3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

1966, Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in America) -- Amazon

That's it, I'm done with the iconic trilogy. I knew I had seen this movie before, probably back in high school on VHS but I don't recall an iota of it.  

You know, I am not all that impressed by the trilogy as I thought I would be, but at the same time, I can see the immense amount of progress made between each? And if I am going to use the age-old excuse, the film making was probably incredible for its time. There are elements that impress me, but as a whole, I am hesitant in my respect. I am not going to claim admiration just because the rest of film critique feels so.

Or I am just not in the mood for it; my moods (which now come in years long swathes) do change how I feel about things I may have once adored, or at least respected more.

Anywayz.

If the first movie was about a small plot, setting two families against each other, with The Man with No Name (who always has a name) playing the focus, and the second movie having The Man with No Name (again, this time named Manco) pitted against a nemesis come ally, then the third movie expands to three main characters, the titular Good, Bad and Ugly. But, they are all Bad. 

You know, the whole Man with No Name was just a marketing scheme put on the trilogy by the distributors? Frickin' Purple Suits, man...

This movie is set during the Civil War. The Ugly is petty criminal Tuco (Eli Wallach, The Holiday), always on the run. The Bad is classic Black Hat gunfighter "Angel Eyes" (Lee Van Cleef, The Octagon) who starts as a bounty hunter but becomes more interested in chasing down some stolen Confederate gold. And the Good (debatable) is a con-artist, bounty hunter (Clint Eastwood, Magnum Force) who is running a bounty con with Tuco, wherein he captures Tuco, turns him, claims the money, but then frees Tuco just as he is about to hang. That is, until he betrays Tuco as well. Yeah, not so Good.

This is a big story, a sprawling story, with lots of extras and covering lots of geography. The opening acts are establishing the characters, the setting and the personalities involved but then kicks into full gear once Tuco and "Blondie" find out about the stolen gold. Tuco knows the graveyard in which it is hidden, Blondie knows in which grave. On their way there Tuco makes a strategic blunder and they are captured as Confederates by dusty Union soldiers.

In the prison is where Angel Eyes makes the connection and formulates a plan with Blondie's help. Tuco is dispensable but he is also a cockroach and follows the pair, as well as Angel Eyes new gang. In an abandoned town, being shelled by one side or the other, a scene more reminiscent of a WWII movie than a western, Angel Eyes and his gang have a traditional western confrontation with Tuco and Blondie, i.e. the pair walks up the middle of the road while the Bad Guys patiently wait to get shot. No matter, Angel Eyes has betrayed his own gang and escaped on his own after the gold.

Best buds again, Tuco and Blondie are once again interrupted on the route to the gold by the war, this time coming across a river crossing contested by both sides. This act is a massive set piece, trenches and cannons, and designated times of the day for both sides to rush each other on the bridge, slaughtering many, accomplishing little. The pair pretends they want to sign up and are taken before a drunken disillusioned captain who blurts out he really really wants someone to just blow the bridge up so this senseless death can end. The pair complies.

On the other side, after a wee bit more betrayal, we get the final confrontation. The graveyard is massive, and Tuco drives himself half made running from grave to grave trying to find the right one. Tuco thinks he is brilliant having conned the location out of Blondie but not quite. Angel Eyes appears, we get a proper Mexican Standoff (in Texas), and they put him in a grave. And they actually find the gold, with one last betrayal, where Tuco is forced to stand on a grave marker, his neck in a noose, while Blondie rides away with his share... just his own share. Tuco should have expected a reversal, and Blondie is The Good, and from a distance, he shoots the rope.

Ennio Morricone signing off.

Yah, not sure why it didn't grab me. I guess I just prefer my westerns stripped down. Admittedly another draw to westerns for me has always been the grandeur of the American Old West, when shot in actual America. Italy looks dusty enough and they did a good jobs building those fake old towns, but it was lacking a certain something for me. For me, that is, for I am well aware that the Spaghetti Western became such a staple that westerns following them, including video game depictions, movies and TV shows all ended up being more Italy dusty than border of Mexico dusty.

So much for my exploration of the Spaghetti Western, it might not be my thing.

An amusing side note, as I mentioned above, The Man with No Name is a marketing ploy. I guess it was popular enough that they even invented reasons to dress Eastwood in clothing familiar to the audiences, including a serape and his wool fringed vest.

Fear Street: 1994, 1978 & 1666

 2021, Leigh Janiak (Honeymoon) - Netflix

I was not all that fond of Janiak's debut with Honeymoon. While it was sufficiently creepy and had loads of creature-feature ick factor, I found the reactions of the characters to be questionable, even in the context of horrible creatures creeping around in a lady's hoohaa. Euphemism intended to lessen creep factor.

