The Screengrab : ride the high country

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Seven)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:00:00 GMT

SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)

Sometimes, bringing a movie to a transcendent stop just comes down to the right sign-off line. Take it away, Joe E... (PN)

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962)

You might think we're double dipping here, since this same scene wound up on our list of great deaths scenes last week, but fuck it: Babe Ruth was a great hitter and a great pitcher. And when Joel McCrea, having taken what satisfaction he can from making the world a few louts shorter and knowing that his old pard (Randolph Scott) has had his trustworthiness restored to him, sinks to the bottom of the frame, and out of our world, it's a better than fitting end to both the character and the movie. Later Peckinpah films would end memorably and well, but never again would he get such a massive emotional effect so quietly. (PN)

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)

The kind of unstructured crazy comedy that Mel Brooks (and, back then, Woody Allen) practiced in the '70s tended to collapse when time came to give the movies some kind of wrap-up. His collaboration with Gene Wilder is the best-sustained -- maybe the only sustained -- movie of Brooks' career, and part of what makes it satisfying is that he actually managed to provide a logical, happy ending that develops from the story instead of crashing through the rafters. You've got to be glad for these crazy kids. (PN)

CHINATOWN (1974)

Forget it, Jake. What did you do in Chinatown? As little as possible. One of cinema's best indictments of the corruption of power, Chinatown pulls no punches. No movie has better illustrated the brutal correlation between money and water rights in the arid climates of the Southwestern U.S., nor been quite so willing to show how the stewards of the public interest debase themselves acting as lackeys to the wealthy and powerful. This is exactly what American exceptionalism is trying to cover up, but the truth is that hiding something rotten only adds to the stench and decay. It takes a European eye, but not just any European eye, to see through the high gloss of rhetoric covering the post-War growth of the U.S. No, to get it right, you'd need a very particular European: one who had lived in the U.S. for a number of years, a person who lost his mother to Auschwitz and who himself spent his childhood surviving by wits alone while ducking Nazis and Nazi informers, a man who lost his wife, unborn child, and a bunch of his friends to the uniquely American Manson Family. That's the guy to look his audience in the eye and tell them that their cynical gumshoe is going to lose everything through his faith in the system, the monstrous Noah Cross is going to get away with rape, murder, and incest, and the femme fatale with the heart of gold is going to die for their sins. Forget it, he says, we're all in the dark, and no one knows if sticking their neck out makes things better or worse. I usually find nihilism appalling, but I'll be damned if Chinatown isn't a much-needed slap in the face. Where your run-of-the-mill misanthropes like Todd Solondz never got over being bullied in 7th grade, Polanski offers concrete reasons to assume the worst about people, especially when power and money are involved. It leaves you with a sour taste in the mouth and a queasy gut, but it leaves you wiser, too. (HC)

THE LONG GOODBYE (1973)

TERRY LENNOX: Nobody cares.

PHILIP MARLOWE: Nobody but me.

LENNOX: Yeah, well, that's you, Marlowe. And you're a born loser.

MARLOWE: Yeah; I even lost my cat.

[Reaches for his gun...]

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Hayden Childs

Final Farewells: The Best & Worst Death Scenes In Cinema (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Bambi’s Mother in BAMBI (1942) & Debra Winger in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983)

The actual moment that Debra Winger’s character dies in Terms of Endearment is all well and weepy (and fairly Goth, what with that deathbed make-up job), but the real reason James L. Brooks’ ten-hanky drama makes the list is the gut-punch scene where Winger’s dying Emma Greenway Horton says goodbye to her two sons in the hospital, easily the most harrowing family tragedy scene since the national trauma induced by the off-screen demise of Bambi’s mother (thanks to goddamn Man entering the forest) way back in 1942. In the all-time Top Ten of throat-lump-inducing lines of dialogue, it’s hard to beat Mr. Bambi’s grim pronouncement, “Your mother can’t be with you anymore.” But for me, no single moment of cinema is sadder than Winger’s Emma telling her youngest son, after their final visit together, “I think it went pretty well, don’t you?” -- except maybe the look on the little kid’s face when he bravely nods goodbye. (Now if you'll excuse me, I...uh...think there’s something in my eye...) (AO)

