A Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Conversation (dir. by Francis Ford Coppola)

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As a result of my continuing effort to see every single film ever nominated for best picture, I’ve been lucky enough to both discover and rediscover a handful of excellent films that, for whatever reason, have ended up forgotten and neglected in the years since they scored their nominations. One of the more recent of these films was Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece of a paranoia, the 1974 Best Picture nominee The Conversation.*

The Conversation tells the story of Harry Caul (played by Gene Hackman), a surveillance expert who, along with his colleague Stan (played by the great John Cazale), is hired by a businessman (Robert Duvall) to bug a conversation between Duvall’s much younger wife (played by Cindy Williams) and a man who might be her lover (played by Fredric Forrest). Harry, we quickly discover, is a man who values his privacy and who manages to find a balance between his unsavory job and his devout religious faith by maintaining an impenetrable shield of detachment from the rest of humanity. He is a man who hides from the world inside of his apartment, only allowing himself to show the slightest hint of emotion when playing his saxophone. In one of the film’s best scenes, Harry finds himself awkwardly socializing with a far more sleazy acquaintance (played by Alan Garfield, one of the great character actors of the 70s) and it becomes apparent that Harry may be the best in the business but he’s still the ultimate outsider.

However, Harry is forced to confront the contradictions of his own lifestyle when he listens to the conversation between Forrest and Williams and believes that he might have found evidence that both Forrest and Williams are in fear for their lives. With Duvall’s operatives demanding the surveillance tapes, Harry Caul soon finds himself becoming more and more paranoid and unstable as he finds it more and more difficult to justify his detachment. Harry finds himself obsessively listening to the conversation over and over again, going over every possible nuance and emphasis to try to figure out what’s actually being said. Of course, by the end of the film, it’s obvious to both Harry and the audience that nothing is as simple as it sounds.

Compared to the Godfather films and Apocalypse Now, the Conversation is a surprisingly low-key and rather muted film. A lot of this is because, as opposed to the Corleones and Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard, Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul is a complete and total introvert, a man who makes his living by observing a world that he refuses to be a part of. Though the film works quite well as a thriller, it works best when viewed as a sympathetic character study of a paranoid and anti-social human being. Hackman full inhabits the role, bringing Harry — with all of his frustrating contradictions and conflicted actions — to oddly vibrant life. The film ultimately serves as a sad-eyed look at how a good person can justify doing bad things and how the inevitable consequences of those bad things can only be delayed for so long.

On a final note, an impossibly young Harrison Ford shows up here as Duvall’s sinister assistant. He plays the role with just the right amount of prissy arrogance and he has a great scene where he asks Harry is he wants to try a homemade cookie. “They’re good,” Ford assures him.

So is The Conversation.

—–

* Of course, another Coppola film — The Godfather, Part II — beat the Conversation for best picture. However, The Conversation did win the Palme D’Or at Cannes that year. It was a good year to be Francis Ford Coppola.

Two Post Presidents Day Reviews: Frost/Nixon (dir. by Ron Howard) and All The President’s Men (dir. by Alan J. Pakula)

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Now Watergate doesn’t bother me/does your conscience bother you?” — Lynard Skynard, Sweet Home Alabama

As part of my continuing quest to see and review every film ever nominated for best picture, I want to devote my first post Presidents Day post to two films: 2008’s Frost/Nixon and 1976’s All The President’s Men.

During my sophomore year of college, I had a political science professor who, every day of class, would sit on his desk and ramble on and on and on about his past as a political activist. He protested Viet Nam, he hung out with revolutionaries, he loved Hugo Chavez, and I assume he probably had a Che Guevara poster hanging in his office. Whenever he wanted to criticize George W. Bush, he would compare him to Richard Nixon and then pause as if he was waiting for the class to all start hissing in unison. He always seemed to be so bitterly disappointed that we didn’t. What he, and a whole lot of other people his age, didn’t seem to understand was that Richard Nixon was his boogeyman. The rest of us could hardly care less.

That was the same problem that faced the 2008 best picture nominee Frost/Nixon.

Directed rather flatly by Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon tells the true story about how a light-weight English journalist named David Frost (played by Michael Sheen) managed to score the first televised interview with former President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella). Both Frost and Nixon see the interviews as a chance to score their own individual redemptions while Frost’s assistants (played by Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell) see the interview as a chance to put Richard Nixon on trial for Watergate, the Viet Nam War, and every thing else under the sun. That may not sound like a very exciting movie but it does sound like a sure Oscar contender, doesn’t it?