This series of three movies positioned, as adaptations of popular RL Stine books, for the teen / post-teen age group, is so SO much better. Janiak gives us a trilogy of classic slasher killer supernatural possession witch curse revenge tropes, all elements at the heart of the classic horror movies of the 80s and 90s. But these movies are not just an homage, but quite the stand-out on their own. And she raises the bar, adding sexual politics and the turnover of often misogynistic tropes associated in horror movies. If the black friend always dies third, the women (well, all but the virgin) always get the sharp end of the kitchen knife. And don't you dare be sexually active.

Part One - 1994.

Maya Hawke works at the mall, just like she did in Stranger Things. Late night, as she is closing, the kid in the store across the mezzanine cracks and becomes a slasher killer in a Halloween mask. As he kills Maya, he is shot dead by the town Sherriff. 

We learn of Sunnydale vs Shadyside, side-by-side towns more just neighborhoods of each other, one affluent & successful, the other run down & under a curse -- they have more than their fair share of spree killings. It is a horror movie town. We meet Deena and Sam, two girls who had a secret relationship, until Sam moved to Sunnydale and strived to reinvent herself, ala boys. During an incident after a school sports game, where Deena confronted Sam, there is a car accident and an injured Sam bleeds into some strange red moss. She is instantly beset by visions of the past, horrible visions. And something has been stirred.

This raises the dead, quite literally, to come after the kids. Its a solid first act movie, as the kids expand on the curse Shadyside is under, learning more about the accused witch Sarah Feir, who was long ago hung from a tree (which now sits at the centre of the mall) and is blamed for the regular spree killings for 300 years. The kids have to learn more, much from weird kid brother Josh, and find away to do away with the curse before it, and the resurrected past spree killers, kill them all.

Unexpectedly, the kids have depth. Unexpectedly, the kids we actually like don't all survive. Deena may end up saving Sam, but at the cost of two of her oldest friends, in incredibly gruesome deaths. This is not a "you cannot kill kids" movie. This movie is for kids, so the kids die, and not just the horrible or slutty ones. Not that this movie would slut shame anyone. Sunnydale does enough of that for everyone. 

The movie ends as Sheriff Goode, who knows more than he lets on, blames the post Maya Hawke killings on the two friends who died last -- they were known Shadysider drug peddlers. And while traumatized by the heaping of insult upon injury, Deena, Josh and Sam have survived. It's over. Until they get a call, a call from the lone survivor of the last spree killing in 1978, who tells them, you cannot get rid of the Feir Witch so easily.

Part Two - 1978

I love how they slipped into this second movie so easily and so quickly. The lone survivor of the 1978 summer camp killings tells them the tale of that summer, and her experience with the curse from the evil witch Feir. She tells how she has lived in fear of Sarah Feir returning and with the guilt of not having saved her sister. And we slip into a movie-long flashback.

This is a summer camp without "adults". All the camp counselors are teenagers, raunchy, horny, awkward and bullying teenagers, from Shadyside and from Sunnydale. The tale begins as a number of Sunnydalers attempt to hang Ziggy, a Shadysider whom they just don't like. In case we didn't catch that Netflix wants this series to be the new Stranger Things, Ziggy is played by Sadie Sink from season 2 of the aforementioned series. Ziggy is at odds with her own sister, who is playing at being a Sunnydaler, wearing a polo shirt, her only polo shirt, and dating a tall, handsome boy from Sunnydale. Ziggy is weird and angry but catches the eye of a younger Nick Goode, who will grow up to be the Sherriff from the previous movie.

Its a summer camp, so we need to have a slasher. But we are learning of the curse, and the slasher in a burlap sack is Ziggy's sister's BF Tommy, possessed by Sarah Feir's curse when the kids blunder into a secret sanctum below the summer camp. Tommy is now an axe weirding murderer who picks off the campers and counselors in droves. Again, this is a kids movie for horror loving kids, so we are only mildly surprised when youngsters are chopped to bits by the axe wielding possessed murderer. But Ziggy and friends are doing their best to understand Sarah Feir's curse, and defeat it. Alas....

In the end, they defeat Sarah's curse (for this round), allow the majority of campers to escape (people make unexpected good decisions to not hide in the wood shed filled with rusty blades) but with one twist. We have assumed all along that because it was Ziggy who was cursed, the one who bled on the hand-bones of Sarah Feir, that she was going to die and her sister was telling the tale. But no, in the final scenes, Ziggy is stabbed in the gut while her sister is horribly bludgeoned to death before her eyes. Ziggy dies, briefly, but is revived by the young Nick Goode. She survives, the curse is foiled. But she has lost everything.

