May 27th, 2009 admin
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
1962
Starring: Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles Edmond O’Brian
Director: John Ford
Runtime: 123 Minutes
Distributor: Paramount
Rating: PG
When at the tender age of just twenty-six Orsen Welles delivered Citizen Kane, a groundbreaking piece of cinema both technically and thematically that has served as a benchmark ever since, people were understandably curious as to how he’d managed to accomplish it? His reply was his strikingly simple: “I studied the greats; John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.”
Prolific, innovative, and famed for his commanding yet eccentric directorial style, John Ford is widely regarded as one of the great masters of American cinema. But it is within the genre of the western (where his best work genuinely does reside) that he is best remembered and will always remain as a true icon. Famed for his now legendary vistas and location shooting where he displayed an eye for landscape that would rival the greatest canvas artists, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance represents something of a departure from the mold for Ford and the result is, according to Sergio Leone, “the only film where Ford learned about something called pessimism.”
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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April 28th, 2009 admin
2008
Starring: Mark Redfield, Michael Hagan, Jennifer Rouse, Kelly Potchak, Richard Cutting
Director: Wayne Shipley
Runtime: 98 Minutes
Distributor: One-Eyed Horse Productions
Rating: PG-13
There have been westerns almost as long as the medium of cinema has existed. The first ever-narrative film, Edward Porter’s 1903 twelve-minute milestone The Great Train Robbery was a western. In terms of sheer cinematic proliferation, the western simply stands unmatched and there is a very good and very simple reason – they’re bloody cheap. A couple of guys, a couple of horses and some wide-open space and you’ve essentially got yourself a western. But just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should nor that there is value in doing that thing.
With that in mind we arrive at Come Hell or High Water, writer-director Wayne Shipley’s DV, no-budget, horse opera where, at first glance, a Maryland amateur dramatics society comes together to chart the vast outreaches of incomprehensible thespian inadequacy. Coming across like some bizarre hybrid between a civil war reenactment, a wild west show and left over footage from one of those Gunslinger RPG arcade games you find at Dave & Busters, Come Hell or High Water might best be used to coax information out of suspects at Guantanamo Bay – but only the hardcore inmates mind you, the ones who didn’t bat an eye at water boarding.
Mark Redfield (whose credits include such fare as The Curse of the Screaming Dead and Chainsaw Sally) stars as Missouri freight nogul Justin Gatewood. After five years in Leavenworth for attempting the murder of the man he holds responsible for his brother’s death during the Civil War (he hit the sheriff instead), Gatewood is pardoned by the governor (who values his tax revenue) and returns to his ranch with a mind to finish what he started.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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September 18th, 2008 admin
2008
Starring: Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellwegger, Jeremy Irons, Lance Henriksen
Cerris Morgan-Moyer, Timothy Spall, Timothy V. Murphy
Director: Ed Harris
Runtime: 114 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Rating: R
Not that it ever really went away but post-Deadwood, the great horse opera is enjoying something of a renaissance thanks to an injection of star power and a slow but calculated drift into the muddy waters of moral ambiguity. But while this film certainly packs a one-two punch in the star power department, this is not one of those fashionably cynical revisionist stories. No, sir, there are certain actors in this business that much like the doggedly upright men of principle they are duly attracted to playing time and again, just won’t allow that kind of thing. Kevin Costner and Open Range is one such example, Ed Harris and this fiercely traditionalist oats and outlaws fable is another.
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September 3rd, 2008 admin
1968
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Inger Stevens, Ed Begley, Bruce Dern, Pat Hingle, Charles McGraw, Ruth White
Director: Ted Post
Runtime: 114 Minutes
Distributor: MGM
Rating: R
This minor Clint Eastwood effort might be the most unfortunate western ever made. Despite being an excellent tale of revenge with delicate musings on man’s fallible nature, it has three major problems; It isn’t A Fistful of dollars, It isn’t For a Few dollars More, and it isn’t The Good The Bad And The Ugly. As the first post-Sergio Leone Clint Eastwood western, coming less than a year after the diminutive Italian forever altered the landscape of the American western, turning it on its head, Hang em High is thrown into a very harsh and somewhat unfair examination where everything about Leone’s masterful style that is absent just screams at you. It’s like showing up to watch your favorite football team play the local derby and finding out that they are fielding their reserve side. The shortcomings are ultimately not the film’s fault, but are also inescapable under the circumstances.
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