Our Hospitality

1923 romantic comedy

Rating: 17/20 (Dylan: 11/20, Emma 18/20, Abbey 20/20)

Plot: After twenty years in New York, Willie McKay returns south to claim daddy's estate. Prior to his trip, his aunt warns him of a long-standing feud between his family and the Canfields. A Canfield, after all, was responsible for putting bullet in Willie Sr. On the way south, Willie Jr. hits it off with a woman sitting beside him on the train. He's disappointed when he arrives at his birthplace, not only because his father's "mansion" turns out to be nothing more than a shack but because he finds out the woman he's smitten with is in fact a Canfield and that every member of her family wants to kill him. A thing like that could ruin a first date.

Cute little story with lots of visual gags along with some more subdued and modern humor. There's some nice period detail (his bicycle, the minutia within his hometown, the giant hats, a glimpse at Times Square, and especially the rickety funky-looking train) that give this a bizarre, otherworldly atmosphere. It's a funny movie, and it's an exciting movie with some impressive stunt work, especially during a climactic chase scene that involves a horse, a dress, the train again, a boat, a mountainside, and a waterfall. If nothing else, it lends credence to the idea that Buster Keaton is the first Jackie Chan. Except he didn't kick people. And he wasn't Asian. There's nothing completely outrageous about the story. Like most 1920's comedies, you'll know exactly where this is heading, but there's enough charm and fun to make the journey worth it. This and The General are, along with The Gold Rush, good silent romantic comedies to start with for somebody wanting to try out a silent comedy for the first time. And let's just be honest--everybody needs to do that!

Note: A charming Keaton featurette called Sherlock Jr. was also included on this dvd. My children watched it last night while I was out. Abbey rated it a 20/2o, Emma gave it an 18, and Dylan went with a 15. That little movie is stuffed with some absolutely brilliant moments. Our preparation for Wall-E is now complete (the nearly-silent title character was apparently based on Chaplin and Keaton), so we'll see us some Pixar in the next few days.

The back of my head derives no pleasure from these silent movies:

The Storm Riders

1998 martial arts fantasy

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Lord Conquer, just like everybody else according to Tears for Fears, wants to rule the world. Standing in his way is Sword Saint. A prophet named Mud Buddha informs him that the battle will take place in ten years and that integral to his success is making two children (Whispering Wind and Stinky Cloud) his disciples. They're sent out to find a fire monkey and remove somebody's head, and then, I think, somebody gets a brand new computer and wants to show off some of its screensavers. There's a love interest in there somewhere.

I gave this movie a bonus point for Sonny Chiba's line "Good. . .Now let's see how much blood you have." Other than that, this was an awful, ugly movie. Too bad for the legendary Sonny Chiba, I guess. Most surprising to me is that this movie outsold Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in Hong Kong. I couldn't find a time on the dvd box (it seemed endless), but I've read that the international release of this film was cut from a little over two hours to eighty-some minutes. I think I would have preferred a version cut by two hours. CGI effects have been vomited all over this, and the action sequences make almost no sense at all. Wind and Storm have these unexplained powers and can apparently tear off their own arms and throw blood on their enemies or spin around really fast. One of the characters can make a giant bubble to float around in. Lots of "What the hell?" moments scattered all over The Storm Riders. It's all as vacuous as a Power Rangers television episode except it doesn't look as realistic. And it's almost entirely void of entertainment value. This may go down in shane-movies.blogspot.com history as the movie that singlehandedly destroyed Kung-Fu-Ridays.

Here's an awfully disappointed back of the head:

For a Few Dollars More

1965 spaghetti western

Rating: 17/20 (Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: The Man with No Name (not that man with no name but a different one) and Lee Van Cleef (not that Lee Van Cleef but a different one) are bounty hunters, wanted- poster chasers out for big paydays. When a very dangerous criminal and probable lunatic named Indio is busted out of prison by his gang, both bounty hunters decide to go after him.

