Western

THE HATEFUL EIGHT: talk talk bang bang

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Samuel L. Jackson and Walton Goggins in THE HATEFUL EIGHT
Samuel L. Jackson and Walton Goggins in THE HATEFUL EIGHT

By now, everyone should understand what you’re going to get in a Quentin Tarantino movie:  1) lots of very harsh and extremely stylized movie violence; 2) lots of witty dialogue before and after the violence; and 3) references to other movies that Tarantino loves.  A classic example of Tarantino cinema, The Hateful Eight delivers on every count.

If you aren’t entertained by gratuitous violence, then don’t go to this movie.  The splatter quotient is high.

The Hateful Eight starts out like the great epic Westerns of the 50s and 60s, complete with dazzling vistas and a score by Ennio Morricone (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).  But soon we are inside a single room with a bunch of scoundrels (some more lovable than others) and entangled in a Spaghetti Western plot – constructed to set up the action set pieces.  And the violence is so over-the-top that much of it is both shocking and funny.

Those scoundrels are the spine of The Hateful Eight.  It’s always been easy to conclude that Samuel L. Jackson was put on this earth to deliver Tarantino dialogue.  Now it’s clear that Walton Goggins serves the same existential purpose.  Goggins shot to cult fame by playing the loquacious, crafty and manipulative hillbilly crimelord Boyd Crowder in TV’s Justified.  Goggins has the rare ability to project a complete absence of personal bravery, a quick-witted resourcefulness and be very, very funny while he’s doing it.  The very best aspect of The Hateful Eight is that it evolves into a Samuel L. Jackson/Walton Goggins buddy movie.

And then there’s Jennifer Jason Leigh, always one of our most interesting actresses.  In The Hateful Eight, she plays an extreme sociopath who can absorb an alarming amount of physical punishment.  Her character is a malevolent and seemingly irrepressible force of nature, and Leigh’s performance is another reason to see this movie.

Jennifer Jason Leigh in THE HATEFUL EIGHT
Jennifer Jason Leigh in THE HATEFUL EIGHT

 

I saw the regular 2 hours and 48 minute version of The Hateful Eight, projected on the digital system that most theaters now use.  There is also a “Roadshow” version , which was shot on and is projected from 70 mm film.  The Roadshow version also has a musical overture, an intermission and few minutes of extra action.  It all adds up to three hours and 6 minutes.  While this three hours and 6 minutes version is playing on 12 screens in the Bay Area, only two of them are the 70 mm projection.

I found the The Hateful Eight to be a hoot-and-a-half, but then I love Tarantino and have a high tolerance for movie violence.  The Wife stuck it out like a good sport (“Tell me again why I wanted to see this?), but then she’s a Walton Goggins fan from Justified.   If you liked Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained, you’ll probably like this one, too.

THE REVENANT: authentic and awesome

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Leonardo DiCpario in THE REVENANT
Leonardo DiCaprio in THE REVENANT

Not just a compelling movie, The Revenant is an experience for the audience and a marvel of filmmaking.  Oscar-winner Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful, Birdman) may be the director doing the most groundbreaking work in today’s cinema, and The Revenant, with its long shoot in hostile conditions, is his triumph over the seemingly impossible.

The Revenant is based on the historical episode of mountain man Hugh Glass, who was fur trapping in the Missouri River watershed of the Dakotas in 1823, when the area was completely unspoiled and inhabited only by nomadic bands of Native Americans.  Glass was severely injured in a bear attack, left for dead by his companions and crawled 200 miles to safety.   A “revenant” is a re-animated corpse, and Glass essentially returned from the dead.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Glass, and his performance is extraordinary.   For one thing – the most obvious – DiCaprio is a human piñata who actually must stand and then submerge in a freezing river, get bounced around by a CGI bear, chew on raw bison liver, crawl across uneven ground, and on and on; he takes a licking and keeps on ticking.  And, in at least two-thirds of the movie, Glass either isn’t able to speak or has no one to talk to.  So DiCaprio must convey his terror, grief, determination to survive and seek revenge with his physicality.

There are also solid performances by Tom Hardy (being villainous) Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson (a good year for him – also Ex Machina, Brooklyn and Star Wars).

There probably isn’t a more overused word in the current culture than “awesome”.   But it’s precisely the right word to describe the depiction of Glass’ ordeal.  The dazzling scenery as photographed Iñárritu‘s equally brilliant cinematographer  Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki is awesome, as is the overall filmmaking challenge.  In particular, the bear attack and an extended one-shot of a Native American attack with the camera moving by and forth among the combatants are brilliant and unforgettable. Showing off, Iñárritu even throws in an actual avalanche as a background shot.

The result is an utterly authentic film.  Now I think I know what it looks like when a bear attacks and when an Indian band raids. DiCaprio shows us convincingly how it looks when a man grieves.

The Revenant is also exhausting – in a good way.  As the film opens, we see men creeping through a primordial forest that has been flooded by a river.  They are tense and so are we.  We can’t tell whether they are hunting or hunted or both.  We soon come to understand that their heightened alertness and intense concentration is required to survive a dangerous environment.  That level of intensity remains throughout the film, and it wears down the characters and the audience.

History buffs will appreciate that Glass was part of Ashley’s Hundred, an enterprise that included many mountain men (Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson) who would later become guides and explorers with central roses in the history of the American West.

I also recommend Sheila O’Malley’s insightful comments on survival movies, in particular the very compelling Touching the Void.

This is one of the very best survival movies.  See The Revenant, and make sure that you see on the Big Screen.

 

SLOW WEST: a Western that never gets into the rhythm

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SLOW WEST
SLOW WEST

Slow West, which I saw at Cinequest, opens theatrically tomorrow. I suggest that you skip it.

I love Westerns, but Slow West just didn’t work for me. It’s a film of some ambition, and it won an award at Sundance, but the movie kept sliding in and out of self-consciousness, and I could never settle in to the story.

Kodi Smitt-McGee plays a sixteen-year-old Scot completely unsuited for survival in the Old West. Nonetheless, he is devoted to a young woman and he launches a determined quest to track her down. He soon picks up a veteran Westerner (Michael Fassbender) who can guide and guard him. The two, of course, have a series of adventures along the way.

There’s some appealingly dark and droll humor in Slow West (quite a few good laughs, actually). The problem is that Slow West can’t figure out whether it should have the tone of a straight Western (Unforgiven, The Homesman) or wink at the audience (Little Big Man). Accordingly, some of the period details are so wrong that they distracted me from the story. For example, in an otherwise very funny scene with arrows and a clothesline, the Indians look like tiny, skinny Asians. Smitt-McGee employs a Scots accent in every fifth line. And Fassbender sounds like he just stepped out of a time machine from 2015.

Slow West was filmed in New Zealand, so there are grand vistas that kind of look like the American West, but then kinda don’t. This DID work for me, because it contributed an almost subconscious edge to heighten some scenes.

Bottom line: Slow West is a mess.

SLOW WEST: a Western that never gets into the rhythm

by
SLOW WEST
SLOW WEST

Slow West, which I saw at Cinequest, is out on VOD today, ahead of a theatrical release in mid-May. I suggest that you skip it.

I love Westerns, but Slow West just didn’t work for me. It’s a film of some ambition, and it won an award at Sundance, but the movie kept sliding in and out of self-consciousness, and I could never settle in to the story.

Kodi Smitt-McGee plays a sixteen-year-old Scot completely unsuited for survival in the Old West. Nonetheless, he is devoted to a young woman and he launches a determined quest to track her down. He soon picks up a veteran Westerner (Michael Fassbender) who can guide and guard him. The two, of course, have a series of adventures along the way.

There’s some appealingly dark and droll humor in Slow West (quite a few good laughs, actually). The problem is that Slow West can’t figure out whether it should have the tone of a straight Western (Unforgiven, The Homesman) or wink at the audience (Little Big Man). Accordingly, some of the period details are so wrong that they distracted me from the story. For example, in an otherwise very funny scene with arrows and a clothesline, the Indians look like tiny, skinny Asians. Smitt-McGee employs a Scots accent in every fifth line. And Fassbender sounds like he just stepped out of a time machine from 2015.

Slow West was filmed in New Zealand, so there are grand vistas that kind of look like the American West, but then kinda don’t. This DID work for me, because it contributed an almost subconscious edge to heighten some scenes.

Bottom line: Slow West is a mess.

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE HOMESMAN

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Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones in THE HOMESMAN
Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones in THE HOMESMAN

Tommy Lee Jones co-wrote, directs and stars in the dark Western (I love Westerns!) The Homesman. Hilary Swank plays a single woman in bleak frontier Nebraska who volunteers to take three madwomen to respite, a hard five weeks wagon ride to the east in civilized Iowa. She conscripts an irascible reprobate (Tommy Lee Jones) to help her. About Jones’ character, A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote “It’s as if Yosemite Sam had turned up in the pages of a Willa Cather novel.” As in any odyssey or road trip story, they face obstacles that make it an adventure – and, in a Western, we expect those to include harsh natural conditions, hostile Indians and bad gunmen.

Like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, The Homesman doesn’t romanticize the Wild West. The three passengers have suffered mental breakdowns. Each of them has clung to sanity through almost the unbearable hardships of frontier life, and then has been broken by a distinct trauma.

The Homesman has been labeled a “feminist Western”, and this is accurate. Swank’s character is independent, industrious and earnest and responsible to a fault. She’s a great catch for any guy post-1900, but her very independence repels any hope for male companionship in the mid-19th Century Old West, where the local yokels travel all the way Back East for women that are suitably submissive. As to the three broken passengers, really bad things have happened to the women, and the fact that they’ve been isolated with patriarchal and, in some cases abusive, men, has made it that much more unbearable.

Jones directs with a steady hand, and as in his exemplary Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, proves to have a special gift with a western setting and in getting good performances. Here, he and Swank are just as good as we would expect, which is pretty damn good. The cast is dotted by the likes of John Lithgow and even Meryl Streep, but the standout, most memorable performances are the supporting turns by Tim Blake Nelson, James Spader and Hailee Steinfeld.

Unless you’re on a date or looking for an escapist lark, The Homesman is a fine movie on all counts; but be prepared for unrelenting grimness in this starkly, dark tale. It is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

Cinequest: SLOW WEST

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SLOW WEST
SLOW WEST

I love Westerns, but Slow West just didn’t work for me. It’s a film of some ambition, and it won an award at Sundance, but the movie kept sliding in and out of self-consciousness, and I could never settle in to the story.

Kodi Smitt-McGee plays a sixteen-year-old Scot completely unsuited for survival in the Old West. Nonetheless, he is devoted to a young woman and he launches a determined quest to track her down. He soon picks up a veteran Westerner (Michael Fassbender) who can guide and guard him. The two, of course, have a series of adventures along the way.

There’s some appealingly dark and droll humor in Slow West (quite a few good laughs, actually). The problem is that Slow West can’t figure out whether it should have the tone of a straight Western (Unforgiven, The Homesman) or wink at the audience (Little Big Man). Accordingly, some of the period details are so wrong that they distracted me from the story.   For example, in an otherwise very funny scene with arrows and a clothesline, the Indians look like tiny, skinny Asians. Smitt-McGee employs a Scots accent in every fifth line.  And Fassbender sounds like he just stepped out of a time machine from 2015.

Slow West was filmed in New Zealand, so there are grand vistas that kind of look like the American West, but then kinda don’t. This DID work for me, because it contributed an almost subconscious edge to heighten some scenes.

Bottom line: Slow West is a mess.

 

THE HOMESMAN: a dark, feminist Western – and not for eveybody

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Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones in THE HOMESMAN
Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones in THE HOMESMAN

Tommy Lee Jones co-wrote, directs and stars in the dark Western (I love Westerns!) The Homesman. Hilary Swank plays a single woman in bleak frontier Nebraska who volunteers to take three madwomen to respite, a hard five weeks wagon ride to the east in civilized Iowa. She conscripts an irascible reprobate (Tommy Lee Jones) to help her. About Jones’ character, A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote “It’s as if Yosemite Sam had turned up in the pages of a Willa Cather novel.” As in any odyssey or road trip story, they face obstacles that make it an adventure – and, in a Western, we expect those to include harsh natural conditions, hostile Indians and bad gunmen.

Like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, The Homesman doesn’t romanticize the Wild West. The three passengers have suffered mental breakdowns. Each of them has clung to sanity through almost the unbearable hardships of frontier life, and then has been broken by a distinct trauma.

The Homesman has been labeled a “feminist Western”, and this is accurate. Swank’s character is independent, industrious and earnest and responsible to a fault. She’s a great catch for any guy post-1900, but her very independence repels any hope for male companionship in the mid-19th Century Old West, where the local yokels travel all the way Back East for women that are suitably submissive. As to the three broken passengers, really bad things have happened to the women, and the fact that they’ve been isolated with patriarchal and, in some cases abusive, men, has made it that much more unbearable.

