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I really disliked Slow West. I think it was just because it was hyped up for me, but it was such a nothing of a movie.
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Nov 14, 2019 23:00
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90s and later western lists without Ravenous and Dead Man are bannable fyi Also in ascending order of quality: the revenant, blueberry, big money rustlas
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Nov 14, 2019 23:46
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DeimosRising posted:90s and later western lists without Ravenous and Dead Man are bannable fyi Hot take: The Revenant looks great but is overpoweringly dumb.
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Nov 14, 2019 23:58
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There's very little story to the Revenant which makes it hard for me to call it dumb since there's very little to criticise from an acting standpoint. Tom Hardy was great. I didn't like the ending, which I felt was the weakest part of the movie.
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Nov 15, 2019 00:33
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sean10mm posted:Hot take: The Revenant looks great but is overpoweringly dumb. It’s no big money rustlas, for sure
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Nov 15, 2019 00:53
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sean10mm posted:Hot take: The Revenant looks great but is overpoweringly dumb. Fellow goon and member of this movie watching party Pharmaskittle loves Ravenous; I watched it with him once and was not on board for the "They Live alley fight but serious" finale.
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Nov 15, 2019 01:01
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Jack B Nimble posted:Fellow goon and member of this movie watching party Pharmaskittle loves Ravenous; I watched it with him once and was not on board for the "They Live alley fight but serious" finale. You’re mixing up Ravenous (western cannibals) with the Revenant (bear attacks DiCaprio) I also sort of thought the revenant was dumb other than the visuals and the amazing opening battle scene. DiCaprio winning an Oscar for a movie where he’s unconscious half the time and screaming incoherently the other half is real stupid
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Nov 15, 2019 02:54
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I really enjoyed Hostiles, even tho it’s a pretty straightforward movie. I really want to see that one about the lady painting Sitting Bull’s portrait, A Woman Walks Ahead. Anyone here see it?
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Nov 18, 2019 00:28
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If you can only watch one True Grit it should be the 2010 one. It’s excellent, and a much better movie than the original. Hell or High Water has been mentioned, I think Wind River should be as well.
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Nov 22, 2019 07:07
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I’ve almost finished watching the first segment of my Western films, "Pre-Stage Coach: 1903 - 1926" and realized I should start saying something now before I'm a dozen movies deep. These early silent films set the tone of rough action, melodrama, and stock characters that Stage Coach would go on to both culminate and transcend. Although it feels odd to assign these movies a hard rating since they’re noteworthy mostly for their influence on the genre, at least two of these films are quite good in and of themselves and could be enjoyed today even outside of some genre retrospective. Per the OP I’m going to spoil tag some stuff since, even though these films are ancient, most of them also aren't widely viewed. The Great Train Robbery (1903) 3/5 The first film is the best example of the difficulty of grading these earliest Westerns; The Great Train Robbery feels more like an extended scene than one complete movie. However, that small scene introduces core elements of the Western Genre: bandits, posses, fist fights and shootouts, bawdy dance-halls, and, of course, Train Robberies. There were a few famous visual tricks I knew to look for, like the painstaking film cutting to create a moving background and the famous “point of view” gun shot. Other highlights include the “stick `em up” scene with the passengers and the safe guard shoot out, the acting in both is surprisingly nature aside from reaching to heaven in the stage-acted deaths. Still, even if The Great Train Robbery is so raw and unsophisticated as to be almost unrecognizable compared to a modern feature-length film, it’s on youtube and short, so the barrier for entry couldn’t be lower. Hell's Hinges (1916) 3/5 Unsurprisingly, thirteen years allows a new art form to grow in complexity; this is a got-danged movie. Unlike its predecessor in this list, Hell’s Hinges features a protagonist, William S. Hart as Blaze Tracy. Since Hart is the first real Western star in this list; he’d go on to star in, produce, or direct dozens of silent westerns, and Wikipedia says that “during the late 1910s and early 1920s, he was one of the most consistently popular movie stars”. He had a background as a Shakespherian actor, including a role in the first stage production of Ben-Hur, which is going to give him a link to another early Western leading man, Harrey Carrey, who we’ll see later). Finally, while I wouldn’t exactly call him gorgeous, he has a striking face that excels in the stark close ups of early film, check this out:  Also note, in the above photo, the fantastic costume. Hart loved the west; he owned one of Billy the Kid’s revolvers and was a friend of Wyatt Earp; and he insisted on accurate props and costumes in his pictures. The visual authenticity of the movie is excellent and I’m going to really miss these outfits when we get to the 50’s and I’m watching Johnny Guitar. Furthermore, Hell’s Hinges doesn’t just provide us with a protagonist, it provides an anti-hero. The titular town is a sort of Deadwood, lawless and dangerous, and Blaze Tracy likes it that way. The gunman lives by his own rules and, as the film itself says, he’s one side of a coin that also features the reprehensible Silk Miller, a treacherous tavern owner whose evil is helpfully illustrated by an intertitle card which reveals he is *gasp* half Mexican. The basic premise is that religion comes into the town, including a beautiful and pure young woman named Faith, and Blaze is drawn into conflict with Silk and the other, seedier elements of Hell’s Hinges. The movie is still rough in it’s narrative structure and pacing, but the premise and central characters are iconic, there are some fantastic close ups, and the climax has Blaze burning the whole damned town, six guns blasting in both hands, the whole thing shot in a red filter, righteous:  While The Great Train Robbery is justly famous as the First Western, Hell’s Hinges represents an essential evolution from that film into a more sophisticated form; in support of that I’ll close with this excellent contemporary review: The New York Press posted:"Gunplay and religion lubricate 'Hell's Hinges' ... It is a film drama that combines all the elements that make for success ... Reckless riding, double-handed shooting from the hip, a dance hall of the Bret Harte description and, finally a conflagration that gives a truly Gehenna-like finish to the place known as Hell's Hinges ... No actor before the screen has been able to give as sincere and true a touch to the Westerner as Hart. He rides in a manner indigenous to the soil, he shoots with the real knack and he acts with that sense of artistry that hides the acting."
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Dec 29, 2019 18:27
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Finally watched The Great Silence and goddamn, that is a brutal ending. Not sure I've ever seen an ending quite like that in a Western. It totally lives up to the hype, now having seen it I realize how essential and iconic it really is. It's one of those movies that not many people have actually seen but it's obvious that a lot of filmmakers certainly have.
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Jan 2, 2020 16:49
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Basebf555 posted:Finally watched The Great Silence and goddamn, that is a brutal ending. Not sure I've ever seen an ending quite like that in a Western. I once showed this to a class and, upon learning that the studio forced the filmmakers to shoot an alternate ending where the sheriff shows up at the end and saves everyone, the majority of the class agreed they would have preferred that ending.
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Jan 2, 2020 17:10
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Anonymous Robot posted:I once showed this to a class and, upon learning that the studio forced the filmmakers to shoot an alternate ending where the sheriff shows up at the end and saves everyone, the majority of the class agreed they would have preferred that ending. I can't necessary blame them because it's so shocking and just an absolute gut punch. I wonder if they'd been given a few days to let the movie marinate, maybe they'd feel differently. I'm spoiler tagging a movie from the late 60s because I think it would definitely be better experienced first hand and I assume a lot of people in CineD have never seen it.
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Jan 2, 2020 17:18
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Howdy folks. I run a small Youtube channel that mostly talks about media/lefty stuff and I recently made a video entitled "You couldn't make Blazing Saddles today!" The video deals with the films cultural legacy and explores just how disruptive it was in addition to the idea that the film (and controversial films in general) couldn't be made today. My channel is really really small at the moment so any shares, advice, feedback, likes, subs and comments go a long way!
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Jan 3, 2020 00:39
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Saw that pop up in my subscriptions when it came out but didn't realize it was you. Skipped it because I didn't want some nerdo hot take. But I'll check it out later tonight, your stuff is great.
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Jan 3, 2020 00:45
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Basebf555 posted:Finally watched The Great Silence and goddamn, that is a brutal ending. Not sure I've ever seen an ending quite like that in a Western. "And all according to the law."
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Jan 3, 2020 04:59
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William S. Hart was only five years younger than Billy the Kid. It's pretty amazing to think about how the first westerns and the actual "Wild West" were contemporary.
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Jan 4, 2020 16:54
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I recently gave Keoma a spin because I'm on a spaghetti western kick and goddamn, what a wonderful film. Franco Nero is a cold eyed hippy warrior, playing a half breed who's antagonized by his adopted, ex-confederate brothers. This was one of the twilight films made in it's genre, and serves and a great swan song for the whole Italian experiment. It's not that they weren't great films, they were just unsustainable for the specific factors which made them real to begin with. For 77', the film sports some excellent slow-motion, and the actions scenes still hold up splendidly. The setting is oddly absent of the trees which the American mainland is famous for, but whatever. The only niggle I have is the singing. The goddamn singing. I get it, this is the land of the opera but I'll be damned if Nero can carry a tune. Actors should act, singers should sing. I feel like this is the ultimate lesson learned from the whole spaghetti western episode.
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Jan 7, 2020 21:03
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For my money, The Lonesome Dove miniseries from the 80’s is definitely one of the best Westerns that I’ve ever seen, and maybe the best novel to film adaptation. Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, and Robert Duvall are absolutely at the top of their game, and it’s amazing what they are able to do within the limits of mid 80s network TV. Incredibly underrated film/show IMHO. Also echoing the poster who mentioned Open Range.
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Jan 8, 2020 05:11
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FreudianSlippers posted:William S. Hart was only five years younger than Billy the Kid. Yeah that's on my mind a lot during the earlier movies. Man, after a half dozen silent films we're watching Stagecoach next and I'm getting so excited for the dialogue. Gonna see if I can make them sit through the commentary track on the criterion channel in a follow up watching.
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Jan 8, 2020 23:37
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Does Days of Heaven count as a Western? It's set in the Texas Panhandle in 1916 so well after the closing of the West but it's gorgeous to look at and, while I can't speak to its historical accuracy, it depicts the period and life of the characters in a way I hadn't really seen on screen before. Also lol at some of the shots with the Rockies in the background given its setting. I watched it in parallel with Heaven's Gate, which I also love for its slice of life-y moments.
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Jan 9, 2020 00:01
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Arcsquad12 posted:There's very little story to the Revenant which makes it hard for me to call it dumb since there's very little to criticise from an acting standpoint. Tom Hardy was great. The best thing is when you realize that Tom Hardy is channeling Tom Berenger in that movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhJ7DZdL0AQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bw8UM1eLFo
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Jan 9, 2020 04:28
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Calico Heart posted:Howdy folks. I run a small Youtube channel that mostly talks about media/lefty stuff and I recently made a video entitled "You couldn't make Blazing Saddles today!" Yo, this video was great; it's a thorough and smart examination of the context surrounding the film and I'm going to link it to all my friends when we get to Blazing Saddles.
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Jan 10, 2020 19:03
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German westerns from the 30s are an odd bunch. Der Kaiser von Kalifornien (1936) features a main character that rides into San Francisco to a heroe's welcome at the end of the film and basically act like Hitler at Nuremberg, complete with "Nazi" salute. It's pretty bizarre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4mTDnSOTnQ&t=39s
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Jan 20, 2020 00:03
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Paddyo posted:For my money, The Lonesome Dove miniseries from the 80’s is definitely one of the best Westerns that I’ve ever seen, and maybe the best novel to film adaptation. Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, and Robert Duvall are absolutely at the top of their game, and it’s amazing what they are able to do within the limits of mid 80s network TV. Incredibly underrated film/show IMHO. Also echoing the poster who mentioned Open Range. I remember finding it really corny for the most part (like when the horny youngster gets killed by snakes) but being really blown away by the last episode. Maybe it merits a rewatch.
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Jan 20, 2020 17:29
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For post-Unforgiven Westerns, I like Apaloosa. It has its quirks, but it's memorable.
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Jan 21, 2020 09:51
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Payndz posted:If you're ever in southern Spain (I lived there for a year) and a western fan, it's well worth paying a visit to Tabernas in Almeria. There are three former - and occasionally still active - western film sets there in close proximity that are now tourist attractions: Mini Hollywood (aka Oasys), Texas Hollywood (aka Fort Bravo) and Western Leone. Mini Hollywood was first built for For A Few Dollars More, Western Leone for Once Upon A Time In The West and Texas Hollywood, as far as I've been able to find out, was set up for the spaghetti western boom in general but used in The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, along with many others. The bank at El Paso from FAFDM is a centrepiece of Mini Hollywood, and it's great fun* wandering around all of them and finding a building or setpiece or camera angle that you've seen on screen. I forgot to get around to mentioning that I did this last September and it was loving great. My relationship with my girlfriend is sort of built on a foundation of Westerns (we both love Lonesome Dove) and she had lived in Spain before so we went ahead and added Almería to an otherwise touristy itinerary. Not only was Mini Hollywood great, but the desert mountains out there are breathtakingly beautiful. For the cowboy shootout, they blast Morricone music and break a dude out of the jail by pulling the bars off the window by horse & rope. It felt like some kind of pilgrimage.
