Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

Gregory Peck made six films with director Henry King, two of them Westerns: this one and 'The Gunfighter'. The film starts off in Rio Arriba, a small town close to the Mexican border, where Jim Douglass (Peck) arrives in order to see four bad guys hanged the next day.   I guess these are the bravados of the title although I'm not sure it's an appropriate description, since according to my dictionary a bravado is an obsolete word for a swaggerer. Certainly at the start of the film they're not doing a lot of swaggering in their prison cell but things do look up for them when they escape, taking with them a young woman, Emma  as a hostage.  The rest of the film concerns the efforts of the posse to rescue Emma and bring the bravados to justice, dead or alive.   Very quickly Douglass takes charge of proceedings, and one by one he catches up with the bravados and kills them, but not before trying (in vain) to get them to confess to murdering his wife some six mon...

Apparently Randolph Scott appeared in over 60 Westerns, but this is the first I've seen, and (spoiler alert) it's probably going to be the last. Scott plays Ben, a bounty hunter who is trying to deliver a young murderer, Billy, to Santa Cruz, despite various obstacles which he has to overcome. Firstly there's some pesky Native Americans (or to be more specific Mescalores) who are apt to pop up at any time.  For a film made in 1959 the portrayal of Native Americans here is not very progressive.   Then there's a guy called Sam.  Although they are now on opposite sides of the law, he and Ben know each other from way back and there's a mutual respect bordering on friendship between them.   Sam and his sidekick Whit (James Coburn in his debut performance) are tagging along because Sam would desperately like to be the one to bring Billy into Santa Cruz.  This would be n ot so much for the money as for the amnesty he would receive that would wipe out his outl...

I have a strong childhood memory of reading a picture-book version of this Alexandre Dumas story, maybe in the 'Look and Learn' magazine. Given that this latest film adaptation runs to nearly 3 hours yet is described as a streamlined version, what I read as a boy must have been very abridged.  That it has stayed with me all these years is a testament to the power of what is the ultimate revenge narrative. An i nnocent man is framed for a crime he didn't commit, is left to rot for the rest of his life in an island prison, manages to escape and acquire a massive fortune, enters high society under a new identity, and then is able to avenge himself on the three men who were responsible for his incarceration.  It's a terrific tale, and this sumptuous adaptation does it full justice, provided you overlook that the writers have made wholesale changes to the original. Rest assured, I'm not going to even begin to try to enumerate all the changes, most of which I am sure are...

James Stewart is Will Lockhart, the man from Laramie, in this 1955 Western,  He arrives in a town called Coronado with supplies he is delivering, and so  as to avoid returning home empty-handed he and his men are loading salt from some salt flats when they are interrupted by a local hothead and a load of cowhands.   The hothead, Dave, summarily has Lockhart's wagons burned and his mules shot dead. So OK this is now going to be a film about how Lockhart gets revenge, right?  Well, not exactly.   It is indeed a film about revenge but not in the way it first appears.  The real reason why Lockhart has come to Coronado is to find the person who sold rifles to the local Apaches, because those rifles were used to massacre a cavalry troupe, including Lockhart's brother. This does rather beg the question of why Lockhart needed to come to the town with supplies, and then seemed to be planning to go straight back to Laramie, but best not to worry, the plot i...

I'm well into the swords-and-sandals genre so I had a good time with this sequel. And why not? It's got a lot of spectacle and a great cast - Paul Mescal! Denzel Washington! Pedro Pascal!  Matt Lucas!   But of course it doesn't have the power of the original: it  has a less clean storyline, and though he is a fine actor Paul Mescal is no Russell Crowe. We start off following a very similar path to the original: Hanno (Mescal) is captured by the Romans and wants revenge for the death of his wife, the target of his wrath being General Acasius (Pascal).  He is bought by Macrinus (Washington) who among other things trains slaves to be gladiators. From this point on the story arc thankfully diverges from the original if  not always in a good way.  Spoiler alert: Hanno is really (would you believe it?) Lucius, the son from the first film of Crowe's character, Maximus, and Lucilla, sent away by his mother to protect him from assassins.  Lucius is angry about ...

Of all the great Preston Sturges film comedies this is my favourite by some distance.  It's simply perfect, and any list of great romantic comedies without this at or at least near the top is not worth your time.  Henry Fonda is perfectly cast as the unworldly and bookish Charles Pike, son of a wealthy beer baron, ably supported by a stellar supporting cast.   We have Charles Coburn as the conman "Colonel" Harrington, Melville Cooper as his aide Gerald, William Demarest as Charles' minder Muggsy, Eugene Pallette as Charles' father, and best of all Eric Blore as a conman pretending to b e an English aristocrat, Sir Alfred McGlennan Keith. But the person who lifts this film to classic status is the great Barbara Stanwyck as Jean Harrington, daughter of the Colonel.   She is totally convincing as the con artist who can twist Charles around her little finger whilst also falling for him, as he does for her.   The scene when he rejects her after discove...

My bible for any film of this era ("The Sunday Times Guide to Movies on TV") is surprisingly lukewarm about this 1953 crime film directed by Fritz Lang, not liking the 'gratuitous violence'. Well, a lot of blood has flowed since that review was written.  Sure, there are a couple of moments here of shocking violence, but they are integral to the story. And what a taut, well-plotted story it is, more than capably performed and directed, with not a moment wasted. Glenn Ford is fine as an honest homicide detective, trying to do his job despite the corruption all around him.  He eventually triumphs, but at a huge personal cost, and only with the help of the splendid Gloria Grahame, as a gangster's moll.   The gangster in question is the psychopathic Lee Marvin, having a whale of a time. Unusually for a film of this period there is some suggestion that Ford's happy relationship with his wife might extend to the bedroom,  or maybe I am reading too much into a couple ...

What an entertaining but odd Western this is, directed by the German  émigr é Fritz Lang, and starring Marlene Dietrich. The eponymous ranch is named Chuck-a-Luck, which was the original title of the film until the studio boss Howard Hughes objected - one of his better decisions.  Apparently Chuck-a-Luck is a real thing, a game using dice and a form of roulette wheel.  With the help of Frenchie (Mel Ferrer), Altar Crane (Dietrich) wins enough money at the game to set up the ranch as a refuge for outlaws, who in return give her 10% of their ill-gotten gains. Into this happy setup comes Vern (played by Arthur Kennedy) seeking revenge on the guy, Kinch, who raped and murdered his fiancée at the beginning of the film, the only problem being he doesn't know what his quarry looks like, or indeed anything about him.  Things rapidly escalate what with Vern romancing Altar in order to extract information (who responds enough to make Frenchie jealous), a bank robbery, and Kin...

The opening credits sequence of this film, a remake of the 1962 original, is terrific, combining the visual design of Saul and Elaine Bass with the music of Bernard Herrmann. Hitchcock masterpieces such as 'Vertigo' and 'Psycho' used the same collaborators, but sadly Scorsese is no Hitchcock, and for me the film goes downhill once the action begins. One has to question how committed to this remake Scorsese was, given that he only did it so that the studio would back the film he really wanted to make, 'The Last Temptation of Christ'. The basic plot is that Max (played by De Niro), is recently out of prison and seeking revenge on his lawyer, Sam, (a surprisingly svelte Nick Nolte) who failed to defend him properly.   Also in Cady's sights are Sam's wife (Jessica Lange) and teenage daughter.  Max is a violent rapist, so it's pretty obvious what form of revenge he has in mind. Apparently Scorsese liked the idea of making the family dysfunctional, so Sam ...

This 1961 Western is the only film directed by Marlon Brando.  It had a notoriously troubled production history, going way over budget after Brando, as producer and star, had the chutzpah to dispense with Stanley Kubrick as director.   Given also that the studio re-edited the 5-hour cut Brando initially produced   one might be forgiven for thinking this must be a disaster.  It certainly was a commercial flop, and heralded a decade when Brando's career went on a seemingly terminal decline. In fact what we have is an above-average Western which has a lot going for it: a very good cast, a compelling and unpredictable revenge narrative, an unusual setting (Monterey), a great score - and it is a delight for the eyes. And there is Brando of course, magnetic as always, and still just about young enough to play a brooding romantic hero. The narrative is also surprisingly coherent so whoever did the re-edit did a swell job. There are two main relationships at the heart o...

This is a memorable and original film that doesn't pull its punches,  written and directed by Emerald Fennell.   She was the show-runner for the second season of 'Killing Eve', which was precisely the point at which that show went downhill for me.  Given this, and that I am not Carey Mulligan's biggest fan, I went into this film concerned that it wouldn't live up to its positive reviews. I need not have worried. Mulligan is not an obvious choice for the role of someone consumed by righteous anger, but she is a revelation in this film. She plays Cassie, a dropout from medical school after her best friend and fellow student Nina committed suicide, having been raped at a drunken party by Al, a fellow student. Now 30, Cassie is living with her parents, and working in a café by day, whilst at night she is pursuing a bizarre one-woman campaign to make young men who think they are nice realise they are not. Her chance meeting with Ryan, who was a fellow student at medical ...