How cool is Lee Van Cleef? And when you add a Clint Eastwood and a hunchbacked Klaus Kinski into the same movie, you've got an overwhelming amount of bad ass. This is arguably a cooler movie than The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and just as emotionally charged, but it probably isn't as poetic. Still, exquisitely directed with another Morricone over-the-top-but-still-about-perfect score. Abbey was a little confused about Van Cleef looking nearly the same but playing a different character. I was surprised at how she was able to follow this enough to enjoy it. She just loves seeing bad guys getting shot up, I guess. She claims that her favorite thing about the movies is the way they all talk.

Add these to my Christmas wishlist (with the Lone Wolf and Cub action figures in case you've forgotten):

The back of the head with no name:

The Heroic Trio

1993 Hong Kong phooey

Rating: 10/20 (Jen: 2/20)

Plot: Ummm. An evil magical guy is kidnapping male babies and putting them in birdcages that he keeps in the sewer where he lives. Apparently, he wants to raise one of them to be an emperor or something. Aiding his endeavors is a half-man/half-animal with a decapitating device and a woman who can turn herself invisible. The woman who can turn herself invisible happens to be married to a scientist who is putting the finishing touches on some sort of invisibility cloak which the bad guy wants to get his hands on. Wonder Woman (no, not that one) and Thief Catcher team up to stop him but realize they'll need to seek the help of Invisible Girl or the movie's title won't make any sense. Together, they form a trio of dangerous high-flying females that might be able to save the world.

Extravagantly ludicrous and hysterically funny, this is the perfect example of a terrible movie that you'll love and feel guilty for loving. Abandon everything you know about the laws of physics and suspend your disbelief and just watch attractive superheroines flitter about in spandex in absurdly quick action sequences. This rarely lets up, the exception being a comical chunk of sentimentality that has to do with lotus flowers, and the feature-length martial arts fantasy with an overabundance of special defects moves along so briskly that it feels like it's only ten minutes long. There's definitely not a lack of style, and I'd say it's a case of style-over-substance except for the fact that there isn't any substance at all. The dubbed dialogue is great fun. It also seems like the producers of this one were going for some kind of plot hole record or something. I've rarely had more fun scratching my head than I did while watching The Heroic Trio. I would, by the way, probably watch this movie twice than most American superhero movies once. Insanity!

A not-so-heroic uno (head back):

Seven Men from Now

1956 western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: An ex-sheriff seeks revenge on the seven men who robbed a Wells Fargo and killed his wife in the process. As he journeys, he encounters a struggling half-a-man and his wife pioneering from Kansas City to California. He assists them. He also runs into old nemesis Bill Masters, a man whom he had put in jail on two separate occasions. Bill and his sidekick Clete decide to tag along so they can possibly get their hands on the stolen 200,000 bucks after Ben Stride finishes the robbers off. The party tries to survive the elements and horse-eatin' Injuns as they ride toward their destination.

Good traditional Western with some good characters--a real snake for a bad guy (Lee Marvin) and a stoic toughy for a good guy (Randolph Scott in a role originally intended for John Wayne). Gail Russell is also a mighty fine (lookin') actress. (Died at 37 of a heart attack, for the record.) It's also one of those Westerns where the scenery--in this case some jagged wasteland, some mountains, some rivers, some storms--becomes a character or at least becomes as important as the characters. Some real pretty shots anyway. I would have liked to see more darkness in the story, more darkness than the mid-50's would have allowed. I would have also liked to have more characterization for the seven guys he's chasing. They were just there to be killed, sort of like cardboard targets at a shooting gallery, and giving them individual personalities or quirks would have made the movie longer but also more intriguing. Its succinctness, however, is probably part of the appeal. There's hardly a wasted moment. Good little story with some surprising twists.

