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Reviews
Shoot (1976)
i saw this film in a movie theater in Oklahoma in 1978, 3 to4 years after the end of the Vietnam War. The movie cannot be appreciated completely outside of that context...
This movie is not fluff and is not meant to "entertain." It aims to make you feel at a visceral level AND to think, and it succeeds on both counts. This film is multi-layered in meaning and is a fantastic example of why the late 60's to late 70's, into the very early 80's was the greatest period in American film-making history.
FIRST: In the mid 70's, when this film was made, the Vietnam War was a painfully fresh event in everyone's mind, and the paranoia that embodied the Dulles Brothers' "domino principle" for east Asia was a very prevalent them in the American psychic. The movie "Shoot" can only be fully appreciated for its symbolism in that context.
SECOND: I grew up in a gun culture of Oklahoma in the 1960's - 1970's. I like guns for what they are in terms of practical tools and in terms of casual entertainment for target shooting. I started shooting with my dad when I was 7 years old, and the first gun I owned was a Winchester .22 pump rifle that I bought off of my grandfather when I was 9. So I'm NOT a hater/fearer of guns. BUT, that said, the move "Shoot" perfectly captured the utter craziness of what had come ot be known as the "gun culture." There's scene early on in "Shoot" in which Cliff Roberson is cleaning and oiling his deer rifle so tenderly and with such obvious care, as contrasted with Robertson's alienation from and utter lack of any intimacy with his spouse. This psycho-sexual dissociation rang true to me in 1978, knowing a few twisted people at the time who were pretty much like that. It's more prevalent today, I would note.
The POV final scene in the movie with Cliff Robertson reflecting on the errors of the decisions he made in his life is one of the most utterly chilling (and tragic) moments of any piece of movie-making I can bring to mind. In some understated ways, as an anti-war movie the impact of this film is on the level of that of Apocalypse Now.
Extreme Prejudice (1987)
A marvelous tribute...
This film is director Walter Hill's carefully crafted tribute to Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch." The plot line is different, but the underlying theme of men who are anchored to the past and who have outlived their time on earth runs through the film and permeates every (male) character, albeit heavy-handedly at times (hence, my dinging the film down to a 9-star rating). If you like kicking back to a solid testosterone-charged action flick, you'll love this movie. If you are a student of the history and evolution of the collapse of the Hollywood studio system and the rise of independent film-making, and if you also appreciate the genius that Peckinpah demonstrated in many of his later films, I guarantee that you will find this movie to be wonderfully engaging on many levels and well worth a second viewing. With the possible exception of "Hard Times," I think that this is Walter Hill's best work to date.
The Godfather (1972)
A towering masterpiece in cinematic history.
It is sort of disheartening to read the plethora of negative reviews of this film on IMDb. There seems to be a fundamental gap between those who understand and appreciate the history and the evolution of cinema and those whose powers of perception and attention spans have been impaired by mind-numbing video games and by a culture of total immersion in the utter banality of "social media." I even read one negative review which seriously attempted to draw a comparison between "The Godfather" and the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. I loved both movies by the way, but FOR CHRISSAKES! It's apples and oranges! One of those movies was a thoughtful, introspective ADULT film, which are few and far between. The other film, though great entertainment, was not.
The acting (across the board), the script (almost entirely Coppola's) and directing (entirely Coppola's) in the "The Godfather," though arguably equaled on occasion, have never been bested by any Hollywood or independent film. One qualification here: to the amazement of every film critic and everyone else alive in the 20th Century, the movie "The Godfather" was actually eclipsed by "The Godfather, Part II," which really needs to be seen back-to-back with "The Godfather" in order to fully appreciate either film. The two films in combination are really just the 1st and 2nd halves of Mario Puzo's pulp fiction book, entitled "The Godfather." Coppola's screenplay elevated Puzo's 2nd-rate prose immeasurably, and together those two films constitute the single greatest piece of epic-scale movie-making in the history of American cinema.
Criminal Justice (1990)
Floored me! ! !
I've practiced law for 30 years. I've never seen any courtroom drama (except for perhaps "To Kill a Mockingbird") that comes anywhere close to this film in terms of brutal authenticity. The gut-wrenching hollowness that sinks into you with the deliberately unsatisfying ending is SO REAL and SO TRUE of a demonstration of how "the system" really functions, as to leave you in tears. The film is a beautifully crafted, unparalleled indictment of the fundamentally screwed-up justice system in this fundamentally screwed-up country. Whitaker is wonderful, and never gives away the truth of his character (whatever that might be). Anthony LaPaglia as the defense attorney is remarkable, as it the script. Rosie Perez's performance is of an intensity that is typical of the actress... she is never insincere, and, whether you're convinced by her obviously contrived sympathetic rantings or not, you WANT to believe her. The film is an un3expected gem with stunning performance all around