"Rio Bravo," Howard Hawks, Film Review

Rio Bravo is a bit of a rarity in that it is a genre film present in the Sight and Sound Top 100 list but absent from the IMDB Top 250 list.  There are all manner of dreadful genre films present in the IMDB list that aren't in the SS list, but it doesn't happen so often the other way round.

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Perhaps the reason it doesn't score highly among IMDB users is that it is a slow-burn, focusing more on building tension than continually delivering action scenes.  And perhaps the reason the critics and directors behind the SS list like it is because Howard Hawks goes out of his way to subvert the Western genre.

There are all sorts of expectations that get raised in the film that don't get realized.  The wagons that arrive early on loaded with fuel oil and dynamite stubbornly refuse to blow up.  The expendable-looking foreign hotel owner doesn't get shot.  The young sharpshooter who rides into town never really bothers to display a notable virtuoso display of sharp shooting.  The recovering alcoholic doesn't have an amusing lapse into drunkenness.  The two main baddies get quietly beaten, not shot.  At the end they are put into jail, off camera.  The sassy card-cheating girl doesn't get spanked or tied up, despite siding with the sheriff and standing up to the bad guys.  More generally, the action is centred on the town and its jail.  We have no campfires, no bean cooking, no riding horses through rivers.  What sort of a Western is this?

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The beginning also makes little concession to the viewer, launching straight into action with multiple characters, giving little explanation as to who there are or what they're doing.  When Pat Wheeler (a friend of the sheriff) comes into town with his wagons and men and says, 'Now don't tell me what's going on. Just leave me wandering around in the fog.  I like it. I'm getting used to it,' he could be speaking for the first-time viewer as well as for himself.

John Wayne plays Sheriff John T. Chance as a kindly, almost Christ-like figure.  He associates with cripples, down and outs, and loose women.  He stands up for good while not being afraid to show tough love.  He attracts disciples.  While Christ said, 'To him that strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also,' John T. Chance says to recovering alcoholic Dude (Dean Martin) 'That's the second time you've hit me.  Don't ever do it again.'  I'm not sure Christ would have endorsed Chance's implied threat (Hit me a third time and I'll whoop yo' ass) but it's a similar idea.  It's clear from comments made by Dude and Chance's other employee, Stumpy (Walter Brennan) that Chance is supposed to be a hardass, a macho man who refuses to give praise or thanks.  I can't help but think that there's an element of vanity acting in Wayne's continual kindly chuckling and gentle downward glances.  He can't quite bring himself to be an out-and-out macho man.  The gentle giant is too attractive a character for him to move away from.

The young sharpshooter, Colorado (Ricky Nelson), seems to have been cast purely so he can sing a couple of cowboy songs with fellow crooner, Dean Martin.  It would be easy to write his character out of the script.  He comes across as an even more fay version of a young Tom Cruise in this film if you can imagine such a thing.

Overall, the tension builds nicely to several impossible situations for our heroes to solve (which they do in convincing and character-confirming ways).  The songs are an acquired taste and some of the characters aren't entirely true-to-life, but they're always entertaining, there are some good laughs and plenty of surprises.

Personal Score: 7/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

"Before Midnight," Richard Linklater, Film Review

If you define a dream job as work so worthwhile and satisfying that you'd gladly do it whether you were paid or not, the two leads in Before Midnight have both landed dream jobs, in this third film of Linklater's trilogy covering a couple in roughly real time.  Jesse (Ethan Hawke) is a globally loved author, travelling the world on book tours and writers' retreats.  Celine (Julie Delpy) is busy saving the planet.

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Before Midnight explores the impact on these two characters of living in a world where a large majority of people will have children by their forties and where a large majority of people will have split from the first partners with whom they've had children.

Both characters complain about childrearing giving them no time to think.  And when they are given the chance to think, they realize they hate the compromises they've made in their lives.

It is a deliberately wordy film with no action to speak of other than the dialogue.  Parents don't get the chance to do anything.  Even talking is only possible at restricted times; for example, when their twin girls are asleep in the back of the car.

So we get a lot of car journeys, meals, walks and a lot of talking in front of pretty Greek scenery. 

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Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.

      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Most parents accept that their jobs become a joyless mechanism to pay the mortgage, a dismal countdown to retirement.  Most parents accept that their friendships wither as their friends become similarly overtaken by children.  Most parents accept that their youthful sparky intellectual chat was a thinly veiled effort to look good in front of potential sexual partners, and that the need for that has now basically vanished now there are kids to look after.  Most parents will carve out some time from their work and family lives for hobbies and me-time and be content with that.  After all, the life-changes that come with children are well known and hardly a surprise to anyone, right?  And it's all more than compensated for by the joy that the children bring, right?

