Reeling Backward: "The Stalking Moon" (1968)

"The  Stalking Moon" is a largely forgotten Western, owing mostly I think to arriving around the time the genre was being reexplored with a more critical eye -- "The Wild Bunch," "Little Big Man," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

But it contains some of those same questioning elements, including a subtle (maybe too subtle) examination of the relationship between an expanding America and the native peoples who were often trampled along the way.

Gregory Peck, a dramatic leading man who occasionally dabbled in cowboys, had been down this path before a decade early in "The Bravados," playing a rancher-turned-killer. Here it's the other way around, portraying Sam Varner, an Army scout helping round up American Indians who tries to settle down but finds his old life pulling him back in.

The first half is more interesting than the second, which oddly plays out almost like a slasher flick as the good guys are hunted by a seemingly unstoppable assailant. It's a rousing bit of Western action, abetted by the novelty of an Indian antagonist who clearly outskills the white hero. But in the end, it's just standard tension-and-release filmmaking.

How the movie got there has more merit.

Getting ready to muster out after 15 years with the Army, where he garnered a reputation as the best of the best, Sam is enticed to escort a white woman, Sarah Carver (Eva Marie Saint), who was kidnapped by Apaches 10 years ago when she was a girl.

(This would put the character in her mid-20s at the oldest, which is a bit of a stretch for the then-44-year-old actress. Peck, at 52, is a little closer to Sam's presumed age.)

Since then she has married and produced a boy of about age 8 (Noland Clay), a "half-breed" or "breed" using the parlance of the film, who has not yet been named in the tradition of his father's folk. After the vestiges of her tribe are captured and she is afforded the opportunity to return home to Columbus -- while the Apache will assumedly be taken to a reservation -- Sarah is desperate to leave right away, guilt-tripping Sam into being their escort.

It's eventually revealed that her husband is none other than Salvaje, a legendary killer feared even by his own people. Salvaje, which roughly translates as "ghost" or "he who is not here," is intent on getting his son back, if only for pride's sake.

Sam intends to put Sarah and her boy on a train and be done with them. But after all the people at a coach station are killed while they were off chasing down the boy during a runaway attempt, he's ready to be quit immediately.

There's a wonderful, largely wordless scene where Sam stares at the woman and her son as they wait at the lonely train station. He knows it's the smart thing to do, but he's also seen the looks and reaction the pair produces in white society and guesses what their future will hold. Carefully weighing matters, coupled with his own longing for stability (read: family), Sam invites them to come live with him at his ranch in New Mexico.

It's a fateful decision, yet knowing what the outcome is we suspect Sam would still make the same choice.

Salvaje soon comes a-knocking, wiping out Sam's new neighbors as well as his oldster caretaker, Ned (Russell Thorson). He's helped for a time by Nick Tana, another "breed" Sam took under his wing a decade earlier and shaped in his image as a scout.

The relationships between Sam and Nick and the boy are the film's most compelling dynamic. Certainly it's more worthy of note than the repressed romance that slowly builds between him and Sarah. Saint really isn't given a whole lot to do, other than sit stoically waiting for the menfolk to do stuff as she speaks in clipped cadences of her nearly forgotten English tongue.

Sam clearly regards Nick as a son, even if he's a somewhat resentful, churlish one. In an early scene Nick throws a knife at Sam's retreating back, clearly a demonstration of the arrival of his full manhood and commensurate independence. He feels like Sam is running away for him, and there is an unspoken hurt that the elder did not invite him to share in his new life.

Maybe Nick would've said no, but he's bothered by the lack of an ask.

All this is barely revealed in the dialogue. A rough caress of Nick's cheek as he dies at Salvaje's hand is all the evidence the film provides.

For his part, the boy largely remains an enigma -- but it's clear that he bears Sam even less regard. He's rebelling at being forced away from his people to live in a white man's world. He tries several times to escape and be reunited with his father. He steals a white man's knife and is tempted to use it on him before Sam intervenes.

Really, the best thing for all concerned would be for the boy to go back to Salvaje and for Sarah to marry Sam and produce another son. But that's not how a mother's love, or Western films, work.

