Videotape Swapshop Review: Tears of the Black Tiger (2000)

From http://d.ratingmovies.com/servlet/Main/CoverDisplay/Tears_Of_The_Black_Tiger_(2000).jpg?film_rn=9587

Dir. Wisit Sasanatieng

Whether the review is positive or not, to watch a film like this that attempts to be something different and unique is of some interest. Particularly when its using a genre with as wide a scale like the western. Existing from as far back as the beginning of cinema, the western, despite being an inherently American concept, has transferred globally, the films made outside the USA distinct in what is done different in them, what is done to same and what the tone is for them. I intend to watch as many westerns as possible, and review as many of them as possible, because the difference are just as interesting for me as the great films within the genre are breathtaking to see.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/18732/tears-of-the-black-tiger-2000-dir-wisit-sasanatieng/

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Clearing Through The To-Watch List #5: The Lone Ranger (1956)/The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958)

Images from http://www.cowboysindians.com/Blog/June-2013/
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/http://www.cowboysindians.com/Blog/June-2013/
Weekend-Western-The-Lone-Ranger-And-The-Lost-City-Of-Gold/
lone_ranger_lost_city_of_gold.jpg

Dirs. Stuart Heisler/Lesley Selander

The Lone Ranger (played by Clayton Moore). When his brother was killed, he donned a mask and became a masked avenger in the American west to fight wrongdoing. The man who found him after the shooting, Native American Tonto (Jay Silverheels), decided to join him in his goal. There's no denying this character, adapted once again in a Disney blockbuster last year, feels like he's from another era now, where despite the earnest nature of the character and the potential for more works to be made, people will have political correctness issues with them even though the new film does exist. And if this wasn't a problem, the western has lost its interest for many unfortunately, and even if it was revamped for this generation, it'll be a fifty-fifty chance if there'll be a sequel to the new one. There's no denying these two films, released on DVD in the UK, one disc, to tie in with the new Disney film, are from a different era where it wouldn't be a commercial risk and b-movie features were much more prominent. And that they were for children rather than sold to the widest audience possible. There's a lightness in tone and a lot of humour. The bright colours. The Lone Ranger's clean-cut image, which Moore carries on in his stoic behaviour and moments of comedy, and the bombastic use of the 1812 Overture by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The Overture, starting with a horn, clearly begins as a Calvary charge, befitting horse races or charging horsemen. But there's always been a jaunty, playful side to it befitting comedy and for a character like the Lone Ranger charging over the plains.

The first film, the first time the character had a feature film, has him and Tonto sent into a community to investigate tensions between Native Americans and the (mostly) white populous, only to find the indiscriminate attacks presumed to be by the Natives are up to question. The second concerns Indians being killed for unknown reasons, possibly for very specific items, while a subplot follows a town doctor who is hiding his true Native American heritage. The films as entertainment are average. Their flaws equate to not being good enough westerns, for children not meaning that they should not try to be as good as they can. They're not as memorable as they should be, only alright. But there is a virtue to them that I will keep even if I forget them, and connects to the sense of having lost something now without films like these in existence. The films, for their flaws, do have the virtue that their rudimentary meat-and-potatoes filmmaking has the desire to have spectacle, showcasing talent and just having fun with their material that is drastically missed from a lot of films now, especially when CGI became a convenience for everything. They do show signs of limited budgets. Rear projection including, bizarrely, on characters on horses stood still talking. The only real technical flaw is with the first film but this could have nothing to take the creators to task for. If it was, it's an abomination of a production choice, cuts to black that suddenly kill the mood and energy of scenes, but I suspect the version Classic Media have acquired for the 2013 DVD release is one designed for television, the cuts designed for ad breaks. Commercials undermining a film's tone is bad enough, but non-existing ones doing so is just ridiculous.

The films have a solid quality to them outside of this, conventional westerns but with the playfulness and the willingness just to do something so a person can steal the scene for a trick or stunt. Moore and Silverheels have a charisma on a team. Moore also has a character who uses disguises to help him get information, including a Southern dandy in the second film, which with both cases showed he was able to be varied in both speech and body language with them, an impressive feat considering they skirt the line of being too broad in the tone of the films. This extends to the horses of the protagonists, especially the Ranger's trusted Silver, as much a person as the human characters in the mannerisms the animal can act out. Moments like this can be cheesy in a cute way, but the films show a sense of wanting to entertain the viewer that is rewarding. That they had two lead actors from the television series who were clearly so used to their roles but enjoyed them still. That they would get trained horses who would act out mock moments of gesture and humorous gags. That, especially, they would have the stunt work as they have in this; it's not imaginative, but including a brief fire stunt, you cannot help but appreciate real people doing real falls and other such sequences. This willingness to make something of interest in these films, even if the structures of the plots are what fail them, is of great appreciation.

