3:10 To Yuma

[Zeno]

Good post Rick. I agree somewhat that the ending is 'strange', and catches most off guard as it did me also. But this reminds me of the great movie The Sand Pebbles. Jake (Steve Mcqueen) gets shot at the end and dies. This displeased many reviewers and movie goers alike. I mean - What the hell happened?

-Zeno

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
Good post Rick. I agree somewhat that the ending is 'strange', and catches most off guard as it did me also. But this reminds me of the great movie The Sand Pebbles. Jake (Steve Mcqueen) gets shot at the end and dies. This displeased many reviewers and movie goers alike. I mean - What the hell happened? -Zeno

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"The Sand Pebbles" was a great movie and holds up very well over time (I first saw it last year) even though (or perhaps because) it focuses on politics and blowback. I'm surprised people had problems with the ending but it may be that craving for happy endings by the public at large.

For me in the best movies the ending isn't too predicable and there is a possibility of a tragic outcome (but it's not required as in some types of "arty" movies; you simply don't know going into the theater). I can make exceptions for great movies like "Titanic" were we know the boat is going to sink.

When I hear somebody say "I didn't like that movie because it didn't have a happy ending" I know it's somebody I don't want as a movie date (or for much else for that matter).

~ Rick

[Phat Mack]

[ QUOTE ]
Good post Rick. I agree somewhat that the ending is 'strange', and catches most off guard as it did me also. But this reminds me of the great movie The Sand Pebbles. Jake (Steve Mcqueen) gets shot at the end and dies. This displeased many reviewers and movie goers alike. I mean - What the hell happened?

-Zeno

[/ QUOTE ]

I saw this flick a few weeks ago. As I was leaving the theater, I had some doubts about the ending; I wasn't sure that it went with the rest of the movie. In the intervening time, the ending has "settled" a bit, and now I don't have a problem with it. It was never a problem that the ending was happy or sad, it was more a case of whether it was consistent with the rest of the flick.

As far as plausibility goes, I see no reason for it. Some of my favorite movies (The Big Sleep as it was originally released, and Once Upon a time in the West, to name two) make no sense whatsoever.

[CharlieDontSurf]

Jesse James > Valley of Elah

Id see the former over the latter.


Novelist Nick Antosca ("Fires")

This isn't really a review; consider it a breathless, extemporaneous appreciation. I saw The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford a few hours ago and it doesn't feel like something to sit down and matter-of-factly dissect. God, it's a majestic accomplishment. Hard to remember the last time a film had me so deeply in its reality. Park Chan-wook's Oldboy did it; so did Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia and, to a lesser extent, Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream and Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men. (All great films, all very different from Assassination; I'm only comparing the effect.) I saw each of those three or four times in the theater and the same will probably end up being true of Andrew Dominik's film.

I experienced Assassination in my skin and my blood and my bones. It's such a powerful piece of art... spooky, absolutely beautiful, and so richly put together. From the trailer and early reviews I expected a tone poem, something lovely to look at but not necessarily affecting in any profound sense--like Terrence Malick's The New World, with its mumbling and utterly inscrutable characters framed by gorgeous forest--so what initially startled me was the genuine humor and deftness of Dominik's script (and of Ron Hansen's dialogue--Hansen wrote the novel). Every character is achingly human and distinguished with care, given dignity and pettiness and strange quirks and spotlit moments.

There are so many perfect things in this film, large and small: <font color="white"> The train robbery at the beginning... the sight of Jesse James toying with serpents in his back yard... the glimpse of fish beneath the ice... Dick Liddell seducing his friend's stepmother... the horrific forced laughter after Jesse pretends he's going to slit Bob Ford's throat... the moment of Jesse's murder, which is just as much a suicide... </font>

And everyone involved has done an astonishing job. No slack. Every actor (including Sam Shepherd as Frank James, Paul Schneider as Dick Liddell, Sam Rockwell as Charley Ford, and Ted Levine--Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, amusingly enough--as a lawman) has got it exactly. Even James Carville. Dominik must be a directing genius to have gotten performances this uniformly excellent out of his cast. And Roger Deakins' cinematography is otherworldly; I've never seen another movie that looked like this. And Warren Ellis and Nick Cave's score got into me like heroin. And--

Enough, I'll stop already. Suffice to say I loved this movie more than any I've seen in a very long time. Will you? Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn't seem to have been universally appreciated. But there have certainly been others--this guy, for example--who felt as strongly as I did. Devin Faraci, maybe the best movie critic on the internet, apparently also loved it so much he's having trouble writing a "review". So did one or two others. Like Magnolia and Oldboy and 2001 and Days of Heaven--it's an idiosyncratic taste. It meanders (perfectly, mesmerizingly) and digresses and draws moments out, and some people will just be bored (fair enough) and others will call it pretentious (many of these people will be ignorant) and that's that. So it's definitely not a movie I'll be recommending to every person I know. Only to select ones.

It is very long though..over 2 1/2 hours

[Zeno]

[ QUOTE ]
As far as plausibility goes, I see no reason for it. Some of my favorite movies (The Big Sleep as it was originally released, and Once Upon a time in the West, to name two) make no sense whatsoever.


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I first saw Once Upon a time in the West around last Christmas with an old friend who has it on DVD. What a great flick; I especially loved the opening scene - Nothing like a gang of thugs to brighten up an otherwise dull day. Which reminds me that the timelessness of the Western is tied to thuggery, power, and avarice. I wrote an ode to Vladimir Putin, my present-day favorite thug, in the Politics forum months ago. Many took umbrage; Why was a real mystery to me.

-Zeno

[Phat Mack]

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
As far as plausibility goes, I see no reason for it. Some of my favorite movies (The Big Sleep as it was originally released, and Once Upon a time in the West, to name two) make no sense whatsoever.


[/ QUOTE ]


I first saw Once Upon a time in the West around last Christmas with an old friend who has it on DVD. What a great flick; I especially loved the opening scene - Nothing like a gang of thugs to brighten up an otherwise dull day. Which reminds me that the timelessness of the Western is tied to thuggery, power, and avarice. I wrote an ode to Vladimir Putin, my present-day favorite thug, in the Politics forum months ago. Many took umbrage; Why was a real mystery to me.

-Zeno

[/ QUOTE ]

Now that you mention it, thugs may be the entire basis for Westerns. I can't think of a Western where the primary thrill isn't watching the thugs get their just deserts in the end. (Once Upon a time in the West is, of course, an exception. The primary thrill in watching Once Upon a time in the West is looking at Claudia Cardinale, but I digress (I'll come back to Claudia in a couple of sentences).) Anyway, its all a morality play about thugs.

Sometimes the thugs represent the establishment and get offed by the outlaws (Wild Bunch, McCabe and Mrs. Miller). Sometimes the thugs are outlaws and get offed by the establishment (High Noon).

The big question about Once Upon a time in the West is whether Henry Fonda got his just deserts. Sure, he was killed by Death Wish, but he got to bang Claudia Cardinale for God's Sake! It's hard to believe that he didn't get the best of it.