The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

USA
directed by: Clint Eastwood
written by: Philip Kaufman, Sonia Chernus + Forrest Carter (book)
starring: Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sam Bottoms, Will Sampson
comment: 19th September, 2016

The novel structure seems very prominent in the film itself as well, but I wouldn't dare to complain to Clint Eastwood's face about it. I've also recently realized that I tend to perceive his work as a personal political statement, while he considers it to be a personal political commentary, and there's a difference and I need to keep that in mind.

In the meantime, I'm crying in awe about the bunch of side characters shaping the final form of this film. Wounded Jamie, monologuing Watie, and proudly tall Ten Bears are my clear favourites, for said reasons. Josey himself complicates it a bit for me - he's an unusual combination of Clint's famous man with no name and a regular bloke from any character driven character film. Unlike with the man with no name, we know his origin, his background, his circumstances, but he still manages (and mainly off camera) to develop quasi supernatural abilities and magnetism of someone who doesn't have to abide by the same laws as regular people who drink the same water and fight the same fights as he is.

My heart inclines towards the tightness, articulacy and self-confessed magic of "High Plains Drifter", but we'll see how time will change my mind. My father watches "The Outlaw" at least once a year, so there should be plenty opportunities for revision.
 

Scarface (1983)

USA
directed by: Brian De Palma
written by: Oliver Stone + Howard Hawks a Ben Hecht (original screenplay)
starring: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
comment: 10th September, 2016

Given the fact that this film inspired several generations of people to adorn their walls with posters of pissed off Al Pacino, I expected "Scarface" to actually deliver some merit to this rebellious identification. And I cried bitter tears. Tony Montana is a complete idiot inerudite with zero dimension or any redeeming qualities and the film formally follows his lead.

The opening effort to connect an older story with present-day social issues fades away rather quickly and what goes on next is almost three-hour long (?!) adoration of emptiness and rubbish that doesn't seem to have a point or change a point of view during its course. I found the soundtrack to be very, very outdated and things like optimistic montages of rise to power, wedding plans and financial succes would be banned by law under my rule.

My disappointment is only made bigger and stronger by the fact that the original "Scarface" by Hawks is one of the few gangster films I find really well made and seriously artistically respectable.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy
USA/Velká Británie
režie: James Gunn
scénář: James Gunn, Nicole Perlman
hrají: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista
viděno 13. 5. 2016

Is this overembellished and unextraordinary combination of childish humour and "brutal" violence really the film that had everyone on their asses with their mouths open last year? Why would a collective of american film critics subject everyone to this film before they die? Of all the comic book adaptations and sci-fi films and a-lot-of-dialogue comedies in the world, why this one, god damn it? And I must also solemnly swear that the proposed magical powers of Chris Pratt don't work on me. And I agree with a random opinion I read online that this film is made for people who cannot hold their attention for more than two seconds.

Scream (1996)

USA
directed by: Wes Craven
written by: Kevin Williamson
starring: Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan
comment: 13th February, 2016

I never saw this film as a teenager, when it would be more relevant, but only as a pompous student of film art on the verge of my so-called adulthood. But perhaps it was better this way, because it was way too "in" when I was a teenager and that would be reason enough for me to hate it right off the bat, whereas later (and also after I've seen a lot of the films "Scream" is referencing) I was able to enjoy the parodic and meta side of things. Some of that "wink wink" was a little too simple for my taste, but the obvious love for the genre made up for it very nicely. Janitor Fred in a stripped sweater, for example, or the sentence "We all go a little mad sometimes." made my inner nerd trully jump in joy.

Ben-Hur (1959)

USA
directed by: William Wyler
written by: Karl Tunberg + Lew Wallace (book)
starring: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, Stephen Boyd
comment: 11th February, 2016

Even if I didn't have a brain of my own at all, there's still one gigantic reason why this film would never, never feel serious to me, and that is Monty Python's Life of Brian, of course. Another rather alienating fact is that Fellini was making his La Dolce vita at the same time as Wyler was shooting this "opus magnum". It isn't one of my favourite films and it isn't even set in the same millennium as Ben-Hur, but looking at the two and comparing the work with actors, with mise-en-scène and with basically everything, it's very much obvious which film became obsolete and which one paved the way for modern (or post-modern, should I say) cinema.

I consider Judah's bitter sarcasm to be the most impressive message/abstract of Ben-Hur, since his deliverance/salvation seems unconvincing to me. But it is entirely possible and even probable that I just/simply don't understad the subject matter.

Seven Chances (1925)

USA
directed by: Buster Keaton
written by: Clyde Bruckman, Jean C. Havez, Joseph A. Mitchell + Roi Cooper Megrue (original play)
starring: Buster Keaton, T. Roy Barnes, Snitz Edwards, Ruth Dwyer
comment: 8th February, 2016

Oh no, what does it mean that Buster has white actors in blackface alongside real actors of colour? I didn't notice that before. But through a mild research I found out that this is a proof of state of affairs in Hollywood at the time and not of Buster's close-mindedness. He grew up amongst vaudeville performers from around the world and had no time to develop fear of anything different or foreign. Real black actors could only appear as extras and studios did not accept them as actors for speaking roles and such.

And now to the film itself: I often admire Buster's signature dramaturgy of bizzare, which reaches one hundred and ten percent in this flick. His films starts off quite realistically, actually, quite normally, just a common loser encounters a problem and by trying to deal with it he pushes the solution further and further away, if not making it entirely impossible. And then the whole fictional universe morphs into something very absurd and abstract, in this case a clever chase with a bunch of brides turns into a primordial fight for survival, where honor and flying bricks go against each other, and then it evolves in a symbolic fight between man and his destiny, here in a form of an artificial avalanche threatening to bring doom to all. The story only plays a second fiddle, Buster goes where his instinct and his body limits lead him and let him. And boy, if it isn't a fantastic ride.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

USA
directed by: J.J. Abrams
written by: Lawrence Kasdan, J.J. Abrams, Michael Arndt
starring: Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac
seen: 30th January, 2016

I've been in love with Adam Driver ever since "Inside Llewyn Davis", and here he is, crying on top of everything so his sex-appeal is up by three hundred percent at least, but him being awesome does not guarantee the whole film inciting the same feeling.

And since the film didn't make me angry (what a surprise at this point in my life), I'm only going to complain about two things: 1. Those tantrums weren't especially sexy and I would like to see them done differently. 2. What exactly is up with Abrams and his inability to time things? Nothing in the film really lasts as long as it should. And most of all I'm talking about emotions, because the film really isn't about anything else.

The story is not the focus of attention, whether you consider it being simple and straightforward or schematic and copied - but that's one of the things I've dediced not to critize because the original trilogy is mostly also only one script filmed three times ("Empire" might be a small exception, but not entirely) - the point is, it should be atmosphere and immersion sitting there in the limelight. And:

The only cool moment I consider really well made is the first "traitor" moment, the rest of the film somewhat fades into one blob. The new good guys team is quite unimpressive (ok, we have a black guy, a woman and a jewish Guatemalean, where is rest of the joke, or some charisma at least, Oscar Isaac has some, but that's not enough). And the bad guys do their share of supposedly terror-sprouting monologuing in the same schematic and routine way.

At no point I was really scared that someone was in real danger and the only two scenes where I felt genuine interest were Kylo and Rey's first meeting in the forest and their subsequent conversation where Kylo first reveals his face. All the other situations felt rushed and forced and also predictable in their outcome. The only emotion that got a lot of attention was the sentiment dragged into the film by Han, but that's the nostalgia that does not move me very much, since it origins in the past and in the universe outside of the film.

If only the familiar situations had the guts to end in an unexpected way. Perhaps Kylo could, after performing the spoiler, find out that he's not strong enough to handle it, and react in basically any other way than how he did in the film. Or the marketing team could control itself a bit better and not give every ace away before the film itself even hits theatres.

Oh well, I'm developing some fanfictions in my mind and I'm hoping that the real screenwriters will deliver some surprises next time. And most of all I would like them to discover that between two or more people there can be a whole range of relationships, not only obligatory romance, blind following and black and white hostility.