Warren Oates in BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974)

Bennie the down-on-his-luck piano player just wanted to make an easy buck. Some rich guy who calls himself El Jefe was promising money in exchange for proof that a poonhound Bennie knows, one Alfredo Garcia, was dead. Sure, Bennie knew that proof might involve a little grave robbery, but the promise of money and a new beginning with his ladyfriend Elita gave his small-change dreams a lift. What he didn't know was that every step he made was shadowed by death and failure. First he has to kill a couple of bikers who intend to rape Elita. Then, when he finds the body, he loses Elita along with whatever remnants of his soul he had kept scraped together. After he recovers his precious proof of death, the severed head of the poonhound, the death toll mounts furiously while Bennie grows more and more unhinged, monologuing in his car to the filthy, fly-streaked bag in which Garcia's head rots. There's something rotten in Bennie now. There's something rotten in the whole scenario, and when he finally confronts El Jefe, he's beyond caring about life and death. He has nowhere else to go, and the trajectory of his life will soon converge into a single point with the probability of his death. (HC)

Warren Oates in MAJOR DUNDEE (1965)

It's supposed to be Moby-Dick in the Old West, but where the Great Whaling Book starts cooking with grease about 2/3 of the way in, Major Dundee falls to pieces. With Charlton Heston and Richard Harris in the lead roles, there's a Christmas dinner's worth of ham smeared all over even the good parts. But the supporting cast is excellent. And when Warren Oates, playing ne'er-do-well Confederate soldier O.W. Hadley, deserts and is captured, the supporting staff quietly, almost wordlessly, shows up the stars of the movie. In the above scene, consider how natural Oates seems, how L.Q. Jones and Ben Johnson express their characters' tension, sorrow, and anger with barely a sentence between them. The movie falls apart after this. It seems that Oates, with his weird energy and comic timing, was the thread holding everything together. (HC)

Joel McCrea in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962)

Although the clip is nowhere to be found on YouTube, Joel McCrea's Steve Judd goes out with a dignity that all who live by the gun -- or whatever "living by the gun" means metaphorically these days -- should aspire to. Earlier, he tells his old friend Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott) that he "just wants to enter [his] house justified." When Westrum makes to steal the gold that's under their protection, Judd is a step ahead of him, but the disappointment in the way he looks at Westrum is almost worse than his threat to make Westrum stand trial. The final shootout isn't about the gold, though. It's about the girl they're protecting from the feral mining family she's gotten herself mixed up with. Westrum redeems himself at the end, choosing to take the honorable side and stand with his friend. When Judd is mortally wounded, Westrum has the wisdom to step back, shield the young people from the blunt reality of death, and give Judd the closure he wants: alone, justified, eyes gazing up at his beloved high country. (HC)

Toshiro Mifune in THRONE OF BLOOD (1957)

Here's something all of you aspiring regicides should know: when the witch or witches make a prophecy about your success or failure, don't share it with anyone. Macbeth saw his thanes defect to the other side and was finally dispatched by Macduff, whose rough birth made him Macbeth's ideal assassin. Toshiro Mifune's Lord Washizu meets death at the hands of his own archers in a spectacular rain of arrows as he runs from place to place, bamboo shafts sticking out of his body at odd angles, his face a mask of horror, fear, betrayal, and anger. It's a crime that this scene isn't available on the youtubes. (HC)

Takashi Shimura in IKIRU (1952)

Takashi Shimura's face is, even in rest, a remarkable vehicle for his emotions. Perhaps its highest calling was carrying the stricken look he uses throughout Ikiru as Kanji Watanabe, a dying bureaucrat who realizes that his life will mean nothing when he is gone. He decides that his decades of pointless public service will be worth it if he can turn a stinking cesspool of a lot in an unappreciated corner of Tokyo into a park with a playground for children. The final third of the movie leaps forward to his funeral, as his family and co-workers discuss his drive and mission, growing more and more grief-stricken as they realize why he fought so hard for this little playground. At the end, we hear and see the testimonial of a police officer who saw Watanabe on the final night of his life, sitting on a swing in the park that is his legacy for the world, with his face transformed. All of the fear and sadness that he had been carrying in every scene of the movie has become into a beaming look of pure and simple satisfaction and joy. It's one of the most impressive and powerful emotional gut-punches in all of cinema. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, Eight & Nine

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Hayden Childs

Set Your DVR!: November 17 - 24, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

My infant daughter has been sick this weekend, and I'm not feeling too great myself. So this may be the most slapdashed, pithy-free column yet. Keep those expectations low! Adam Christ asked last week about setting up an online movie discussion based on one of the flicks I mention in this column. I don't have an answer for him, but I promise to figure it out soon. Anyway, here's what I like this week. As always, be sure to mention any glaring omissions in the comments thread and I'll edit the column to add your recommendation.

Mon, Nov 17:

6/7 pm: Restoration on IFC.

8:30/9:30 pm: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) on TCM. This is the Charles Laughton version.

10:15/11:15 pm: The New World on IFC (repeat on 11/18 at 2:45/3:45 am). By god, what a great movie.

Tues, Nov 18:

3:30/4:30 am: The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit on AMC. Quite a contrast from Mad Men, but it should provide a little something to help tide us over.

5:05/6:05 am: Incident at Loch Ness on IFC (repeat at 10:15/11:15 am and 3:25/4:25 pm). This is not a great or even good movie. But it is rather fun to watch Werner Herzog parody himself.

5:15/6:15 pm: Ride The High Country on TCM. One of my all-time favorite films, this is the first movie Sam Peckinpah directed that's really a Peckinpah movie. Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, two actors a little past their sell-by date, are perfectly cast as Old West gunfighters in a similar autumnal period of their lives. There's a fascinating shift in tone about halfway into the movie. I don't mean to detract from the first half when I say that it has that slight remove from reality that's not too unfamiliar to fans of earlier Westerns, especially those of John Ford and Anthony Mann. The cowboys may be tough, but they're pretty clean and well-spoken. At the halfway point, the action moves to a rough mining camp, which shepherds a more realistic look at the past: grimy, ugly, amoral. Westerns would never be the same.

7/8 pm: To Have And Have Not on TCM. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone loves Bogey & Bacall.

10:30/11:30 pm: Top Hat on TCM. Astaire. Rogers. You know the score.

Wed, Nov 19:

5/6 am Burden of Dreams on IFC (repeat at 12:35/1:35 pm). Brilliant documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo.

9:15/10:15 am: Picnic at Hanging Rock on IFC (repeat at 3:45/4:45 pm).

5:35/6:35 pm: Ride With The Devil on IFC (repeat 11/20 at 4/5 am).

10:05/11:05 pm: The Last Wave on IFC (repeat on 11/20 at 2:05/3:05 am).

Thurs, Nov 20:

12:45/1:45 am: Sunrise on TCM. One of the greatest film of the silent era. I was fortunate enough a few weeks ago to catch a showing of this in a friend's film class with a bunch of people in their late teens/early 20s. I was a little worried that some of the kookier silent movie tropes would lose the audience, but I was dead wrong. They loved it. It's a loveable movie.

8/9 am: Duel on CHILLER (repeat on 11/21 at 2/3 am). Spielberg's first film.

9:45/10:45 am: The Cars That Ate Paris (repeat at 2:35/3:35 pm). An oddball film from early in Peter Weir's career about a town that bolsters its income by causing horrendous car accidents.

8:45/9:45 pm: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) on TCM. This is the Lon Chaney version.

Fri, Nov 21:

1/2 am: Citizen Kane on TCM. I don't know if you've ever heard of this film, but it apparently has some sort of reputation.

3:15/4:15 am: The Stranger on TCM. Orson Welles' most conventionally-directed movie.

8:45/9:45 am: High and Low on IFC (repeat at 3/4 pm). Kurosawa and Mifune do crime drama. Their best movie that doesn't involve samurais.

11 am/12 pm: Vanishing Point on FMC.

Sat, Nov 22:

3:45/4:45 am: Die, Monster, Die! on TCM. In Germany, this is The Monster, The!

7/8 am: The Sword of Doom on IFC. One of the finest samurai movies that wasn't directed by Akira Kurosawa.

4:45/5:45 pm: Vertigo on TCM. I'm breaking my no-Hitchcock rule again. But no matter however long it's been since you last saw this, it's been too long.

Sun, Nov 23:

5/6 am: Bend of the River on AMC. Mann/Stewart Western.

5/6 am: A Night In Casablanca on TCM. Marx Brothers.

1/2 pm: The Thomas Crown Affair on TCM. Steve McQueen!

Mon, Nov 24:

8/9 pm: The Proposition on IFC (repeat 11/25 at 12/1 am). John Hillcoat's Aussie Western.

Double Threats: Dylan in the Movies

Hayden Childs — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Here’s an idea I have for an ongoing series: Double Threats, in which I discuss the acting careers of people mostly known for other artistic endeavors. Or conversely, the other artistic endeavors of people primarily known as actors. Inspired by tonight’s debate between the quick-witted enigmatic younger man and the proverbial Mr. Jones who seemed unsure of what, exactly, was going on here, didn't he?... OK, I’m stretching at this point, aren’t I? Actually, I’ve just had Bob Dylan on the brain recently and thought he might be a good test subject for this idea.

The double-aughts have been pretty good for Dylan in the movies. The man who made a household phrase out of “the sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken” managed to baffle critics and audiences alike with 2003’s Masked And Anonymous, which (this may surprise you, unless you saw it) he wrote himself. Then Martin Scorsese made the epic 3+ hour documentary No Direction Home in 2005, which included footage that shocked and amazed rock fans, such as the famous “Judas” moment from the misnamed Royal Albert Hall Concert, Dylan at the March on Washington in 1963, or (and this blew my mind) contemporary gnomic-old-man Dylan cracking a smile. And then 2007 saw Todd Haynes’ brilliant I’m Not There, which created an alternate universe where all of Dylan’s mythologies sprang to life.

Masked And Anonymous wasn’t Dylan’s first acting role, of course. Prior to that movie, he appeared as a chauffeur in a 1999 movie called Paradise Cove. I confess that I’ve never seen it, and his role was apparently miniscule, so let’s move on. In 1989, he had an uncredited role in the Alan Smithee-directed Backtrack. The Smithee name is always a sign of quality -- and we’re all on the same page here, right? (“Quality” is my clever code word for “utter crap.”) Moving on. Two years before that was 1987’s Hearts of Fire, which starred Dylan as a rock star with the supernatural ability to bore everyone senseless. At least, that’s what my vague memory tells me. I also seem to recall that he turned into The Hulk at one point, so I’m willing to concede that I might have fallen asleep somewhere in there.

By now you’re wondering: has Dylan been in anything good? Well, there’s the four-hour Renaldo and Clara from 1978. I have a simple test to assess how much you’ll enjoy this movie: add up the number of Dylan albums you listen to regularly (and you’re free to define “regularly” as you and your maker see fit) and then divide that number by the total number of albums he’s released (32 studio albums, 13 live albums, 14 compilations, and a near-infinite number of bootlegs, but you don’t have to count them unless you feel so compelled). Should you hit somewhere around 40 percent, then you might like Renaldo and Clara. You’ve probably already seen it, though, so, uh, never mind. Finally, before Renaldo and Clara, Dylan was in Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 great-on-the-square Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid.

Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid is a masterpiece, but it’s a messy one. I guess you could say the same thing about some of Dylan’s 70s albums, too. In the movie, Dylan plays Alias, a mostly wordless guy who hangs around Billy The Kid looking shockingly similar to a rock star named Bob Dylan. It’s not a big stretch for the man. But it is a pleasant, unassuming role that complements his sometimes-powerful, mostly-pleasant and unassuming soundtrack for the movie.

According to movie lore (and, uh, Wikipedia), Peckinpah had never heard of Dylan before the movie and had to be talked into meeting him by Rudy Wurlitzer (who wrote it) and Kris Kristofferson (who played Billy). Dylan was a fan of Peckinpah’s movies, especially the elegaic Ride The High Country. So Dylan played Peckinpah a couple of songs he’d written after reading the script, and Peckinpah, sentimental cuss that he was, was blown away. Peckinpah brought in Jerry Fielding to help Dylan score the movie. Fielding despised Dylan and everything he stood for and was thoroughly unimpressed with the music Dylan wrote for the death scene of Sheriff Colin Baker (spoiler!).

Baker, who was played by Slim Pickens, has a quite moving death scene, one of the most poignant in any Peckinpah movie, and that’s saying something. Fielding pushed and prodded Dylan to come up with something better, and Dylan responded with that obscure ditty “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” (Obscure? I kid, I kid.) Fielding, not exactly a man of the times, hated the song so much that he quit the production. Dylan toiled on without him. Later, as with so many Peckinpah movies, the studio took control away in editing, and the theatrical release chopped Dylan’s role down to not-much and cut his music into pieces. The 2005 DVD release restores the movie to its director’s cut and adds a different version that combines elements of the theatrical cut, the director’s cut, and previously unreleased scenes. None of these versions, however, expand Dylan’s role into anything major or even coherent, but they’re certainly worth a viewing. Apparently, most of Dylan's role was shot using a camera with a defective lens, so there wasn't much left for the movie. It’s a shame no one's brought his acting chops to cinema yet. That Dylan guy would have killed as the lead in Don’t Look Back.

That Guy! Classic: Warren Oates

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

As character actors go, they don't come much more iconic than Warren Mercer Oates. A tall Marine Corps vet from rural Kentucky's Muhlenberg County, Oates came west in the 1950s and, after working a number of menial jobs, started to get a string of acting jobs in western movies and televisions shows, thanks largely to his hunched six-foot frame, throwback looks, and thick rustic accent. But it was his acting chops that won him the attention of some of Hollywood's greatest directors; over the years, he worked with, among others, Norman Jewison, Monte Hellman, Stephen Spielberg, John Milius, William Friedkin, Terrence Malick, and Philip Kaufman. But it was with Sam Peckinpah that Oates found his greatest success; the two shared a no-nonsense approach to filmmaking and a similiarly straightforward (and sometimes abrasive) personality. After first working together on Ride the High Country, Peckinpah and Oates worked together repeatedly over the years, and Peckinpah even gave Oates one of his few leading man roles in the controversial and underrated Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Extremely prolific during his 25 years in Hollywood, Warren Oates and his sneering, crooked smile became one of the few character actors as immediately recognizable as many lead actors of his day. Sadly for the many fans of this gifted actor and storyteller, he didn't live to enjoy his greatest success: he died unexpectedly of a heart attack just months after completing Stripes. His role as the straight-edge Sgt. Hulka won him legions of new fans and scored him more money than he'd made in any of his previous movies, but he would make only three more films, both of which were released after his death. Since then, a posthumous cult has grown up around Warren Oates, and it's hard not to read various bits of casting without imagining what he'd do with the role. Luckily, he left us with a lot of good work to chew on.

Where to see Warren Oates at his best:

THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Outside of Stripes, Warren Oates' best-known, and most beloved, film role is that of the bandit Lyle Gorch in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Gorch combines Oates' two most common roles in western genre pictures — the craven and the brute — into an incredibly memorable, whore-chasing, washer-stealing character. Better still, Oates is paired in the barrier-busting revisionist western with Ben Johnson, another genre great, as his conniving brother Tector. An essential role in an essential film.

TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971)

Monte Hellman was the director Warren Oates worked with most often outside of Sam Peckinpah (Oates claimed that he would work with either man at any time on any film for any reason). This bizarrely minimalist existential road picture was probably their finest collaboration, though Cockfighter has its partisans: Oates plays "G.T.O", an enigmatic, constantly self-inventing figure who becomes embroiled in a cross-country road race for the same reason men climb Everest: because it's there.

BADLANDS (1973)

Oates has only a minor role in Terrence Malick's stunning retelling of the story of Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, but it's an undeniably effective one. Playing the father of Sissy Spacek's Holly Sargis, Oates' laconic performance contains unexpected depth, and his character, by acting as the barrier between the two callow young lovers, is the one who sets off their oddly casual, affectless killing spree. Proof that even in small parts, Oates could make a huge impact.