Back to the future, nay 1994. The kids, having heard the tale of Sarah Feir's hand, and her horrible treatment at the hands of the villagers in 1666, believe they can assuage her wrath by returning her hand to her bones. The kids in 1978 thought the bones had been under the tree where Sarah was hung, but do not find them. But they do bury the hand there. Deena, in 1994 knows the hanging tree now stands at the centre of the Shadyside Mall (greaaaat choice there) and also knows the bones are under that strange moss in the woods, where Sam bled into. Hand meet bones, curse lifted? Again, not quite.

Part 3 - 1666

This is the most clever of the trilogy but also the most ambitious, as Deena is now seeing through the eyes of Sarah Feir, waaay back in 1666. She is not possessing her body, but all the cast of the other two movies get to play 1666 counterparts, including the recreation of the love affair between Sarah Feir and Hannah Miller (as seen as Sam). Sarah was not a witch, but a rebellious young lesbian, doing her best to rebuff the horny pioneer boys and make connection with Hannah. Nice rework of the classic witch accusation, as well as a rebuff of the classic tale that has built both Sunnydale and Shadyside.

But deviltry IS at work in Union, the community that laid the ground for Shadyside and Sunnydale. Something IS causing a rot to form at the centre of this community. It doesn't take long for the sinful ties between Hannah and Sarah to form the works of a witchy accusation, and we the viewers join in this suspicion when Sarah does in fact find a witch's den deep in the woods, along with the evil spell book that played a part in 1978. When Sarah says No to the wrong young man, she is instantly lied about, making a strong tie between the actual witchcraft at work, and her already known sinful ways. Alas, Hannah also gets accused along with her, but Sarah throws all caution to the wind to save Hannah, whom she loves dearly.

We have seen Deena in two movies doing everything in her power to prove her love to Sam, and now the ties between Deena and Sara, Sam and Hannah are so clear. Sarah is not the force of the evil inside Shadyside, but another fucking victim. And when we find out who the actual "witch" is, and lo it IS actual deviltry, an actual pact with not just Satan but many devils, we are kind of not surprised. Nor are we surprised by its connections to the fates of the two future towns. 

The Goode Family, that which spawns Sherriff Nick Goode we have met in the previous two movies, have been manipulating the souls of the residents since 1666. By forcing someone to be possessed by the evil they have summoned, the blood and souls are sacrificed for the betterment of some of Union, that which eventually becomes Sunnydale. And those doomed to live in Shadyside, they will always be the unwitting sacrifices. Sarah Feir was not a witch. Sarah Feir did not cut off her hand to show her dedication to Satan. She discovered Solomon Goode's evil pact, and he cut off her hand. But can an already reviled young woman convince her brethren of her innocence in defiance of a Goode man of the village? No. 

Back to the future, nay 1994. Deena is once again herself, but still armed with the truth from 1666. And now they have to defeat Goode, good Sheriff Goode, and his minions, the evil souls of evil possessed killers from so many ages past, summoned to do his killing once more. In a classic teen movie confrontation scene, that once again tells us viewers that Netflix wants this to be the next Stranger Things, the kids gather together in the Shadyside Mall, with a plan in hand to defeat the evil.

And they do. And all is better with the world. Finally, for real this time. But so many are lost. So so SO many.

This series was epic, in its telling, and in its scope. It not only drew upon all the tropes of the 70s to 90s horror movies we grew up on, but also deconstructed them in so many ways. It created heroes, villains, gave us tragedy that had weight and a redemption that was cheer worthy.

P.S. I am looking at YOU, The Tomorrow War.

The Dark Knight Rises

2012, Christopher Nolan - in theatre

I can see why some fanboys are reacting negatively towards The Dark Knight Rises.  After all, here's a Batman film where Batman is in costume for maybe 30 minutes of a 165 minute feature (and that's a very liberal estimate).  The movie, all told, is more of a movie about Gotham City than it is Batman, and unlike The Dark Knight, which is largely upheld as the Godfather 2 of superhero movies, it doesn't stand alone as a great film.