I’ve always secretly been a big history nerd so I was really looking forward to seeing Frost/Nixon when it was first released in 2008. When I first saw it, I was vaguely disappointed but I told myself that maybe I just didn’t know enough about Richard Nixon or Watergate to really “get” the film. So, when the film later showed up on cable, I gave it another chance. And then I gave it a chance after that because I really wanted to like this film. Afterall, it was a best picture nominee. It was critically acclaimed. The word appeared to be insisting that this was a great film. And the more I watched it, the more I realized that the world was wrong. (If nothing else, my reaction to Frost/Nixon made it easier for me to reject the similarly acclaimed Avatar a year later.) Frost/Nixon is well-acted and slickly produced but it’s not a great film. In fact, Frost/Nixon is epitome of the type of best picture nominee that inspires people to be cynical about the Academy Awards.

Before I get into why Frost/Nixon didn’t work for me, I want to acknowledge that this was a very well-acted film. By that, I mean that the cast (Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Sam Rockwell, and Oliver Platt) all gave very watchable and entertaining performances. At the same time, none of them brought much depth to their characters. Much like the film itself, nobody seems to have much going on underneath the surface. Frank Langella may be playing a historic figure but, ultimately, his Oscar-nominated performance feels like just a typically grouchy Frank Langella performance. Michael Sheen actually gives a far more interesting performance as David Frost but, at the same time, the character might as well have just been identified as “the English guy.” In fact, a better title for this film would have been The Grouchy, the English, and the Superfluous.

For all the time that the film devotes to Rockwell and Platt blathering on about how they’re going to be giving Richard Nixon “the trial he never had,” this film is ultimately less about politics and more about show business. Ron Howard devotes almost as much time to the rather boring details of how the interviews were set up and sold into syndication as he does to the issues that the interview brings up. Unfortunately, for a movie about show business to succeed, the audience has to believe that the show is one that they would actually enjoy watching, This, ultimately, is why Frost/Nixon fails. While the filmmakers continually tell us that the Frost/Nixon interviews were an important moment in American history, they never show us. Yes, everyone has hideous hair and wide lapels but, otherwise, the film never recreates the period or the atmosphere of the film’s setting and, as a result, its hard not to feel detached from the action happening on-screen. For all the self-congratulatory claims made at the end of the film, it never convinces us that the Frost/Nixon interviews were really worth all the trouble. Much like my old poli sci professor, Frost/Nixon never gives us a reason to care.

For a far more interesting and entertaining look at the Watergate scandal, I would recommend the 1976 best picture nominee All The President’s Men. Recreating the story of how two Washington Post reporters (played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) exposed the Watergate scandal that eventually led to Nixon’s resignation, All The President’s Men is the movie that Frost/Nixon wishes it could be. Despite being made only two years after Watergate, All The President’s Men doesn’t take the audience’s interest for granted. Instead, director Pakula earns our interest by crafting his story as an exciting thriller. Pakula directs the film like an old school film noir, filling the screen with menacing shadows and always keeping the camera slightly off-center. Like Frost/Nixon, All The President’s Men is a well-acted film with a bunch of wonderful 70s character actors — performers like Ned Beatty, Jason Robards, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, and Robert Walden, and Jane Alexander — all giving effectively low-key and realistic performances. The end result is a film that manages to be exciting and fascinating to those of us who really don’t have any reason to care about Richard Nixon or Watergate.

Both of these two films were nominated for best picture. Frost/Nixon quite rightly lost to Slumdog Millionaire. All The President’s Men, on the other hand, lost to Rocky.

Quick Review: Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3D

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Leonard Wilson

This isn’t so much a review of The Phantom Menace, as it’s one about the 3D aspect of it. I can’t imagine there isn’t a single person who doesn’t know what The Phantom Menace was about.

Historically, Unless it happens to be a cartoon, I really don’t do very well when it comes to 3D films. The effect for me tends to wear off really quick. The only real movie exception for me lately was last year’s Drive Angry 3D and Hugo (which to talk about in full requires it’s own review). The tail end of 2011 saw some of cinema’s Old Schoolers jump into the 3D scene, with Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin adding to the lot. So really, it was just a matter of time before George Lucas would blow the dust off his legacy and take all six of the Star Wars films into the 3-Dimensional arena.