It's also surprising, for such friendly films in tone, that they have incredibly dark and serious subject matter in them. People are still killed, and a key set piece in the first film is about Tonto being a potential victim of a lynching in the middle of a town. As the plot details for both films point out too, they are also both dealing with racism against Native Americans. It's not perfect. The Natives are treated as superstitious, played by white actors in dark body paint, and to quote Jean-Luc Godard, speak in "Navajo English" that you probably only get in films. The Lone Ranger ends up at times like a teacher lecturing children when talking to them. And while Silverheels has moments for his character Tonto to stand out, for the most part he is a dogsbody to the Ranger. If this was even a D-grade martial arts film from Asia, the Lone Ranger and Tonto would be an equal ground if just in having enough time in the spotlight as a team with the Ranger still the protagonist. Despite this though the clear messages of unity and honour for Native Americans, from matinee films like this, is still praisable and something immensely interesting about them. They suffer from not quite getting to the idealised place but this willingness to go close to these ideas, especially the second film with the doctor character who has a big character arc for himself, shows an attempt at progression.

In the end, what should be taken from films like this, for myself and anyone who viewed them, is that while it was disappointing that they weren't as good as they should have been, there was however a clear line of quality that was being kept up to. Admittedly what a large piece of their virtue is is defined by them being films from another era, where westerns like this were popular and that they weren't being made to be "adult" in a way a teenager boy would view that term. In fact these films, while still children's films in their playfulness, are far more adult in what they cover than a gritty, teenager's film (in most cases) now. It emphasises that I would rather watch films like this than many of now. Although I have optimism for the new one...but that's an entirely different subject of topic in my mind to deal with.

Mini-Review: The Claim (2000)

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyjvRYQU0emV2DEggh2jlfLGF9E17NSAsho5kWUaNY_QdXlDVEfta_mxUJ3QQxGoriZxZQcFbsD9ROJaQvXmPgT6lTRIC4OI8kY_ocu7gTe6zDCHF6KwyVc26OH7CAelCkR4aadSOsCOI/s320/The+Claim.jpg

Dir. Michael Winterbottom

Set in the 19th century American frontier, The Claim is set in a small pioneer town when members of a railway company, including Wes Bentley, enter to negotiate the building of a railway. Interacting with the townsfolk including the head Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan), conflict slowly starts to take place alongside various domestic issues, Dillon's past coming to haunt him when the chance to rekindle his love for the wife he sold (Nastassja Kinski) becomes possible but with the baggage of memories. The promise of the film is the possibility of all the actors within it being onscreen - Mullan, Kinski, even Milla Jovovich in a drastically different type of role - plus the fact that its setting is one of a community of different nationalists (Chinese, Irish, Scandinavian etc) suggesting the potential for a really complex film on the nature of these pioneer towns in the New American. The Claim however is just dull. Its everything I hate about modern cinema even if this is now a decade old or more.

The problem for me with it became immediate when it tries to depict a "reality" of what the west at the time was like - worn faces, Jovovich with little makeup on, dirt, cramped environments, cussing and sex - but undermines it completely with a glossy film style that presumes to be realistic but chops its plans down by the knees, made worse because so many films repeat this style to death exactly. Soft lighting. Pointless amounts of editing for a single conversation. Orchestral string score that sounds like so many others.  Its drama that is supposed to be serious and sober, but without any sense of real meaning and depth to it. It could have been about the industrialisation of the frontier, the tensions between the immigrants, and what would have to be sacrificed, conflict between a senior and a young upstart, love and death. But its hollow. It takes thirty minutes or so to establish a beginning to its main ideas, and it cannot decide if it's a character piece or a drama. There's nothing vaguely entertaining let alone intriguing about The Claim, continuing the problem with many realistic historical films in that they feel like cinematic taxidermy onscreen. It's so deathly serious without any real moment that grabs your attention; the closest is when a whole house is moved over a mountain, which should have been longer a scene, could have been a whole feature film by itself and likely more interesting. It's worse when great actors like Peter Mullan are trying their hardest in something that strives for pretence but is not touching anything actually interesting. By its end its supposed to become incredibly emotional, but its signposting of this through its obvious musical cues and pauses for dramatic effect feel contrived and overused. Classic, more fictional westerns from the fifties or so are far more interesting in how they try to tackle serious issues like race, gender or family relations, their lack of pretence and their glamour allow them to pull you into them with characters who stand out greater. Their clear, quick narratives, and short lengths, allow them to emphasis the issues clearly through the briefness of the material. The Claim never allows its narrative to stand out because it goes for bad drama and tedious structure choices, far too long at two hours and confusing sluggishness for being profound. The unfortunate thing is that there are many films in this art film area of cinema that are just as bad for this reason, my heckles slowly growing to the point they are a nuisance and my hopes drop if a movie strays into these habits just in their beginning. It feels like it misses the complete point of its existence when something like Flaming Star (1960) with Elvis Presley manages to be far more interesting in its themes alongside its Don Siegel-directed western content. Its attention seeking through a form of laziness, not willing to entertain like those classic films, not willing to truly push to grab the human heart of the viewer, and it seethes that it's not just a film like The Claim that suffers from this, but so many other works in cinema including ones celebrated for this problem that justifiably chastised for it.

