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Bite the Bullet (1975)
A fun, and sweet, western...one of the best
I have been going to westerns since the early 1950s. For years my father and I went almost once/week.
I loved them as a child, and still do. I have a collection of several hundred western films.
There are several top-notch ones. Bite the Bullet is one of them--a neglected gem.
The plot is simple--a horse race.
But it is the stories within the plot that make this one special. The main story is Gene Hackman, who rides like he was born on a horse. Over the course of the film one learns his history, and you grow to like him tremendously.
There are other stories, some of which are better than others. One is played by Ben Johnson who is great in every western film he was ever in (and who was an honest to goodness cowboy before he got into acting).
The men's love for their horses is another story. A beautiful part of the film.
The scenery? As good as any of the best western.s
The music? As good as any of the best westerns.
The ending? As good as any of the best westerns.
The Great Gatsby (1974)
Simply amazing how good it is
What is it? A love story? A mystery? A way of showing the shallowness of rich people? A tragedy? A beautiful production?
Answer: All of the above.
The story, of course,is first rate. And the acting is spot on. Redford plays a man who is haunted by his past--a past where he was never "good enough" to win the love of his life. Where he wasn't "rich enough" to win his love. And where his one true love dumped him for that reason.
Mia Farrow has never been better as the spoiled, shallow rich girl who has no capacity for any pleasure except spending her husband's money. Beneath her beautiful surface there is.......nothing.
You enter a world that almost none of us have experienced...a world of rich, self-centered, people who have been handed money and think they are special as a result.
Gatsby's obsession with his lost love drives the entire film.
For all of the laughing and dancing in the film, nobody seems happy except the narrator. Played wonderfully by Sam Waterston. He and Gatsby's father are the only two people you would really like to get to know.
To appreciate this film, you really have to look hard at the characters. The acting is superb.
Two Rode Together (1961)
A deep film, hard to see because of dumb humor
This film is about two men who travel to a Comanche village to trade for white settlers who were abducted by the Comanches.
The Comanches were the ultimate cavalry. They took to horses as no other tribe did. All other tribes were essentially mounted infantry. They would ride their horses to battle, and then dismount to fight.
Although even before Europeans arrived, American tribes were in constant warfare with each other, took slaves, some engaged in cannibalism and torture, the Comanches were the supreme warriors because of their horsemanship.
So taking of captives and raising them as Comanches (those that weren't killed) is historically accurate.
Ford and Wayne explored this in their greatest collaboration, The Searchers, and it is continued in this film.
But it has a deeper and darker aspect. In The Searchers, Ford was the first filmmaker to show the racism and vengeance of white settlers. In Two Rode Together, he showed this in even uglier terms. And the irony--many captives did not want to return because they knew they would never been accepted by their families and other white settlers. Talk about harsh.
One leaves the film wondering who were civilized and who were not, as both the Comanches and white settlers seemed the same.
Now, because Ford was the only film director willing to show the real brutality of the frontier, he apparently decided he needed to "soften" his films with humor. He did that some in The Searchers (turned out badly) and a lot in this film (turned out really badly).
I don't know if audiences in 1961 would have accepted this film without the dumb humor....the ugliness displayed by all sides would not have been accepted by audiences without it.
But it is a fine film. Ignore the stupid humor, and see this film for what it was---Ford's attempt to show the west for what it really was: brutal and violent.
Brigadoon (1954)
Fell in love with it as an 8-year-old in 1956
That is when I first saw it. I was too young to appreciate Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse at that age, of course, but not too young to fall in love with the film.
All of these years later: I am still in love with it. How can you not be?
The difference, though, is that at an older age I can fully appreciate the extraordinary talents of Kelly and Charisse.
There will never be another Gene Kelly. His talent cannot be duplicated. I have seen all of his films. And never tire of them.
Brigadoon is an unbelievably sweet love story of how love can create miracles. If you have ever been in love, you will know this to be true. I know because I am in love, and have been in love forever. My wife and I live in our own Brigadoon.
And, like Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, we dance.
The Star Wagon (1966)
A HIDDEN, AND OLD GEM
I remember watching this in 1966, when it was on TV.
I finally got a DVD copy of it in 2022, so watched it again.....66 years later.
It was worth the wait. Sweet, moving, and profound. Dustin Hoffman got 3rd to 4th billing, which was correct for this, but he and Orson Bean really made the film.
This is the way TV used to be. We miss it.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
You can't believe the improbable
Famous line about movies: You can believe the impossible, but not the improbable.
This film is so trite as almost be laughable.
It is never explained why if people in the future can transport people from the present to fight the aliens that they didn't also transport some major weapons and skilled people to shoot them out of the sky as they were arriving. Too improbable to be believable.
Nor is it explained why the people they transport to the future are no more skilled in combat than the average college professor (I know because I once was one). Their "training" is laughable. Why not train people on earth for a decade and THEN transport them back in time.
And they can't kill the suckers unless they hit them in just the right place. So......get them guns that work better. Lots and lots of firing of guns, but rarely are any aliens killed. And they never seem to need to reload. What?
Somebody has invented time travel, but this is the best they can do to invent something to kill aliens? Impossible to believe.
Giving it two stars was generous.