From big-budget blowouts to small scrappy indies, 1999 was a great year for movies. Just look at the hall of fame from that pre-millennial year: American Beauty, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich, The Sixth Sense, Boys Don't Cry, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, Fight Club, The Blair Witch Project, The Insider, Magnolia, Election and The Iron Giant. One movie from the class of 1999, though -- David O. Russell's Three Kings -- stands out as a work of lasting power not just because it looked to the Gulf War with an amoral eye, but also because you can see how prescient the movie is.

In fact, in light of all that's happened since Three Kings came out, you could almost say that it predicted the future.

Continue reading "Pick of the Week - Three Kings Shows Its Age in a Good Way" »

Screen cowboys are generally tight-lipped men of action -- think the stoic resolve of Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper. But with the rise of Method acting in the '60s, the strong and silent archetype gave way to tortured gunslingers with conflicted motivations. Yes, the technique that would later induce Robert De Niro to pack on 50 pounds for Raging Bull and Daniel Day Lewis to restrict himself to a wheelchair for My Left Foot led to a new era of psychological realism in Westerns. Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson were just two actors who led the way as they mounted horses, strapped on spurs, and roamed the American West... despondently. Who did it best, you ask?

Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, The Missouri Breaks (1976)
There are plenty of stories floating around about this movie's production, most of which center around Brando catching grasshoppers in his off hours and eating a live frog. Not kidding! But a lot of the quirkiness is there onscreen: Brando speaking in an over-the-top Irish accent, and wearing a dress, to start. They all add an interesting flavor to this oddball Western, in which Nicholson, compared to his idol and later work, looks positively restrained.

Dennis Hopper, Mad Dog Morgan (1976)
Hopper had early supporting roles in True Grit and Giant, but his first big starring role in a Western came much later as Mad Dog Morgan. In this Western, Hopper delivers a manic, scenery-chewing performance that befits the name of his character. After being thrown in prison, tortured, branded, and much worse, Hopper sets out for vengeance in this Australian bushranger movie that turned out to be eerily reflective of the tumult going on in the actor's personal life.

Continue reading "Dustin Hoffman in Spurs? Method Actors Show the Old West Who's Boss" »

Thinking of catching a movie this weekend? Right now, your choices are either big, unbending action (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) or star-free slapstick comedies (The Hangover, Year One). Whatever happened to the idea of a little jump with the jokes, a little adrenaline under the amusement, some starpower driving the snappy comedy? Like a lemonade with a hefty shot of vodka in it, The Whole Nine Yards is a perfect summertime refresher, with light, bright laughs and a wickedly adult mean streak, and it succeeds in no small part thanks to Bruce Willis, one of the more underrated actors of his generation. 

Think about it. Of all the carefully calculated tug-of-war calibrations and balancing acts a director can face -- dialogue versus visuals, romance versus sex, shock versus terror, action versus suspense -- the most challenging one is murder versus mirth. The old "It's all fun and games..." adage applies to the big screen as well: There's just something about seeing people get killed that makes the laughs languish in the back of your throat. So why do Willis' on-screen killing sprees leave the air ringing with laughter? It can't all be attributed to our happy memories of Die Hard's gloriously wisecracking John McClane.

Continue reading "When Is Murder Funny? When Bruce Willis Is Doing the Killing" »

Thrills abound in the 1989 mini-series based on Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer-winning book Lonesome Dove. (Seriously!) Beyond white-bearded Tommy Lee Jones' strong-and-silent Woodrow F. Call and Robert Duvall's boozing charmer Gus McCrae, there's also Anjelica Huston as the One Who Got Away, a young Diane Lane looking particularly comely in period garb as the town prostitute, and Rick Schroeder as an orphan named Newt. And that's the just beginning, as a few quick clicks through AMC's Lonesome Dove photo gallery will reveal. Why not break out that pastel bandana and have yourself a look?

Click here for a full schedule of Lonesome Dove showings on AMC.

Film careers often end with a whimper. (Just look at the recent spate of action cheapies from a bloated Steven Seagal: 2008 marked five movies from the "actor, musician, martial artist, and philanthropist," and you haven't seen any of them.) But that isn't to say there aren't interesting, fitting, and unexpected roles to be found in many actors' latter-day careers -- especially those who often called the Wild West their home.