Here's the back of my head again:

The Gold Rush

1925 silent comedy

Rating: 19.1/20 (Abbey: 20/20, Emma: 3/20, Dylan 11/20)

Plot: The little tramp ventures to the Klondike in search of riches. After a run-in with a bear, a wanted criminal, and a burly miner, the little guy finds himself fighting against the elements in a dilapidated cabin. He eats a shoe. The weather clears up enough to allow travel to town where he meets and falls in love with a showgirl named Georgia, and what he perceives as a return of affection is more valuable to him than gold. When the burly miner pops into the picture once again, however, there is also a renewed prospect of gold and the chance that the little fellow could once again afford a second shoe.

Confession: I may have bumped this up 1 or 2 rating points because it's a classic and I didn't want to disappoint winter rates.

My second favorite Chaplin movie, and I'm happy that at least one of my kids enjoyed it. I'm always surprised with how funny this is. It's not 1920's-silent-film funny where I can just appreciate the humor. It's actually still funny. But if it was just funny, it wouldn't be great. It's also got heart, and there are some really poignant moments when Chaplin first spots Georgia at the dancehall and later at the cabin he's staying at when the girls don't show up for a New Year's Eve party. The story is also tightly written, allowing the romance and the action-adventure to intermingle with the slapstick and other visual gags smoothly. This, by the way, would probably be the silent comedy that I would recommend to somebody who has never given them a chance.

Jen took this picture:

The Cat and the Canary

1927 comedy thriller

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Twenty years after the death of a millionaire kook, his relatives arrive at his creepy mansion for the reading of his will. Due to a stipulation, the relatives are forced to stay the night at the mansion. An escaped lunatic, a milkman, a murdered lawyer, a pair of envelopes, diamonds, and quite possibly incest find their ways into the story. Mystery!

I guess you have to call this influential since the makers of Scooby Doo used the exact same structure (and even some of the gags) in about 80% of their stories. The humor doesn't work for modern audiences, and the thrills don't really either. Still, there's some nice texture starting with an opening shot of a lunatic hand wiping away cobwebs to reveal the title card and continuing with ominous shadows and a camera creeping over dark details. This doesn't have the experimental playfulness of Paul Leni's Waxworks but there's enough clever directing and camera work to make up for a sub-par story and characters that are nothing more than cliches. It's definitely got more than enough style for its time. I love how they felt the need to throw the movie's title into the dialogue twice. "The escaped lunatic tears apart his victims. . .like a cat claws apart a canary!" Dum dum dum!

Yet another picture of what the back of my head looks like when the front of my head watches a movie:

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

1966 spaghetti western

Rating: 18/20 (Abbey: 18/20)

Plot: Three men, the title characters, wander through deserts of historical inaccuracies in search of a bunch of gold. Resilient but ugly Tuco's got the general location and his once-sidekick-turned-enemy Mr. No-Name knows the specifics. The three gold-hungry tough guys match wits and gun-drawing prowess while brushing up against Confederate and Union armies busy fighting all those battles in the American Southwest. There's plenty of back-stabbing, but they also have some laughs along the way. And they make S'mores!

Abbey really liked the music. My one complaint--I would have liked to see more scenes involving characters with missing limbs. The guy with no legs who had to open the door with his head? That guy should get his own prequel. The guy with one arm who wants to join Tuco for a bubblebath? Him too. So many scenes in this are simply perfect. I've heard rumors that somebody wants to remake this? That could be about as wrong as it gets. That project should be abandoned immediately to concentrate on a follow-up--The Good, the Ugly, the Guy with No Legs, and the Guy with Only One Arm.

Half-coyote:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

2007 historical western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The title's sort of a spoiler.

I will say only one thing about this one. Singer Nick Cave (screenwriter of The Proposition) has a very brief role in this as a balladeer singing the traditional folk ballad about Jesse James in a tavern. The guy's been in something like four movies, and two of them have starred Brad Pitt. This, by the way, might be Brad Pitt's best performance since playing the title character in Johnny Suede, the movie that also features Mr. Cave as a character named Freak Storm. Conclusion: Brad Pitt is best in movies that have Nick Cave in them. I was also impressed with Ben Affleck's little brother. This movie would have been far better without the narration. I liked the writing in this one, but I don't watch movies to be told everything. Better direction could have conveyed the same ideas without narration.