"The Stalking Moon" has impeccable credentials. It's directed by Robert Mulligan, who made "To Kill a Mockingbird" with Peck five years earlier, with a screenplay by renowned scribe Alvin Sargent, who won two Oscars (for "Paper Moon" and "Julia") and found a second 21st-century spurt as the script man behind three of the Spider-Man movies. This was just his second feature film writing credit after starting out in TV.

Based on the novel by Theodore V. Olsen with an adaptation credit to Wendell Mayes, the filmmakers make the curious choice to depict Salvaje as little as possible. He's only glimpsed as a shadow or distant figure until the very end, and he never speaks a single word. His showdown with Sam is shot so as to avoid showing his face or revealing his humanity. It's basically a stuntman role.

I was struck by the musical score by Fred Karlin, best known for his music for "Westworld" and its sequel. It's more a collection of atonal sounds than melodies, with an oft-repeating discord strummed across a string instrument of some kind used for building tension.

(My ear isn't attuned enough to tell, so I'll take a stab that it's a mandolin, zither or dulcimer.)

Is there a hidden meaning to all this? If so, we're barely given more than a few wind-scattered tracks in the sand to decipher.

My guess is the theme has something to do with Sam facing a reckoning for his transgressions as an Indian hunter. He's reached an age where he wants to let go of that life, and finds that it has a hold on him he can't ignore. Having raised and ultimately rejected a half-Indian child, he is given another chance at fatherhood -- but has to endure a mountain of sacrifice as punishment.

The lack of a real character for Salvaje indicates he's more a remorseless force of history than a full-blooded human being, more existential threat than person.

"The Stalking Moon" is well-made, but seems like a sketch for a grander, grimmer tale the filmmakers weren't ready to tell. After the Peckinpahs and Penns of the world had their say, movies like this were destined to fade away.

Video review: "Us"

I think the best kind of horror films, particularly those with a supernatural edge, are the ones that don’t try to explain everything to you. They just present a confounding mystery, and let it hang there.

One of my favorite of recent years was “It Follows,” in which people are inexplicably pursued by relentless doppelgangers. I would add “Us” to the list.

Writer/director Jordan Peele’s sophomore effort is superior, in my opinion, to his previous venture, the smash hit “Get Out.” Lupita Nyong’o stars as a seemingly normal woman with darkness in her past that will catch up to her and her family.

Thirty years ago as a child, Adelaide had a chilling experience inside a carnival funhouse, where the image in the mirror turned out to be a real live reflection. Now that person, who has grown up just as she did, returns to the “real” world to exact a blood-soaked revenge.

I don’t want to give away too much, since the very appeal of “Us” lies in its teasing out information and surprises. Suffice it to say, Adelaide isn’t the only one with a nefarious shade following her around.

Winston Duke plays her husband, Gabe, a good-natured guy; Evan Alex plays their son, Jason, who has a few disturbing aspects to his own personality; and Shahadi Wright Joseph is teen daughter, Zora, who makes a show of her independence until it’s time to fall back on her family.

The big twist of the movie wasn’t a surprise for me, but I watch a lot of films and there’s only so many tricks in the bag. But it’s still a very satisfying ending to a terrific movie fraught with frights.

Bonus features are quite expansive and include six deleted scenes, funny outtakes and an extended version of the dance sequence. There’s also an in-depth exploration of the making of three pivotal scenes and five documentary shorts.

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Review: "Late Night"

"Late Night" operates as a good companion piece to "Bookmart," which came out just a few weeks earlier. Both are about female relationships, how they can be so important and so complicated. The first movie centered on high school kids, while "Late Night" looks at a professional conflict between an older Millennial and a younger Boomer.

It's written, produced and stars Mindy Kaling as a youngish new writer for a legendary late night talk show host played by Emma Thompson. Kaling's script has television rife through its DNA, but I guess that's not too objectionable since it's about a TV show. It begins wickedly sharp and funny, and grows surprisingly sentimental as it goes along.

The movie starts out aiming for laughs, and gets them, and then shoots for the heart, and nails that, too.

I liked Kaling as Molly Patel, who's added to the roster of writers after it's pointed out that "Late Night with Katherine Newbury," on the air for 27 years, doesn't have any female writers. She's wholly unqualified for the job, working in quality control for a chemistry plant in Pennsylvania, but she's got a nose for funny and for what's true.

