Review – Rango

The animation is good, especially for 2011. And normally I’d be a sucker for any story set in a world where small, anthropomorphic animals have made a town for themselves out of trash. But the “dumbass who lucks his way into becoming a hero” is just too hard for me to swallow. The cast includes a ton of familiar voices, including Johnny Depp as the title character, Ned Beatty as the main villain and Timothy Olyphant as a a thinly-veiled Clint Eastwood cameo. It’s also heavily peppered with blink-and-you-miss-it allusions to other movies. In more than one way this is an apt transition between Gore Verbinsky’s collaborations with Depp on the popular Pirates of the Caribbean movies and their disastrous turn in The Lone Ranger. Mildly amusing

Review – Skinwalker

This is one of those crappy indie productions where it looks like all the actors brought their own costumes. At least it gave everyone an excuse to wear their Apple Cider Days outfits more than once a year. Assholes disturb a Native American burial ground, releasing a demonic curse that seems tangential to the bickering and other awkward character interaction that serve as the movie’s true reason for existence. Perhaps it’s for the best that they made no meaningful effort to make this scary, because all the attempts at horror (especially the monster makeup) were so inept that they turned to comedy. See if desperate

Review – Deadwood

At the outset I should point out that if you aren't a serious fan of the original Deadwood series, this movie may be difficult to follow. On the other hand, if you are a fan then this is the closure you’ve been waiting for. Familiar characters are back, albeit older. Fair warning, though: unlike the series, the story here departs significantly from the historical record. So for plot and character developments, all bets are off. I also would have guessed that one of the town’s devastating fires would have factored in somehow, given all the foreshadowing the show did. Nonetheless, this is a worthy conclusion with all participants in fine form. Worth seeing

Review – Joe Kidd

Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns attempt to develop a social conscience as the title character takes on a greedy land baron (Robert Duvall) out to kill the leader (John Saxon) of a group of farmers. Elmore Leonard supplied the story, which is better during its action scenes than it is when it bothers with plot and character development. Mildly amusing

Review – A Fistful of Dollars

Yojimbo gets a Spaghetti Western makeover in this first collaboration between Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone. Like its Japanese predecessor, the action scenes are excellent but some of the slow spots really drag. Mildly amusing

Review – The Lone Ranger

Once again Gore Verbinski cranks out a movie you can see without actually seeing. Just imagine Pirates of the Caribbean with the pirate tropes unplugged and Western tropes installed in their place. The clichés and random silliness are spread so thick that the picture becomes an act of self parody; I’m a little surprised we weren’t treated to a scene reminding us where the title character takes his trash. They do a better job than the Lone Ranger of yesteryear at dealing with racism and injustice inflicted on Native Americans, though even that comes across as self-conscious. The thing that probably killed this with audiences was the script’s stubborn refusal to tell any kind of coherent story. Either that or people are finally getting tired of big budget Johnny Depp action comedies. Nah, gotta be the script. See if desperate

Review – Wyatt Earp

Of the two big-budget movie versions of this story that came out within six months of each other, this is by far the worse. The other one starred Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer. So yes, Kevin Costner really is able to suck that much joy out of a production. The meandering story and poor pacing didn’t help matters much, either. See if desperate

Review – True Grit (2010)

I’ve never seen the original, and if the Coen brothers hadn’t been at the helm I probably would have skipped the remake as well. However, I’m glad I gave it a chance. The Coens’ usual level of quirk mixes nicely with a vaguely Deadwood-y script, resulting in a reasonably watchable Western. Mildly amusing

Review – Wild Bill

Plays adapted as movies sometimes come across as too "theatrical," and wow is that ever the case here. The life and death of Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Bridges) shouldn't have been anywhere near this boring, and a big part of the blame can be placed on the "everything has to take place within the four corners of a single room" approach taken by the filmmakers. Sure, it uses more than one location. And it features some elements – particularly an explicit and historically-inaccurate sexual relationship between the protagonist and Calamity Jane (Ellen Barkin) – that would have been awkward in front of a live audience. But overall the piece is stage play stiff, especially toward the end when Hickok squares off against would-be assassin Jack McCall (helped neither by the motive they assign to McCall's hatred nor the decision to cast David Arquette in the role). Such a production was a particular surprise coming from director Walter Hill, famous for fast-paced-if-slow-witted action pictures. See if desperate

Review – The Donner Party

Here's the problem with the Donner Party story: in theory tales of cannibalism in extreme survival situations should be fascinating. But their dramatic structure doesn't fit the movie mold. If everything was going great for the settlers and then suddenly they all decided to eat one another, that would make for a standard – if somewhat stupid – slasher picture. But the logic of reality is less cinematic. The result of staying true to the truth is a long, dull story about a handful of folks stuck in the middle of nowhere getting colder and hungrier and colder and hungrier until finally it drives them to extremes. I'm glad they passed up most opportunities to sensationalize, but I don't think I'd sit through it again. Mildly amusing

Review – Ride with the Devil

Needed way more devil. Despite the horror movie title, this is a tedious drama about the rough lives of Confederate bushwhackers. Though not quite as badly bewildered as Josey Wales about the overall morality of the War Between the States, it still liberally indulges in the Union-bad-slave-states-good ethos. Every once in awhile the production conjures something of historical interest, such as the reenactment of Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence. For the most part, however, it’s a slick but tedious parade of the-war-that-pitted-brother-against-brother clichés. See if desperate

Review – They Died with Their Boots On

Try as I might, I just couldn’t get past the historical inaccuracies. Custer went to West Point. He served as a cavalry officer in the Civil War. He married Elizabeth Bacon. He was killed at the Little Big Horn. Just about every other element of this picture is pure balderdash. It’s an approach I simply don’t understand. The facts – or at least a close approximation thereof (fair portrayals of indigenous peoples being outside Hollywood’s capabilities in 1941) – make a fine story. And with Errol Flynn in the lead role, even a realistic Custer might have seemed dashing and heroic. I suppose this might be an acceptable action movie based solely on its own merits, but I had too much trouble watching it to be able to say for certain. Mildly amusing

Review – Seventh Cavalry

Even for a Randolph Scott western, this is stupid stuff. I know movies in general and westerns in particular tend to play a little fast and loose with historical fact. But the departures here are genuinely excessive. Scott plays an officer who was away from duty when Custer rode out on his final mission. Overcome with guilt at having not been slaughtered, our hero volunteers himself and a squad of drunks and misfits to brave hostile Native Americans and recover the corpses of the men slain at the Little Big Horn. I think my favorite part is when they identify Custer’s body because the Sioux reverently buried him and placed Sitting Bull’s coup stick over the body as a headstone. Most of the rest of the movie enjoys a similar level of divorce from reality. See if desperate

Review – The Apple Dumpling Gang

Did you ever notice how Germans don’t do much in the comedy realm, and yet just about anything translated into German immediately becomes funny? For example, in English this picture is the evil opposite of amusing, but transform it into Das Apfelstrudelgruppen and it’s the height of hilarity. I vaguely remember seeing this in a theater when it was first released in 1975, and even back then – I was nine at the time – I thought it was stupid. So even though usually I’d partially defend a picture like this by pointing out that I’m not exactly a member of the target audience and thus not in the best position to judge its intended appeal, with this stinker I think it’s safe to say that it just stinks. Disney cranked out boxcars full of dreadful little live-action pictures in the early 70s, and this one is distinguished from most of the rest only by its western setting. A gambler (Bill Bixby) ends up stuck with three troublemaking orphans who find a gold nugget that two bungling robbers (Don Knotts and Tim Conway) try to steal, and … wait, I lost most of you by mentioning Knotts and Conway, didn’t I? See if desperate

Review – Windwalker

After centuries of real-life abuse at the hands of the United States and decades of cruel libel in Hollywood movies, Native Americans finally get a movie that’s actually about them with no white characters at all. Though the actors do fine jobs in their roles, an all-indigenous cast would have made the experience complete. In any event, all the dialogue except for some voice-over narration is in either Cheyenne or Crow with subtitles. The story is a simple tale of an old man who returns from near death to help save his family from a band of marauders. As is often the case with the laconic westerns of the 70s and 80s, the scenery ends up playing a major role. So it stands on its own as a movie in addition to being an important step in the right direction racially. Worth seeing

Review – Unforgiven

After a lengthy and lucrative career making westerns about remorseless gunslingers who kill for little reason and never miss their targets, Clint Eastwood makes an abrupt departure with this production. His character, William Munny, is a single father with no desire to return to his former profession as a gunfighter. But then an aspiring youth (Jaimz Woolvett) talks him into one last easy score, and with his old pal Ned (Morgan Freeman) in tow he returns to the fray. He swiftly runs afoul of vicious boss Little Bill (Gene Hackman), and thing proceed from there. The plot outline doesn’t make it sound like much of a story, but the nuances more than make up for it. Killings have consequences. Killers feel remorse. Revenge never turns out to be a simple business. The addition of human morality to the Western transforms this from a standard genre piece to a genuinely worthwhile film. Worth seeing

Review – The Missouri Breaks

As of this writing I’m planning a trip to Montana, so I got this movie from Netflix so I could get a good look at the Hollywood picture of the landscapes. Though it made a pretty picture, it took an unfortunate back seat to some bizarre storytelling. A rustler (Jack Nicholson) and his band of hippie-goofy friends steal from the wrong land baron, and the old guy hires a weird-ass hit man (Marlon Brando) to hunt them down. Good thing the locations supply a lot of scenery, as the two big names chew ruthlessly through it while the rest of the cast stares helplessly on. This might have eked a slightly higher rating if not for the excessive ill treatment of horses and a rabbit. See if desperate

Review – Jonah Hex

Once again horror and the Western fail to mix. This time around that’s at least in part because the supernatural is superficial, almost an afterthought rather than an actual part of the plot. The hero (Josh Brolin) is out of every you-killed-my-family-prepare-to-die movie Clint Eastwood ever made. The villain (pathetically under-cast John Malkovich) is little more than cardboard leftovers from Wild Wild West, especially with his scheme to restart the Civil War and win the day for the CSA via a weapon of mass destruction. I felt sorry for Brolin stuck behind uncomfortable makeup designed to make him look like half his face was burned off. Other than sympathy for the actor, the only emotion I felt about this movie one way or another was mild annoyance at the hero for wearing a Confederate uniform. See if desperate

Review – A Man Called Horse

When this first came out, it was innovative stuff. Hollywood was just beginning to acknowledge that American Indians were human beings with legitimate cultures of their own, not merely bloodthirsty savages fit only to be massacred by white men. An English lord (Richard Harris) roughing it in the American West is taken captive by a Dakota tribe. At first they’re cruel to him, but gradually they assimilate him into the group. The most famous scene is the sun ceremony, in which the hero undergoes a painful ritual in order to join the tribe and earn the right to marry a Dakota woman. The picture is unevenly paced and includes an unnecessary animal death and way more of Harris’s bare butt than I ever felt the need to see. Otherwise it’s a good experience both as an interesting story and a historical artifact. Mildly amusing

Review – September Dawn

This account of the Mountain Meadow Massacre is none too charitable to the Mormon church, though if it’s accurate then perhaps the church doesn’t deserve much mercy. Certainly the settlers who fell victim to the massacre didn’t get any. The slaughter of innocent folks just trying to make their way to California might have been the subject of a solid, tragic tale, but this production swiftly bogs down in clichés and over-simplifications. For example, all the Mormons are fanatics and polygamists, except of course for the young hero who forms a Romeo-and-Juliet relationship with a young settler woman. When the impact of a picture depends on its veracity, sometimes it’s better to work on showing both sides of the story. Mind you, I hate vicious religious fanatics as much as the next person. But here it comes across as too easy an explanation. Mildly amusing