Here's the back of the head of a guy who realizes that he lied and said more than one thing:

Curse of the Golden Flower

2006 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: After hearing about some things going down, a mean emperor returns home, accompanied by his second-oldest son. The empress, it seems, has hooked up with his oldest son. There's a third son, but he's next to worthless. He can't seem to hook up with anybody! The emperor isn't happy with his wife, despite her buxom bosoms."Not gonna have this ickiness in my kingdom!" he exclaims to one of the guys who stands around announcing things. So he decides to poison her with some fungus that grows somewhere halfway around the world. She, however, has other plans. A plot unfurls during the festival of chrysanthemums, dysfunctional family secrets are unveiled, and blood gets all over the place.

This was less a martial arts movie than a Shakespearean or Greek tragedy or [soap] opera. When action scenes did pop up, they were absolutely stunning--ninja guys floating through the air, swords flashing, arrows sailing, poetic choreography. The acting's great, the story's solid even when it's a bit convoluted, and the climax(es) are powerful and poetic and grand. The stars of the show, however, are the visuals. This thing's an orgy of colors and cleavage. Continuing with the richness and beauty of Hero and House of Flying Daggers, this third Yimou Zhang film almost exhausts the eyes by forcing them to try to slurp in so much color. Jaw-dropping set design here. There is not a single shot in this 2+ hours that the eyeballs won't enjoy. Couldn't stand that music though, especially the happy little song playing over the credits. What the bloody chrysanthemum was that?

One other note: I watched the English-dubbed version of this because I like looking at movies more than I like reading. I also had the subtitles on. They didn't come close to matching. I'm not sure which I'd recommend, but that might have been the source of some of my confusion about what was going on in this one at times.

Monochromatic:

Zen Noir

2004 murder mystery

Rating: 7/20

Plot: A nameless detective still mourning the loss of his wife gets a phone call about a murder taking place at a temple. He eventually locates a Buddhist temple only to find that those within are really uncooperative. They tease him with tea and keep waving oranges at him. As he struggles to get details about the case, he begins to unravel personal mysteries. He also falls for a bald woman.

Points for effort, I guess. The cross-pollination of noir film elements with Eastern philosophy is something that could have possibly worked well. Unfortunately, I don't think the noir or the Zen was done particularly well. I'm not 100% sure of the intent, but I don't think this was supposed to badly parody both of them. The whole movie, which seemed twice as long as it actually was, had the appearance of one really long joke that doesn't end up having a punchline. There are moments, but the bulk of the film's just little jokey sketches or random philosophical moments that don't add up to anything substantial. Like Zen slapstick mixed with Hallmark philosophy directed by somebody who wants to be the next David Lynch and create the next Full House at the same time. Artificial, unfinished, ugly, nauseating, and pretentious. My one hand was definitely not clapping. Heck, I almost walked out of my living room halfway through this one.

Enlightened:

Waxworks

1924 silent film

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A writer is hired by the owner of a wax museum to pen stories inspired his wax figures. The writer immediately gets to work, imagining himself and the owner's daughter (with whom he is quite smitten) in the fantasies he creates for a sultan, Ivan the Terrible, and a Jack the Ripper rip-off.

This is worth seeing if only for the cool expressionist sets that seem right out of Doc Caligari's cabinet. Angular and striking, a lot of the backgrounds look like they could belong in museums on their own. Color is also used well in this black and white movie, and there's some interesting multiple exposure experimentation going on in the dreamy Jack the Snipper sequence. The stories-within-the-stories themselves aren't anything to get overly excited about. Honestly, I wasn't even sure what was going on in the one with Ivan the Terrible. But this is an interesting little film that makes me want to see more of Paul Leni's work.