I grew up on Star Wars, like many kids born early enough to have seen the Originals. I remember the lines, the scenes, all of that. With the release of the Prequels, I took my little brother on Midnight premieres for all three of them. Those are by far the biggest and best memories of the series, the sharing of those “wow” moments either with my family or with friends growing up. Of all of the films, The Empire Strikes Back remains my favorite (as it is for a number of people).

So, here I was, back for The Phantom Menace on 3D. You’d think that Lucasfilm and ILM would go to some great lengths to make sure that the effects were great, and I have to admit that there were really only a few key scenes in the movie where the 3D really shined – The Opening Credits, the Podrace and one of the fight sequences. Still, for me the ability to see the 3D faded within 15 minutes, so I was pretty much left with watching a film I wasn’t particularly fond of, save for the key scenes.

That isn’t to say that The Phantom Menace is a dreadful film, Jar Jar and all. The movie was made with kids in mind, and watching it from that position, the story does make some kind of sense. Ideally, 3D really isn’t a compelling reason to have the Star Wars films return to the cinema, yet at the same time, that they’re there may actually warrant a theatre visit if you like watching them. If any film is going to use the 3D well, it’ll probably be one of the Originals. What the film does excel at is it’s use of sound. Ben Burtt is always great when it comes to sound cues and The Phantom Menace is easily a good example of this. Lightsabers hum, sparks are loud and it flows well.

Back in 1999, George Lucas it was necessary to give us a reason why Darth Vader became the man he was, and decided to create the first installment of Star Wars films that would focus on Anakin Skywalker’s rise and eventual fall. Sitting in the theatre and hearing the Fox fanfare go up, one can’t help but smile as the “A Long Time Ago…” phrase appears. Of course, that quickly fades as the cast actually starts talking. Man, the Phantom Menace was a hot mess, but a beautiful mess at that.

The Podracing scene was just as fun as it always was, and the Darth Maul Double Bladed Lightsaber reveal is just as hair raising, but watching it, I had moments where (just as I did on the first run), I wondered how much better it could be if Lucas didn’t hold on so tightly to his creation. Star Wars overall is an awesome concept, but there are just so many better writers and filmmakers out there. The material feels a little wasted, just a little.

If anything, The Phantom Menace does work as something to bring the kids to see, but if you already have the movie on video, it’s not completely required.

Movies I Want To See: The Oscar

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, it’s almost here! One more week and then, it’s Oscar time. This is the time of year that I always end up remembering an infamous little film from 1966 that I’ve always wanted to see. The film in question was meant to be an expose of all the sordid side of show business but instead, it has since become legendary for the number of critics who have declared it to be one of the worst films ever made. The film is called “The Oscar” and it even scored nominations for both its sets and its costumes. Each year, around this time, I swear that I’m going to track down and finally watch this movie. Will this be the year that it finally happens?

Probably not. To be honest, this is going to be a pretty busy week for me and, once this year’s ceremony is over with, I’ll probably be burned out on Oscar talk.

It happens.

However, even if I don’t see the film anytime soon, I can still share this YouTube video of highlights from 1966’s The Oscar.

Enjoy!

Quickie Review: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (dir. by Neveldine/Taylor)

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Arleigh

Ghost Rider has always been a niche character for Marvel Comics. The character was born out of an earlier Marvel character named Night Rider. After Marvel writers Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich and artist Mike Ploog had rein-visioned the character into Ghost Rider during the early 70’s it has always remained on the extreme fringes of the Marvel Comics universe. This wouldn’t stop Sony (which owned the film rights to the character) to go ahead and adapt it for the big-screen. 2007’s Ghost Rider by Mark Johnson was the first and failed attempt to turn the character into a film franchise. It still made enough money despite a near-universal panning of the film by critics and audiences alike. This turn of profit is why Sony once again dipped into the Ghost Rider well and come up with 2012’s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

