Rango

2011 animated Western comedy

Rating: 16/20 (Emma: ?/20; Abbey: 13/20)

Plot: A Chameleon with No Name (well, actually he does have a name) is accidentally abandoned by his human family. The desert he winds up in is not the safest of places, and the Wild West style animal town called Dirt he eventually stumbles into is probably even less safe. He exaggerates his prowess, lucks his way through a fight with a troublesome bird, and ends up the new sheriff of Dirt. He tries to get to the bottom of the town's lack of water.

Well, I like quirky animated movies with talking animals and spaghetti Westerns, and I seem to like a lot of what Gore Verbinski does (the underrated Mousehunt, The Weather Man featuring our summer star Nicolas Cage, that first Pirate movie). Previews for this made it look really good, too. So I wasn't entirely surprised that this is actually really good. It's really got the whole spaghetti vibe down with the wonderfully withered town of Dirt and the ugliest collection of characters you're likely to see. Some grizzled voice work (Ned Beatty should be in every animated movie; it should be a new law or something) gives them personality and color, and although there's not really all that much character development with any of them other than the titular chameleon, they work really well to give the setting the texture it needs. I really like the animation in this. There's a great blend of natural and realistic settings with these strange looking cartoonish animals, and the action scenes have this frenetic energy but still somehow make sense. There are lots of nods, predictably, to Western greats, but this also has a Hunter S. Thompson spotting which I thought was an awesome touch. That, and the protagonist is supposedly modeled after Don Knotts, probably meaning that I should go ahead and give this a Don Knotts bonus point. Oh, and similar to the movie Keoma that I just reviewed, there's an owl mariachi band in this that sings a bunch of songs about what's going on with the plot and how Rango is probably going to die. They work a lot better than the drunken pair in Keoma though. This works as an action movie, a kids movie (actually, maybe not), a Western, a comedy. It's not flawless--the plot's a little sloppy--but it's a wonderful hour-and-a-half of entertainment and definitely something I'd not mind watching over and over if any of my kids had actually liked it. My rating would probably go up, too.

Keoma

1976 Spaghetti Western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Keoma, an adopted half-Injun (is that politically correct?) returns after the Civil War to find that his daddy is no longer the town big-wig and that his three corrupt half-brothers are in-cahoots with the mean guy who's the new town big-wig. Plague victims are shunned and sent to die. Keoma rescues one of them, a pregnant woman, and pisses off everybody. A whole lot of people die in slow-motion.

Another filthy cool spaghetti Western featuring the great Franco Nero with perhaps an overuse of Peckinpah-style slo-mo spills from horses or rooftops and a great tone. But I'm going to start with the bad or ugly in this otherwise good film--the music. There's a song performed by a woman who screeches like an inebriated Joan Baez and a guy who sounds like a guy who liquified and then drank a bunch of Leonard Cohen records. The song runs intermittently throughout the movie's duration and works kind of like a Greek chorus where the "singers" tell you exactly what just happened in case you somehow missed it or maybe what the characters are thinking. It's unnecessary and annoying. "Now Keoma has to ride into town to face his brothers." Yeah, Joan Baez, I know. I'm watching the same movie you are! Maybe if I was vision impaired, I would have appreciated that sort of thing. Or maybe I would have just shoved pencils in my ears. Other than that, this is good stuff. I like the mysterious tone, and Castellari, a director I've never heard of, uses sound effects and classic Western shots that take advantage of great scenery to create wonderful atmosphere. He uses some unnatural shots that show the characters framed by debris and dilapidated buildings, and during a climactic shoot-out--one of several--he eliminates all of the sound except for a moaning woman and the wind. Awesome. Keoma the half-breed (wait, why isn't this an offensive word?) is a cool character, not invincible and tortured not only by all the stuff that happens to him in the numerous flashbacks but by his future. And I like how he does this pointing thing that must have inspired Hulk Hogan as he was creating his wrastler persona. There's also this cool shot you'd only get in a spaghetti Western where Keoma tells his four enemies that he has four bullets. He holds up four fingers to illustrate. Then, he counts and drops his fingers to reveal the characters he's about to shoot. This movie also has a guy who looks like Colonel Sanders, and a scene where a guy with the whitest teeth in the Wild West gives a black guy's boot a golden shower. Definitely worth watching for fans of the genre even though that song will make you bleed from the ears. And not in a good way.

The Great Silence

1968 Spaghetti Western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: In blizzardy Utah in the late 1800s, bounty hunters run amok, bringing in loads of dead outlaws for financial gain. The titular mute doesn't like them very much and finds ways of getting them mad enough to draw their guns so that he can shoot them in self defense. One widow tries to get Silence to kill a bounty hunter named Loco who shot her husband.

The Great Silence is one of those westerns where the setting is almost more important than the characters. The hills these hills inhabit are drowned in snow, and watching these horses trudge through the mounds of white is impressive. The mute good guy played by Jean-Louis Trintignant is fine as a sort of Eastwood Man-With-No-Name-But-With-a-Nickname. Apparently he was a mute because the actor would only take the role if he didn't have any lines to learn. But he's a cool character with a cool gun. Klaus Kinski dominates as Loco, however, stealing each scene with his eyes. What a great villain! The dubbing in this isn't great although I wonder if Kinski actually did the dubbing for Loco. It sort of sounded like him. I did enjoy the exaggerated dubbed chewing sounds because there's nothing like hearing a guy slurp a chicken. My favorite scene that is not at the end of the movie: a tossed match into a glass of whiskey during a poker game. Nice tension. But the end of this movie? That's what pushes it a notch higher than its Italian Western peers. It's an ending that'll leave your jaw dropping. Great Morricone score, too, if you're into that sort of thing.

Django

1966 spaghetti western

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A man with no name. . .no, scratch that. He has a name. Django! He walks through a muddy wasteland dragging a coffin around until he finds some Mexicans mistreating a woman. The Mexicans' fun is interrupted by some white guys, and their subsequent fun is then interrupted by Django who shoots them all. He travels to a nearby town overrun by the same gang whose members sport these KKK-esque red hoods. Django finds himself in the middle of their conflict. Lots and lots of people die.

The inspiration for at least Tarantino and Miike (see: Sukiyaki Western Django if you need proof), this is a very entertaining bloody Italian western. Franco Nero doesn't have the charisma of Clint, but he's still very good as the stoic anti-hero. The antagonists, both the guys in the red hoods and los banditos, are really just around to die. And boy, do they die. This spaghetti western has a lofty body count, and although a lot of those deaths are just guys falling down, it does have its share of sadistic organ removal and gruesome mangling. Django's got these perfect alternative Western settings. The town's a wreck and drowning in mud. I still can't figure out how a semi-important fallen-down tree got in the middle of the road there. A rickety bridge over a quicksand lake is used twice, and the whole thing ends, appropriately, in a graveyard that looks like it's been hit by an earthquake. The story's filmed competently enough, maybe not with Leone's eye but with some cool shots, and there's a fantastic theme song. I really like how director Corbucci slows things down, letting the conflict build momentum naturally. There's a scene late in the film where Django is sneaking around. Arguably, it goes on too long, but I liked how it builds some tension and makes the title character look clever. Same goes for an earlier scene where Django is literally just sitting and doing nothing for about fifteen minutes.

Note: There are a lot of movies with "Django" in the title but that have nothing to do with this movie. The one I really really want to see is called Django Kill which, from the descriptions I've read, sounds like it could be the greatest movie ever made. I say that about a lot of things though. I've not had success finding that one yet.

True Grit

2010 Western

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 19/20)

Plot: The guy in that one Coen Brothers' movie killed another guy, one we never see but who was more than likely in at least one Coen Brothers' movie. His daughter wants vengeance. She wants it bad! So she finds a tough guy with an eyepatch, the guy who was in that one Coen Brothers' movie, and hires him to take care of business. A guy who has never been in a Coen Brothers' movie but who was in another movie with a guy who was in a Coen Brothers' movie tags along because he's been looking for the guy who was in the one Coen Brothers' movie for a very long time. A guy who looks like a bear shows up later.

Nice traditional, old-school Wild West action here, shaded with the Brothers' dark humor, offbeat characters, and stylized ultraviolence. Cause nobody just gets stabbed in the chest or shot in the head in a Coen Brothers' movie. They create big moments whenever their characters get theirs, moments that are oft-graphic, sometimes blackly humorous, and almost always thrilling. There's almost a coldness to their death scenes, and the poor characters pass to the next world without dignity. That's not a criticism, by the way. And the next worlds that most of these characters will inhabit probably aren't going to be a very nice one, like where the Care Bears live. No, most of these characters are going to end up in some dusty purgatory where their scars will itch. Being a Coen Brothers' movie, there are certain things you can just expect walking in: a great meaty script with lots of humorous things for the characters to say, stunning visual storytelling, and a few moments you'll want to talk about later. You know, like guys being shoved into wood chippers. And you get all that, as well as some terrific character acting. Mattie's played by somebody named Hailee Steinfeld, and although she's good, this really isn't her movie. This belongs to Lebowski, and every word he speaks is drenched in tobacco juice and whiskey and broken glass and filth. Bridges' Rooster is that type of character who is very funny without making any effort at all to be funny. You have to love Bridges' versatility. Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are also good, and the rest of the supporting cast, sometimes only on the screen for a few odd moments, help color in the Coens' askew vision of the Wild West. What I didn't expect walking into a Coen Brothers' movie: a heavy-handed Hollywoody score (I'll have to hear it again actually; Jen says it's a nod to the classics of the genre, and I think it could help with the myth making.) and such a traditional, simple story. The latter was no problem. What bugged me was the end where simple was thrown out of the saloon to make way for a goofy and unlikely denouement where a few too many things happen. As with all Coen Brothers' movies, I look forward to seeing this again.

Jen and I made a rare trip to the theater to see this one. We saw previews for a movie that must be based on the old Rockin' Robots toy and a movie about Neil Armstrong finding Transformers on the moon. Jen leaned over during both and (too loudly) said, "I am all over that! Booyah!"

Jonah Hex

2010 comic book Western

Rating: 9/20

Plot: In postbellum America, Jonah Hex is Civil War hero turned ruthless bounty hunter. The government enlists him to help find John Malkovich and his posse, Wild West terrorist who hope to bring America to its knees by using the same weapon technology that Jar Jar Binks and his friends used in The Phantom Menace--glowing orbs. Hex is all over that because Malkovich is the guy who scarred his face and killed his family.

A lot of this movie is incoherent. The plot's easy enough to follow, and the characters are nothing but cardboard types, but the individual parts that made up this whole just didn't make a lot of sense. It has the kind of fight scenes where you lose focus and can't keep track of what's going on. It's almost like that feeling when somebody turns off the lights and you can't figure out what's happening until your eyes adjust. Watching the action sequences in this movie was just like that feeling. The ultra-modern look of the movie almost clashed with the post-Civil-War and dusty town settings, and the score, thick in rockin' electronic git-fiddles, really annoyed me. There were some moments here (I like the first gun fight scene that winked at predecessors) and Josh Brolin was pretty good as the anti-hero type although his character does seem like a composite of a handful of silver screen anti-heroes. And despite all the whining about Megan Fox lately, I liked it when she was on the screen. But I suspect Jonah Hex is a movie that should have stayed a comic book, a film that cries out, "Look at how fresh I am! I'm new!" while actually seeming like nothing more than a Sin City rip-off.

What do you think, Kairow? Comic/movie comparison?

Back to the Future III

1990 sequel

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Marty has to travel back in time to 1885 in order to save Doc Brown from being shot in the back by an outlaw. Unfortunately, the Delorean is damaged, so getting back to 1985 is a problem. But who would want to live in 1985 anyway? The music isn't as good, and Huey Lewis's penis hasn't even been invented yet.

Ah, a return to form. I love the Western/sci-fi mash-up here. The performers are all likable again, the meanness and general suckiness of the second installment is gone, and the story feels original again. This references its predecessors quite a bit, mostly in ways that are kind of funny or just neat (the bell tower connections), and I also liked allusions to some classic Westerns, most humorously with Marty telling everybody that his name is Clint Eastwood. I also like some of the anachronisms this new context for the characters allows--moonwalking, Frisbees, and the hilarious cowboy garb that the Doc insists are what men actually wore in the Old West. Thomas F. Wilson returns, and he not only gets a great character to work with in Mad Dog Tannen, but he absolutely nails it. Whereas the second movie in the trilogy looked like somebody had eaten too many helpings of special effects and vomited all over the movie, this goes for a less plastic approach. It also lacks the jarring frenetic quality of the second movie, instead sticking to a simple story told simply. There is some creative camera work, however. I really like some of the transitions in this, scenes where you have characters talking in the foreground while a new action is introduced in the background. I do think the final twenty minutes are a little goofy. I didn't care for the climax/denouement, probably because the return of the hover board from the second movie reminded me of how much that one stunk. Overall though, this is a fun ride.

I was talked into seeing this movie in the theater before I saw the second one. It was one of the most important moments of my life.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird

2007 Korean Italian American Western

Rating: 14/20 (Mark: 16/20; Amy: refused to give me a number)

Plot: Everybody was gun fighting. Those cats was fast as lightning. An outlaw, an assassin, and a petty thief fight over what might be a treasure map discovered on a train somewhere in China.

This is thoroughly enjoyable, both with the visually-exhilarating style and the nonstop bursts of ultra-fantastical shoot-'em-up action scenes. Really, it's about as close as you can get to a movie that is too much of a good thing. There's not much new with the story, like a joke it seems I've heard before even if I don't remember the punchline, and the trio of characters weren't nearly as interesting as they should have been, their characterization barely extending beyond their descriptions in the title. The film makes up for it with an addictive creative energy, a mishmash of what must be anachronisms and period detail, and a solid and boggling denouement. There are frequent nods to Leone although it lacks the poetics and subtleties those Clint Eastwood movies, replacing them with frenzy. This is a fun action movie if it's not exactly a great one and a good mash-up of classic spaghetti Western tones with something decidedly modern, just the kind of movie I imagine Tarantino would want to spend an evening with.

Man from the West

1958 Western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Link Jones don't want to be an outlaw no more. But after being abandoned in the middle of nowhere with two others by the train they were riding following a failed robbery, he finds himself face-to-face with his old boss and forced to once again join the gang. He tries to balance feigned loyalty to his posse and concern for his fellow train passengers.

What a pleasant surprise this "man"/Mann Western was! I wasn't expecting much since I had never even heard of this one, but it's solid stuff. I've liked other Anthony Mann Westerns, but in this one, he's second to no one, not even Ford, in using landscape to help tell the story. Link, played stoically by a fatigued-looking Gary Cooper, is one of those characters who is in control in a situation there's no way he can control. As things look bleaker and bleaker, the landscape reflects that, becoming harsher and harsher--from civilized town to a rickety train to a dilapidated farmhouse to a ghost town to miles and miles of brown jagged rock. It's all beautifully photographed, as are the characters. Lee J. Cobb's Dock Tolbin looks like he just rolled off the set of a movie in which he's been shot at by Clint Eastwood while Leone looks on, and there's something raw and tense about his performance. I also liked Jack Lord as another of the baddies. They're definitely not the bad guys I expected to see in a late-50s movie. I think that's what I really liked about The Man of the West actually; it's not a glossy Hollywood Western but one not afraid to get some dust on the lens. There's a great scene with the death of one character. In other Westerns, other good Westerns even, this unfortunate character (second from the bottom on the cast list) would have caught the bullet, fallen down, and died. In The Man of the West, the camera follows him as he stumbles around and moans in extreme pain and then lingers on him from a few moments after he finally, almost mercifully, expires. Harsh stuff. There's another great scene with Julie London's character, a woman thrust into a damsel-in-distress type situation, in an uncomfortably humiliating moment, and Cooper, with a knife drawing a trickle of blood from his throat, forced to watch. Another Western would keep Link 100% chivalrous. Link would grit his teeth and curse the mean guys under his breath. But here, you read something else on his face. There's conflict, a part of the old outlaw Link who really might enjoy what is going on. There's a tense and introspective flavor and an unexpected darkness to The Man of the West that anticipates future Westerns. I liked it a lot.

Little Big Man

1970 big little epic

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A 120 year old bag of wrinkles shares his life story--raised by Indians, lived with a preacher and the sultry Faye Dunaway, worked with a snake oil peddler, drank with Wild Bill, became a gunslinger, married an immigrant, lost his wife, married an Indian, became a hero, became a drunkard, and was the lone white survivor at the Battle of Little Bighorn. But he might be fabricating a bit.

You know, it just occurred to me when I typed the above that the climactic moment takes place at Little Bighorn and Dustin Hoffman's character is Little Big Man. I love this epic Western funk despite some flaws. Every time I see this, I laugh the first time Hoffman's character speaks in the flashback. His deep, nasally voice just doesn't seem to fit his appearance. I'm not sold on his old man voice either exactly, but even kind of pulling off playing the same character as a teenager and a 120 year old is impressive. One could accuse Little Big Man of being too episodic or a little jumpy, but the narrative structure works as it lends credence to the idea that Jack Crabb could be making the whole thing up. Plus, there are plenty of parallel episodes to pull it all together by the end. Little Big Man is often very funny and often very poignant and sometimes both simultaneously which really makes the movie special. As much as I love what Hoffman is doing here, it's Chief Dan George who really steals the show as the wise and goofy grandfatherly Cherokee chief. It seems like every single line he has in this movie is either hilarious or beautiful, delivered with perfect timing and cadence and hitting you just right. I loved his reference to "the black white man," his inquiry about whether Hoffman's white wife shows "pleasant enthusiasm when [he] mounts her," and his explanation of why he calls his snake wife Doesn't Like Horses. But my favorite line in this (and maybe any movie) is when Chief Dan George says, "There is an endless supply of white men, but there have always been a limited number of human beings." Beautiful. Oh, I also like how General Custer pronounces the word gonads, but that's just because I'm immature.

I gave this movie a gonads bonus.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

1962 Western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Senator Ransom Stoddard and his wife arrive in the town of Shinbone to go to the funeral of an old friend, Tom Doniphon. Some newspaper men harass the senator about his visit until he sits down and tells them the story of his very first visit to Shinbone, a visit which starts with being beaten and robbed by a bully of a rancher named Liberty Valance. This treatment inspires Stoddard, an up-and-coming lawyer, to introduce a little law and order to the Western town and its surrounding ranches. He also opens up a school to teach the children and illiterate adults to read. But Stoddard's reasoning and the information in his law books doesn't change the ways of Valance and his posse, and inevitably, Stoddard will have to stand up to him. Doniphon, local tough guy who says "Pilgrim" far more than the average cowboy, doesn't think Stoddard's got what it takes. Doniphon also doesn't like that Stoddard seems to be interested in the girl he plans to marry.

This is great Western drama that often looks like a parody because of far too many gigantic personalities--an overacting Jimmy Stewart, at times almost seeming like somebody else doing a really poor and over-the-top Jimmy Stewart impression instead of an actual Jimmy Stewart; burly John Wayne being all John Wayne-y; Vera Miles hyper-playing her stock female Western character; Lee Marvin as the titular bad guy, ugly and mean and a little too hammy; Andy Devine squealing his lines as the sheepish sheriff with the great name Link Appleyard; Bobcat Goldthwait as one of Valance's men; a stutterer; the newspaper editor Dutton Peabody played theatrically by Edmund O'Brien, a guy who apparently is trying to prove here that he is classically trained or something; and finally, an overly-grandiose orator at the convention late in the film. It's personality overload, and it all adds up to something completely unrealistic and unintentionally comical. I do really like the story and its conflicts though. The Hallie-Tom-Ransom love triangle could have been developed better. The Liberty-Tom-Ransom hate triangle is great though. Nothing needs to be said by any of the characters to show the audience that Tom and Liberty don't like each other and maybe have a bit of a history. And Jimmy Stewart's anger, anger that I'm would please any diehard Stewart fan, contrasts so well with the cool and cocky Marvin. I really like some individual scenes, my favorites being scenes that I think a lot of directors might have reshot. There's a scene where Jimmy bumps his head and then continues on with his lines. He drops or knocks over things, and messes up his lines more than once, but, even if it's not intentional or written into the script, it really adds to the character, this geeky lawyer who you are positive won't be able to kill the tough bully in the end. Ultimately, I like what this movie has to say about Wild West myth-making, the "printing of legends," and the clash between the Wild West philosophies and the big city ideas that Stoddard brings to Shinbone. But come on. Watch the "pick up my steak" scene over again, and try to convince me that it's not funny.

The Man from Laramie

1955 Western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A guy who rolls up the cuffs of his jeans brings a load of supplies from Laramie to Coronado, a dinky town controlled by a rancher named Waggoner. Secretly, he wants to get to the bottom of who's selling rifles to the Apaches. He has a run-in with the mischievous Waggoner son, resulting in his wagons being burned and his mules being shot. He decides to stick around anyway and gets on everybody's nerves.

It's still hard for me to see Jimmy Stewart as a tough guy, but there's a terrific long shot of a very pissed-off Jimmy walking toward a guy who wronged him who apparently is also the cameraman. It made a believer out of me. The fisticuffs that follow, wrastlin' amidst a herd of cattle on the dusty streets, have a grit that lends a realism to the proceedings, as do a few gun fights that come later. We catch the stock characters in medias res, but as the story unfolds, there's a depth to them that I really like. That story's a little uneven at times, and there's a ludicrous explosion along the way. Parts of certain conflicts seemed unresolved or, when I did squeeze pieces together, didn't really fit right. Sort of like Jimmy Stewart's pants. There had to be easier ways for some of these characters to get what they wanted in the movie. Regardless, this is beautifully shot and well-acted Western that shows off the great American West in a story that, although it wasn't, seems like it was pinched from the samurai.

A Man Called Horse

1970 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: King Arthur, taking a break from shooting birds to bathe in a stream, is attacked and captured by Sioux Indians. At the Sioux village, he's forced to work for Buffalo Cow Head. To make matters even worse, someone left his cake out in the rain. Green icing's melting all around, and he doesn't think he can take it. It took so long to make it, and King Arthur will never have that recipe again. Oh, no! The Sioux make fun of him for obsessing over a cake. They dance around him, point at him with spears, and scream "Gay baker!" in a Sioux ritual called Hazing of the Homosexual White Man under the Fall Moon Dance. Eventually, King Arthur learns to appreciate Sioux culture and is suspended by his nipples to prove that he's actually a tough guy.

This is really just a metaphor about how far the typical man would go to get a woman to come into his teepee. But what a woman! Wankatanka! This is a pretty good film, a sort of cowboys and Indians thing but without any cowboys. It does have a more shots of Richard Harris's ass than you're likely to see in any other film, the possible exception being that second Harry Potter movie. Wankatanka! Harris's performance is a solid, physical one. Dame Judith Anderson gave what was likely the performance she was most proud of as Buffalo Cow Head. Nope, that's not a name I made up. This is a fascinating look at Native American culture although I wonder if it was all historically accurate. Highlights (other than Dumbledore's naked bum, of course) include the Sun Dance Ceremony in which Harris's character is suspended by two chest piercings and a dizzying battle near the end. The former looks completely real and completely painful, and the lighting and music contribute to make that a really powerful, if sort of unpleasant, scene. The latter's got some editing that could induce a seizure and is stuffed with scalping, pouncing, clubbing, and jousting, more action than you can shake a tomahawk at. A large percentage of the movie isn't in English (I doubt a lot of it, especially when Judith Anderson is involved, is spoken in Sioux either) and the other "language" isn't translated, but the story moves along just fine without words. I also liked a weird almost psychedelic sequence even though it dates the movie somewhat. It's groovy stuff!

Dead Man

1995 metaphysical Western masterpiece

Rating: 18/20

Plot: William Blake arrives via Crispin Glover-driven train to the Wild West town of Machine where he's been promised a job as an accountant. He's too late, and the job's been given to somebody else. His life is threatened. He meets a woman, and because he looks just like Johnny Depp, she sleeps with him. Unfortunately, her fiance strolls in after the deed is done and shoots them both. Blake kills the man, steals a horse, and flees into the wilderness. An Indian named Nobody, thinking he's the reincarnation of English Romantic poet William Blake, guides him on his journey as a trio of bounty hunters--the vile Cole Wilson, the verbose Conway Twill, and young Johnny "The Kid" Pickett--sent by his victim's father track him down.

On certain days, usually Thursdays when the sun's hitting me just right and I've added just the right amount of sugar to my tea, my answer to the question "What is your favorite Western featuring Iggy Pop wearing a dress?" would probably be this peyote-induced nightmare of a travelogue, Dead Man. Man, does Jim Jarmusch know how to start a movie or does Jim Jarmusch know how to start a movie? Following a quote about how it's preferable to not travel with a dead man, you get the incoherent ramblings of Crispin Glover and the senseless shooting of buffalo from a train. Then, Depp's character enters Machine. William Blake walks the dusty street, passes a coffin shop a la Hang 'Em High, a bunch of animal skulls fastened to a wall, a wagon filled with antlers, a urinating horse, a grunting hog in the middle of the road, Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes on the receiving end of a blow job, and a creepy-looking fellow with troll ears and a troll nose, all with Neil Young's plaintive guitar. They're visuals that let you know what's what in Machine, reminiscent of one of my favorite film images--Kurosawa's dog with a human hand in its mouth at the beginning of Yojimbo. The tone is set, and then you get a ceaselessly surprising man-on-the-run Western with more great Neil Young, lovely shots of great American Western landscapes shot in crisp black and white, an odd assortment of characters and cameos, faux-philosophies, and the best comedy this side of Dante's Inferno. This might be the funniest movie I've seen all year, and it's definitely the funniest Western ever made. Sorry, Mel Brooks. At the center of that is William Farmer's Nobody, the embodiment of a stereotype, spouting Native American-ish riddles and non sequiturs. My favorite scene might be where Nobody tries on William Blake's hat. No, my favorite scene is probably where Nobody and Blake are watching three mysterious men, one being Iggy Pop as "Sally" and another being Billy Bob Thornton, and barely being able to hear snippets of Iggy's retelling of the "Three Little Bears" story. Or maybe my favorite scenes are the ones with Robert Mitchum. No, wait, Crispin Glover's in the movie, so my favorite scene probably has him in it. Or maybe they're all my favorite scenes. It's definitely unique, a riddle of a film that grows every time you watch it and one of those movies you almost want to watch again as soon as it's over. It might be an acquired taste. It's dreamy Johnny Depp as a straight man in an askew Wild West philosophical comedy, mysteriously poetic and absurdly fascinating, and if you've got a high tolerance for the offbeat, this just might be your cup of poisoned tea.

Now, do you have any tobacco?

Stagecoach

1939 Western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: An early CBS experiment in reality television, this puts nine strangers in a stagecoach in 1880s Arizona, right in the middle of Apache territory with cameras watching them 24 hours a day. There's an outlaw, a corrupt banker, a couple broads, a horny guy, a wino, a Slim Whitman impersonator, a sheriff, and a guy in a gopher costume. Apaches, as any history book would accurately tell you, are bloodthirsty fiends, and when Geronimo's impromptu game of Smear the Queer is interrupted by stagecoach dust, the passengers find themselves in a little trouble. Luckily, John Wayne has taken a break from beating women long enough to help them out.

My Uncle Barry first showed me Stagecoach when I was 4 1/2 years old. Actually, he had taken all the on/off switches off all seven of his television sets and couldn't actually show the movie. He had it memorized and performed Stagecoach all by himself, playing all the parts and using a variety of props he'd found in his neighbor's kitchen. It was pretty exciting stuff, and I was inspired to write the first hip hop lyric alluding to a John Wayne movie. I can't remember all the lyrics, but "When you was out playing Bingo / We picked up Kid Ringo / Look, there's a motherfucking dingo / Drop your pants, boys / This stagecoach is about to throw down." My uncle couldn't demonstrate all the brilliance of this Ford Western. His one-man reenactment of the big Indian chase scene is lame by comparison, and his back yard isn't nearly as perfect a setting for this story as the stunning Monument Valley. And a perverse hip thrusting that Uncle Barry would perform whenever he jumped into his John Wayne character also doesn't make much sense in retrospect. My Uncle Barry, in a suicide letter, claimed that he watched this movie over forty times with Orson Welles while he (Uncle Barry) was directing Citizen Kane. Several years later, in a separate rambling suicide letter, he made a claim that the movie Stagecoach doesn't even exist and that it's only a recurring dream he has whenever there's a quarter moon. He tried to tell me that I didn't exist either. "But I'm right here!" I'd say. "Nope," he'd answer. "You're not." Sadly, he was usually right.