Rango: Grade A

A

Rango (2011)

Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy; Director Gore Verbinski.

The animation in this feature is as good as anything out of Pixar or Dreamworks. It is done by Industrial Light and Magic and puts them in the first tier of animators. The characters are fully rounded wire-frame animals, with excellent emotional capture. ILM animators have completely mastered the computationally difficult rendering of fur, water, glass, and other supposedly impossible textures and flows. The film is a triumph of animation technology if nothing else.

But there is much else: it's a good film. The characters are desert-dwelling animals living in a run-down western town called Dirt, where the economy is based entirely on water. Their taps have gone dry and even the reservoir in the bank is desperately low. No consideration is given to rainfall or aquifers – they seem to be on city water of some kind, but never mind that.

A histrionic chameleon named Rango (Depp) wanders into town, strutting and bragging about having killed the whole Jenkins gang with a single bullet. He ineptly and luckily saves the town from a killer hawk with a tin beak. He is acclaimed and named sheriff. But the evil mayor (Beatty), who is diverting the water for his own project, hires Rattlesnake Jack (Nighy) to kill Rango. There is a showdown. Meanwhile a romantic interest develops between Rango and Beans (Fisher).

The story line is formulaic, a pastiche of dozens of westerns. There is no dramatic tension, not even the manufactured kind in Cars, for example, and the romantic relationship is unconvincing, nothing like the one in Wall-e, for example; there isn’t even cheap sentimentality, as in Finding Nemo. I don’t know if kids care about those things. For adults, though, what makes the movie great is its sheer creativity. The script is funny and the excellent voice acting (the range of Depp's vocal expression is astonishing) is a treat. Also to appreciate are the beautiful and witty animations, enjoyable music (Los Lobos), and wink-wink allusions to other movies, from Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider, to Star Wars, The Fugitive, Chinatown, and many others. Those references are enormous fun for movie lovers.

Because it lacks a good dramatic story, the movie might not catch on with kids, but because of all its other virtues, I think it will become a classic in the animation genre.

True Grit: Grade C

C

True Grit (2010)

Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Hailee Steinfeld; Co-writers and co-directors: Joel and Ethan Coen.

This remake of the iconic 1969 western starring John Wayne is actually better than that original. I was never a fan of Wayne, nor am I fond of Jeff Bridges. Even so, you have to respect an actor who would attempt a redo of such an iconic role, and Bridges does pull it off. I was always aware that I was watching Jeff Bridges (same reason I didn’t like Wayne), but his character, a whiskey-sodden US Marshall, was strong and almost believable, so he gets away with it.

Fourteen year-old Steinfeld plays a well-educated and articulate (and well-dressed) girl on the Oklahoma frontier who would avenge her father’s killing, so she hires lawman Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) to track down the villain with her. Her stylized language is formal and slightly Shakespearean. She uses no contractions and sprinkles her speeches with Latin phrases and legal terminology. It’s not a believable character, but it’s fun. Damon is a bounty hunter also after the killer, played by Brolin, and the two hunters argue and fret over who is responsible for the girl. The Marshal, despite his crude gruffness, develops some affection for the girl, but while the characters are entertaining, none is actually convincing.

I was surprised and disappointed with this movie. I expect a Coen brothers film to be quirky, edgy, and above all to raise sharp existential themes, but this was a straight ahead dusty western with no tricks. And it wasn’t even very dusty. All the sets, props, and costumes were brand new and spotlessly clean, even the train that goes through town in an opening scene. Everyone is in robust health, even the horses. So just like the characters, the settings and scenes are meticulously crafted, but never convincing. So it’s hard to determine what the intent of this movie was. Was it a remake just for the sake of remake?

The cinematography is so incredibly bad in the beginning scenes that I was ready to give up. I knew I just couldn’t endure a movie that bad. Improbable lighting, orange filters, and cameras swooping and panning like a cheap television drama. On top of that was a mind-numbing, content-free voiceover, and an insipid piano track reminiscent of a Ken Burns documentary. I’m glad I stuck it out because after 20 minutes, the filmmaking turned competent, and the narrator and the piano disappeared, as did the strange lighting and camera work. All that nonsense reappears momentarily in the closing scene however, so I now believe that those bookends were shot after the main part of the film and tacked on later. Why? Were they a Coen brothers joke? Those two are known to be tricksters. Or maybe somebody thought the film was “too dark”– literally dark, not metaphorically, with many scenes shot at night or on dim interior sets. But whatever the reason for the opening and closing sequences, they are horrible, horrible. The movie overall is not horrible though, just average.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird: Grade A

A

The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008)

Kang-ho Song, Byung-hun Lee, Woo-sung Jung; Co-writer and Director Ji-woon Kim. (Korean, Japanese, and Chinese: subtitled).

