Sam Peckinpah always knows how to make you feel like you're in the dirt. His fin de sicle of the West, The Wild Bunch offered up a bloody climax and a clinic in cross cutting shootouts. Peckinpah's greatest strength was his this type editing combined with his use of slow motion.
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was reviled upon its release. "A graceless, dire vision of cheap humanity." Roger Ebert offered one of the few praiseworthy review going out of his way to proclaim Peckinpah was "making movies flat out, giving us a desperate character he clearly loves, and asking us to somehow see past the horror and the blood to the sad poem he's trying to write about the human condition."
It many ways, it's a film that says as much about the 70's as any other of Peckinpah's work of that era. The corporatism, corruption and the death of the individual's ability to be left alone. Warren Oates plays Benny, a down on his luck piano player who accepts a bounty to bring back the head of one Alfredo Garcia. Taking his head across Mexico and becoming increasingly insane along the way. In many ways, the movie is a road trip as a fever dream. We see the stops of Mexico along way and the humanity. Upon first seeing The Wild Bunch, the most striking image was a bunch of kids feed a scorpion to an army of ants. The kind of imagery littered throughout Alfredo Garcia.
Another flourish is that the movie gives a character actor in Warren Oates, the lead role. There's certain character actors who always choose to hang back. Thus their name. Only a handful are actually able to break out and carry a film. Phil Hoffman being one of the more contemporary examples.
Blood, sand, tequila and gunpowder are the types of smells you get when you watch this movie. I'm sure Sam wouldn't have had it any other way.
A+
Pairs well with: No Country For Old Men
THE HATEFUL EIGHT (EXTENDED VERSION) (2015)
The directors cut can be exploited for financial gain and has been many a time. A re-release in the theater promising 15 extra minutes or that DVD Director's Cut with an extra scene promising Unrated, juicy bits too hot for theaters. Not here.
Like the best Directors cuts (Aliens, Alien 3 and most recently Doctor Sleep), Tarantino's 8th film now moves to a new rhythm. Clocking in at 180 minutes, the canvas for his confined paranoid pot boiler is as ambitious as an Altman epic. With just 4 chapters instead of 8, the transitions we are so use to are somehow improved with this new cut.
Characters who rarely interacted before now do. Take for instance Chris Mannix and Joe Gage. Their dynamics are strengthened through an exchange early on in Minnie's Haberdashery. Joe Gage's character is given added depth and substantive menace with new scenes. Bob the Mexican is shown to be even chummier. The theatrical presented the film as Major Marquis Warren's story. The Extended Cut turns it into an ensemble film. A+
CRAZY MAMA (1975)
Imagine if American Graffiti crossed paths with Bonnie Clyde. Imagine if that meeting was directed by Jonathan Demme. The man whose manic energy in films like Something Wild is unmatched. Crazy Mama takes the sexual subversion of Something Wild and injects a crime plot into it.
Now I must stress that with Demme, plot is loose. Hanging out with the characters is the name of this game. All set to a wall to wall soundtrack of golden oldies. You see why a director like Paul Thomas Anderson gravitated toward this director so much. Demme's look at cadre of characters without an ounce of judgment the same way PT looked the strange little family of Boogie Nights.
The one thing I've seen in every review of Boogie Nights is how much it feels like Scorsese. The influences are definitely there- the rise and fall structure in particular- yet the beating heart of it involves family dynamics. His Demme influence is every bit a part of this as his influence from Scorsese. And if there ever was one to ask for proof of this, I'd show them Crazy Mama. B+
THE LADY IN RED (1979)
Movies about Dillinger end up one way: Dillinger shot to death in an alley. Michael Mann's Public Enemies being the most recent of the bunch. The script for The Lady In Red John Sayles poses a what if scenario: what if instead of following Dillinger the whole time, we followed the women who wore red. The women who signaled to police that it was Dillinger coming out of the Biograph on July 22, 1934. What if her meet up and eventual witnessing of the death of Dillinger was a bump in the road for her?
In a review for the New Beverly, Quentin Tarantino describes it as not only the most ambitious film Roger Corman and New World Pictures made, but the best script written for an exploitation movie. One of the most notable things about the picture is how Sayles takes the lead Pamela Sue Martin through just about every thirties genre picture: working girl in the big city, story of a prostitute, female convict in a prison and finally the gangster picture.
Boasting a strong supporting cast that includes Robert Conrad, Louise Fletcher, a menacing Christopher Lloyd, Dick Miller (in an particularly sleazy role) and an awesome cameo by Robert Forster. An actor who would go onto to star in Lewis Teague's next film Alligator. A role for which Tarantino would look at as impetus for casting him in Jackie Brown.
Lewis Teague is more well known for Alligator and Cujo. Two exceptional animal attack movies. With a fantastic genre-hopping script from John Sayles, Teague ended up making his finest work.
A/A-
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (1958)
I always marvel at the 'boy wonder' filmmakers. With the marvel comes a ball of anxiety right in my gut. PTA makes Hard Eight at 26. Soderbergh makes sex, lies and videotape and wins the Palme d'Or for it at 26. Why even try? When I found out Louis Malle made his stellar debut Elevator to the Gallows at the tender age of 24, I threw my hands up.
Of all the French directors of the New Wave, Malle is easily the most diverse. This came much to Francois Truffaut's frustration after Malle's release of The Fire Within had him trying to jam him into the auterist suit so many directors of the time felt more comfortable in.
He's done comedies (Zazie dans le metro), character studies (The Fire Within), coming of age films (Murmur of the Heart), made forays into surrealism (Black Moon), films about Nazi-occupied France (Au Revoir les Enfants), he's filmed monologues between two academic types (My Dinner With Andre) and made a bunch of documentaries about his travels to India.
All of this started with his 1958 debut. Let's not forget that this film wasn't just Malle's debut. It was our introduction to one of world cinema's leading leadies. Jeanne Moreau. She would find herself working with some of the top autuers of the time including Truffaut, Antonioni, and Welles.
This film follows a businessman who murders his employer, the husband of his mistress. A chain reaction of events follow. Maurice Roney and Jean Pierre Melville regular Lino Ventura round out the cast. The score by Miles Davis propels the whole story into motion right from the opening credits.
To create such a confident, assured crime picture at the age of 24 is a miracle. To have it be a prelude to a string of future classics is another.
A
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