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rsimanski
Reviews
Lonesome Dove (1989)
One of the best miniseries ever
About 10 years have passed since most of the other reviews were written, and if anything, the quality of Lonesome Dove in relation to even the best of the miniseries shown on television today is painfully obvious. Lonesome Dove is simply one of the best of all times. Even the high-quality HBO productions pale in comparison. I agree with the reviewer who wrote that it should be ranked with the greatest theatrical Westerns, such as The Searchers and Red River.
What more could any fan of Westerns ask for? It's a great story. The film features several great actors, such as Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, and Angelica Huston, in their prime, with an excellent supporting cast. The cinematography is stunning, the music deservedly won a major award, and the production values are closer to those of a good theatrical film than to a typical made-for-TV movie.
I bought a poor-quality DVD release of LD seven or eight years go. Fortunately, Lonesome Dove is available on Netflix streaming video in a high-definition, wide-screen version. I recommend it highly.
Secretariat (2010)
Secretariat: Put Your Money on This Horse
If you're looking for a typical boy-, girl-, or man-and-his-horse film, you might be a bit disappointed in Secretariat. The facts of the horse's incredible Triple Crown wins in 1973 are well-known, and many of us are old enough to remember them, so the races themselves don't hold as much suspense as the ones in the other films.
You'd also be missing the point. This isn't just a typical racing film. There are many good racing scenes in the film, and I found myself caught up in the excitement of the Belmont Stakes race even though I knew that Secretariat won the race. But for the most part, the film is about Secretariat's impact on the lives of the people closest to him and their families.
Diane Lane is outstanding as Penny Chenery, a Denver housewife who inherits Meadow Farm, a Virginia horse farm, from her father. Two of her mares are about to give birth to foals sired by a championship horse. The millionaire owner of the championship horse wins the pick of the foals in a coin toss. Penny knows her horse lineage, loses the coin toss, but winds up with the foal that she wanted in the first place. From the moment that the animal is born, she senses that he is special.
Penny becomes devoted to the horse, convinced that he was a champion. She spends most of her time in Virginia, away from her growing family, and misses important events in their lives. The strain on her marriage nearly tears it apart. Her relationship with her brother, Hollis (Dylan Baker), who wants her to sell the farm and the horses in order to pay $6 million in estate taxes, is no better. At times it seems her only ally is the family's long-time secretary, Miss Ham (Margo Martindale), who loves both the family and the horse and wears her emotions on her sleeve. The reviews that I have read have paid far too little attention to the marvelous performance by Ms. Martindale.
Penny hires Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich), a semi-retired trainer with a reputation for losing the big races, to train Secretariat. Lucien wears outlandish hats that clash with the rest of his clothes and often cause the women to laugh. It seems to be his way of playing a clown. Malkovich brings just the right touch to the role--blunt, outspoken, but never out of control.
The business side of thoroughbred racing is not ignored in the film, nor is the difficulty of a woman being accepted into the old-boy network that was in control at the time. In order to pay the estate taxes and still keep the farm, Penny sells breeding rights to a syndicate of monied horse owners. The steep price that she is charging each shareholder depends on Secretariat winning the Triple Crown. His failure to do so would lower his value significantly and drive the family into bankruptcy.
The bond between Penny and Secretariat isn't overplayed, but there is one scene that that brings it out beautifully. It's the beginning of Secretariat's three-year-old season. Track distances are longer than the ones for two-year-olds, and Secretariat's sire had a reputation for failing to win the longer races. Secretariat places a poor third in the first race of the year, a warm-up for the Kentucky Derby. He has been off his feed, and a veterinarian discovers that he has an abscessed tooth. Two days before the Derby, he's still off his feed and Lucien is undecided whether to work him out that day.
Penny spends a long, silent moment looking Secretariat in the eye. The horse returns her stare. They arrive at an unspoken understanding. There will be no workout that day, but tomorrow he will be back on his normal feed. Did I buy it? Yes, because I've learned to communicate telepathically with my cat, and my ex-wife also had that gift.
Secretariat goes on to win the Derby and the Preakness. His main competitor that year is Sham, who comes in second in both of those races. The Belmont Stakes becomes, in effect, a showdown between the two, with only three other horses entered in the race.
Somehow, Secretariat seems to understand this. Typically, he stood at the back of the paddock and started out slowly, behind the rest of the pack, before forcing his way to the front. However, at the Belmont Stakes, he jumps out in front at the start and, except for a few seconds when he and Sham are neck-and-neck, he never relinquishes the lead, eventually winning by an unheard-of 31 lengths. He broke the track records in each Triple Crown race and his performance at Belmont has never been equaled. The fact that the field is not very crowded may be a factor because it gives him plenty of running room.
An interesting change happens to Lucien. As Secretariat starts to win the races, he dispenses with the dreadful hats and begins to take more pride in himself. At the Belmont Ball before the race, he wears a tux, reaches back to his French-Canadian roots, and speaks to Penny in French.
Penny's own esteem has grown as well. Even before the Belmont Stakes, she tells herself that she has won her own battle by proving that she could set and achieve an important goal. At the ball, her family comes together once again and rallies around her. They realize that she has taught them an important lesson about perseverance--a lesson that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
That, in my opinion, is what the film is really about.
To End All Wars (2001)
A "War" Movie That's About Values, Not War
I am a serious film lover who keeps up with the best new films. I stumbled across To End All Wars when it was shown recently on one of the Starz/Encore channels. At the end, I kept asking myself why I had never heard of it. The film is nowhere to be found in Roger Ebert's reviews or Leonard Maltin's annual guide, and yet I suspect that Ebert, at least, would rate this film very highly.
I like films that are about something that is important, at least to me, and not just pure entertainment. Not that I don't enjoy a good action-adventure film or light comedy from time to time, but most of the time, I prefer to spend my time watching films that make me think and perhaps even ask questions of myself.
To End All Wars is one such film. The Bridge on the River Kwai, which deals with the same historical events, is not, despite its many strong points. In this respect, To End All Wars is the better film, and the one that I am more likely to watch frequently.
Despite its title, the film is not really about war. What it is about is the efforts of a small group of men, and one man in particular, to maintain their faith, their sense of values, and their very sanity under horrible, murderous conditions that would drive most men to insanity or to become murderers themselves.
The film forces me to ask myself whether I could have done the same under those conditions. To be honest, I'm afraid to ask the question because I may not like the answer.
Although the film depicts many horrible things, it is not a depressing film, at least for me. Rather, it's a positive, hopeful film, in the same way that Schindler's List is a positive, hopeful film. If one man, in the case of Schindler, or a small group of men, in the case of the ones in this film, can maintain their sanity, faith, and values in a world that has gone insane, then there is hope for mankind.
As for the references to their Christian faith, it is not laid on with a trowel, as it might be in a lesser film. It is simply there as an important part of their lives. Whether or not we share that faith is beside the point. What is important is that they shared it, and that faith helped them to survive.
Could the director and the writers have made their points even more effectively? Probably. Would I have liked to have known more about the individual characters? Definitely. Would the film have benefited from a larger budget? Possibly.
All of these questions are moot, however. Every film deserves to be judged on its own terms, on the basis of what it is and not what it might have been. Not every film can be another Citizen Kane or Rules of the Game, nor should it be.
Taken on its own merits, To End All Wars is an excellent film that I expect to watch many times and recommend to my family and friends as well. The fact that the film never got proper distribution, at least in the United States, and therefore never got the recognition that it deserves, shows just how shallow and superficial the Hollywood film industry has become. Thankfully it is available on DVD.
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Unjustly neglected classic
The Night of the Hunter is an unjustly neglected classic and the only film ever directed by Charles Laughton. It is both a thriller and a fantasy, with a little bit of 1950s "Mother Knows Best" thrown in at the end, and somehow it all works. The reviewers who panned it when it was released must have been asleep at the switch. Because of this critical failure, among other factors, Laughton never directed another film, and we are all losers for it.
Robert Mitchum is my favorite actor and this is perhaps the best film that he ever made. Lillian Gish came out of retirement to make this film and she is wonderful. The cinematography, particularly in the fantasy segment in the middle of the film, is stunning. This should be on the must-see list of every serious film lover.
La vita è bella (1997)
Most overrated film I've seen in years
SPOILERS I am not a cynic in the Pauline Kael mode. My main problem with Life Is Beautiful is that for this type of film to work, it must first be believable. For example, even if Anne Frank and her family had avoided capture, her story would have been believable because of the extreme measures that they took to protect themselves. So, too, are the heroics shown in Schindler's List.
From everything that I know about the Holocaust, Life is Beautiful is anything but believable. It is so full of holes that I cannot omprehend why it was so well received. To be specific (spoiler warning):
* The story begins in 1939. Guido's child, Joshua, would have been born in 1940. He is five years old when the family is taken way by the Germans, making it 1945. By that time, the Allies had liberated Italy and the Germans were long gone.
* When they reached the concentration camp, Joshua would have been immediately separated from his father. He would never have made it to the father's barracks.
* In "interpreting" the rules for the German soldier--and making a joke out of them, Guido makes his son laugh. The child would have been taken away immediately and Guido probably would have been shot on the spot.
* Guido would never have been able to hide his son in the barracks. We are expected to believe that the Germans never inspected them. Give me a break! To make matters worse, whenever someone comes to the door, the child is in plain view. He doesn't hide under the blanket until after the person enters.
* Guido attempts to shield his son from reality by making a game out of their imprisonment. There are about 50 men in the barracks. Are we to believe that all of them participated in the ruse? Surely some of them would have talked about the horrors that they had seen or heard about.
* The scene where Joshua eats dinner with the German children is preposterous. Are we to believe that the Germans, with their fixation on racial purity, could not tell a dirty Italian Jewish child from their own clean-scrubbed Aryan broods?
* The where Guido is captured and prances in front of his son's hiding place like Robert Preston in The Music Man rings totally false. First of all, it would have called attention to the fact that something was going on, and therefore, would have put Joshua at risk. Secondly, anyone acting that nuts in a concentration camp would have been shot on the spot.
* I even find the final scene, where Joshua rides away in the tank, hard to take. Here is a small boy who has been kept in hiding for who knows how long. His only food has been whatever his father could sneak into him. The child would have been starved and half-dead. He could never have climbed onto the tank.
* Finally, wouldn't the child have been more concerned about finding his father than riding in the tank? Surely he must have heard the gunshots when his father was killed. Yet even when he finds his mother, he expresses no concern about Guido.
In my opinion, Life Is Beautiful trivializes the Holocaust, much as Hogan's Heroes trivialized the horrors of the POW camps. There are some horrors in life that cannot be made funny without insulting the memory of the human beings who suffered them. The Holocaust is one such horror.
The Siege of Firebase Gloria (1988)
A tough, gritty, and seemingly authentic war movie
If you've never heard of this movie before, you're in good company. Apparently, neither have Leonard Maltin, Roger Ebert, or the editors of the "VideoHound Golden Movie Retriever." Fortunately, the editor of VideoHound's book on war movies had heard of it. Based on his favorable review, I taped and viewed the film recently. If you enjoy a good "battle" movie, be sure to catch this one--you won't be disappointed.
"The Siege of Firebase Gloria" is a real film about real people in an unreal hell. Its apparently low budget was a blessing because it forced the creators to focus on plot and character development rather than on bombastic and meaningless special effects. Nevertheless, the battle sequences are believable and well-done.
This film is a sleeper that apparently did not get the exposure that it deserved. Then again, R. Lee Ermey and Wings Hauser, who played the lead roles, are not exactly box-office draws, and the other names in the cast were totally unfamiliar to me. However, Ermey, Hauser, and everyone in the cast do a solid job.
The action takes place during the Vietnamese Tet offensive in 1968, during a supposed holiday cease-fire, when the Viet Cong caught the South Vietnamese and U.S. forces by surprise with an all-out assault throughout South Vietnam. Ermey and his Marines are caught in the trap when they are ordered to help defend a small, meaningless outpost, Firebase Gloria, with virtually no help except, finally, from a small Air Cavalry unit. The Tet offensive was the beginning of the end for South Vietnam.
I never served in Vietnam, but this film has the feeling of being authentic. This is not a simplistic "good guys versus bad guys" film. The atrocities and inhumanities committed by both sides are not overemphasised but they are not glossed over either. They are just there as part of the fabric of the war.
Perhaps more importantly, they are shown in the context of a deadly, virtually unsurvivable siege and final battle. We sympathize with the Marines, of course, and we see them as ordinary, basically decent human beings. We may not condone some of the things that they do, but we understand why they may have seen no other alternative. It reminds me of the film "Zulu," about British troops trapped in a similar situation a century ago.
For many of us, our image of R. Lee Ermey is as the over-the-top drill sergeant in "Full Metal Jacket." His character in "Firebase Gloria" is more human and lower in key, yet you can see his character evolving into the drill sergeant following his tour in Vietnam. When you've walked through hell with your fellow battle-hardened Marines and been one of the few to come out alive, you know that you have to do everything in your power to prepare your green recruits to walk through that same hell.
Is "Firebase Gloria" on the same level of quality as "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket"? Not quite. I'd put it on a par with "Go Tell the Spartans," which, despite a strong performance from Burt Lancaster, has also never gotten the exposure that it deserves. These films deserve to be seen, not forgotten.