Me, sporting my new handlebar beard:

The Baron of Arizona

1. 1950 historical drama

Rating: 11/20

Plot: James Addison Reavis concocts a complexly intricate hoax to swindle the government and the inhabitants of the Arizona territory. After traveling abroad, eating his own horse, and manipulating monks, gypsies, and orphan girls, he's able to at least temporarily convince everybody that he has rightful claim to the entire chunk of property. This understandably makes some people angry.

More Vincent Price, this time in a more subdued role. This is one of those cases where the story is really cool but the movie doesn't work very well. It's Simon Fuller's second movie, and apparently he's still learning the trade. It's pretty blah direction with much awkwardness, a flashback structure which doesn't work and then seems to be forgotten, and that typical 40's/50's-era Hollywood music that makes everything seem more majestic than it actually is. There's clumsy voiceover narration used during the first half of the movie. With the complete lack of style and some cardboard acting, it almost makes everything else look like reenactments for a documentary. Boring reenactments. This almost begs for a remake, probably with Tom Hanks in the lead. Maybe Russell Crowe. That or they could cast Will Smith as the Baron and add a wacky CGI lynch mob and have him quote Bob Marley. That would probably work.

Future Hollywood ideas man:

I Am Legend

2007 remake

Rating: 5/20

Plot: See The Last Man on Earth but take out Vincent Price and put a tough action hero in his place.

This was awful. Will Smith, absolutely terrific in gems like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Wild Wild West, is absolutely terrible in this one. The emotions are transparent and forced, and the only thing I nearly believe about his character is that he is kind of a tough guy. The best thing about this movie would be the static shots of an abandoned New York City. Any time there is any action, however, it looks completely fake. The CGI effects are embarrassing. They look unfinished, and I'm surprised a movie that looks like this was allowed in theaters. The zombie vampire things in this really make you appreciate the geniuses behind Jar Jar Binks. Very cartoonish, video-game stuff here. About an hour of this movie seems extraneous. It's almost like I accidentally watched a version with the cut scenes included, but that's not possible unless the theatrical version of the movie was only 40 minutes long. That might have been nice actually. The producers of this one really Hollywooded it up. It's become an action-adventure movie with a true action-adventure hero. It replaces the psychological thrills of the Vincent Price version with zombies-jumpin'-at-ya horror garbage. It tries to inject humor in ways that just fall flat. It's got big explosions! If Richard Matheson hated The Last Man on Earth (his screenplay adapted from his novel), I bet he'd really hate this piece of crap. If you're reading this, Richard Matheson, let me know!

No picture available. If there was a picture, you'd see a person really hating the movie he's watching.

The Great Mouse Detective

1986 Disney cartoon

Rating: 14/20 (Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Directly beneath Sherlock Holmes' pad, Basil the Great Mouse Detective resides. A little girl comes to him for assistance following the kidnapping of her toymaker father, Hiram Flaversham. Basil is reluctant to help despite the insistence of Olivia and Dr. Dawson, another mouse she met on the way. However, when he hears that his archenemy Ratigan is behind the scheme, he's ready to jump into the case. With the help of Dr. Dawson, they uncover Ratigan's scheme to overthrow the queen and take over the throne.

Despite the happy-looking Disney animals on the poster there, this one is pretty dark. There's violence and drinking and sexuality and fisticuffs in a shady nightclub. There's also a really good villain (voiced by Vincent Price) with a scary peg-legged sidekick bat. The good guy is actually easy enough to like too; he's got his faults and is not a one-dimensional hero. The film's got nice texture and tones with the animation used to depict the shadiest parts of London's underground. Action, suspense, character depth, mystery! Good Disney animation.

Here I am completely understanding why Disney would make sequels to The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Fox and the Hound, and Cinderella but not understanding why Basil doesn't at least get some straight-to-video follow-ups: