy

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Up to his neck in gambling debts, Winslow concocts a plan to hire the world's worst orderlies with hopes that they will kill his uncle so that he can inherit his riches. Unfortunately, the only thing that winds up dead in this is the script.

80's rappers The Fat Boys--the Three Stooges of Rap--star in this unfunny 80's comedy. And it's completely obvious why they didn't follow this up with more movies. It's the type of thing you watch and just wonder how in the world anybody thought this was a good idea. The best thing about it might be some of the music. The Fat Boys rap a little bit, and 80's avant-poppers Art of Noise provide some of the soundtrack. The worst thing about this just might be the incredibly goofy cartoonish sound effects (boings, squelches, trumpets, birds, horns) that accompany some of the slapstick. Nothing in this even approaches funny. My brother and I saw this in the theater in '87 and didn't like it then either. And as white kids from rural Indiana, we were likely the target audience. The only reason I picked this up is because I was so stunned it had even been released on dvd that I lost my ability to think rationally.

Shane

1953 cowboy

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: The gayest-looking cowboy ever rides into town with a checkered past and an excessive amount of fringe. The Starett family--Joe, Marian, their son Joe, their dog Joe, a horse named Joe, another horse named Joe, a hopping bull named Joe--is trying to live happily on their farm, but some mean bullies are trying to push them off the land. Tensions mount! Joe gets snippy. Shane and Marian probably "do it" more than once. Joe ain't gonna like that. Ohhhhhhhh, snap!

So, I'm named after the gayest-looking cowboy ever. Thanks, Dad! This is a really good traditional western, a little something for the squares. A bit Disney-fied with some oppressive music, but there's also some grittiness, good acting, and dialogue. I'm not sure how the kid playing Joe (not that Joe; the other Joe) didn't completely ruin the movie. I like the underlying sexual tension with the hero and the guy's wife. There's also a great moment during a fist fight that involves a bull trying (successfully, it seems) to jump over a fence. My favorite scene, however, is a funeral scene that works as a turning point in the story.

First time I watched this, by the way, was in my 8th grade English class. I can't remember why. It's odd that my dad didn't force me to watch it since it's what I'm named after. Of course, he never forced me to listen to Bob Dylan either.

The Ninth Configuration

1980 philosophical dramedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A new psychologist arrives at an American castle being used as a sort of experimental asylum for inmates who are Vietnam veterans and who may or may not actually be crazy. Among those inmates--an astronaut who chickened out at the last minute, a guy adapting Shakespeare's plays for dogs (because somebody has to do it), and a guy who thinks he's a superhero. As the medical physician and army guy at the asylum try to keep order, the quiet new psychologist seems like he could have a few bats missing from his own belfry. Oh, snap!

It took me a long time (half the movie) to even figure out what I was watching here. A more surreal, Cuckoo's Nest rip-off? A comedy? A mysterious drama? Something else? The first half of the movie is syrupy, and there's really not much of a recognizable plot for the longest time. Things are interesting, but they almost seem interesting in a too-manufactured way--the inmates and their obsessions and non-sequiturs are almost too goofy at times. I loved some of the dialogue ("I think the end of the world just came for that bag of Fritos I had in my pants pocket" may be the best line I've heard all year!), and a lot of the more philosophical stuff sort of sneaks up on you and somehow manages to not be pretentious or tossed in at all. In fact, the main theme I grabbed from this (the idea that belief in science requires just as much of a leap of faith as a belief in a deity) seems pretty fresh to me. The climax is brutal and might go on for too long and there are some unfortunate moments that date the movie, but this is definitely one of those movies that I might really like more after a second viewing when I can pick up on some of the foreshadowing that must have been in there. The setting (a strange bulky castle with all kinds of weird sculptures) was definitely cool. I'm surprised that I had no recollection of this film even existing because it seems like something that should have been mentioned to me at some point.

The Grand

2007 improvisational comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Poker players converge on Jack Faro's The Rabbit's Foot casino for a winner-take-all ten million dollar poker tournament.

There's lots of talent in this one--David Cross, Harrelson, Michael McKean, Dennis Farina, Larry David's t.v. wife, Kotter, even Chris Parnell--and a few criminally unfunny ones. That's right, Raymond, I'm looking in your direction. There's also some neat cameos from poker celebrities (I especially liked seeing Doyle Brunson) although Phil Gordon, a poker player/commentator I actually like, overdoes it a whole bunch. It's a good ensemble cast with lots of eccentric goofball characters, most notably The German played by none other than Werner Herzog. There's a guy who, although his talents are behind the camera, needs to be in front of the camera more. Not necessarily in Harmony Korine movies though. The German talking about his need to kill something every day or looking for his pet bunny after his ousting from the tournament are hilarious. (A cut scene in which he reveals a secret he's discovered after travelling the world would have been the funniest bit in the movie.) The problem with The Grand is that there's far too much focus on the numerous subplots (relationships with fathers, attempts to save The Rabbit's Foot, the announcer's book, Raymond's worries about his fantasy football team) and not enough on the players doing their thing at the tables. When the jokes work, it's like flopping a flush, but when they fall flat, which they very often do, the feeling is more like having your opponent hit his three-outer on the river to take the rest of your stack. The poker in this, by the way, doesn't make a lot of sense. A movie pet peeve of mine is where chess doesn't make sense in movies, and although the poker looked real enough, the decisions these "professional" players were making annoyed me.