This violent and bloody Korean action movie is also a comedy. There is an ancient treasure map that several parties want. There is no compelling evidence that it is a real treasure map, but it is the “McGuffin,” as Hitchcock would say, that motivates all the frenetic chasing about. Late in the movie, there is a hint at another layer of meaning when it is suggested that it is really a political map for use in organizing a rebellion against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (the movie is set in the 1930s). However, the political theme was either not developed or was edited out, leaving only a violent, bloody, yet madcap comedy. A shame, that.

Nevertheless, the humor, mostly visual, is effective, from broad farce to subtle parody. The acting is hard to evaluate because the characters and the story line are so offbeat that there are few standards to judge against, but in general, I would say it is quite above average.

However, what makes this movie a real standout is the fantastic cinematography. The pictures are stunning, and in many cases I wondered how they even got them. The narrative descriptive shots are best, for example very long dolly shots through narrow, twisting alleys that seem impossible. The sets and scenes are exquisite, and only enhance the fine camera work. I thought the action shots were less good, on the whole, because they were done with hand-helds, so the camera is jerking all around and the action is blurry, and the shots are in very close and the editing is so short that you can’t see anything, so you come away with only a sense of “action” that is not satisfying. There were some martial arts acrobatics that tried to capture the wit and grace of Jackie Chan’s work but fell short. And there were some wonderful surrealistic action shots reminiscent of Batman or maybe Matrix. It does say "weird" in the title.

The stunt work in this movie was phenomenal. Characterization was extremely creative. I especially liked the Johnny Depp-like evil killer in a pressed white collar. Many shots and the music too, harkened back to the spaghetti westerns, as the title clearly acknowledges. In fact this movie’s overall mood and tone is reminiscent of another weird Asian ersatz spaghetti, Sukiyaki Western Django (2008) which had the Tarantino imprimateur.

The silly, disjointed story line and the absence of offsetting character development are serious flaws, but because of creativity and sheer enthusiasm, I have to give this movie an A.

The Man Who Came Back: Grade F

F
The Man Who Came Back (2008)
Eric Braeden, James Patrick Stuart, George Kennedy, Armand Assante; Co-writer and Director Glen Pitre.

I don’t normally take the trouble to review movies that I don’t feel have anything to offer, but this one fails in so many interesting ways that it might be worth talking about. In the 1860’s right after the Civil War a plantation supervisor (Braeden) speaks to the plantation boss (Kennedy) about how his arrogant son (Stuart) apparently has not received the memo that the slaves are free, and has been treating them cruelly. The boss fires the super on the spot for being an abject nigger lover and puts the arrogant son in charge instead.

In fact, the old cowboy is then accused of killing one of the black men in a sort of Crossbow Incident scene. The accusation is a fabrication, but everybody backs up the evil boss and his son. To make things about as mean as they could be, the evil son cages the super and makes him watch as he and his men rape his wife and throw his young boy down a well. That would make anybody mad, for sure. The old cowboy escapes from territorial prison, after several direct visual quotations from Cool Hand Luke, and goes back to town for revenge, killing at least half a dozen of the ordinary townsfolk who falsely spoke against him and of course the plantation owner and his son.

I love a revenge story and I enjoy a good western so I had hoped this would be along the lines of the terrific Steve McQueen film, Nevada Smith (1966). And maybe it is vaguely like that in structure, but there is no drama here. The lead cowboy, Braeden, has only one look, a stoneface gaze with head tipped down, eyes staring from under furrowed brow. It’s a good look, but it’s his only one. Also he rides a horse well, I’ll give him that. Despite being in his 60’s the character can absorb a severe beating without consequence and punch out a man half his age, not too believably however.

Kennedy gives an admirable performance with the stereotype part he has, but that’s not enough to hold up the whole picture. Assante has the perfect look of a sonofabitch cowboy, almost like Lee Van Cleef, but without the acting ability.

It takes an hour to get to the revenge part of the story but the prelude is so over the top it is ridiculous. A ten minute scene would have motivated the revenge. In the last half, Braeden casually walks up to each citizen and kills him. He is not tricky or stealthy. There is no tension, no hunt, no mystery. He doesn’t give a speech, the victims don’t plead. The townspeople seem disinterested. It’s just boring. Wow. How could a story like that be boring? That is aggressively bad writing and worse directing.

The costumes are ludicrous. All are spotless, new, perfectly stitched, pressed and starched, a stupid error, but also they are very fancy fine clothes, with many topcoats in identical shades of implausible purple. How could something like that happen? Was nobody in charge? Props are shiny museum pieces. Anachronisms abound. Slaves speak modern English. Buildings are built with modern lumber. The whore has tons of modern makeup, professional hair color and lingerie from Victoria’s Secret. Was this supposed to be a historical drama or not? The visuals are unimaginative, grainy, set-bound, and give no sense of time and place. Sound is muddy.

Oh well, that’s enough. There is nothing good about the movie, but oddly, it seems like it was a sincere attempt. I wonder how a movie like this gets made.

The Legend of God's Gun: Grade B

B
The Legend of God’s Gun (2007)
Robert Bones, Kirkpatrick Thomas. Co-writer, cinematographer & director Mike Bruce.

This stunning homage to the spaghetti westerns is gorgeous to look at and a fine example of postmodern filmmaking. Gritty handheld western sequences are solarized and colorized with abandon. Costumes and sets are terrific. Photography is very appealing. The attractive, original and attention grabbing music is mostly in the spaghetti style, but sometimes diverges in creative ways. Directing captures Leone’s and Eastwood’s look beautifully, although with a strong ironic sense of humor. Sound engineering is likewise on target, but ironically over the top. Camera work is a pleasure. And that’s it. There is no story, just a couple of half-hearted goofy ideas. There is no character development (actually few clearly identifiable characters), no obvious script, and very little dialog. What dialog there is, often is anachronistically inappropriate or heavily ironic, and often the sound is out of sync with the lips, as it often was in the Italian originals. This is just a series of western scenes, cowboys on the dusty trail, gunfights, bar fights, closeups of sweaty, cigar-chomping faces. Acting is beyond bad. It had to be ironic acting to be that bad. In a sense, this film is a tragic near-miss. With a story and a few characters it could have been an important homage film, but what it lacks in traditional structure, this youthfully exuberant, zero-budget adventure balances with dazzling color, flair, and style.

No Country For Old Men: Grade A

A
No Country For Old Men (2007)
Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson. Directors Ethan Coen and Joseph Coen.

Brolin is a poor cowboy in east Texas in the 1980s. While hunting in the desert he stumbles across a drug deal gone bad; bloated corpses, a truckload of heroin and two million dollars in a suitcase. Bad guys (apparently from the buyers’ side) see him there, shoot at him, and he narrowly escapes. However, now they know who he is and where the money is so the chase is on. It is unclear what happened to the dope but it is gone by the time sheriff Tommy Lee shows up to investigate. He despairs at the carnage and more generally at the violence wrought by the scale of the drug trade, something he didn’t experience or anticipate in his long career. The scrub country he loves has turned into an alien blood-soaked battleground; thus the title of the film.

Bardem plays a Terminator-like psychopath who stalks Brolin through Texas and into Mexico. Tommy Lee is always one step behind. There is excellent cat-and-mouse. Harrelson has a small but standout role as an assassin hired by the money guys to take out Bardem, for reasons unknown. After two hours, the movie just stops. I’m not even sure what happened to the money. It’s a shame the plot was not stronger, but the film is not really a story of what happened so much as a portrait of the crazy, mindless violence that drug culture brings. In that regard this movie succeeds.

The characters remain stereotypes throughout. There is no story through line either, so what do you have left? Directing, terrific directing. Even though it is a well-worn theme with stereotype characters, the tension is Hitchcockian. And that palpable tension comes with no music! A music director is credited, but it must be for FX sounds. Despite all the gunplay, this is a very quiet movie, like the desert itself. I think 95% of American movies would be improved without music telling us what we are supposed to feel. If the camera cannot tell us that, then maybe the movie is not good enough!

The cinematography is very good here, and sets are perfect, from the brilliant desert to dark, seedy motel rooms. The dialog is spare and sharp, with fine use of East Texan accents and idioms to underscore the taciturn characters. Tommy Lee is such a natural in his role he doesn’t seem like he is acting. Bardem is the central character, an unfeeling, unthinking humanoid who kills without hesitation or mercy, deriving no pleasure from methodically following his destiny, yet somehow distantly amused and perplexed. It is a complex performance. He represents perfectly the dehumanization that drug culture bestows on its participants. A stronger story line would have made this a timeless classic, but it is still far superior to standard fare.

3:10 to Yuma: Grade B

B
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Ben Foster, Logan Lerman; Director James Mangold

Crowe is the arrogant, smirking, Bible-quoting leader of a vicious gang of western bandits who holds up a payroll stagecoach (something they have done many times before), slaughtering most of its Pinkerton guard. The feat is witnessed with disgust by peaceful cattle rancher Bale and his son (Lerman). When Crowe is captured, the head of the Pinkertons wants him escorted to a distant train station, where a prison train, stopping at 3:10, will take him to a federal prison in Yuma. Bale’s character volunteers to join that mission, which involves about 5 men. Crowe’s gang of thugs pursues them to free their boss. The rescue gang is led by Ben Foster who delivers the high intensity that electrified the screen in Alpha Dog. The posse faces various threats on the way to the train station as the gang closes in. At the station and outnumbered, even the Marshall and the Pinkerton guy quit the effort, fearing for their lives. Bale tells his son: “If I don’t come back, you can say your father took Ben Wade to the prison train when no one else would.” Crowe and Bale’s adversarial relationship evolves into a kind of mutual admiration.

It’s a great human drama, and a well-produced western, with lots of guns, horses, wagons, dirt, and steam engines. It was shot in New Mexico, which is the wrong kind of terrain for Arizona, but most people won’t notice that, and the cinematography is outstanding. Directing is flawless and the acting is exceptionally good, even by Peter Fonda, and Luke Wilson (who has an uncredited bit part). In fact, the acting is so good, it raises the quality of this film way above average. What ruins it however, are thoughtless plotting and annoying music. The character drama almost overcomes the contrivances of plot, but not quite. Why does the posse holding Crowe check in to the bridal suite of a hotel to wait for the bad guys, instead of waiting at the railroad station? Why do they wait at all? They could have stayed in the hills outside of town until they saw the train. Why do the bad guys surround the hotel but sit and drink whiskey, waiting for the train, instead of storming the hotel room? And couldn’t the posse come up with another pair of handcuffs or at least a little piece of rope to prevent Crowe from repeatedly escaping and killing off their members? In the final scene, Crowe’s resolution to support Bale is not clear so the big gunfight makes no sense. Who is shooting at whom, and why? Why doesn’t Crowe just sit down and have a smoke instead of running from his own gang? Of course all the bad guys can only hit posts and fixtures while Bale never misses his target once while waving his 30-shot six-shooter. Bale does get shot in the back once, but it apparently heals up within 10 minutes and he is fine. There are many anachronisms in dialog and sets, which is just laziness in a period movie. These defects in the screenplay spoil what could have been a “High Noon” kind of classic, and the grating music misses an opportunity for a restrained and suggestive sound to match the vast openness of the desert and the understated but powerful performances of the actors.

Seraphim Falls: Grade A

A

Seraphim Falls (2006)

Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson; Anjelica Huston. Director and co-writer: David von Ancken.

Set right after the U.S. Civil war (1867 or so), a grizzled cowboy in a black hat, ex-Confederate soldier, pursues another grizzled cowboy in a black hat, ex-Union soldier, through the beautiful landscape of New Mexico, from the snowy, pine-forested mountains to a desert basin devoid of vegetation. Motive: revenge. As we learn in a series of flashback dreams, Union soldier Brosnan had ordered Neeson’s house burned down, killing his wife and son, even though the war was over. Apparently, Brosnan did not get that memo. As a revenge movie, it is very well written, photographed, acted, and directed. Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns are referenced in the fine cinematography. I noticed no anachronisms. The music is excellent. Neeson and his gang hunt the wounded, staggering, bleeding, and freezing or desiccated Brosnan. But Brosnan evens the odds by using his wits against one pursuer at a time. The motivational story is not well-told (why did Brosnan do it?), and likewise the ending is unclear. I can’t give my interpretation without spoiling it. But this is not supposed to be a character movie. It’s all about the chase, which is excellently rendered. Neeson, usually wooden, is convincing in a taciturn part. And Brosnan, well, if you’ve seen Matador, you know the the cork is out of the bottle on him: he really can act. This is a strong A for the western genre.