This “sort of” sequel ditches Mark Johnson and brings in the dynamic (and I’d say somewhat insane) directing duo of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor to helm the film. It brings back Nicolas Cage for the role of Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider. Working from a script by Scott Gimple, Seth Hoffman and David S. Goyer one would think the film had nowhere else to go but up especially with the wacky and frenetic filming style by Neveldine/Taylor. To say that this sequel failed to do anything but finally give this film franchise a final nail in it coffin would be an understatement.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance ditches pretty much most of what transpired with the first film and tries to retcon things for the sequel. I’d say this would’ve been a good idea seeing the first film was truly awful, but what the sequel ended up doing was confuse things even more. The film tries to turn the Ghost Rider persona from just a spirit of vengeance but an angelic being called the spirit of justice which had become corrupted. We get the Devil in the form of Roarke (played by Irish actor Ciaran Hinds) searching for the young boy Danny who is to be his perfect vessel. Johnny Blaze comes into the picture after being recruited by a drunk French warrior-monk by the name of Moreau (Idris Elba whose performance was one of the lone highlights of the film) who promises to exorcise the demon from Blaze in exchange for finding and saving Danny.

This would’ve been a good premise if it had several more drafts of it worked on. Though there’s still a chance the film would’ve still sucked in the end. Even the direction from Neveldine/Taylor (Crank, Crank: High Voltage, Gamer) failed to add any heat to the proceedings. They come up with some unique camera angles and action sequences, but gone was the hyper-realistic and frenetic style they’ve become known for. Their previous films were not stuff to write to one’s film critic circles about but they at least had a sense of fun built into them even if their stories defied any sort of logic.

Even the performances by the cast seemed to be something that barely reached the level of one-dimensional. Nicolas Cage tries to channel his inner crazy by way of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, but it’s too little too late to save the film which never found any sort of footing on the side of competent. Really, the only good thing worth of note was my previous mention of Idris Elba as Moreau who chews the scenery every time he shows up on the screen like it was his last meal. This performance alone wasn’t enough to save the film or even make it somewhat entertaining.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was not worth seeing in the theater (especially in 3D though that part of the film was actually quite well done despite being a post conversion) and I’d be willing to admit that it’s still not worth seeing on video unless it was for free. What could’ve been a restart to the series with the inclusion of Neveldine/Taylor instead gives this franchise it’s death-knell and most likely help Marvel get the rights back from Sony. Here’s to hoping that the flaming skull rider stays on the fringes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for decades to come.

6 Trailers of the Dead

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi and welcome to the latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation trailers! To be honest, I’m usually way too ADD to come up with (let alone maintain) any sort of theme with my trailer posts but this weekend — almost by pure chance — a theme has emerged! So, without further hold up, let us consider 6 Trailers of the Dead!

1) Night of the Living Dead (1968)

How have I done nearly a 100 of these posts without featuring the trailer for George Romero’s landmark Night of the Living Dead?

2) The Astro-Zombies (1968)

Apparently, 1968 was a big year for the dead returning to life.

3) The Majorettes (1986)

The Majorettes was directed by the late Bill Hinzman, the guy who played the Cemetary Zombie in Night of the Living Dead.

4) Dawn of the Dead (1978)

To be honest, I think I’ve already featured this trailer in an earlier post. However, there’s no way that you can start a post with Night of the Living Dead and then end it with Day of the Dead without finding some room for Dawn of the Dead in the middle.

5) Dead Heat (1988)

Wow, this looks really, really, really … not good. However, according to Wikipedia, it’s about zombies and it’s got the word “dead” in the title so it works theme-wise.

6) Day of the Dead (1985)

I’ve watched this trailer several times and those arms still make me jump every time!

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night: Trader Horn (dir. by W.S. Van Dyke)

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, as I attempted to drift off to sleep, I switched over to TCM and watched the 1931 film Trader Horn.

Why Was I Watching It?

I’m on a mission to see every film ever nominated for best picture and Trader Horn was nominated back in 1931. (It lost to the first western ever to win best picture, Cimarron.) Trader Horn is a bit of an oddity among Oscar contenders in that it received no other nominations save for best picture and it has never been released on DVD. When I saw it on TCM’s schedule last night, I figured that might very well be my only chance to see this forgotten best picture nominee.

What’s It About?

So Trader Horn (Harry Carey) is a heroic ivory hunter. Yes, this film was made a long time ago. He makes his living in Africa where he spends his time killing animals and explaining how, whenever the natives start playing their drums, it means that “every black devil is in the bush.” Again, this film was made a very loooooooong time ago.