From http://www.cinemotions.com/data/films/0004/30/2/photo-Redemption-The-Claim-2000-4.jpg

Mini-Review: Yellow Sky (1948)

From http://annyas.com/screenshots/images/1948/yellow-sky-title-still.jpg

Dir. William A. Wellman

After a group of outlaws, led by Gregory Peck, rob a small town bank, they escape through into a barren desert wasteland. It sets up a great deal of promise to keep for the black-and-white shot western. A great amount of time is spent with just these characters at first. The actors - Peck, Richard Widmark, Robert Arthur, John Russell, Harry Morgan and Charles Kemper - have a good repartee, already established that the outlaws can easily gun other down if pushed to it. The lifeless landscape emphasises the great cinematography on display in the film and the use of locations, as the journey to an unknown place is physically felt. One of the biggest virtues of the western, in any country's cinema or language, is that it requires the use of landscape outside of human comfort, giant rock formations for characters to hide behind in shoot-outs, vast desert plains, and grand valleys that are silent and overbearing. Geo-formations that are as much part of the characters as well as the natural landscape. Unlike how Meek's Cutoff (2010) forgot to use the land halfway through to depict the characters' minds physically, the straight forward western, at its best visually, uses the landscapes to emphasise the actions and journeys of the characters onscreen. Eventually the outlaws almost halfway through encounter an abandoned ghost town called Yellow Sky. Lifeless, the dilapidated saloon and buildings set up what could be a very good film.

It has some flaws. It suffers from being too talky. While its idea of the conflicting relationship between the outlaws and the two remaining people there, an old prospector and his granddaughter (James Barton and Anne Baxter), engages immensely, it over depends on dramatic scenes of dialogue to the point of padding its runtime too much. Also annoyingly it drifts away from what is the most interesting aspect of Yellow Sky, the granddaughter, nicknamed Mike, being a tomboy who can handle a rifle, who shows no interest in the males, and can knock Peck off his feet with a strong right hook. The relationship between her and the lustful outlaws gets very uncomfortable, surprisingly sexual and going for discomforting moments that stick out considering the Hays Code would be in full effect at the time. The sexual tension is palpable, Mike threatened but still able to exhibit a toughness liable to take down any of the outlaws. It is only because there are many of them, pressuring the two occupants of the town for a stash of gold, that she and her grandfather are in danger, with only the "Indians" that arrive at one point being stronger than anyone else. It's a shame however she is not this character to the end. Mike stands out because of Baxter's performance and prescience, so it hurts a great deal that once the end credits finish Mike will be shoved into a dress, and be expected to be respectable and "feminine". Even in terms of placing it in the period it was made, there are American film noirs that, even if they could be killed or arrested, had femme fatales, in dresses or not, who stood toe-to-toe with the males by the end with no changes to their personality. It makes Yellow Sky disappointing in this area.

Still, the film is good despite its flaw. Despite being padded in drama, enough of the dialogue scenes feel like they are worth their existence in the narrative. It's very much a great ensemble cast working well together; even if Peck stands out as the matinee idol he's surrounded by a cast on equal grounds to him. Its visually rich and the narrative reaches a good conclusion even despite the problems depicting Mike. It is not up there with the best of the classic American western, my personal canon still needing to be developed, but it makes a solid inclusion for one of the earlier entries within it.

From http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l221n6T6NU1qavi9wo1_500.jpg

Mini-Review: Meek's Cutoff (2010)

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBDM3BhhUbn_jx8BkOHBFfX7zaIEAqP73a5x5tK-QYZLGG2n8vFv4ojc7PXvZP4dK2KHonIE5fnhMRTPWIslhx2GGD6p2DrOSZfTVPHYOtFqjdTzKVYr3gAGRA7176ccVgdgm1IORgT3w/s566/Meek%2527s+Cutoff+DVD.JPG

Dir. Kelly Reichardt

1845. On the Oregon trail westward, two families are on a pilgrimage across the untamed American landscape to a new civilisation. They follow the advice of a bold stranger Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), who guides them across the trail only for it to become clear that they are lost with dwindling amounts of water and food available to survive. When they encounter  a lone Native American, the families against Meek's desires use him as a new guide. But their relationships are breaking down, they have no idea if there are any more Native Americans in the desert around them, creating paranoia, and they don't know if they'll reach anything.

The film has promise. A female director taking on a typically masculine genre in the western. Three core female characters - Michelle Williams, Shirley Henderson and Zoe Kazan - Williams the most distinct if just for the fact that she is willing to lift up a rifle with intent. Stripped of the tropes of the genre in favour of a minimalist drama. It baffles at first, but the beginning half suggest something special. Very minimalistic. Little dialogue. Stunning shots of western frontier desert, barren but evoking. Reichardt name checks Nanook of the North (1922), one of the first momentous documentaries in cinema's history, and the first half consists of the actors working on everyday tasks as they travel, promising a journey which draws you into a trance-like tone of these activities against the participants asking each other if they will ever get to their goal or die. Moments in the first part visually almost become abstract, mistaking the core cast far away as mirages or ghosts.

When the Native American character is introduced and the film becomes more dynamic in story, it sadly becomes a bad drama. I suspect Meek's Cutoff would still be as flimsy on another viewing. It has no tension with what will happen to the characters, their potential deaths or paranoia of Native Americans attacking them in the night never having a sense of real fear or suffocation. The visual potency of the landscape is dropped in favour of a lacking narrative where it feels its cast - including Paul Dano - are just going off a story that feels lifeless. It never feels like the viewer should concern themselves with the group falling to pieces, and both the mundanely of doing tasks and the potential feminist tone are not used at all by its final. Worse is its attempt at being profound. The setting evokes the concepts of "Manifest Destiny", conquering land presumed to be there for white colonists, but never feels like a fully evocative look at it. It's too slight for it to tackle the historical issues of the time subtly, and the scenes with monologues, like Meek saying women are chaos and men are destruction, feel useless attempts at profundity within the structure around them to be significant and linger in your thoughts. The ending is anti-climatic in a terrible way, finishing abruptly. It was support to, clearly, leave the viewer thinking, but for me felt like an ending wasn't written at all. By the end of Meek's Cutoff, there is nothing said in it of worth, of mood, historical analysis, even a good drama. Its actors in period garb  in a film which squanders it promise. Neither does it dissect the western in a profound way like an actual western film could.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi0Lic7pqPUiarxfphl37jiE-_MEKXD07xBGKDOFIs3xHvxqgOmiX-bI8mNN8Z2WKVozSqwyg-60EqitlJeVMLi0J6uWWICAykvces9TtVeesjtgqfP8aOR_CeB7dySFLRqoazhxc_VOGI/s400/Meeks.Cutoff.LIMITED.DVDRip.XviD-DoNE.avi_snapshot_00.19.10_%255B2011.08.13_16.59.06%255D.jpg

J Is For Johnny Guitar (1954)

From http://softmorningcity.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/johnny_guitar.jpg

Dir. Nicholas Ray

There is a lot of classic American westerns I want to watch, more so now that I have an appreciation for them. I admit I've been more positive about the later revisionist and lurid films, from The Wild Bunch (1969) and spaghetti westerns, but that was because they all had a distinct personality, even as part of a collective sub-genre, that made them all unique and have something to make them stand out. Johnny Guitar, revisiting it, is the sort of film that exemplified this. My first viewing of it years ago I thought there was nothing special about it, but with a lot of time to see more films, including westerns, that opinion is baffling now considering how unconventional it truly is. Its drastically different from the classical American Western of the fifties and before admittedly, but it showed me there are probably a lot of distinct and interesting films in its golden period I once dismissed as potentially dull.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/14939/j-is-for-johnny-guitar-1954-director-nicholas-ray/

From http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film4/blu-ray_reviews57/johnny_guitar_blu-ray_/large/large_johnny_guitar_blu-ray_x08.jpg

Mini-Review: The Halliday Brand (1957)

From http://fiftieswesterns.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/the-halliday-brand-movie-poster-1020533660.jpg

Dir. Joseph H. Lewis

Regardless of my thoughts, The Halliday Brand looks exceptional. Joseph H. Lewis, in just a few films, has shown a tremendous visual eye, encapsulated by the dark smoke covered alleys of The Big Combo (1955) and the gangsters standing in the middle of it blurred, and with The Halliday Brand, cinematographer Ray Rennahan adds to this with his talents. The black-and-white images, of closed rooms, cramp and shadow covered, to wide open plains, sprawling and at points baroque in look, are sumptuous with a rich use of lighting. At points it fells naturalistic, at others stylised and artificial, like a summary of the western genre in terms of images. After his sheriff father (Ward Bond) may have deliberately allowed a half American Indian employee to be lynched, because of his racism and hatred of the idea of his daughter being in love with him, one of the sons (Joseph Cotton) decides to act in a way to make his proud, egotistical father crawl on his belly to apologise for his nature. Using the dissolve flashback to enter its back-story for most of the film, the old, no longer used editing effect causing a complete fraction of time as an entire chapter in a person's life goes for just a minute in the present for them, the relationship between the father and son is problematic even on the father's deathbed.

As a technical piece of visual art, it's great, but the narrative is minor. It is enough when supported by the film's visual splendour and the prescience of the actors, especially Cotton and Bond, but by itself it doesn't match up to something like Lewis' own Terror In A Texas Town (1958). It feels lacking in story, which even in such a short length could have juggled this parental divide alongside the romance with the lynched man's sister (Viveca Lindfors), the son's brother and Cotton's character, but as is the case with such a continually churned out genre, it fells underwritten, with the ending feeling like a big anticlimax. It's more of a personal taste as times, but which such a visual eye to it, this isn't the film that's going to push Joseph H. Lewis (yet) from being a fascinating director to a great one. I'm going to have to see more of his films to see if this can happen.

From http://cf2.imgobject.com/t/p/original/cBx0lwUKtyAvLyo0QmrsIFDZpnT.jpg

Gun Battle At Monterey (1957)

From http://www.westernmovies.fr/image/is0/9/7404/gunbattleatmonterey1957.jpg

Dirs. Sidney Franklin Jr. and Carl K. Hittleton

USA

You will have noticed that alongside continental curiosities, anime and abstract cinema, I have a taste for covering certain well trodden genres like martial arts films and westerns. Above other genres that have more mainstream currency, above most if not all other genre types, I am more willing to watch all of the films in these two genres because I am becoming enamoured by the mythologies and legends interconnected into their cores above any other pulp cinema. Other genre cinema is only interesting when it’s good, spectacularly ridiculous or is inherently cultural. The western and the martial arts genre are entirely based on social, mythological and cultural content by their natures. Others could become more interesting for me – I will watch almost anything from Japan and Italy – but especially with the western I’m seeing the real and fictional stories of an untamed country, America’s or set in another land, being repeated over and over again like the repeating ghosts of the past. Gun Battle At Monterey is unfortunately not a good film, but I’m still grateful for watching it and I will be willing to watch more westerns like it in promise of good qualities and with the devotion I share with anything from anime to avant-garde cinema.

Also anything with Sterling Hayden in it has now grabbed my attention. The one-two of Terror In A Texas Town (1958) and revisiting Johnny Guitar (1954) has made the man a badass who I admire for his screen presence, charm and how he clearly looks like a real life tough guy onscreen. Carrying a fuck-off huge whaling harpoon nearly twice his size in the former Joseph H. Lewis film helps just as much solidify his image. He is a robber who is shot in the back by his partner Max Reno (Ted de Corsia). Going to return the favour and get his promised share of their stolen wealth back, he finds that Reno has taken over a small town like the corrupt man he is. Things pick up from here. The unexpected sight of Lee Van Cleef, as Reno’s right hand man Kirby, in the opening credits was an additional enticement, already promising with Hayden but just as it starts topping the cake with a giant cherry while you’re in front of the TV watching it. He is young, angry and playing the stereotypical evil hothead with aplomb. Hayden even if he’s coasting is still Sterling Hayden. The addition of Cleo the card dealer at Reno’s gambling joint (Mary Beth Hughes) improves things further. Charismatic and likable – far more so than Hayden’s good girlfriend and moral compass (Pamela Salvador) problematically for the plot; Duncan feels like a loose end when, despite being the girlfriend of Van Cleef’s character, Hughes’ Cleo and Hayden work well with what they had, so far that she manages to rip off his shirt in their first encounter in his rented room in a way incredibly gratuitous and pornographic for a family friendly, fifties western. Like film noir, it’s the femme fatales who are more charismatic, beautiful and thoughtful when depicted onscreen, although here I think that’s a botched failing than an intentional thing done, sad since both actresses could have been equals in these qualities in their characterisations.

The film around them is the problem that doesn’t make it good. Shabby, rushed, even when the plot in this very short western starts to get interesting in the ending, killing its potential. The actors are shot in mid-to-torso distance images that look like they’re trapped in that camera space, and the black-and-white cinematography does not show the scope of the land or the bustle of the gambling den and confined sheriff’s jail cell. As some of the westerns I’ve seen, not a lot but enough to prove this point, have shown, low budgets don’t stop a film looking exceptional and being resourceful. The actors in this film, going for their best, make the film rewarding to view once, but the cinema around them lets the side down. But this is the reality of being enamoured with watching a certain type of cinema on mass. It means wading through bad ones, or imperfect ones like this, in the desire to still see them and that there’s always the hope of uncovering one that you’ve never heard of and love, even if you’re its only defender. And it proves Hayden and Van Cleef, even in something like Gun Battle At Monterey, are able to shrug off cinematic limitations around them and stride on the screen. It’s like two kaiju standing in a model western town, the cardboard buildings completely unable to hinder them as they squabble onscreen and show, regardless of who wins, that neither is truly a loser. 

From http://www.moviegoods.com/Assets/product_images/1020/319759.1020.A.jpg

Mini-Review: Casa de mi Padre (2012)

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5bwVgRjwbneUyEiy7Q9-OxjE2aERmodm86V04sSJwHHjSsbRXcxRf43s_jy66Q2lcebd78GCLsMWKfKP-4pQwwlCLthKHD2rFX2KB5PWAC5_SGf9dL7xZTFM9j-eKjX6zyVVuh_J29w/s1600/Casa+de+mi+padre+2012+poster.jpg

Dir. Matt Piedmont

USA

The newest kinds of parody films that tackle cult and niche material are divisive. Unlike Airplane! (1980), they are in danger of only being designed for single viewings only, unable to create memorable worlds to match the jokes; Black Dynamite (2009) fell to pieces on the second viewing for example. I have hope for Norwegian Ninja (2010), and in its favour it has a full story, even in such a short running time, and is tackling real life Norwegian political history which adds layers to it. Casa de mi Padre, based on Mexican melodramas, is in a precarious place for me even if I admire what it attempts to do. I have not seen anything that could have influenced this film, so it came to me as a very unconventional work, one, regardless of what happens on another  viewing, I will applaud for being an American comedy taking an original turn.

When two drug lords – his own brother (Diego Luna) and the local lord Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal) – begin a bloody conflict, pushed forward by a corrupt American FBI agent and Mexican police, the naive rancher Armando Alvarez (Will Farrell) will have to learn what it means to be a man to protect what he loves. Done completely deadpan, it is supposed to be a Mexican film with everyone, including Farrell, speaking in Spanish. What could have been quite insulting to Hispanic viewers, with its intentionally fake model effects and back projection, is far more interesting than a cheap parody. It’s whole premise and concept is what could make it remembered in the future even if it’s flawed in the final results. At only eighty minutes, if suffers from a thin running time which prevents it from taking a sketch and making it into  fully formed, unique creation. Many of these intentional cultish films spend most of the running time setting up the premise and not deepening them, which Casa de mi Padre does suffer from.

This film could survive in the eyes of viewers in that, embracing its cultural influences fully, it is inspired and exhilarating. In eighty minutes it includes some immensely good musical numbers, a throwback to spaghetti western title themes that Quentin Tarantino wishes he had, a willingness to tackle something as serious as the Mexican drug wars in a way that isn’t trivialising, and a legitimate cinematic quality to the material, far from flatly made comedies as we expect now but with a mix of artificial and real sets that is distinct and imaginative. When it does play with the tropes of “bad” filmmaking – awkward delays in dialogue, obviously fake animals, in-film advertising – it comes as peculiarly funny rather than a self conscious attempt at being awful. And that it is playing itself as a serious film, including bloody gunfights and tragedy, while creating an off-balanced tone to the story at first, actually makes it difficult to not be caught up with the narrative arch even when you’re still noticing the subtle and blatant absurdities in the fore and background of scenes. The only hesitation I have with giving the film more praise is its slightness, and whether this will do the same to it as it did to Black Dynamite, making it pointless to watch it after a first viewing, is up to what happens on another viewing. Aside from this it is the kind of unconventional idea you want more comedy films to go along with. 

From http://boscosgrindhouse.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/casa-de-mi-padre-1-620x.jpg

Mini-Review: Terror In A Texas Town (1958)

From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9QcjIpxfKYU/T9IHqmf1rdI/AAAAAAAADlw
/6rJSRxVsTuM/s1600/Terror%2Bin%2Ba%2BTexas%2BTown.jpg

Dir. Joseph H. Lewis

USA

The old motto is to never bring a knife to a gunfight. At the beginning of this western from the director of The Big Combo (1955), a man brings a harpoon to a duel, so large that it makes the one from Strike of Thunderkick Tiger (1982), the film I reviewed a month ago, look like a toothpick. Said man is George Hansen (Sterling Hayden), who comes to a tiny town only to discover his father was killed. As he investigates the cause of this, he begins to be wary of an enforcer (Sebastian Cabot) for a rich tycoon who has no qualms about using force. The film is only seventy seven minutes long, a lean, solid tale. Unlike The Big Combo, which undermined its point as film noir by having its protagonist get on his soapbox and rant for no justifiable reason when the plot laid it out for him, this is too short to allow itself to be bogged down by bloat in the dialogue and events, and in the character of Hansen has a man with a likeable personality who just wants to claim his father’s farm and nothing else.

Hayden is good in his main role, passing off, and I am serious with this comment, as a lovable bear of a man who yet has the curved-from-cliff face of a Lee Marvin who will snap when his immense patience is broken.  Cabot is just as good thought, his villainous character allowed to have time to flesh him out alongside his love interest Molly (Carol Kelly), showing him as a heartless villain who yet is vulnerable and could have been a great man if he tried. As I watch more westerns, I am finally getting more enamoured by them, not just the later ones post-Serios Leone and Sam Peckinpah, as the good ones like this show both good genre storytelling and exhibit American culture and moral tales through a genre that has been repeated hundreds of times and yet still be watchable. Terror In A Texas Town does not attempt to be more than a short length western, and succeeds incredibly well.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh76pzL11mstgy17hI3Lf8NFDLtwmqhyphenhyphenRr-GmuVMxeIsfUKcOFRMlnNba3mzNKecwWYzFEz0Xm3rVYKgw5BzCr0vMNvIyDgA9F4dCcvsM0qf_2jOFx87qQFZxGddI3T-mKJKw17Ua2KM37m/s1600/ttt4.jpg

Cowboy Rock [Zachariah (1971)]

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Dir. George Englund

USA

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/zachariah/w448/zachariah.jpg?1310420090

It was this exact DVD, which is the first image for this review, that enticed me to Zachariah in a second hand DVD store, an odd looking spine in the Z section that lead to a fascinating cover, a brilliant one, and the promise of ‘the first and only Electric Western’ in the back cover blurb. The subversion of the Western, the archetype genre of American cinema, is an obvious concept to do. In American B-cinema itself it was subverted with films such as Johnny Guitar (1954). Many other countries, especially Italy, made their own, and numerous revivals and twists to the genre had been done up to the current decade. It seems obvious that, on the cusp of the Seventies when alternative culture was ripe for film, that something like Zachariah was made, combining rock music with the genre.

From http://img.rp.vhd.me/4536650_l4.jpg

When he acquires a gun, young Zachariah (John Rubinstein) in tow with his friend Matthew (Don Johnson) becomes a gunfighter, first encountering the incompetent but musically talented bandits The Crackers (the band Country Joe & The Fish) before continuing on in a journey of self discovery including notorious gunfighter Joe Cain (Elvin Jones) and dancer Belle Starr (Patricia Quinn). As they continue though, Zachariah and Matthew start to drift apart. With an opening image of a horseback rider travelling through a barren landscape, accompanied by an electric guitar riff, the film starts off swimmingly. A blasphemous juxtaposition to the traditional, John Ford-lead western yes, but with an awkward combination of full drum kits and guitars in a traditional frontier western setting, this is far from a conventional piece within the genre, trying to meld both sides together. It has the look of a traditional Western, closer to the classic American ones of the 1950s than something from the same decade it was made in like El Topo (1970), but with rock music and groupies of the period as well as the attitudes of this era. When Zachariah goes to a border town to Mexico, the film is almost about to hit its stride, its colourful, flat dimensional architecture for the outdoor and interior scenes gingerly toddling towards a Ken Russell film but with less confidence and a lower budget.

From http://i.ytimg.com/vi/79Cdwsdwp8I/0.jpg

The film has the materials to be great, Rubinstein and Johnson generally likeable in their roles, while the late drummer for jazz musician John Coltrane Elvin Jones makes a formidable gunfighter who gets a chance to show his impressive skill with a drum kit as well in one scene. There is a great choice of music and musical acts scoring the film that push the film over to a musical as well as a western even if no one suddenly bursts into song mid-dialogue. Only an attempt to combine Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with rock guitars fails, potentially kitsch in its most awful form, but something that could have been impressive if it wasn’t half heartedly attempted when scored over an attempted wagon robbery. The film sadly though feels incredibly convoluted, undermining its potential to be good. It is clear it is supposed to promote the bands and musicians involved – also including The James Gang and The New York Rock Experience – but the film comes to a screeching halt at many points when the musical numbers are played. The story itself goes in unnecessary and completely pointless directions, such as Patricia Quinn’s entire contribution to the film, and the true plotline of the film, of Zachariah and Matthew’s relationship being tested by the chance that one of them will shoot the other dead, is killed by a New Age message introduced in the last act that, while attempted in a subtle way, feels undercooked. Even the potential gay subtext to Zachariah and Matthew’s relationship, which would have been a great flourish for the film, is inadequately dealt with because of the pointless tangents. Sadly it is also another potentially great genre film failed by its director not allowing the locations around the characters to breath and flex on camera; baring some good moments, including those moments when it is about to become a Ken Russell made western, the closed-in use of the camera, fixed on the actors baring an occasionally establishing shot, kills the sense of grandeur an ‘Electric Western’ could have used to its advantage. This is worse when you consider how landscape and its character is one of the most significant aspects of the western genre.

From 1.bp.blogspot.com/_E2uWeSxRO60/TRtJw4ZEwyI/AAAAAAAALms/g2GvQeta8h4/s1600/zach9.jpg

There is a sense that, sadly, the cover and tagline promised a film that Zachariah is not, although this is probably what producer-director George Englund thought the words ‘Electric Western’ conjured. With a tagline like ‘A head of his time’ however, you are expecting a psychedelic western in what those two words mean. Zachariah could have been good on its own terms regardless of this, but excluding the music, it feels far too mellow for a film which combines two things, rock music and the western, that could be perfect fellows for their hardened, world weary tones and complete lack of compromise.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWfIcHCwYsSSXSBRujjHlr3hmPQ75lgGSY1mX1RxetxIk691tKc7MwMrtHk-zM0Wu8x9NXe-6Alri7BCv1X-84ksQXuXWPgFj_idmDs5aoOif5yelWGbPW2Tzsorg02pakJhYhXmJrt4w/s1600/ZACHARIAH+017.jpg

An Aesthetic of Violence and Hunger [Antonio Das Mortes (1969)]

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Dir. Glauber Rocha

Brazil-France-West Germany

Aka. O Dragão da Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro

The disparity between a nation’s cinema and the amounts of films that are available outside the country is significant with the Brazilian director Glauber Rocha, whose filmography on purchasable disc is only three films available from the company Mr. Bongo; this is problematic in that, despite my little knowledge of Rocha, what knowledge of him I know of is that of a very important director in Brazilian cinema and Latin American cinema in general. Founder of the Cinema Novo movement in the continent, Rocha also wrote a very important manifesto on the Aesthetics of Hunger, calling on film directors in third world countries to draw from their plight – poverty, government corruption etc. – and channel it into left wing political cinema that could spark revolutions. In the vast numbers of Latin American cinema of the 1960s and 1970s that is waiting for me to see then, within a period of political strife during these decades for countries like Chile and Brazil, Rocha looks to be one of the most important directors of the continent, making the lack of access to his films even more disparaging. Antonio Das Mortes can be said to be a sequel to Black God White Devil (1964), in which the titular Das Mortes was introduced as a secondary character, a bounty hunter who targets Cangaceiros, ‘mythical’ bandits who fought for the people. Played by the same actor Mauricio do Valle, the film gains a lot from being a continuation but can be viewed by itself, and it takes the character on a very different path to before.

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/antonio-das-mortes/w448/antonio-das-mortes.jpg?1309012930

Set decades after Das Mortes has killed the last Cangaceiro, he is an older, less confident man, filled with regret and yet also left without a purpose. When he is called upon to deal with a leader claiming to be a Cangaceiro, it gives Das Mortes new purpose, but it leads to him taking a drastic turn in his life from what he has done before. The film sounds like a Brazilian western in plot, which it pretty much is, but it is something far more drastic in tone from genre. Not only is the film set in a more modern day environment, the older myths being crushed under modernisation and completely losing the battle long before the film’s narrative, but the film is definitely a political manifesto onscreen. It is very unconventional in tone, willing for three quarters of its length to have prolonged scenes of characters talking to each other and straight to the camera directly, interlaced with overlapping dialogue over visuals and folk music, the Western driven plot dissected for the purposes of Rocha’s ideas as Das Mortes’ alliances drastically change. It is very much its own film and completely unique to itself, its dialogue and literary subtext combining the fantastical with politics and reminding me of William Blake’s more political and visionary writings. The growing intensity of the film, intercut with scenes of violence, eventually grows into a finale that is a barrage of merciless death, the only way tyranny can be overruled, genre and political revolution as a cacophony of gun fire and blood that is brief and startling, with a humorous and lyrical guitar song played over the screams that makes it an event already immortalised during its length. The use of music is exceptionally important for Antonio Das Mortes, the sense of ordinary people within the narrative being able to speak through songs, emphasised by the continuous singing that commands the soundtrack at one point and drowns out the voice and gunfire of the capitalist landowner and his henchmen. The music breaths life through the film while giving it an even more mythical tone alongside its symbolism.

From http://www.theoneonefour.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Antonio-das-Mortes_still1.jpg

The final film needs to be adapted to, but by its end it is startling in its effect, the violence and rage of the content emphased by its messy yet very considered structure, its deep 1960s colours almost making it look like the paintings that bookend the entire film. The use of mythology with political fury is clearly biased, with no regard for balance, but made in a period that could only get worse when a dictatorship took over Brazil, forcing Rocha to leave the country in exile, it is a creation of strife and the desire to change the world when it was drastically needed. As the man who wrote a manifesto of channelling one’s anger into one’s cinema, Rocha made a furious film that is effecting even if it loses you at first with its unconventional tone. Pretty much like most world cinema once you start to dig deeper into it, it will break down your views on what ‘cinema’ should feel and be like, and the lack of Rocha’s films in terms of availability is even worse when I consider that Antonio Das Mortes, with its desolate ending, encourages one to continue through the director’s filmography, a vast one even if he tragically passed in his forties that is out of hand’s reach.

From http://cf2.imgobject.com/t/p/original/voOUcsIgQQYPlLvIDPKeSJ0CT3h.jpg