GUNMAN’S WALK may not be a classic Western like THE SEARCHERS or HIGH NOON, but it was entertaining enough to hold my interest. That’s due in large part to a change of pace performance by All-American 50’s Teen Idol Tab Hunter as a sort-of Rebel Without A Cause On The Range, an unlikable sociopath with daddy issues, aided and abetted by Phil Karlson’s taut direction and some gorgeous panoramic Cinemascope shots by DP Charles Lawton Jr.
Boisterous cattle rancher Lee Hackett (Van Heflin) is one of those Men-Who-Tamed-The-West types, a widower with two sons. Eldest Ed (Hunter) is a privileged, racist creep who’s obsessed with guns, while younger Davy (played by another 50’s Teen Idol, James Darren) is more reserved. The Hacketts are about to embark on a wild horse round-up, and enlist two half-breed Sioux, the brothers of pretty young Clee (Kathryn Grant, young wife of crooner Bing Crosby).
The year is 1886 and Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) is the world’s greatest adventurer.
Or, at least, that’s what he says. Actually, Sir Lionel may have made a name for himself and gained some popularity as a result of his many adventures but his fellow explorers and adventurers don’t take him seriously. They view Sir Lionel as being little more than a self-promoter and they’re largely unimpressed with the all the time that he’s devoted to searching for mythical beasts like The Loch Ness Monster and lost lands like El Dorado. Sir Lionel desperately wants to join the London-based Society of Great Men but the snobbish Lord Piggot-Dunceby (Stephen Fry) refuses to accept his application.
When Sir Lionel receives a letter from someone in America who claims to have tracked down the legendary Sasquatch, Sir Lionel and Lord Piggot-Duncey make a bet. If Sir Lionel can prove that the Sasquatch exists, he will be allowed to join the Society. Sir Lionel heads off to America while Lord Piggot-Dunceby promptly hires an evil bounty hunter named Willard Stenk (Timothy Olyphant) to prevent him from accomplishing his mission. As Lord Piggot-Dunceby explains to his assistant, Mr. Collick (Matt Lucas), the world is changing too quickly. If Sir Lionel isn’t stopped, people might start to believe in things like evolution or women’s rights.
When Sir Lionel arrives in America, he promptly starts searching for the Sasquatch and, amazingly enough, it doesn’t take him very long to find him. It turns out that the Sasquatch — who Sir Lionel names Mr. Link — not only speaks remarkably good English but he’s also the one who wrote to Sir Lionel in the first place. As played by Zach Galifianakis, Mr. Link is a rather laid back and good-natured Sasquatch. In some ways, Mr. Link is surprisingly worldly and, in other ways, he’s rather naive. He takes everything that he hears literally, which poses a problem since Sir Lionel has a tendency towards sarcasm. It also turns out that Mr. Link is lonely but he thinks that he might be related to the Himalayan Yetis. And Mr. Link thinks that Sir Lionel is just the man to help him get from America to Asia!
Sir Lionel reluctantly agrees. Accompanying them on their journey is Sir Lionel’s former girlfriend, Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana). And pursuing them, every step of the way, is Lord Piggot-Dunceby and Willard Stenk.
Missing Link is an enjoyable and undeniably cute stop-motion animated film. It was produced by Laika, the same animation outfit that previously gave us Kubo and The Two Strings. While Missing Link is never as memorable or emotionally resonant as Kubo, it’s still a good-hearted film and entertaining enough that an adult can watch it without wanting to tear their hair out. Blessed with impressively detailed animation and the comedic vocal talents of Hugh Jackman, Stephen Fry, Timothy Olyphant, and Zach Galifianikis, Missing Link has enough funny moments and clever lines that most audiences should be able to overlook the fact that the story itself sometimes feels a bit haphazard in its construction. Much like the Sasquatch at the center of its story, Missing Link is a rather laid back film. If Kubo was a carefully-constructed work of art, Missing Link feels like it was almost thrown together at random. The film is at its best once it reaches the Himalayas, where the humor becomes very barbed and Emma Thompson steals the show in a sharp-witted cameo.
I enjoyed Missing Link. It’s just too sweet-nartured not to like.
He was the black-clad terrorist who haunted the news in 2014 and 2015. He was the faceless man with the London accent who was frequently filmed standing in the desert, taunting Barack Obama and David Cameron before then beheading a hostage. In total, Jihadi John was filmed either beheading or directing others to behead 29 hostages. Among his victims were American journalist James Foley and British aid worker David Haines.
Up until he was apparently blown up by a drone strike in 2015, Jihadi John was, for many of us in the West, the best-known member of ISIS. When we heard the word “ISIS,” he was the one we pictured. Because his face was always covered, his identity was unknown. All we knew about him was that he spoke perfect English with a British accent. He was like a creature sprung from a nightmare, a monster who materialized out of nowhere and taunted us for our inability to defeat him. There was much speculation about who Jihadi John was. Even after we found out that he was probably a Kuwait-born British citizen named Mohammed Emwazi, we still wondered how this man came to be standing in the desert, being filmed as he committed terrible crimes.
The new HBO documentary, Unmasking Jihadi John, is an investigation into the origins of terrorism. The film attempts to reconstruct Emwazi’s early life as an outsider in the UK. His teachers describe him as being quiet and somewhat forgettable. Video from that period shows a skinny and awkward-looking teenager, one who covered his mouth whenever he spoke because he had once been taunted for having bad breath. When he was ten, he wrote that he wanted to be a soccer player. A few years later, he was caught on video, smiling while sitting in a computer lab. And then, just a few years after that, he was in Syria, committing horrific acts of evil. And make no mistake about it — the Emwazi who we see waving a knife while condemning the West is evil. Evil comes in many disguises and will often try to justify itself by hijacking a religion or an ideology. But in the end, evil is evil.
Because Emwazi was vaporized in 2015, he’s not around to explain just what exactly led him to join ISIS. The film speculates that Emwazi initially joined because he was looking for both a surrogate family and a place where he actually belonged. The documentary contains clips from several ISIS propaganda videos and what’s interesting is that the images that ISIS used — children playing in the streets, men working together to rebuild a city, and friends hugging each other — are many of the same images that one would expect to find in western advertising. They’re seductive images, ones that offer up a promise of a better life as long as you follow orders and don’t question authority. They were exactly the type of images designed to appeal to someone like Emwazi (and countless others), who had a need to feel as if they belonged to something bigger than themselves.
If the first half of the documentary focuses on Emwazi and the founding of ISIS, the second half deals with the aftermath of Emwazi’s actions. Interviews, with the hostages who survived and the families of those who did not, drive home the pain that was caused by the actions of ISIS as a whole and Emwazi in specific. It’s in those interviews that we are reminded that Emwazi’s evil cannot be excused by a turbulent childhood or misplaced idealism. Towards the end of the documentary, the man who controlled the drone that fired the missile that ended Emwazi’s life is interviewed. When we watch the grainy and coldly impersonal footage of Emwazi’s car blowing up, we feel no sympathy for the man who was called Jihadi John. As to whether or not there’s joy to be found there, well, that’s up to the viewer to decide for themselves.
It’s a compelling documentary but it’s also frustrating, if just because it poses a question that may be impossible to answer. Why does evil exist? How can one go from being a normal, if awkward, teenager to being a savage murderer? Like the rest of us, the documentary can only wonder why.
Released back in February (just in time for Valentine’s Day!), Cold Pursuit was this year’s Liam Neeson revenge flick.
This time, Neeson played Nels Coxman, a snow plow driver who speaks in a raspy tone of voice and tends to walk around with a thousand-yard stare on his face. After his son is killed by gangsters, Nels sets out for revenge. It turns out that Nels’s father was some sort of mob enforcer so both Nels and his brother (William Forsythe) have apparently inherited the “instinctively know how to kill” gene So, while Nels’s wife (Laura Dern) stays at home and has a nervous breakdown, Nels heads out and starts killing folks. Since the gangsters are led by an idiot named Viking (Tom Bateman), they all assume that they’re being targeted by a rival drug gang, one which is led by a Ute named White Bull (Tom Jackson). So, while the two drug gangs are killing each other off, Nels is busy killing any stragglers that he comes across. It all adds up to a lot of killing.
Cold Pursuit is different from other Liam Neeson revenge films by the fact that it’s an out-and-out parody of the genre. So, while Neeson walks through the film with his usual glum expression and commits all the usual mayhem that we’ve come to expect from a vengeance-driven Neeson, everyone else plays their role as broadly as possible. Tom Bateman leaves not a single piece of scenery unchewed in the role of Viking while Tom Jackson is stoic to the point of insanity in the role of White Bull. Whenever a gangster gets killed, a title card appears, listing his name, his nickname, and his religion. Meanwhile, two cops (Emmy Rossum and John Doman) prove to be comically ineffective.
And I will admit that I did laugh a few times while watching Cold Pursuit. The scene where Neeson asks his brother to explain why everyone has a nickname made me smile. Some of the murders are clever and the action scenes are frequently so over-the-top that you can’t help but be amused by them.
That said, Cold Pursuit didn’t really work for me. I think the problem is that the filmmakers spent so much time trying to parody Neeson’s films that they didn’t consider that the majority of those films are themselves already parodies. I mean, just watch The Commuter and tell me that film isn’t cheerfully winking at the audience. Since Neeson’s screen persona hasn’t really been a serious one for close to ten years now, parodying it isn’t quite the subversive act that Cold Pursuit seems to think it is. The difference between Neeson’s other films and Cold Pursuit is the difference between merely winking at an audience or pulling a gun on an audience while demanding, “LAUGH, DAMN YOU!” Sometimes, the funniest jokes are the ones that you pretend you’re not making.
On the plus side, the film looks gorgeous. It takes place in the Colorado mountains and makes great use of the frozen landscape. And George Fenton’s score is nicely evocative and well-used in the film. Finally, Liam Neeson is always fun to watch, even when it’s in a somewhat flawed film like this one.
Candy Johnson, dubbed “The Perpetual Motion Machine” by American-International publicists, shaked, rattled, and rolled her way across the Silver Screen in the first four AIP/Beach Party flicks, then just as quickly disappeared from the scene. But just who was this undulating beach bunny with the amazing ability to send Eric Von Zipper flying through the air with her hip-quaking booty shaking?
‘Candy’ was the childhood nickname of Vicki Jane Husted, born in San Gabriel, California on Feb. 8, 1944. She was the niece of race car driver Jim Rathmann, who won the Indy 500 in 1960. Candy loved dancing (obviously!) and her energetic go-go shimmying landed her a two-year gig as the featured attraction at Palm Springs’ Safari Lounge, backed by The Exciters Band, where she drew sold-out crowds on a nightly basis. The California Girl and her band next hit glittering Las Vegas, where the local press first coined…
That, in itself, is not a surprise. The Upside is about a wealthy, emotionally repressed white man and, if there’s anything we’ve learned from the movies, it’s that wealthy, repressed white people always love opera.
Another things that we’ve learned from the movies is that wealthy, emotionally repressed white people always hire a streetwise person of color to help them learn to appreciate life. This person of color will inevitably not care for all of the opera and will then introduce the wealthy, emotionally repressed white person to their own type of music. If the movie’s a comedy, that music will be rap. If it’s a drama, that music will be jazz. The Upside is a dramedy so the music of emotional liberation is Aretha Franklin.
There’s not a single cliche that goes unused in The Upside. Actually, I take that back. As opposed to so many other films of this short, Phillip (Bryan Cranston) does not start the film as a politically incorrect bigot, which means that we’re spared of any cringey scenes of Philip trying to bait Dell (Kevin Hart) by being casually racist. Otherwise, every cliche imaginable is present in The Upside and it all gets to be a bit much after a while. I’m sure that the film means well and there’s a part of me that felt a little bit guilty about not liking it but seriously, this is one of those movie’s that just keeps coming at you.
Phillip is a paraplegic who wants to die, though not before listening to a lot of opera. Dell is an ex-con who needs to find a job so his parole doesn’t get revoked. Yvonne (Nicole Kidman) is Phillip’s personal assistant. She’s obviously in love with Phillip, though for some reason this fact is never acknowledged until the end of the film.
Together …. they solve crimes!
No, actually, they all become friends and learn the importance of celebrating life. It’s a good lesson to learn, make no mistake. But it’s just all so predictable that it’s hard not to resent just how thoroughly and blatantly the film insists on trying to manipulate you. You get the feeling that the filmmakers didn’t have any faith in their audience’s capability to feel empathy. Director Neil Burger did such a great job with Limitlessbut, with this film, he seems to have lost his sense of pacing. The movie drags from one heartwarming cliche to another, without any hints of the type of quirky self-awareness that would help to make those cliches easier to digest.
Bryan Cranston’s a great actor but, perhaps realizing that he’s merely playing a more a benign version of Walter White, he seems a bit bored here while Nicole Kidman is sabotaged by a script that doesn’t allow her to do much other than reproachfully shake her head. Kevin Hart, however, actually gives a pretty good performance, one that suggests that he actually has a lot of potential as a dramatic actor. The character may be a stereotype but Hart at least brings a bit of energy to the film.
The Upside came out this January and it was actually a modest box office hit. I imagine that a lot of people loved this film for the exact reason that I disliked it. The film’s just too predictable for me to embrace The Upside.
Capsized: Blood in the Water- It’s Lifetime with Sharks! I’ve watched Shark Week since I was a wee lad and in all of my years this is the first MOW for Shark Week that didn’t have any narration explaining/teaching about sharks. This was a movie that could’ve just been on Lifetime and it would’ve fit right in if they threw in a creepy babysitter or doctor.
The characters were a crew of five VERY stupid people. I don’t just mean kinda dumb. I mean they should’ve been monitored in daily life on sea and on land. Mark (Josh Duhamel) is the captain who makes nothing but bad decisions. Mark (Joshua Close) is the first mate who is a self-centered alcoholic. Meg (Rebekah Graf) – the captain’s girlfriend who spends most of the film not doing much. Brad and Deborah who don’t really do much either.
The director does try to build suspense, but all of the character’s decisions are so dumb that it makes you really lose sympathy. The death scenes are also a little light on the gore. I know this is a true story and all, but Shark Week- you root for the sharks (at least, I do).
They set sail, which I gotta say is a little weird to me. I never understood the allure of sailing when wind powered vessels became obsolete since the steam age. Once at sea, we learn that Mark is a stubborn, alcoholic, and incompetent first mate. He drinks himself into a stupor so they miss the storm warning. Meg is supposed to go to safe place down below during the storm, but she ignores everyone and gets injured. Eventually, this injury is both life threatening and attract LOTS of sharks. Then, they get the storm warning, but John ignores the Coast Guard’s instructions to stay put, causing them to get capsized.
They manage to get a raft, but don’t go into it and attract lots of sharks with Meg’s open wound. Why don’t they go inside the raft? Who knows? John tries to apply a tourniquet to Meg’s wound, but Mark tells everyone that Meg gonna die anyway and starts fighting everyone. John goes nuts and starts swimming for a mirage and gets eaten. Mark gets the great idea to drink the ocean. I say, Let Mark Be Mark! Drink That Water! Fly Mark Fly! Live Your Saltwater Drinking Truth!
Of course, the saltwater makes Mark go crazier and he tries to knock the boat over. Mark falls out of the boat and we watch him slowly get eaten, but not enough really. This is just too light on the gore for me. I want some Giallo levels of gore, but nope. I gotta wonder if IRL Mark really fell out of the boat. Hmmmm.
They remain adrift for a long long long time more and Meg succumbs to her wound and the last two survivors toss her out of the raft as we see a shark coming up to I guess her remains… we don’t know for sure because they don’t show it. UGHHH.
The Coast Guard stops looking for them and the last two survivors decide to flip the raft over because there’s water in the boat, which is making them cold, but they were adrift for over a week- how didn’t it dry out? A Russian freighter finds them, but as they swim for the boat Deb gets tire and Brad’s like – Sucks to be you! He eventually decides to help her, but that was coooold blooded.
Sometimes, you hear about a film and you just know that it’s either going to be brilliant or it’s going to be disaster.
Take 1917, for instance. The film is World War I epic and right now, a lot of people are predicting that it’s destined for Oscar glory. I’m one of those people and I’ve said that despite not having seen the film. What we do know about the film sounds intriguing. Apparently, much like Hitchcock’s Rope and Birdman, the film is being put together to appear as if it’s just one, long continuous shot, without any breaks, with the idea being that 1917 is going to an immersive film about the horrors of war. While the film’s two leads are played by unknowns, supporting roles have been taken by Colin Firth, Mark Strong, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Sounds pretty good, right?
Here’s my concern. The film is being directed by Sam Mendes, who is one of the most pretentious filmmakers of all time. Mendes did brilliant work with Skyfall but have you tried to sit through American Beauty or Away We Go recently?
Anyway, I hope that 1917 lives up to the promise of its premise and that we get the Mendes of Skyfall as opposed to the Mendes of SPECTRE. The trailer looks good and here it is:
The 1963 film Palm Springs Weekend asks the question, “When is a beach film not a beach film?”
When it takes place in the freaking desert!
That’s right, Palm Springs Weekend takes place in the middle of the California desert. There’s no ocean in sight nor are there any beaches on which to frolic. Instead, there’s just a cheap motel and a swimming pool. That said, Palm Springs Weekend pretty much follows the same formula as all of the beach films that were released in the early 60s. A group of college students hop on a bus and head off for the weekend. One student is wacky. One student is rich, wild, and dangerous to know. And, of course, one student is clean-cut, responsible, boring, asexual, and studious and all about doing the right thing.
Troy Donahue, the blandest teen idol of all time, plays the clean-cut student. His name is Jim and he’s a college basketball star. Even when he’s on the bus traveling to Palm Springs, he’s still got a book to study. Jim’s the type who wears a suit and a tie to the pool. He ends up falling in love with Bunny Dixon (Stefanie Powers) and the two of them spend a lot of time talking about sex in the most chaste way possible. Bunny’s father (played by Andrew Duggan) is the chief of police and he doesn’t want any crazy college kids causing trouble in his town! Well, it’s a pretty good thing that all he has to worry about is Troy Donaue asking his daughter if she wants to take a moonlight stroll in the middle of the desert.
(Trust me. I’ve spent enough time in the desert to know that the last thing you want to do when you live near rattlesnakes is take a moonlight stroll.)
Jim’s best friend is Biff (Jerry Van Dyke). Biff is the wacky college student, which means that he plays the ukulele and he gets all the comedic moments. In this film, that amounts to getting babysitting an annoying boy and, at one point, falling into an extremely sudsy pool. Luckily, Jim’s there to deliver CPR, which leads to soap bubbles floating out of Biff’s mouth and …. you know what? I’m tired of writing about Biff.
Anyway, Biff and Jim really aren’t that important. The entire film pretty much belongs to Robert Conrad and Connie Stevens, largely because they’re the only two actors who are allowed to break out of the trap of always either being bumbling and innocent or dramatic and self-righteous. Robert Conrad plays Eric Dean, who is a spoiled rich kid who owns an expensive and fast car and who is basically a fun-loving sociopath. Meanwhile, Connie Stevens plays Gail, who is a high senior and who is pretending to be a college student. And while the film insists that we should somehow be disappointed in Gail because she’s acting wild and breaking curfew and doing more than just talking about whether or not it’s appropriate to kiss on the first date, she’s actually the most compelling character in the film because, at the very least, she’s actually setting her own rules and making her own decisions. Since Palm Springs Weekend was made in 1963, it ultimately feels the need to try to punish Gail for thinking for herself but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still a far more interesting character than the blandly innocent Bunny. Gail’s a rebel. Gail’s the future. All hail Gail!
Anyway, Palm Springs Weekend is pretty forgettable and it’s never as much fun as any of AIP’s old Beach Party films. That said, I’d still recommend it if you’re a history nerd like me. It’s definitely a film of its time, a time capsule of an era.
So, I just finished watching the trailer for The Lighthouse and I am now officially excited!
Robert Eggers previously directed one of the best horror films in recent memory, The Witch. Well, he’s back now with The Lighthouse, a black-and-white film about two men (Willem DaFoe and Robert Pattinson), one lighthouse, and one secret. The trailer is wonderfully creepy and the black-and-white cinematography is gorgeous. I can’t wait to see this film!