Anyway, at the start of the film, Trader Horn is introducing his apprentice (Duncan Renaldo) to the facts of life in Africa. Eventually, they meet a missionary (Olive Golden) who is looking for daughter who was kidnapped by a tribe years ago. When Golden is killed, Trader Horn takes it upon himself to find her daughter (played by Edwina Booth) and bring her back to civilization.

What Worked?

Trader Horn was the first non-documentary to be filmed on location in Africa and, as you watch the movie, it quickly becomes apparent that the film’s plot is really just an excuse to show off all the nature footage that director W.S. Van Dyke managed to capture. Countless time the film’s story comes to a complete halt while Carey and Renaldo simply stop to watch a grazing giraffe or to watch a leopard hunt a wildebeest. Normally, this is the sort of thing I would complain about but, in this case, the story was so predictable and silly that I was happy for the interruption. It helps that the 80 year-old nature footage is still visually impressive and exciting to watch. According to the research I did on the Internet after seeing the film, Trader Horn’s footage was used as a stock footage in countless “jungle” films over the next three decades in much the same way that the same old distressing mondo footage tends to show up in every single Italian cannibal film.

There’s a scene were Renaldo finds a lion cub and oh my God, it’s just the most adorable little kitty ever!

Trader Horn actually has an interesting production history and I enjoyed reading about it after I watched the movie. Apparently, Van Dyke spent seven months in Africa making this film and almost the entire crew ended up falling ill. At least two cameramen were killed while filming the wild animals and Edwina Booth returned so sick that her film career was pretty much ended.

On one final note, there was apparently a pornographic remake of this film in the late 60s. Its title? Trader Hornee.

What Didn’t Work?

Did I mention this film was made a really looooooong time ago? Because, seriously, it was. On occasion, I’ve heard an old film described as being “creaky.” I never really understood what that meant until I saw Trader Horn because, quite frankly, this film is amazingly creaky. It moves slowly, the performers are rather melodramatic (though Harry Carey does a good job), and. while the cultural attitudes may have been acceptable in 1931, they now come across as extremely racist and its hard not to feel really uncomfortable with scenes where Renaldo ogles the bare-breasted native women and says, “Why, they’re not savages at all! They’re like little children!”

Bleh.

“Oh My God! Just Like Me!” Moments:

I would have wanted to adopt that lion cub too.

Lessons Learned:

1931 was a long, long time ago.

Review: The Shawshank Redemption (dir. by Frank Darabont)

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Arleigh

“Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” — Andy Dufresne

1994 was the year that men finally got their version of Fried Green Tomatoes and Beaches. We men we’re always perplexed why so many women liked those two films. Even when it was explained to us that the film was about the bond of sisterhood between female friends and how the march of time could never break it we were still scratching out heads. In comes Frank Darabont’s film adaptation of the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.

Using a script written by Darabont himself, the film just takes the latter half of the novella’s title and focuses most of the film’s story on the relationship between the lead character of Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) who gets sent to Shawshank Penitentiary for the crime of killing his wife and her lover and that of another inmate played by Morgan Freeman. The film doesn’t try to prove that Andy is innocent even though we hear him tell it to the convicts he ends up hanging around that he is. The relationship between Andy and Red becomes a great example of the very same bond of sisterhood, but this time a brotherhood who are stuck in a situation where their freedom has been taken away and hope itself becomes a rare and dangerous commodity.

Darabont has always been a filmmaker known for his love of Stephen King stories and has adapted several more since The Shawshank Redemption, but it would be this film which has become his signature work. It’s a film that’s almost elegiac in its pacing yet with hints of hope threaded in-between scenes of men clinging to sanity and normalcy in a place that looks to break them down and make them less human. It’s nothing new to see prison guards abusive towards inmates in films set in prisons, but in this film these scenes of abuse have a banality to them that shows how even the hardened criminal lives and breathes upon the mercy and generosity provided by the very people who were suppose to rehabilitate them.

While the film’s pacing could be called slow by some it does allow for the characters in the film, from the leads played by Robbins and Freeman to the large supporting cast to become fully formed characters. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Clancy Brown playing the sadistic Capt. Byron Hadley to James Whitmore as Brooks Hatlen the inmate who has spent most of his life in Shawshank and whose sudden parole begins one of the most heartbreaking sequences in the film. The whole cast did a great job in whatever role they had been chosen to play. Freeman and Robbins as Red and Andy have a chemistry together on-screen that makes their fraternal love for each other very believable that the final scenes in the film doesn’t feel too melodramatic or overly sentimental.