Jen didn't stay awake for the entirety of this one.

I had to give it a bonus point just for getting to her Werner Herzog say, "I've had a goat. To strangle a goat. . .that makes you feel really alive."

I recently watched this again, laughing more the second time, I think, than the first. I own this movie and couldn't find another comedy to watch. I feel bad for writing bad stuff about Phil Gordon. He's fine here, and so is Michael Karnow as his obnoxious co-host who sells his own books on his poker systems. There is a lot of inside poker humor that might not appeal to people who don't play the game, but there's really enough kookiness for the whole family. And Herzog! Man, I had to watch a couple of his scenes twice.

The Gunfighter

1950 western

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Middle-aged Jimmy Ringo, the fastest draw in the West according to some, is tired of his notoriety. Brushing off cocky young punks wanting to make a name for themsevles or men with scores to settle exhausts him until he is finally ready to ride into that sunset to a place where nobody knows who he is. After killing one of those aforementioned young punks in self defense, he rides to a town to talk his old flame and their young son into disappearing with him. Not-so-hot-on-his-trail are the brothers of the young punk, three guys who aren't concerned in the least about whether Ringo's girl will talk to him or not. They just want him dead. Oh, snap!

Gregory Peck has some great moments in this even when the performances around him are pretty weak. This would frustrate anybody expecting a movie called The Gunfighter to actually show the title character drawing a gun, but it works as a more reflective, psychological, moody piece that sort of topples the myth-making of traditional westerns. Well-written and well-paced, this succinctly packs in small amounts of humor but loads and loads of tension. There are also shades of philosophies that will turn up in later westerns like High Noon and The Shootist. Bob Dylan sang about this movie in the mid-80's. I'm named after him! And a different western! And my dad!

This was a Cory recommendation.

I don't know where the camera is.

The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe

1972 martial arts spaghetti western

Rating: 12/20

Plot: It's the 1880's, and Joe decides to immigrate from China to San Francisco to look for a fresh start in America. He encounters racism immediately, and the prejudice and hatred continue as he travels by stagecoach to Texas and looks for work as a cowboy on a ranch. He finally lands a job, but aiding in the transport of Mexican slaves isn't exactly up his alley. He decides to help the Mexicans instead, so the owner puts a price on Shanghai Joe's head. The promise of 5,000 dollars sends bounty hunters named Pedro the Cannibal, Tricky the Gambler, and Scalper Jack after our hero and his fighting fists.

It's a martial arts spaghetti western with Klaus Kinski playing a guy named Scalper Jack. I don't see how anything else needs to be said. Joe's high-flying antics and groan (it's a groan that rivals Bruce's bird tweets) are fun to watch, more fun perhaps in the western setting. There's some incredibly violent scenes (impaling, eyes torn out, scalps) and a nice mix of the Asian philosophy with the rugged ideals of the American West. Pretty cool characters, too! This movie has an abundance of funk! I highly recommend this to anybody who likes this kind of crap.

Believe it or not, this was a gift from one of my students.

One-Eyed Jacks

1961 melodramatic western

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Rio is screwed over by partner Dad Longbutton following a bank robbery in Mexico. He spends five years in a Mexican prison, and his hate drives him to seek revenge. He finds his old partner in Monterey and is surprised to discover that he is not only married with a step-daughter but sheriff of the town. He puts a plan in motion, a plan which starts with the seduction of Dad Longmullet's step-daughter and ends with sodomizing Slim Whitman.

This was Brando's lone direction credit, and apparently, he didn't even like it very much. Spending well over his budget and time allotted, he put together a cut of the movie that was over five hours long. Studio edited to this nearly two-and-a-half version which seems like it is over five hours. There's an interesting dynamic with the protagonist and antagonist, but I don't completely buy what is going on and everything is far too pretty to seem realistic. After all, the hero's wearing more make-up than the step-daughter he falls for. Brando's just shiny. There are some quality scenes and great lines ("You ain't gettin' no older than tomorrow.") and it's always a treat seeing Slim Whitman in anything, but this dragged-out affair is never capable of building enough momentum or making the relationships between the characters anything you can sink your teeth in. Maybe it did need to be five hours long.

Curious about the step-daughter (Mexican actress named Pina Pellicer), I looked her up to see what else I might have seen her in. Suicide at the age of thirty. I blame Marlon.

Here I am wishing this western had more toughness: