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Beautifully shot but brutal. I’m not sure Nick Cave’s screenplay successfully tells the story he wanted it to - many of the characters’ actions and motivations seem unfathomable, and ultimately you wonder what the point is supposed to be. Read the rest of this entry »
You could miss it if you weren’t paying enough attention, but Clint Eastwood’s highly atmospheric 1973 film, High Plains Drifter, is as much supernatural thriller as hard-bitten western. To an eerie soundtrack reminiscent of horror films, The Stranger materialises from the desert to wreak vengeance on the inhabitants of the desolate township of Lago for their previous sins. Is he a man, or a ghost? Read the rest of this entry »
The meditative and subtle beauty of barren desert landscapes was a key motif of cinema’s Westerns from the late 60’s to the early 70’s. In juxtaposition with the harsh brutality of life in the old west, these landscapes were exploited to devastating effect by film-makers like Sam Peckinpah, Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone. In his directorial (film) debut, Tommy Lee Jones has returned to many of the themes first explored in those “Revisionist Westerns” – corrupt US authority, the repression of Indians and Mexicans (as well as women), and masculinity as brutality, to name a few – whilst at the same time adopting the same stark aesthetic.
Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles is widely considered to be a comedy classic. So I’m reluctant to say it but… what if it isn’t really all that funny?