However, it is, I would concede, a good final act to the overall Christopher Nolan franchise, truly bringing various story and character elements introduced in Batman Begins and its sequel to a head in a massive spectacle that at once seems immense and quite contained.  It's a bloated film, not unlike the last Batman film to feature Bane as a protagonist, yet unlike Schumacher's horrifically neon-soaked, fetishistic, camp-throwback Batman and Robin, all the cogs are working together to form the singular timepiece instead of against each other to form a nightmarish clockwork fun-time monster.

The Dark Night Rises is epic, a rare third feature that not only justifies its existence with quality storytelling and production values, but actually makes itself essential to the development and understanding of the characters over the entire trilogy and bringing closure to the series as a whole.  Where many trilogies have little in the way of characterization to offer an audience by the time it reaches it's epilogue, this film actually tells you more about the quality of character of these heroes, and their increasing shades of grey.  While there weren't exactly plot threads dangling from Batman Begins nor The Dark Night, at least none that detracted from the enjoyment of either film, Nolan's latest mythologizes both films and steeps itself in their minutiae.  8 years following the end of the last film (in timeline, not real-time), Bruce Wayne is still reeling from the death of his boyhood love Rachael Dawes and has gone into hiding, and the Wayne Foundation has suffered an incredible blow after Bruce shut down a revolutionary energy project after learning it had the potential to be weaponized. Batman remains in hiding following the death of Two-Face, and the city has prospered in his absence with the enactment of the Harvey Dent Act permitting the police unprecedented powers to incarcerate criminals and tear down organized crime.  But an international masked terrorist named Bane has set his sights on Gotham, drawing Batman out and crossing paths with a cat burglar named Selina Kyle.

And it just gets more complex from there, as lies are exposed, prisons are torn wide open, Batman's secret identity is discovered, the city is cut off from the rest of the world and threatened with annihilation, and Batman is broken by Bane.

Batman fans, at least those that were around in the 1990's, should be familiar with some of these things.  Obviously with the inclusion of Bane, the "Knightfall" storyline was one inspiration, and with the city cordoned off by military action, others should recognize the "Cataclysm/No Man's Land" influence.  And naturally, with a beaten, bruised, and retired Batman, there's obviously a few nods to "The Dark Knight Returns" in there, for good measure.  As well, there's some general Batman mythos being played with, especially the "League of Assassins" (as it's known in the comics, "League of Shadows" in the film series), the secret society led by Ra's Al Ghul in the first film, and now Bane here.  (I think everyone was wondering if Ra's was alive, or if Nolan would employ the Lazarus pit at all, and there's more than a couple of fake-outs within the film in this regard).

Then there's John Blake, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who, it becomes quite apparent is the Nolan-verse version of Robin.  There's a lot of focus on Blake, a GCPD officer who becomes Gordon's right hand man, and is naturally set up as either a sidekick or replacement for Batman.  He's an original creation, but in this regard, Nolan (with his brother Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer) form him out of bits and pieces of not just Robin's past, including Jason Todd and Tim Drake, but also Terry McGinness, Bruce's replacement in the Batman Beyond cartoon.

I quite liked, to my own surprise, Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle.  She had a wonderfully dual carefulness and carefree attitude that played well against and among the seriousness of Bruce Wayne and the crumbling Gotham.  There was a delightful amount of chemistry between Kyle and Wayne, both in costume and out, rivaling any other pairing previous.  The only downside was there wasn't enough of it within the film.  The demands of the larger story, kept the pair apart for much of the running time, and the film, and series as a whole would have benefited from much more of their rooftop shenanigans.

I suppose that's where the true disappointment would come in for a Batman fan.  After getting a really kick-ass, full-on Batman experience with the Dark Knight, and with Bruce's return to the costume here, one gets a real sense of the comic book Batman come to life, as if we're one step away from him swinging from the rooftops.  Had there been two other, more adventurous Batman films between The Dark Knight and this finale, I think the fanboys would be placated in a way they're just not going to feel here.  One does have to wonder how if Heath Ledger were able to return as the Joker just how different would be.  There's was the Batman: Gotham Knight animated anthology that padded out the Nolan-verse slightly between the first two films.  I've heard no rumours of a follow-up but a second would be welcome, or even a "sequel" with more of John Blake.

I do say though that I did enjoy The Dark Knight Rises overall, fully admitting there's some clunky dialogue throughout that made me actually wince a few times, and also not discounting its quasi-failure as a proper "Batman" film.  That said, it tweaks the mythos of Batman quite nicely, so much so that it compensates for its moderate shortcomings. 

I will see it again.  I will own it on some form of digital media.  I will watch it in a marathon with its forebears.  I may grow to like it more, I may come to like it less.  In such a way, upon repeated watchings, the film and the series' true qualities will, ahem, rise.