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Jan 21, 2020 20:10
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drat, we've worked our way up to Fort Apache and the one other guy in our group who has seen a few westerns says both that he's seen Fort Apache and that it's bad and he won't re-watch it. I'm going to watch it myself and then we'll all meet up to see the new film in the list, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. I haven't seen it yet but I think its kind if weird that someone who has liked the several John Ford films we've seen so far would hate this one enough to not want to see it. Edit: Also, trip report of the Western after Stage Coach and My Darling Clementine: It was fun watching a dozen or so silent westerns but good lord did the complexity of the narrative and characters increase with the talkies, Stage Coach might have as much dialog / interactions between characters as every preceding film combined. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 21, 2020 21:12
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I think Fort Apache is really good, but is it possible your friend doesn't like black and white films or maybe has a problem with the different aspect ratios? I think a lot of people who go back and watch movies from the 30s and 40s don't realize that it's gonna mostly be the Academy ratio(the square one). I guess if he liked Stagecoach that's out the window though. I dunno, one thing might be that Fort Apache is pretty focused on characters who are military men, and the story is about a famous military scenario. I imagine that isn't as interesting to some people as outlaws and saloons. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 21, 2020 21:26
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Fort Apache's awesome. Your guy is out of his gourd and should probably rewatch it, especially if you guys have been down with all the other Ford you've been watching.
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Jan 21, 2020 21:30
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Not to get E/N but he watched all the westerns he's seen because his recently deceased father liked them, but he also checks out real quick from anything that makes a bad first impression, so there's potentially a really good or really lame reason to not want watch it. But yeah, we're both liking John Ford's movies; I'm falling hard his themes of interweaving the myths of the west into the larger myths of American history.
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Jan 21, 2020 21:36
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Is Fort Apache the one with an adult Shirley Temple?
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Jan 21, 2020 22:22
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General Dog posted:Is Fort Apache the one with an adult Shirley Temple? Yep
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Jan 21, 2020 22:24
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Ask him if he’s seen Fort Apache, The Bronx.
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Jan 22, 2020 01:30
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ruddiger posted:Ask him if he’s seen Fort Apache, The Bronx. I've seen it, and now I've seen the Western! I liked it, it wasn't what I was expecting and I suppose I could see why my friend might be turned off by the narrative and ending, but I enjoyed a more slower paced look at life inside a frontier fort. I also appreciate the portrayal of the native Americans, I never considered that even they would use Spanish as the southwestern Lingua Franca. Uh, John Ford didn't make that up right?
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Jan 26, 2020 15:04
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In honor of my man K-Doug’s memory, please watch Lonely Are the Brave if you get the chance.
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Feb 6, 2020 14:35
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Kull the Conqueror posted:In honor of my man K-Doug’s memory, please watch Lonely Are the Brave if you get the chance. I've hadn't heard of this but the poster appears to depict a Cowboy vs. Helicopter scenario so it definitely has peaked my interest.
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Feb 6, 2020 15:03
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I’ve decided I want to get more into Westerns this year, so I recently watched Johnny Guitar and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Both were great movies, and I like how the myth of the American West allows filmmakers to craft these over-the-top, melodramatic stories about love, crime, and death without feeling hokey or cheesy. I also appreciate the character acting on display, like a younger Ernest Borgnine in Johnny Guitar, or a menacing Lee Van Cleef or an older scene-chewing Edmond O’Brien in Liberty Valance.
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Feb 6, 2020 15:42
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I saw Johnny Guitar pretty late in my Western viewing, I'd already seen a ton of Wayne and John Ford and Eastwood and the rest, but still it blew me away. Maybe it blew me away even moreso because of all the Westerns I'd seen, I dunno. It's just so unique, even today, I'm not sure I've seen another character along the same lines as Vienna in any other Western. Fantastic sets and costumes as well.
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Feb 6, 2020 15:52
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X-Ray Pecs posted:I’ve decided I want to get more into Westerns this year, so I recently watched Johnny Guitar and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Both were great movies, and I like how the myth of the American West allows filmmakers to craft these over-the-top, melodramatic stories about love, crime, and death without feeling hokey or cheesy. I also appreciate the character acting on display, like a younger Ernest Borgnine in Johnny Guitar, or a menacing Lee Van Cleef or an older scene-chewing Edmond O’Brien in Liberty Valance. Check out Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country, with Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea. I need to watch more of Peckinpah's westerns. I haven't seen Johnny Guitar, so I'll check that one out.
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Feb 6, 2020 16:10
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