NEVADA SMITH Henry Hathaway 1966
This is an improbable but engrossing revenge tale — engrossing, though Nevada Smith does take a long time running to earth the three men who savagely, gleefully murdered his parents. (SPOILER ALERT): His decision to leave the third and final man alive, with two shattered knee caps and begging to be killed, is a startling surprise.
McQueen is especially good in the early scenes in which he shows his character’s naiveté about the world outside his own.
With Arthur Kennedy, Karl Malden and, for some odd reason, a dubbed Raf Vallone.
ALMOST FAMOUS Cameron Crowe 2008
Loud and hectic and too long, but the character of the underage journalist with integrity is original and intriguing. Billy Crudup is well cast and good. Frances McDormand as the young journalist’s mother is excellent. Kate Hudson and Patrick Fugit (as the boy) are outstanding.
Screenplay by Cameron Crowe.
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MOVIES ARE EVERYWHERE
In John Knowles’ novel Indian Summer, Lynn leaves home. Well, not exactly home. She has been visiting her sister at the home of the sister’s new in-laws who are about to give a huge party which Lynn does not want to attend. And she wants anyway to end her visit at the big home of the family, High Farms. She wants to be “. . . where the movie houses seemed the kind of palaces she loved, so much more magical than a real house like High Farms, movie palaces with their functionless theater boxes, tormented Vatican pillars lining the lobbies, rococo balconies encrusted with crust, lost Arabian courtyards featuring one drinking fountain, fake stars winking from the satiny ceiling; above all, their huge screens, where she could watch huge people doing huge things and be happy until the arid moment when the lights came on and she had to withdraw into her own undersized self again and step back onto the bleak, unintelligible treadmill called real life.”
John Knowles. Indian Summer. Random House, 1966.
NEXT FRIDAY POST November 10
Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick
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