Thompson is the real revelation as Katherine. It's a fierce and amazing performance. Katherine is domineering and often downright nasty. On Molly's first day, she's astounded to discover that most of the writers have never actually met their boss before. Too harried and contemptuous to learn their names, Katherine assigns each of the writers numbers so she can call on them more easily, and shoot down their ideas.

It's a role that reminds me a lot of Meryl Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada," though Kaling's script and director Nisha Ganatra grant Katherine a lot more interior real estate to explore. In fact, about halfway through it stops being Molly's story and really becomes Katherine's.

I loved how the two women talk to each other. Molly is a bit of a wallflower but not afraid to stand up for herself. When Molly expresses her qualms about being seen as a token diversity hire, Katherine brazenly tells her that's exactly what she is. But then she advises her to go earn her place.

Katherine's show has become tired, out of touch, favoring chats with authors or intellectuals instead of cracking topical jokes. Think David Letterman during the last years of his show: still funny, but you got the sense he was coasting and more than a little annoyed at having to chat up celebrities and entertain audiences.

Early on we learn that the new network president (Amy Ryan) wants to push Katherine out. This propels her to try to reinvent herself, get a little more personal and political. Molly acts as her Svengali, urging her to get out of the studio, connect with people and do fun bits that can go viral.

Reid Scott and Hugh Dancy play Tom and Charlie, lead writers on the show who resent Molly's presence but gradually start to warm up. There's even a budding romance with Charlie, though the movie misplaces his character in the second half.

Denis O'Hare is a solid presence as Brad, Katherine's dependable right-hand man; John Lithgow plays Katherine's eternally supportive husband, Walter, who can see past the casual cruelty to the person underneath; Ike Barinholtz is a hot young insult comic who is held up to Katherine as the wave of the future, much to her revulsion.

One of the most interesting things about "Late Night" is its portrait of showbiz and the types of neurotic personalities that thrive there. Katherine treats her staff like cattle, firing people on a whim, and they in turn crave any scrap of attention from her. "We're not here because you're nice. We're here because you're good," Brad says.

This is a movie that works as both an insider's view of TV comedy and as a character piece about two women clashing and connecting. We instinctively like Molly, and just as instantly loathe Katherine. But by the end we understand what makes these women tick and feel less impulse to judge them, but simply embrace them as they are.

Video review: "Captain Marvel"

Brie Larson soars as the latest Marvel Comics Universe superhero, a figure who’s a mix of bravado and self-doubt. She plays Carol Danvers, a military pilot-turned-outer-space warrior, manipulated by others but eventually working to find her way back to her true self.

The theme of “Captain Marvel” is to explore your own path and not define yourself as others want to. Irradiated with alien energy that scrambled her memories, she’s been fighting for years on behalf of the Kree, cosmic do-gooders fighting against the evil Skrulls.

As with many things, the line between good and evil isn’t quite as bright as it first appears. Carol is in for a major letdown/reawakening when she returns to Earth and starts reconnecting with her old persona.

Samuel L. Jackson plays Nick Fury before his days as the boss of S.H.I.E.LD. The story is set in the 1990s when superheroes where a novel notion the powers-that-be labored to keep under wraps.

Jude Law plays Carol’s Kree commander/mentor, who’s always making her prove herself. Ben Mendelsohn plays the chief of the Skrulls, shape-shifters who have been leading terrorist attacks. Lashana Lynch is an old human friend, and Annette Bening has a dual role as a scientist and the living embodiment of the Kree artificial intelligence.

“Captain Marvel” boasts both plenty of action and a hefty hero with a compelling journey. It’s tough to know yourself, especially when so many people have competing ideas.

Bonus features on Blu-ray are quite good. There’s a feature-length commentary track by directors/screenwriters Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, as well as an introduction. Plus six deleted scenes, a gag reel and the following documentary featurettes: “Becoming a Super Hero,” “Big Hero Moment,” “The Origin of Nick Fury,” “The Dream Team,” “The Skrulls and the Kree:” and “Hiss-terical Cat-titude.”

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Review: "The Secret Life of Pets 2"

"The Secret Life of Pets 2" is not made for me, or thee -- unless one of us is under the age of 10. In which case, I'll endeavor to keep the cursing in this review to a bare minimum.

