All the Movie Reviews No One Asked For

Hello my good beans! Due to being under the weather, I find myself with much more down time than I expected to have this week. So far I've used that time mostly to watch old movies. Which is maybe not the best way to spend one's sick time? But I also don't think it's the worst. At a certain point, however, one gets tired of watching old movies and finds the need to talk about them. This is why watching movies with friends is the ideal thing to do; but in lieu of live commentary with friends, I suppose blog posts are the next best thing. 

Hence, this post, being my initial thoughts on all the cinema I've consumed in the last few days.

Command Decision (1948)

It's the height of WWII, and Clark Gable stars as the leader of a precision bombing campaign. You'd think fighting the Germans would be stressful enough, but he's also got to fight his superior officers and the American newspapers, who are appalled at the number of planes (and men) he's lost over the last two days. Poor fellow. 

I'd been wanting to see this movie for awhile because it's about B-17s, don't you know, and I don't know nearly as much about that side of WWII as I should like. I used to have this vague and very incorrect impression that bomber crews weren't quite as dramatic as, say, the fighter pilots of WWI. Because surely dropping bombs on factories is less dangerous than duking it out with German aces one-on-one, right? Well, no, no not really. It wasn't until I took a course on military history and took notes on a lecture about air power in WWII that I realized how high casualties were for bomber crews. Like, even if the plane made it back that was no guarantee all the men on board did. Scary stuff. 

Anyway the movie is about that, and as such I'm glad to have watched it. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to people not interested in military aviation history, because--well you can kind of tell it was originally a stage play, y'know? The setting is confined to the air base. You never actually see the battles, just the planes taking off and coming in. 

There's a Very Sad Death towards the end of the movie that I saw coming from a mile away. It's not that hard to spot if you're familiar with the gut-wrenching ways of fiction writers. 

It pleased me very much that the movie was in black and white. There's something so cozy about black and white movies, don't you know. 

Sherlock Holmes (1954): 

"The Cunningham Legacy" and "Lady Beryl"

These are the Sherlock Holmes episodes starring Ronald Howard. Now, I've no right to an opinion because I've never actually seen the much-celebrated Benedict Cumberbatch show, but I daresay this and not Sherlock is the best adaptation of Sherlock Holmes out there. Or at least the most fun. Certainly the most wholesome. At least, I like it oodles better than the Robert Downey Jr. movies (...I've only seen the second one, and it was fun, but not quite Sherlock Holmes, you know?) and it's more faithful to the books (which I also have no right to have an opinion on, never having read most of them) than the Basil Rathbone movies (which are likewise delightful, but they plop Sherlock Holmes down into the 1940s, and I mean, come on now, chaps, we can do better than that). 

My siblings and I watched these all a long long time ago and my sisters have recently gotten back into them, so 'tis at their recommendation that I revisited the series.

And guys it's SO MUCH FUN. 

Again, there's something so soothing about cinema in black and white.

And the episodes are only half an hour long so there's not much of a time commitment. 

And the show has SUCH A SENSE OF HUMOR and the friendship between Holmes and Watson is SO ENDEARING. Sherlock Holmes himself is endearing, which is, I daresay, an improvement on the original stories. He's just so much of a kid, oblivious to the people around him due only to his surpassing interest in the world of crime. When he wants to be he's actually quite polite. 

There's this one shot where we see the cases lined neatly up on Sherlock Holmes' study shelf:

POISON

DEADLY POISON

SNAKE POISON

TEA

Which last one he proceeds to take down and make tea with, at the same table where he is experimenting with fatal chemicals. He offers tea to the policeman who comes in, and the policeman would be delighted. Sherlock Holmes cannot remember where he put the sugar. The policeman doesn't seem to remember that sugar and arsenic look rather similar, all things considered. They have a delightful time making tea. And it's just adorable, I tell you.

I will be watching more of these. I may be binging them. I doubt they will replace The A-Team in my estimation, but they may replace Hogan's Heroes and Laramie. 

The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)

Seeing as how Rio Bravo is one of my favorite Westerns ever, I hadn't much choice to but to give The Sons of Katie Elder a shot, now had I? Since both are starring John Wayne and Dean Martin. 

Well, I liked Katie Elder quite a lot. 

The question is whether I liked it better than Rio Bravo. 

Advantages that Rio Bravo has over Katie Elder: 
-Dean Martin singing with Ricky Nelson
-DUDE

It must be emphasized that Dean Martin's character in The Sons of Katie Elder is nowhere near as loveable as Dude, the gunslinger struggling to get sober. Tom the gambler is pretty loveable, but he's not as loveable as Dude, and that is just a fact. Especially when Dude sings so angelically. 

On the other hand, there's no distracting romantic subplot in Katie Elder as there is in Rio Bravo. (I am still not sold on Feathers, my friends. I am still not sold on Feathers.) It stays focused on the main plot, which is a very manly one. Four brothers, more or less estranged from each other, ride into town for their mother's funeral and stay there to investigate their father's murder--and, just maybe, to make their dead mother proud. 

(It is possible to ship John Wayne's character with the very respectable lady who runs the boarding house, sure, but their conversations are always centered on the memory of Katie Elder, not on some steamy attraction. Which I appreciate very much.)

And, I mean, the movie is about BROTHERS. Four of them. Four dysfunctional brothers, just starting to learn that maybe they can be best friends after all. 

The scene where they're arguing about what kind of monument to put over their mother's grave? Hilarious. Surprisingly, hilarious. 

And the FIST FIGHT. 

I dig. I dig it muchly. 

But then, the ending.

The ending was kind of SAD.

It was kind of AWFUL, actually. What with the dynamite and the shooting and the 75% casualty rate. 

...Usually heroes getting shot up at the end of Westerns doesn't bug me too much? At least not in The Magnificent Seven? But in The Magnificent Seven it's different because they're all professional gunslingers and they all go into the movie EXPECTING to get shot up. It's considerably more tragic when the people getting shot up are brothers who were just learning to be happy together. I JUST WANT THEM ALL TO BE HAPPY, OKAY. 

Final verdict: to be decided. (I think what I need is to watch this movie with my sisters and swap opinions/feelings with them. Cuz that's another advantage Rio Bravo has over The Sons of Katie Elder: I usually watch it with my sisters.)

The Return of the Magnificent Seven (1966)

Oh, my. 

Oh, my. 

You may know The Magnificent Seven (1960) is basically my favorite movie and hands-down my favorite Western. I've been curious about the sequel for a long time. 

Naturally I wasn't expecting it to be very good, because you can't top perfection. 

I guess I'm glad to have seen it? If nothing else it's good for a laugh. 

The plot revolves around Chico, Chris, and Vin from the original movie, but the only returning member of the original cast is Yul Brynner. They replaced Steve McQueen with Robert Fuller, which is an...interesting choice. Don't get me wrong, I dearly love Robert Fuller. But, like...he's not Steve McQueen. It is very, very hard to recognize Robert Fuller's Vin as Steve McQueen's Vin. He's too smiley or young or something. Also, Vin's favorite word would now appear to be "hell"? Who wrote this script? 

Anywho, the plot. Chico's village (the one from the original movie, which looks pretty much identical to how it did before except they're harvesting crops now and seem very busy and prosperous) gets attacked by a band of bad guys who look eerily like Calvera's bad guys. Chico is captured and dragged away, along with all the other men. Chico's wife goes looking for help from Chris and Vin. Somehow she finds them. And they promptly go through the motions of finding 4 other guys to bring along on the rescue mission.

You'd expect Vin to make a lot of jokes about how familiar this all feels, but he doesn't?

Also, Chris' standards for men to fight alongside have, it seems to me, gone way down. He finds several of his new recruits in a jail. Not just on the run for murder charges such as any self-respecting gunslinger might get himself into, but, like, awaiting execution in the morning. For actual crimes. And Chris just pays off the jailor and takes up with these guys? And one of his hired guns is a very obnoxious womanizer? (I expected this guy to die a redemptive death a la Harry Luck, but, well. No such luck.) (See what I did there? Luck? Ba-doom-tisshhhhh.) 

Anyway they go off and fight the bad guys and find Chico (who, incidentally, has this weird moment where he wants to go back to being a gunslinger, HIS WIFE WILL UNDERSTAND) and there's lots of shooting and the bad guy is NOT anywhere NEAR as convincing as Calvera (he's enslaved all the men so he can...build a...church? how does this...work as bad guy motivation, exactly??) and there's a priest involved who switches from bad guy side to good guy side and in the final showdown there is a LOT of dynamite.

(It's the third western I've seen in two days that depends on lots of dynamite for climactic gunfights. I am a little Over It, my friends.)

Another thing: the Elmer Bernstein score from the first movie is recycled for the sequel, and hearing it played over different scenes than we usually associate with it is....kind of trippy.

All in all....this was a pretty bad movie, but honestly? it could've been way worse. 

There were scenes where the priest said Mass for all the men who were about to maybe die, and where the whole group of enslaved farmers were praying the rosary in Spanish, which makes my heart rather happy. 

And at least the friendship between Chris and Vin tries to be sweet and tough and heartfelt. 

And I didn't hate the final lines of the movie: 

CHRIS: I'll be damned. 

VIN: I very much doubt that.

So, like, yeah. It could've been worse. I've seen worse, actually. Overall I prefer this to the remake they did in 2016. Because the tone of The Return of the Magnificent Seven towards the original was "that was fun! let's do it again, one more time!"--which, even though it's impossible to pull off the "one more time," is a respectable way to feel. Whereas the tone of the 2016 remake towards the original struck me as, "well, that movie's out of date, let's FIX it." Which is unacceptable. 

Well, my friends, that does it for me today! I think I should probably go off now to do something actually good for my brain, like maybe read a book. 

But I want to know: have you seen any of these movies? If so, what did you think of them? If not, what's a movie you've seen recently that you should like to squeal or rant about?