Jones directs with a steady hand, and as in his exemplary Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, proves to have a special gift with a western setting and in getting good performances. Here, he and Swank are just as good as we would expect, which is pretty damn good. The cast is dotted by the likes of John Lithgow and even Meryl Streep, but the standout, most memorable performances are the supporting turns by Tim Blake Nelson, James Spader and Hailee Steinfeld.

Unless you’re on a date or looking for an escapist lark, The Homesman is a fine movie on all counts; but be prepared for unrelenting grimness in this starkly, dark tale.

Dead Man’s Burden: times are hard and the women are harder

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DEAD MAN'S BURDEN

I always welcome a new Western, and writer-director Jared Moshe’s impressive debut Dead Man’s Burden takes us to a darkly realistic Old West.  The dry New Mexico landscape is beautiful but unforgiving, and the law is three days ride away.  The times are hard and the women are harder.  The Civil War ended five years before, but families are still reeling from losing a generation of young men.

As the film opens, a man rides away on horseback.  A petite woman, young but worn, hoists an 1853 Enfield rifle to her shoulder, takes aim and fires.  We later learn the identity of the man, his relationship to the woman and her reason for firing.  It’s not what you might guess.  And the villain is not who you expect it to be.

Moshe’s story reveals some characters to be bound by duty and others to be opportunistic.  They are caught in the same web of circumstance, which funnels inevitably them to conflict.  The movie’s final two shots echo an earlier moment, and neatly (if grimly) wrap up the tale.

The cast – Barlow Jacobs, Clare Bowen (Scarlet in ABC’s Nashville), David Call and veteran Richard Riehle – is uniformly good.  Jacobs (Kid in Shotgun Stories) is especially well suited for a Western hero, with expressive eyes that narrow like Eastwood’s or Van Cleef’s.

There’s a gunfight that is more historically typical than the usual cinematic facedown in the street.  These men, hunters and former soldiers, chase each other through the brush, firing from cover.  It ain’t heroic.  And Dead Man’s Burden is remarkably unsentimental.

DEAD MAN'S BURDEN

Dead Man’s Burden was shot on 35mm by Robert Hauer, and the look of the film brings out the isolating vastness of the land.  Sadly, the sound is substandard, and I had difficulty comprehending some of the dialogue.

Dead Man’s Burden is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, Vudu and other VOD outlets.

DVD of the Week: Let the Bullets Fly

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Ever seen a movie where the outlaw rides into town and sticks up for the little guys against the local bully of a crime boss?  Well, maybe so, but you probably haven’t seen a movie like Let the Bullets Fly (Rang Zidan Fei), which is set in southeastern China in the Chinese warlord period around 1919.

For one thing, it’s an unusually exuberant film that’s extremely funny for an action western.

For another, it’s a deeply cynical assessment of government corruption.  It quickly becomes apparent that the professional bandit is more honest and reliable than any of the local institutions.  (That subtext is not lost on the Chinese public.)

And the Chinese movie fans have embraced Let the Bullets Fly.  It’s the highest-grossing Chinese language movie ever, and is the all-time #2 most popular movie in China (behind Avatar).

Writer-director Wen Jiang plays the stalwart bandit hero who substitutes himself for the newly arriving appointed Governor (played by You Ge as a hilariously unabashed sleazeball).  Jiang’s bandit comes up against the local baddie (Chow Yun Fat), who doesn’t want to relinquish any of his power or ill-gotten gains.  As the two match wits, a fast, funny and utterly rambunctious ride ensues.

In this case, 1.3 billion Chinese are correct – this is one fun movie.

Cinequest – Salt: the best spaghetti western this year

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I love spaghetti westerns and so does the protagonist of Salt (Sal), a would-be screenwriter who must have the only cat in Spain named Clint.  He has written a movie set in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth, but nobody else thinks it’s any good.  When he decides to visit the Atacama to improve his script, he is mistaken by all the locals for someone else – the guy who had cuckolded the local crime boss.  That first night in Chile, he is plunged into a real life shoot em up and is soon experiencing a story that Sergio Leone himself would have loved to film.

Much of the fun is in the fact that our hero has never shot a gun or been shot at, and he doesn’t take easily to either – he’s no Clint, for sure.   Salt is filmed in the style of a modern-day spaghetti western and comes with its own spaghetti western score with jangly guitar and jarring harmonica.  If you love A Fistful of Dollars, this is the movie for you.  Even if you don’t love the spaghetti western, you’ll find this a satisfyingly funny movie.

I attended the North American premiere of Salt at Cinequest 22.