The Shawshank Redemption was a film that lost out to Forrest Gump for Best Picture, but was a film that would’ve been very deserving if it had won the top prize at the Academy Awards. It was a film that spoke of hope even at the most degrading setting and how it’s the very concept of hope and brotherhood that allows for those not free to have a sense of freedom and camaraderie. Darabont’s first feature-length film remains his best work to date and one of the best Stephen King adaptations which is a rarity considering how many of his stories have been adapted. So, while the fairer sex may have their Fried Green Tomatoes, Beaches and the like, we men will have ours in the fine film we call The Shawshank Redemption.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Ox-Bow Incident (directed by William A. Wellman)

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As part of my continuing mission of see every single movie ever nominated for best picture, I’ve been watching a lot of TCM this month. Last week, I caught the 1943 best picture nominee, The Ox-Bow Incident.

Taking place in Nevada in the 1880s, The Ox-Bow Incident is a western that examines both the mob mentality and takes on the issue of lynching. (It should be remembered that when the Ox-Bow Incident was first released, lynchings were still a regular occurrence.) Henry Fonda and Henry Morgan play two prospectors who ride into town one day and discover that everyone is on edge because there are apparently cattle rustlers about. When it’s reported that a rancher has been murdered, the townspeople form a posse and go searching for the rustlers. Realizing that until the real rustlers are caught they’ll be considered prime suspects, Fonda and Morgan join the posse. Led by Major Tetley (Frank Conroy), who falsely claims to be a Confederate veteran, the posse comes across a camp with three men. Though it quickly becomes obvious that the three men are probably innocent, the posse immediately makes plans to lynch the men. Fonda and Morgan find themselves forced to either side with the bloodthirsty posse or to stand up to the mob.

To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of Westerns. On a personal note, Some of that is because whenever anyone from up north finds out that I’m from Texas, they always ask me if I’ve ever ridden a horse. (For the record, I do not own a horse, I do not ride horses, and I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to them.) On another note, Westerns often strike me as being predictable. All of the dark strangers and the old maid school teachers and the tight-lipped gunslingers spitting tobacco all over the place — it all just makes me want to go, “Bleh!”

However, I was surprised to discover that I really enjoyed The Ox-Bow Incident. While the film’s well-intentioned message was a bit heavy-handed, director William Wellman emphasizes the psychological aspects of the story and the movie itself was well-acted by a large cast who brought a surprising amount of depth to characters who, in lesser hands, could have easily just been stereotypes. Henry Fonda and Henry Morgan were both excellent and sympathetic leads while Jane Darwell dominated the film as one of the more bloodthirsty members of the lynching party. A very young and very suave Anthony Quinn also shows up as one of the accused men. Five decades before either Quentin Tarantino or the Coen Brothers, Wellman and his cast use the standard tropes of the western genre to comment on some very real issues and the end result is a fast-paced film that succeeds in making a moral debate just as exciting as any gunfight or stampede.

Released in 1943, The Ox-Bow Incident was nominated for best picture but, ultimately, it lost to Casablanca. It’s hard to complain about any film losing to Casablanca but taken on its own terms, the Ox-Bow Incident remains an entertaining and intelligent film and one that I’m thankful that TCM gave me a chance to discover.

6 Trailers for Valentine’s Day Weekend

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy St. Valentine's Day

I’m running a little bit late on getting this Valentine’s weekend edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers up and running and for that, I apologize. Last night, around midnight, I found myself at Target waiting for them to start selling the latest Twilight movie…well, let’s just not go into it, okay? Instead, here’s 6 trailers for your Valentine’s weekend.

1) Valentine (2001)

Oh. My. God. This is such a bad movie! Seriously terrible. However, it is Valentine’s Day weekend…

2) My Bloody Valentine (1981)

The original.

3) My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)

The remake, which is a lot better than Avatar.

4) Emmanuelle (1974)

Valentine’s weekend is all about either celebrating romance or being alone and bitter. I’ve been told that Emmanuelle can be used for both of those purposes. “This movie will be shown only in special theaters.”

5) Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977)

Not surprisingly, Italian director Joe D’Amato put his own individual spin on Emmanuelle (or Emanuelle as he spelled it, in order to get around copyright laws). This is probably one of the more explicit trailers I’ve ever posted so keep that in mind before you watch it.