David Vining's Blog, page 145

Up the River

The first feature film appearance of both Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy! In a movie directed by John Ford! How is this not a huge thing?! Because it’s kind of a middling little comedy of dubious construction. Far from worthless with enough little laughs here and there to get an audience through to the end, it’s just kind of a minor little work from everyone involved. I’ve seen far worse.

Up the River is a prison comedy, of sorts. It starts in a prison with a new batch of detainees com...

Sergio Leone: The Definitive Ranking

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I grapple with Sergio Leone’s legacy.

On the one hand he had obvious talent, but on another I feel like most of his films were missing some necessary element that, if present, could have shot the film into true greatness. I think he hit that mark once, and yet I know I’m in a certain level of minority on this. Four of his seven films are on the IMDb’s Top 250 list, indicating that a whole lot of people really love his films a whole lot.

There’s definitely entertainment value to be had ...

Once Upon a Time in America

Taking over a decade to make after his previous film, Leone adapted The Hoods by Harry Grey into a six-hour film that he needed to cut down to four. The luxurious running time allows Leone to explore moments in similar ways as he had always done, but there’s a greater focus on storytelling, character, and an overall sense of melancholy at times long gone that gives Once Upon a Time in America a maturity, confidence, and depth of feeling that Leone never matched in his career.

It’s the sto...

The Last Duel

A $100 million epic that probably should have been made for significantly less considering the subject matter, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is a hard-edged Rashomon-like look at a rape in Medieval France and the ensuing legal duel, sanctioned by Charles VI, the last in France’s history. I’m going to be honest, I’m not surprised that it’s bombing horribly at the box office. This isn’t the sort of thing people want to buy popcorn to and go to the theaters to watch. It’s too heavy.

The film ...

A Fistful of Dynamite (Duck, You Sucker)

I wouldn’t really call this a Western, though everyone labels it as such. It’s too modern (set in the 1910s during the Mexican Revolution) and too focused on an actual revolution to fit. I’m not one for genre games, but it just helps settle me when I’m able to firmly state that Once Upon a Time in the West was Leone’s last Western. Duck, You Sucker isn’t a western.

Anyway, put into production very quickly after his previous film, Leone developed a story of an Irish revolutionary finding a...

Once Upon a Time in the West

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly felt like the work of someone in over his head, unsure of how to spend the massive amount of money for the large production. Once Upon a Time in the West feels like the work of a mature filmmaker with a fuller understanding of how to use a large budget. The interesting thing to me in the credits is the story by credits for Sergio Leone that he shares with Dario Argento and, in particular, Bernardo Bertolucci. It’s documented that Bertolucci was responsible for...

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

This is one of those movies that you simply don’t dislike. Everyone who loves movies loves Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Well, my opinion of the film has honestly just degraded with time to the point where I throw this in, ready to rediscover the love for the film I saw in my youth, and instead I discover a bloated, aimless mess of a film.

I swear I’m not trolling. I genuinely think this.

I felt like For a Few Dollars More was a nearly ideal meld of style and somewhat...

For a Few Dollars More

The success of A Fistful of Dollars took everyone by surprise, and Sergio Leone, in order to claim his pending fee from his producers, agreed to make a follow up with Clint Eastwood returning. Writing very quickly, Leone and Luciano Vincenzoni banged out a new script and headed off into production. What they produced was much more naturally in line with Leone’s style, creating a more cohesive overall film that has a more appropriate amount of plotting to fit.

It is the story of two bounty...

A Fistful of Dollars

This is a film of great moments. I’m not entirely convinced that they coalesce into an actually good film, but I’m consistently entertained every time I watch it. And that, really, is all the movie really endeavors for, entertainment. Plagiarizing Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (to the point where Kurosawa all but owned the film in Japan after his legal challenge) and bringing over the young actor Clint Eastwood, known only for his role in the television show Rawhide, Sergio Leone took the studio ...

Born Reckless

This is the dangerous part of not worrying too much about the pieces that feed into your ending. Yes, everything in the ending was set up, but the first bulk of the film is so overstuffed, unfocused, and downright dull that the fact that the ending is a fulfillment of the rest of the story ends up not meaning all that much. The story was simply not that interesting to begin with. This is an increasingly rare misstep in Ford’s burgeoning career.

Born Reckless tells the story of Louis Beret...