Mary Poppins Returns

3 Stars (out of four)

I was a little skeptical about this one. Mary Poppins was one of the best movies I have ever seen. It is wholesome, entertaining and holds up after fifty years. It is literally one of the best films ever made. How do you follow that up? Believe it or not, Disney has managed to make a pretty good go at it. Considering that Disney has been on a high horse lately with their live-action remakes with their ridiculous social-justice warrior themes, this is a refreshingly almost modern attitude free story and simply just an entertaining romp.

Basically, the film takes place about twenty years after the original Mary Poppins and follows the Banks children. They are now grown up and they have problems if their own. Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt, in a pretty good imitation of the original Julie Andrews performance) shows up out of the air to take care of the Banks children while money problems are sorted out at the bank. Of course, this means there will will be lovely song and dance numbers with amazingly imaginative and magical set pieces. The standout being when Mary and the children jump into a porcelain bowl. It is reminiscent of the time when Mary, Bert and the children jumped into Bert’s chalk drawings, and like that scene, animation and live-action mixes together in a charming way (or a most delightful one?).

In any case, is the movie any good. The answer is yes. While the songs are not quite as memorable as the original (an admittedly high bar), they are very fun and entertaining, even a bit catchy. While none of them are the masterpieces of the original, Disney went well out of its way to catch the atmosphere and charm of the original. The songs are as timeless sounding as the original with nary a modern twist that would immediately date the original. This also goes with the atmosphere of the entire movie. A very annoying thing about Disney’s new live-action remakes of their old properties has been a ridiculously heavy handed social justice warrior tendency. The wolf pack of The Jungle Book is led by an alpha-female, Belle is a modern, independently minded woman, Malificent is a misunderstood and wronged party, Lafoux is gay, etc, etc, etc. While I have never had a problem with strong female protagonists, the tendency of the Disney movies of today is to insert very modern atttidues to very old stories. This tends to take me out of the story because of the obvious agenda that goes with each movie. Instead, create something new that makes these cases instead of falling on old stories but imprinting 21st century attitudes on 19th century individuals. It is sloppy and lazy writing.

That said, Mary Poppins Returns is a surprisingly wholesome and relatively agenda-free piece of entertainment that thoroughly does what it is supposed to do, entertain. Not preach. The movie is long  on emotions and whimsy, which is just what Mary Poppins should be. The dance numbers are fun, but a tad unmemorable. I very much liked the film, and it was much better than I thought it would be, but it is not particularly a masterpiece. It is a perfectly acceptable and fun film that is great for all ages. I would recommend it for a fun, turn-your-brain-off-and-go piece of entertainment that should be loved by ironic-free minded people of all ages.

They Shall Not Grow Old

Four Stars (out of Four)

November 11, 2018 we celebrated the 100th Anniversary of Armistice Day, the end of World War I, a war of unfathomable destruction and waste, and sadly, only the opening act to the bloodiest conflict to the worst conflict in human history, World War II.  But for all the ink that World War II gets and how much it gets studied, surprisingly little is known about its bloody forebearer, World War I. And the sad thing is, no one seems to really care as much. Maybe because the motivations of World War II are so much easier to comprehend to several generations who don’t want to think too hard about history and its consequences, maybe because of the confused nature as to how World War I started, or maybe a combination of both, but those who study history realize that World War II was merely a continuation of the issues of World War I. In any case, They Shall Not Grow Old is not meant to be a documentary of the great issues, battles, or even the great truths World War I can teach us. In fact, it is the strangest documentary of its type that I have ever seen. It is the documentary, if that is the right word, of the experience of being a solider in the British Army during World War One. In a fascinating documentary about the documentary at the end of the movie, director Peter Jackson explains he wanted to make a story regarding the experience of the common solider during this most destructive conflict.

In this regard, the movie is surprisingly complete for the typical solider’s story. The movie originally started out as a project from the Imperial War Museum and the BBC to memorialize the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day. The Museum had hundreds of hours of film footage and the BBC hundreds of hours of interview material from the 70s and 80s from World War One veterans. The project that was handed to Peter Jackson was to use as much of this material to give the viewer and idea of what World War One was, which, from a historical perspective, is quickly becoming to be like a forgotten war. The film starts from the outbreak of war, to the initial recruitment drives, through the basic training, the wartime experiences, and finally the experiences back home after the war where the country had little use for the veterans and left them alone to deal with the horrors of what they had experienced, today what we would call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The movie is astonishingly complete in the mundane and extraordinary experiences the men felt during this time.