Well, not for these two.

Inevitably they find only dissatisfaction rather than answers.  The kids still take up all their time.  Demands of their own and ex-partners' children still ruin their careers.  The me-time each tries to eke out causes resentment in the other.

The rows they have aren't very convincing.  They're not hurtful enough to be realistic, but on the other hand, the blows that do land have to be soaked up with a smile so that the incessant and self-indulgent talking can continue.

Old wise characters and a young couple are rolled out to sum up their respective generations' take on it all.  It quickly all gets a bit grim.

By the end of the film the characters would have achieved just as much if they hadn't said a word.  I wished the twins would pipe up, 'What about us, you self-obsessed fucks?' before beating their parents to death with pointy toys.

Personal Score: 4/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

"Nosferatu," F.W. Murnau, Film Review

I've reached a milestone this week as I have now watched all of the first two hundred films in the IMDB Top 250 film list.  Not only have I watched them but I have also written my writer's notes on each one and given a (slightly psycho-ish) score out of ten for every one.  It's been a hugely enjoyable activity to watch one of these films every week over the past years.  Apart from the entertainment value, I've learned an awful lot about plot, character, pacing, dialogue, framing etc etc along the way.

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Number 200, at least when I first wrote the list down about five years ago, is F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu.  (In case you're wondering, I haven't watched them in order.  That really would be psycho-ish.)

The thing that struck me immediately about this film is the attention that has gone into framing every shot.  There are a lot of static shots, around which the characters run, glide and creep, each one set up with the composition of a good photograph.  The effect is rather theatre-like, although with an awful lot of scene changes.  There are common themes such as arches that link these shots.  Many also have a heavy distinction between shadow and light to the extent that the line marking the edge of the shadow adds geometric elements to the composition.

Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.

      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

There is a pleasing amount of ambiguity in the film.  The cards that pop up from time to time, supposedly to help the viewers understand what's going on, are often incomprehensible.  They add to the strange, uncanny atmosphere of the film, with their cryptic words and Gothic fonts.

The association with vampires with other creatures that can infect blood such as mosquitoes and plague-carrying rats is a nice idea, as well as the (rather cheap) link between evil and disease and madness in general.

Speaking as the father of a young child, I noticed quite a few connections with Beauty and the Beast in this version, from the enchanted and sinister castle to the cart journey through the forest to reach it, and the requirement of the willing participation of an innocent girl to break the spell.  Bizarrely, given the audacity of the vampire plot, some magical elements from Beauty are made more realistic, such as the slightly implausible location of the vampire's new home (a huge ramshackle deserted building) opposite the hero's house.

It's a creepy and effective horror film and it's one of those films on the list that I'm looking forward to re-watching.

Personal Score: 8/10

Follow @MichaelHardach



This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

"The Best Years of our Lives," William Wyler, Film Review

In Britain army staff at different ranks often live and socialize with their own rank.  In some cases this means all the officers live in one street, with a certain standard of home, and all the generals live in another street with a different, better standard of home, and so on.  And then the socializing between families is conducted purely within the rank, for dinner parties, golf buddies etc.

This system may seem terribly British and class-focused but in The Best Years of our Lives, you see some of the embarrassing problems that it can solve.

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In William Wyler's film, three US servicemen returning home from WWII become buddies.  They come from different ranks.  And because of this ungodly mixing of ranks, before you know it, the married captain is soon kissing the sergeant's daughter, and the intimacies of all three men's marriages and relationships are held up for the inspection of all the others, along with their drinking habits, night terrors and all sorts of other personal and demeaning information.

Thank goodness for the British system.  All that dirty laundry is kept in nicely segregated wash-bins, ordered by class.

Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.

      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Each of the three men returns home to a woman in the same small town.  And in each case the woman initially reacts in the opposite way to how she'll end up feeling.  The nightclub floozy wife of the captain welcomes her man with open arms, the sweetheart of the disabled sailor looks a little nervous about what's she's getting into, and the wife of the sergeant tiptoes and fuses around him, as though uncertain that their love is still valid.  It's a useful dramatic touch that sends off three narrative trajectories.

There are also a lot of nicely framed shots of isolated men, smoking in corridors, wandering between a graveyard of decommissioned warplanes etc.

There is an interesting under-use of fighting.  The captain has several chances to fight but only once acts on it (knocking down an anti-war customer in his store and getting fired as a result).

The film asks questions about the nature of worthwhile work and worthwhile skills – using the army as an example where simple capability and character can sometimes override background and put the right man in the right job.  Back in civvy street the captain finds he must go back to being a soda jerk.  The sergeant goes back into a promotion at his bank.

Personal Score: 6/10

Follow @MichaelHardach



This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.