Kirk Douglas in The Man from Snowy River (1983)
Kirk Douglas has his Eddie Murphy moment in this Australian Western, taking on dual roles as the eccentric old coot Spur and the evil rancher Harrison. While the movie showed that the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral star (then in his 60s) still had plenty of lust for life, critic Roger Ebert wasn't unduly impressed. "[Douglas] has a tendency to overact, and you're asking for trouble if you give him a beard, a pickax, a whiskey bottle and a wooden leg." Perhaps, but while the critics may have harped, The Man from Snowy River was popular enough with audiences to generate that rarest of trifectas: A sequel, a TV series, and an "Arena Spectacular."

Continue reading "Eastwood and The Duke Don't Just Know How to Shoot, They're Also Great at Goodbyes" »

Nothing against big Hollywood blockbusters, but sometimes you want to see something a little less...polite. Well, fear not! If you've been searching for a source to satisfy all of your sleazy, off-color, delightfully low-budget needs, AMCtv.com is here to help. There's a whole slew of new movies to AMCtv.com's B-Movie Classics (BMC). Among the new additions?

Go for trashy high camp with the heist flick Dog Eat Dog, starring Jayne Mansfield, Isa Miranda, and Cameron Mitchell. Or indulge your taste for high-atmospheric noir with Frank Wisbar's Wet Asphalt, in which a pair of bumbling journalists fake a story about a German soldier emerging from a bunker many years after the end of World War II. Or dive into the scifi oddity Crawling Eye, in which giant disembodied eyes invade a sleepy mountain resort.

Enjoy!

When people think of Civil War movies, Glory and Gone With the Wind usually come to mind. Both are classic movies, for sure, but Westerns have also focused their fair share of attention on the conflict -- albeit in somewhat subtler ways. (Well, subtle for the genre, anyway!) Most Westerns tend to be set in the elegiac post-Civil War period, full of broken souls moving Westward for a new lease on life, but not a few frontier dramas planted themselves in the midst of the bloody conflict between the States. With brother battling against brother, there were opportunities aplenty to mine the tense period for drama and moral ambiguity. Who doesn't love a little drama and moral ambiguity?

Dances With Wolves (1990)
It's easy to forgot that this idyllic Best Picture winner took place in the middle of the Civil War -- more memorable are Wolves' lush natural landscapes, its moving story of cultural understanding, and Kevin Costner sinking his teeth into gelatinous buffalo liver. (Nasty.) But of course the war's what propelled it all into motion, as seen in the film's prologue in which Union officer Lt. Dunbar (Costner) makes a suicidal Hail Mary on the battlefield, for which he's rewarded with a post at the dilapidated Fort Sedgwick where the Native American-White Man lovefest begins.

Continue reading "Git Along Now, Soldier - Westerns Tackle the Civil War" »

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With the summer movie season in full swing, sequels seem to be coming as fast and furious as, well, sequels to The Fast and the Furious. (Sorry.) From Terminator Salvation to Crank: High Voltage it seems like nearly every movie out these days is either X Part X or an aspiring franchise. Of course, the latest deluge of cinematic postscripts doesn't mean that the sequel trend started yesterday. Even the Western, that traditionalist haven, has spawned its share of sequels. Sure, most of them would have been better kept in the corral, but a few of them equaled or even improved on the original. So mosey on up, and get a gander at these Western sequels, which range from wild misfires to unexpected bulls-eyes.

Return of the Seven
Except it's actually only the Return of the Yul -- Brynner being the only original cast member to saddle up for this pedestrian retread of the The Magnificent Seven. While Julian Mateos is a reasonable substitution in the role of Chico, Robert Fuller doesn't exactly match Steve McQueen for charisma. To avoid being accused of false advertising, the pair recruit four more gunfighters to once again defend imperiled farmers. Though a case of sequel-lacking-its-original-cast is usually fatal, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, the third film in the series, fared slightly better without Brynner at all. Nevertheless, Return can lay claim to a great score provided by Elmer Bernstein, who earned an Oscar nomination for his troubles.

Young Guns II
With most of its original lineup of baby-faced Brat Packers returning, casting difficulties didn't hobble Young Guns II. And with pseudo-history providing the storyline -- the final act of Billy the Kid (Emilio Estevez) -- it had a natural place to go. Unfortunately, the sequel's biggest claim to fame was its double-platinum soundtrack, featuring Jon Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory," a faux-country power-ballad whose twanging Jew's harps eventually give way to Bon Jovi's overwrought vocals. Oscar voters, being shrewd judges of musical quality, nominated it for an Academy Award.

Continue reading "Trailheads Revisited - Westerns Go for Sequel Gold" »

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