Four Cult Westerns

On 16^th of January, I had the great pleasure of attending Night Visions’ and National Audio-visual Institute’s Western Movie mini-festival called Colttikonsertti 2016 (Colt Concert 2016) at the movie theatre Orion.

Four Western movies we’re presented in their 35mm film prints, these movies we’re: Minnesota Clay, Two Mules for Sister Sara, Blue Soldier and Red Sun. So here are my reviews on each one of them.

Minnesota Clay

The first Western and 2^nd movie of Sergio Corbucci, mostly famous from his violent Spaghetti Westerns that include Django, the Hellbenders and the Great Silence. I must say, despite the build-up hype surrounding this movie, it was an incredibly mediocre movie that’s background plot resembled way too much on Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and most of the dialogue was the characters telling the audience how they we’re feeling, instead of expressing their emotions or the better word I’m looking for is: Acting.

Still, what I found redeeming here was the protagonist being a 46-year old revolver gunman Minnesota Clay (played by Cameron Mitchell), who was wrongfully judged and placed in a prison encampment, there is another catch about this character and the odds set against him, which I won’t spoil.

The concept of the story was good, but the execution was simply lacking, Still it was Corbucci’s first western and as previously mentioned he went on to make some of the greatest Spaghetti Westerns out there.

Two Mules for Sister Sara

First off, thank you Denmark for having such a pristine copy of the technicolor print, it was near perfect! 

With such deluxe print this was a pure jaw dropping experience to see the movie for the first time and I just have to ask: Why the hell is nobody talking about this movie?!

Everyone talks great things about the Man with no Name trilogy with good reasons, but this movie was an incredibly blast of witty dialogue, extremely charismatic chemistry between Shirley MacLaine and Clint Eastwood that just sells the whole movie.

Directed by Don Siegel, the man who has made great movies like Dirty Harry, Escape from Alcatraz, the Killers and was a clear influence to Clint Eastwood’s career as an actor and director, without Siegel (and obviously Sergio Leone) there wouldn’t be the Clint Eastwood as he is today.

The story is about Hogan (Eastwood) helping the Mexicans to capture a French fortification, on his way he meets up with a Nun named Sister Sara (MacLaine). Look, Do I have to say anything else? Go see this great piece of Western history, I promise you will laugh your ass off, the chemistry is so good between MacLaine and Eastwood.

“All the women I've ever known were natural-born liars but I never knew about nuns until now.” – Hogan

Soldier Blue

Soldier Blue, a movie about the atrocities U.S Soldiers inflicted upon the Native Americans was a massive success over in Europe, so why is it that we have never heard about this spectacle? 

The people hosting the event explained the audience that the movie has been cursed with strict censorship edits, and in fact the film print we saw on the festival was a combination of the gore revealing Swedish technicolor spliced together with the censored Finnish print. You have to give credit to both Night Visions and the National Audio-Visual institute for coming up with a solution that would please the audience.

Now this was a great presentation at the atrocities of war, I have not seen that many Westerns tagged with anti-war, but considering the movie was filmed during the 1970s the clear allegories you can make with Vietnam War in this movie are damningly evident.

Soldier Blue uses two protagonists to construct a narrative between the visionary woman Cresta (Candice Bergen) who’s wisdom and common sense gets ignored and scuffed at, where the naïve young soldier blue Honus (Peter Strauss) is the buffoon who has enlisted to the military cause. 

These tropes by now have been done to the death, but the movie demonstrates that beautiful line between ugly brutality and the central themes, that our world should truly respect the will of others and believing in your own. 

American history is full of war crime atrocities, like any country with military history but the message should always be present to the youth, in our dimmest hopes that history would not repeat itself, in this case, too damn often. 

Red Sun

Charles Bronson! Ursula Andress! And the legendary Toshiro Mifune! All together in a movie! The first west-meets-east Western from James Bond director Terence Young.

The gunslinger tough guy Link (Bronson) and the Samurai Kuroda (Mifune) teaming up is such a hype building concept with these actors, I have to sadly inform the movie is not the greatest out there, but it was a very serviceable and fun action movie. 

It was clearly more Western-favoured with Bronson being the main character, Mifune does a great performance showcasing Samurai swordsmanship and seeing the two different fighting styles working together worked for the movie. 

Still, at times the favouritism to the West just felt too forced and it really disappointed me how the movie ended, but this is just personal preference pure and simple.

Conclusion

I would greatly recommend everyone to check out Two Mules for Sister Sara and Soldier Blue, both we’re the uttermost best presentations of Westerns.

Tragedy of Macbeth Movies

William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is a story of the humans’ desire for power and the conflicts we have within ourselves for such a lust. There have been numerous adaptations of this play, from television to movies to various stage play incarnations to comic books, etc.

This review will look upon three movie adaptations by three different directors. We’ll go thru them on the chronological order of their release date, starting with Akira Kurosawa’s the Throne of Blood, released in 1957.

Throne of Blood depicts the story of Taketoki Washizu played by Toshiro Mifune, as a tyrant Samurai in Feudal Japan. As one might expect from a samurai story, the depiction of honour is so immersive and beautiful like nothing you have 

experienced before. It really comes to a great conclusion at the end of the movie, what it means to have honour and what happens when you lose that.

Lady Asaji Washizu played by Isuzu Yamada, is the vile serpent who whispers doubts to Washizu’s ears and urges Washizu to commit treason for them to advance in power. Now I am not implying Macbeth was ever an innocent man who was succumbed to his most darkest thoughts by his mistress, the fact Macbeth commits these atrocities shows already he had these ideas implemented in his mind. Still, the depiction of Lady Macbeth by Yamada comes off as a haunting, nearly demonic with her appearance and dialogue.

Next up is Roman Polanski’s Macbeth, released in 1971 and produced with the assistance of Hugh Hefner!

Macbeth was filmed in the British Isles to Wales to Northumberland, locations such as Lindisfarne Castle, Bamburgh Castle and Saint Aidan’s Church.

John Finch plays Macbeth and what the movie instantly does different is showcasing Macbeth’s descent into madness, with a heavy emphasis on inner monologues. Right off the bat, Polanski doesn’t shy away from showcasing that there is little to no honour in this man.

In fact Lady Macbeth really doesn’t have much screen time or importance in this movie compared to the original play, she simply exists, but this movie was a one man’s show and easily the most villainous interpretation of the character from the get-go.

It’s a thematic story of revenge and its cycle of revenge alongside the themes of greed and power, the screenplay by Polanski was co-written by Kenneth Tynan, a British theatre critic and it deserves praise for making this grim depiction of Macbeth.

 Last, but not least is the latest Macbeth movie by Justin Kurzel, released in 2015.

 

Macbeth is played by Michael Fassbinder and Marion Cotillard is the Lady Macbeth. What this adaptation does different than the ones before, is that it has preserved most of Shakespeare’s dialogue and the movie can feel like a theatrical play.  

The problem here occurs is that at times, it comes hard to follow Fassbinder’s or Cotillard’s dialect and you’re forced to pay attention to the subtitles. Which are also set in the tone of Shakespeare’s theatrical dialect instead of simplified English, 

 therefore at times I had to pay so much attention to the subtitles, it took away from my enjoyment, but one cannot fault the movie completely, for simply trying to accomplish something new. The movie redeems itself with its cinematography and costume design.

Like Polanski’s Macbeth, this one was filmed in the Northumberland, the Bamburgh Castle, the beautiful Ely which is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire and the Island of Skye. The locations are grand spectacular with its cinematography by Adam Arkapaw. Who takes full advantage of the beautiful scenarios that are displayed in cathedral Lady’s chapel, the Ely Cathedral and the Island of Skye.

Macbeth is interesting and appealing story to spin off, the tropes of power and desire can be recognized in any culture and setting, so it was simply a blast to watch three distinct incarnations of Macbeth and how these directors perceived the story and how the characters we’re performed. 

If I had to choose one movie out of these three to recommend, it would have to be Akira Kurosawa’s the Throne of Blood simply because of Toshiro Mifune’s performance, all in all:

Retro Review - License to Kill

License to Kill is the 16^th Bond film and was released in in 1989. The movie is a showcase of the 80s cocaine drug cartels of Latin America and Japan within the beautiful state of Florida, the story sets 007 on a personal quest for revenge and truly demonstrates what happens when the chains come off from British Secret Service agent. 

the interpretation of Bond is one of the darkest, grittiest and true to the character’s core elements when it comes to Bond movies, but it can also be seen as a contemporary imagining as it heavily focuses on the narcotic crimes of the 80s, which had already been seen in features such as Scarface, Lethal Weapons, Miami Connection and the popular Miami Vice television show. License to Kill is a stylish blast of 80s aesthetics that is ever increasing in popularity today.

Ian Fleming’s James Bond is a ruthless, frightening, casually sexist blunt instrument of foreign policy that unfortunately has never been fully captured in the movies, but the wolf-eyed Timothy Dalton gives us one of the closest showcases of Bond’s vengeful nature, the physical and mental damage that has broken him into pieces, but his English-pride will never let him give up.