But the movie does most historical documentaries one better. Unlike the footage from the countless other documentaries we have seen over the years, Peter Jackson and his crew took great steps to clean and restore the film as much as possible, and most astonishingly, realistically colorize it. Now this isn’t just any thrown together job of colorization that we have seen from movies in the past, this was an astonishing attempt to get the colors and atmosphere so correct that it is as if you were really there.  I was impressed by the History Channel’s superb documentaries, WWII In HD and Vietnam In HD that did basically the same thing, but this movie went the step further. Peter Jackson’s crew corrected the time difference of the hand-cranked 18 frames per second from filmed subjects back then to the correct 24 frames per second we are used to seeing today. When we look at historical footage, it has almost a surreal feel because of this technical problem. By correcting this, Jackson has made the footage even more real. He brought in lip readers so we could hear what the men were saying onscreen. He included foley effects from the real weapons so the film would sound right. He even brought actors from the same areas of England that the units were from so the accents would be right. This insane attention to detail brought a vitality to the men and their emotions that we see onscreen. There is absolutely nothing about this film that does not feel “real” in every sense of the word.

And what a payoff it is. It does a justice to these men who fought, suffered and died under the most hellish of circumstances by focusing on their experiences, their emotions, and ultimately their humanity. In this way, this was the most different documentary I have ever seen because it is a documentary of feelings, not cold facts and dates. It is almost wrong to call it a documentary, because it is a presentation of emotions and experiences, something that is usually subjective, which basically goes against a documentary’s usually mandate. Yet there is nothing untrue here. It is emotion laid bare and raw, worthy of the finest storyteller, and yet it is all real. This is a work of immense achievement, not for its breadth and scope, but for its intimacy of such a large subject. Ultimately, it succeeds so well where other documentaries fail so utterly; it is a true memorial to the men of whom it’s about, a towering feat of a conflict I barely know, and yet fell deep intense feelings for. This movie is phenomenal and should not be missed. Finally, stick around after the credits for a fantastic documentary about the making of the film that is just as good as the film itself.

Logan

4 Stars (out of four)

So, it's finally here. The last time Hugh Jackman will play one of the most iconic roles in cinema. There has been a lot of hype surrounding this film, and for once, the hype lives up to itself.

Logan takes place in 2029. Our hero Logan (Hugh Jackman in his career-making role) is still angry and bitter. The film opens up with him walking in on some car thieves trying to steal the tires of his car. After a couple tense words, Logan is shot by them and he proceeds to literally tear them apart. This sets the tone for this incredibly brutal, very R-rated romp. It turns out Logan has been hiding in Mexico and caring for an ailing Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart). The world hates mutants now and has hunted them almost to extinction. Professor Xavier realizes there is a young mutant Laura, (Dafne Keen) who they must help before she is killed, and there is something eerily familiar about her...

i know now my description is not very good, but there is a lot to this movie and I want to keep it spoiler-free. I will first say, this is probably one of the finest superhero movies yet, an example of truly great storytelling that surpasses its pulpy roots. The themes are simple, but run very deep: loyalty, redemption and the importance of family in whatever form. I warn those with more delicate sensibilities that this is NOT a film for children. In the first post-Walking Dead superhero yarn, Logan definitely earns its R-rated stripes with its incredibly brutal story, violence and language. However, like Deadpool, the adult material fits the subject perfectly and is not gratuitous. That said, the movie can be hard to watch, particularly with its violence toward and wreaked by children. If I didn't know better, I'd say there was a subtle message regarding what happens to children who grow up surrounded by violence their entire lives, whether they be Syrian refugees or African child soldiers.

The movie deepens Marvel's most enigmatic and complex character. Logan is by nature a loner, yet he always has a soft spot for those who can't help themselves, particularly little girls. In the comics and movies, he usually becomes a protector and mentor to them, despite all of his instincts not to be. In this movie, he is a reluctant protector both to Professor Xavier and and a surrogate father to Laura. Despite his well-wrought cynicism to a very cold and cruel world, he can't help but obey the better angels of his nature and protect those who need it. This selfish/selflessness dichotomy of his nature makes Logan one of the most interesting characters ever committed to the page or screen.

The genius of the film is that it does not infantalize tha characters or the audience. Gone are the colorful costumes and black-and-white morality of most superhero movies. Instead, we have a cynical, bleak and evil world that uses our berzerking protagonist perfectly. This is the Wolverine story that I have always wanted to see in print or in the movies, one that does not dance around the brutality of a character who has long claws in his hands. That said, I hope that this will not be a harbinger of more R-rated superhero movies which fans have been clamoring for since the success of Deadpool and The Walking Dead. All three of these shows have taken great care to present well-rounded characters whose arcs lend themselves to this type of story. But superhero stories, for the most part, are meant for kids. They are modern-day parables or fables designed to teach morality in a simple way. Most of them do not need an R to get their point across. In fact, I think only Captain America: The Winter Soldier would have benefited from a more adult storyline, and yetit did quite well within its boundaries.

In the end, Marvel continues its astonishing ability to produce movies that far exceed the medium they sprang from. Like Pixar movies in the past, they have proven what good, complex characters and stories can accomplish. Just because the stories spring from a childish medium does not mean they have to stick to dumb, simple plots and spectacle. This is what DC movies have yet to understand with the possible exceptions of 1978's Superman and 1989's Batman. DC, instead of mining their great and extensive material to make compelling stories, feel they can win over audiences with flash and dazzle, and fall flat almost every time. If they want to compete with Marvel on this level, they certainly have the tools. DCs characters are older and much more iconic than anything Marvel has to offer, they just need the patience Marvel has in building a cohesive world. That will not be accomplished in two or three movies with Heath Ledger in a purple suit or Margot Robbie in hotpants and fishnets. They have to go beyond the superficial.

Once again, parents, be warned. This is not your X-Man movie, but something much more brutal and harsh. You may want to think twice before allowing your kid to see this one, as if the R-rating wasn't enough of a clue. Yet I can't recommend the film more highly.

Fifty Shades of Grey

0.5 Stars (out of four)

So, the worldwide publishing sensation became an erotic movie, but I have never seen an erotic movie that was so unerotic in my life. It's a lot like Showgirls in that it tries to be a very titallating film that transcends its obvious erotic overtones into something greater. And, also like Showgirls, it fails in truly spectacular fashion. But unlike Showgirls, a film "so bad it's good," Fifty Shades of Grey is one of those singularly bad films you hear about occasionally. There is absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing, remotely redeeming, entertaining or even arousing about this film.

The movie opens with our heroine, Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson, daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith) an oh, so lovable and precocious young college girl who ends up interviewing Christian Grey (Jaime Dornan) for her college newspaper. After what is probably one of the dumbest and clumsiest meet-cute scenes ever, our hero Christian MUST have our heroine Ana. What then follows is over two hours of some of the dullest and silliest crap ever committed to celluloid until Ana realizes she's not happy and SPOILER ALERT leaves Christian.

For a movie that is ostensibly based on one of the more sexually-charged novels of our time, the heat and excitement level of the film is pretty flat. For those who grew up on the late 80's/early 90's, this movie is almost a caricature of every Zalman King softcore movie you ever saw on Cinemax after midnight. This movie evoked images from everything from 9 1/2 Weeks to Wild Orchid to Two Moon Junction to The Red Shoe Diaries. But unlike those that came before, Fifty Shades is too pompous and grandiose for its own good. The Zaman King ouvier was beautifully shot, but ultimately dumb sex fantasies that never really took themselves too seriously. Fifty Shades is actually trying to be something more, a feminist sexual manifesto perhaps? The books make constant references to Ana's "inner Giddess" that was set free when Christian takes her virginity. She is a big girl now, a member of the sisterhood of the sexually active in good standing. The movie tries to replicate this with visual clues, the most striking is how much better her wardrobe gets the more sex she has. Her dresses get nicer and tartier the further down the rabbit hole she goes. These are not dresses a well-adjusted woman wears, but rather one who is advertising she is ready to have sex, almost like a prostitute. Ana goes from a clumsy, frumpy girl in a ponytail to a smoldering, confident object of sexual lust because of the virile man. But the funny thing about it is that if you take Christian's youth and billions away and put the character in a trailer park, this is just another episode of Law & Order: SVU.

Now, I understand there is a fantasy element at work here. When I was in my 20's, the big panty-burning story was Indecent Proposal. Every woman I knew wanted to be Demi Moore in that movie, to be Robert Redford's whore. But the basic story is exactly the same. Once you strip away the veneer of beauty and money, it comes down to a man treating a woman as a hooker. This is not healthy.

Beyond that, Dakota Johnson is chewing the scenery so badly I'm surprised there weren't bite marks on the drapes as well. She seems to take her cues from a Jennifer Aniston's Rachel character from Friends: constant fidgeting, coy sideways glances mixed with direct dead stares; combined with an incessant need to coquettishly clear her throat. 50 Shades has all the drama of an after-school special with boobies. Dornan isn't much better. All he does is blankly stare with a hint of a frown. I think it's meant to convey a mysteriousness or even a little danger; but in reality, he just looks like he just smelled a bad fart and is trying to figure where it came from...FOR THE ENTIRE MOVIE. I actually don't blame him for this. This is just bad writing and direction. I guess the movie is trying to tell us that Ana needed to become a sexually active WOman, and with this new-found confidence mixed with innocent naïveté, she finally knows that Christian is a horrible person. But, in the end, she can't let go because we now have the sequel...

Finally, this movie can't figure out what it wants to be. Is it an erotic fantasy or a feminist declaration about a woman exploring her budding sexuality on her own terms? Either way, I have never seen an erotic film go so far out of its way to be unerotic. The sex scenes are campy and laughable. The only one with some tepid warmth to it is actually the first, "vanilla" sex scene. Everything else comes across as staged and flat, devoid of any passion or heat. Compare this movie to Unfaithful, Body Heat or The Last Seduction and you will see the difference. Instead, we are treated to red hot scenes of drawing up a contract to define the terms of their dom/sub relationship. The scene where our heroes sit in a boardroom to discuss the terms of acceptable limits is supposed to be hot, I think, but just comes across as being unintentionally hilarious. So, I can find absolutely no redeeming things about this movie. It is not erotic. The characters are two-dimensional and boring. The story is told at a breakneck pace that resembles on snail overdosed on Valium. I was looking at my watch around 95 minutes in and realizing, with horror, I still had 40 to go. The story is contrived, disjointed and fragmented. And worst of all, there is absolutely nothing endearing about either of the leads. He is creepy, a stalker, damaged and a bit rapey. She is empty-headed and keeps coming back for more, which makes it hard to sympathize or empathize in her plight. Basically, this movie is, in a word...

DUMB. Avoid at all costs unless you are also masochistic like Ana.

Passengers (2016)

3.5 Stars (out of four)

This movie, from the trailers, seems to be a simple story. Two people wake up from suspended animation on a long journey, fall in love and need to help each other with a disaster at the end. And while that is the general gist, it is actually a little more complicated and deeper than that, thankfully.

After a freak in-flight accident, engineer/mechanic Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) is awaken from suspended animation on a space flight from Earth to a new world Homestead II. The spaceship is a gargantuan vessel carrying over 5000 passengers. The accident caused a system malfunction and he finds he has been awakened 90 years too early on his journey. What he doesn't know is that the accident set into motion a cascading series of events that will come into play later. He awakes to find himself all alone on the ship, his only company an android bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen). Jim spends over a year trying to fix his problem and filling his time until he comes to the brink of loneliness and despair and almost commits suicide. He then sees writer Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) in another pod. He falls into an instant longing for her and learns everything about her. He wrestles with the idea of waking her up to allay his selfish, but ultimately necessary desire for human contact. He deliberately wakes her up, despite knowing he is dooming her to his fate, to die on the ship. When she wakes, he lets her believe she, like him, was awoken by accident. Gradually, they fall in love with each other until it is revealed his deliberate act. From then on, it gets interesting...

What impressed me so much was the dynamics of how their relationship changes throughout the story. We have all seen stories like this before, but Pratt and Lawrence are such riveting actors that they totally sell the premise. This movie is essentially an acting exercise around the question of horrible betrayal and can forgiveness happen. I heard one reviewer say that it's hard to buy into it since the movie has two of Hollywood's most beautiful stars in it. One should have been a lot less attractive and that would have made the story much more interesting. While that may be the case, this is a business and you have to get butts in the seat. But in the end, I found it to be a wonderful and satisfying story that most people will like. This is definitely a good date movie, so check it out.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

4 Stars (out of four)

As good as The Force Awakens was, Rogue One is really the Star Wars we have all been waiting for. Despite the bad press regarding major reshoots because Disney executives thought the tone of the film was too dark, to everybody's irrational fear that Disney would ruin Star Wars, to just the plain old naysayers who said that Rogue One was a redundant and unnecessary film because, as we all know, we already know the end. Boy, were all those people wrong and their fears totally groundless. This was a make or break film for Disney with their new franchise, and unlike The Force Awakens, Rogue One does something extraordinary. It takes us in new directions and unlocks the vast potential this franchise of franchises possese to tell amazing stories.

"It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet."

With those 55 words, myself and countless other excited moviegoers were glued to our theater seats in 1977 for the film that would ultimately change most of our lives, and definitely the summer blockbuster, forever. These are the first words in the opening crawl of Star Wars, and yes, at that time it was simply Star Wars, not this Episode IV: A New Hope nonsense. It also describes exactly what we will see in this new movie. But to get a little more specific without spoilers, Rogue One is a movie about Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the now-outlaw daughter of Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), the man who ultimately designed the power system for the Death Star. Jyn is freed from prison by a rebel, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his reprogrammed imperial robot K-2SO (Alan Tudyk, who, like his character Wash in Firefly/Serenity, provides some much-needed, but not out-of-place sarcastic humor). They are given a mission by the fledgling and divided Rebellion to reach out to Saw Gerrera (Forrest Whittaker), a dangerous extremist who received an urgent message from Jyn's father regarding a new weapon being built by the Galactic Empire. This sets into motion the events that are described in the opening crawl quoted above.

So, why is this movie so great and not just a redundant and cynical cash-grab from Disney? Despite the fact we know the story, we don't know the context behind that first battle. To be fair, this is NOT required viewing for a new Star Wars fan, but it is a rewarding and satisfying chapter that explores the context behind what is to come in Episode IV. This is truly the first Star Wars movie with adults in mind first and foremost. It is long on action AND story, a key failure of the prequels, and is not simply a retread of Episode IV, a key weakness of The Force Awakens. Rather, it is a new story entirely based on an outcome we already know. This does not detract from the plot, but rather enriches what comes after the events of the movie. It establishes the stakes even more by giving crucial context to the events of A New Hope.

Chief among those elements of context are the natures of both the Rebellion and the Empire. For those of you who do not read the books, the Rebellion is far from a united organization based on a common goal and the Empire is not a monolithic entity all steering in the same direction, either. We see the Rebellion, far from being united or totally good for that matter, is fractured and divided. The events of Rogue One are a key component that forces the Rebellion to come together and act for the first time in a unified manner to defeat an existential threat to them and the universe. The Empire as well is not a hive-mind of evil devoted to one goal, but rather a collection of competing interests and ambitions which the Emperor uses to keep everyone in check under him. This makes the universe immediately more complex, diverse, and yes, "real" than the simplistic archetypes of the rest of the Star Wars series. Star Wars, at its core, is made for children. Rogue One, for the first time, dares to try to move that bar into more mature territory. It works just fine on a simple level for kids with its great action pieces. But it also works on a much deeper level, as a more nuanced, larger story, with complex characters who actually feel.

In the final analysis, this complexity is what makes Rogue One superior to every other movie in the series. It is why The Empire Strikes Back is the only other movie that actually matters. There is complex emotion and evolution in the characters and story. We see Jyn evolve from a loner criminal to determined rebel. We see Cassian change from rebel drone to free-thinking individual. Each character in this cast (and there are many), all have their evolutionary journeys that are completely realized, a not-easy feat to do in our jump-cut, action-oriented thought processes of today. This movie actually has some real meat to it in the characters and organizations that may cause you to look at each a little different when you leave. Rogue One adds real nuance to everything in the Star Wars universe, and thus changes our perception of it. For me, this was a game-changer and restored my faith in the power of moviemaking. The movie is just familiar enough to ground us in the reality, but different enough to change our perception about it in a positive and meaningful way. Screenwriters Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy may not win an Oscar for this, but they should.

Finally, I can't leave this review without a little criticism. As much as I love it, it's not perfect. It's as close as you can get, but still falls a little short of the mark. We are given just enough information to put us in the action, but there is a lot of unmined territory that could maybe be produced in books. The territory is primarily the backstories of all the characters. Each one of them is interesting. Part of Jyn's backstory is in Catalyst, but each of the supporting characters are fascinating in their own right, particularly Saw Gerrera. There is enough to tantalize, but I would like to know more. Other than that, this movie is superb in both story and acting, and deserves a place as one of, if not the best Star Wars movie of them all.

The Seven Samurai (1954) vs The Magnificent Seven (1960) vs The Magnificent Seven (2016)

This The Seven Samurai 3 Stars (out of four)

The Magnificent Seven (1960) 3 Stars (out of four)

The Magnificent Seven (2016) 3 Stars (out of four)

So the remakes continue. The Magnificent Seven, itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is now being remade again in 2016, this time with a politically correct racially diverse cast. However, I like the idea of this new cast as all actually would have had a reason to be in the Old West. With today's tendency toward historical revisionism, this new version promised to be a fun and interesting remake.

The story is pretty much the same. All take off from the same general outline of The Seven Samurai, only the details change. A small, rural farming village is being robbed by a large group of approximately 40 bandits. The village elder tells some of the men to go into town to hire men experienced in fighting and weapons to train and help the villagers defend themselves. The villagers cannot afford to pay the Samurai what they would get for such services, but they promise their defenders all the food they can eat and a pittance. We have a montage of the older warrior who recruits six other men, all with different strengths. One is an old brother-in-arms, another is a killer of the greatest skill, and another is a young man who dreams of becoming a warrior. We find out this young man was a farmer as well and personally identifies with their struggles and hardships. Once the group reaches the village, all the women are missing as the villagers think the warriors will rape them. When those fears are allayed, we get more montages of training and getting ready for the big battle. In the middle of all this, the young warrior falls in love with one of the local girls, much to the dismay of her conservative father. The movie ends with the warriors fighting alongside the villagers in a battle to kill the bandits.

THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954)

Before American audiences were watching foreign films regularly, Akira Kurosawa was one of Hollywood's go-to directors to rip off. Some of his movies that have been appropriated include this one, of course, Star Wars uses elements from both The Hidden Fortress and Throne of Blood. His film Yojimbo has been remade at least twice (Last Man Standing and A Fistful of Dollars). All three films are based on Dashiell Hammett's noir novel Red Dust. Even Kurosawa himself was not above stealing as his movie Ran is a remake of Shakespeare's King Lear, only set in feudal Japan. I guess it goes to show that if you're going to steal from somebody, steal from the best.

That said, The Seven Samurai is a wonderful movie, if just a tad overlong. I'm not one with a short attention span, but at close to 3.5 hours, this movie becomes a butt-buster. Even so, it takes its time so that we can get to know and appreciate each character. We know backstories on each Samurai and the villagers who hire them. Different motivations come into play, particularly with longtime Kurosawa-collaborator Toshiro Mifune's character. In this movie, we are introduced to him playing a character that is almost buffoonish in his broad comedic performance. He careens wildly from annoying comic relief to sullen, worldly cynic that is abrasive to all around him except the old Samurai. As we and the other characters get to know him, we see a damaged character underneath that uses bluster to hide his very deep pain at the world. He keeps people at arm's length so they will not hurt him anymore than he has been already. His arc from cynical buffoon to real hero is very satisfying because of this deliberate evolution.

The movie's (very long) climax when the samurai and the townspeople is quite exciting and entertaining. The denouement where four of the Samurai die is quite poignant as we have come to know and like each one of them. The Seven Samurai is one of those movies that just seems right to serve as the archetype of things to come. It is a work of stunning originality on the part of Kurosawa and all his collaborators behind and in front of the camera. Kurosawa is one of those legendary directors because he made great movies time and time again. This is only one of at least six of his movies that are considered classics of the film genre and he is one of the most revered and copied filmmakers of all time. Like Chaplin, Welles, Scorsese, Spielberg, Ford or Hitchcock, he is one of the templates that all aspiring filmmakers should study.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960)

After Kurosawa saw The Magnificent Seven for the first time, he said, "It's a wonderful movie, but it's my movie," and shortly after began legal proceedings because no one had secured the rights for remaking his picture. Once it was released, The Magnificent Seven became a classic of western action. If there was ever a movie that benefited from trimming the run time, this is definitely it. At just over two hours, this movie steams along at a great pace and never really slows down. Even at the slower points, and there are a couple, the movie is brisk with very little filler. The movie is similar in its plot, except this time it takes place in Mexico and a local ground of bandidos is terrorizing and robbing a small farming village.

My two biggest complaints of the movie are fairly minor. The biggest one was the casting of Yul Brynner. Although he is great in just about everything he ever did, the choice to cast him in the lead role is a bit off for this film. When I was younger, I hated it, but as I got to appreciate Brynner's presence, I warmed up to it. But it still rings wrong in this cast and I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I don't buy him as the lone outlaw with the Clint Eastwood attitude. My second complaint is a pet peeve of mine. The western genre at this time tended to be the springboard for a lot of young actors to make their mark, and producers wanted to showcase them, sometimes at the expense of the real talent we were coming to see. The most egregious example is Rio Bravo. As good as the movie is, we came to see John Wayne. Dean Martin is badly miscast and bringing in Ricky Nelson was a disaster. They even shoehorn in a song so Martin and Nelson can sing together. The offending character in The Magnificent Seven is Horst Buchholtz who plays Chico, the young man with the background of being from a similar village, a combination of two characters from The Seven Samurai. This is the critical part of the movie, but again, it feels as if they wanted to make Buchholtz the star (instead of the other soon-to-be-superstars in the stellar cast including Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach, Robert Vaughn and James Coburn). I am not saying this is Buchholtz's fault, his performance is fine. It's just a little too pronounced in an otherwise stellar, soon to be immortal cast of Hollywood action heroes for the next two decades.

In the end, The Magnificent Seven is a fine movie with a great ending, but in my opinion, falls just short of greatness. But a movie I would heartily recommend to anyone for a wild ride of rip roaring fun.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (2016)

I have held that movies are definitely a reflection of the times they are made. A movie like this one or King Arthur, Robin Hood, or Ben Hur, a story told over and over again in different generations gives a fascinating glance into how people perceive reality and their biases toward each other and their environments. Movies, being a product of popular culture, have to conform to these cultural norms in order to be embraced. For instance, D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation is roundly and rightly considered a cinematic classic in that it set up the modern method of cinematic storytelling structure, but it is also incredibly racist in its attitudes toward black people in general with its favorable portrayal of the KKK as the saviors of the post-Civil War Reconstruction South. The movie was embraced as a blockbuster, but is roundly reviled today in its attitudes. Westerns from the 30s through the early 60s portrayed a boyhood fantasy of what the Old West was like with bloodless gunfights and virtuous whores. Clint Eastwood's Man-With-No-Name spaghetti Westerns with Sergio Leone signified the end of the innocent Western of John Wayne and a more nihilistic Old West as a cruel, dehumanizing landscape that culminated in Eastwood's visionary anti-Western, Unforgiven. A movie that in one brilliant turn shreded every cherished trope and legend of the Old West. It could only have been done by Eastwood or Wayne, the two men most directly responsible for establishing these legends to begin with.

So why am I bringing all of this up? First to show that stories are continually adapted to meet cultural sensitivities. Also to illustrate that in a post-Unforgiven cultural landscape, we are left with a more jaundiced eye toward the portrayal of our past. In the case of the upcoming Guy Pierce's version of the King Arthur story, you have a man not born into nobility as Arthur was, but rather a street kid who ascends to the throne, a very modern type of hero. In the case of Westerns, there is a dual track of striving for historical authenticity combined with modern inclusion of as many new characters as possible, not matter how shoehorned they appear to be. Movies like Posse and The Quick and the Dead are the most egregious examples. This new version of The Magnificent Seven strikes a good compromise between the two. In a modern all-racial-inclusive cast, this movie works on all levels. No one out of place here. All the cast members have compelling reasons to be in the story, but the overall themes of justice and redemption are still in place.

In this case, the action takes place in the Wyoming territory, where an unscrupulous land baron is now trying to take the land from settlers to make way for a railroad line to his mines. He is the thoroughly modern Occupy Wall Street/Mr. Robot villain, a totally amoral rich guy that will take everything from poor people unless there is a revolution of the proletariat of sorts. No matter, the movie is great and all performances are fun to watch. I particularly like Chris Pratt, who is fast becoming the next superstar movie actor. He is very affable and comes across as a very sympathetic character, and one actor I am excited to see what he will do next. The finale is very kinetic and fun, and propels this film into a better than average action flick. A fun recommendation when you just want to turn your brain off and go with the flow.