Like the original film from three years ago, "Pets" is specifically and intentionally made for little kids to enjoy, and for parents to endure. During the screening whenever I started sighing or feeling my thoughts start to wander, I just looked over at my two boys, smiling and laughing their heads off.

Eighty-six minutes of intensely cute and predictable storytelling is not too much to endure for your children.

If anything, I like the sequel a little more than the first one. It splits up the action into three separate storylines, so just when one is getting a little tiresome it switches things up.

The main role of Max, voiced by Louis C.K., is taken over by Patton Oswalt (for #MeToo reasons). He's an excitable Jack Russell Terrier who's resistant to change. Duke, the big shaggy doofus voiced by Eric Stonestreet whose introduction into Max's household formed the basis of the first film's story, gets relegated to the backburner here.

A few years have passed and their woman has married and produced a baby, Liam, to whom the dogs are very attached. When the New York City family goes off for a vacation in the country at an uncle's farm, it sets all sorts of activities in motion.

Gidget, the cultured Pomeranian (voice of Jenny Slate) who pines for Max, is put in charge of his favorite toy, Busy Bee, but quickly loses it into the intimidating lair of the old lady downstairs who has a literal regiment of scary cats. To infiltrate this den of hiss, Gidget must disguise herself as a feline and learn the ways of the cat from her too-cool neighbor, Chloe (Lake Bell).

Meanwhile, uppity rabbit Snowball (Kevin Hart), who's really committed to playing super-hero dress-up with his girl, goes on his own mission. Befriending a Shih Tzu named Daisy (Tiffany Haddish), they rescue an albino tiger from a nasty circus owner (Nick Kroll). Then, of course, they've got to find somewhere to stash it.

Out on the farm, Duke and Max are impressed with the farm dog, Rooster, voiced with delicious gruffness by Harrison Ford. He's everything they are not: self-reliant, authoritative and master of other critters.

Rather than a typical movie dynamic, where Rooster resents the urban invaders and then gradually warms up to them, the country dog is more or less benevolent from the start. He's clearly annoyed by their lack of skill in essential dogginess, like herding sheep and howling at the moon. But Rooster sees Max not as a city slicker to be dismissed so much as a youngster in need of tutoring.

It's about as close to a blue state/red state bonding as we're apt to see in the movies these days.

Director Chris Renaud and Brian Lynch continue to ride their "Minions" formula: slapstick mixed with fart jokes and doe eyes. It's unsophisticated filmmaking for a kiddie audience, nothing more and nothing less.

You can bemoan that this type of movie exists, or pony up to the ticket booth and make your young'uns happy.

Review: "Dark Phoenix"

I still think the first iteration of the X-Men would’ve done a great job with the Dark Phoenix Saga, one of the most storied arcs in comic book history. That cast of the superhero outcast mutants -- Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart -- felt the most emotionally true of any super-franchise.

You could feel their sense of alienation and conflict about whether they should serve the humans who hated their kind, or dominate them.

But I’m pleased to say the “new” X-Men still pull it off with plenty of emotional and action oomph. “Dark Phoenix” will reportedly be the final film in the series produced by 20th Century Fox, though my guess is eventually it’ll be merged with the Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) the way Spider-Man was, and we’ll see more X-films with yet another cast.

The Dark Phoenix story is well-known to even casual comic book fans. Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), a telepath/telekinetic and protégé to Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), is irradiated with alien energy during a rescue mission. She seemingly dies but is resurrected with fantastically heightened powers, dubbed Phoenix like the mythical bird that rises from its ashes.

But great power brings great temptation, and Phoenix begins to use her abilities for less-than-benevolent purposes. Eventually her own team of X-Men turns on her, seeing her as a threat to their hard-fought peace with humans.

This film time-jumps to 1992, seven years after “X-Men: Apocalypse.” The X-Men have become accepted by mainstream society and hailed as heroes. Professor X has gotten bit drunk on his status, both figuratively and literally, swilling from omnipresent tumblers and enjoying a direct phone line to the President.

“The way the women keep saving the men around here, you might consider changing the name to X-Women,” one veteran needles him.

After the accident, Jean goes searching for clues to her long-buried past, and the terrible accident that killed her parents and brought her into Professor X’s charge at his school for mutant children. She gets angry when she learns the truth, things escalate, and collateral damage soon becomes an existential threat that brings multiple power centers to bear.

Writer/director Simon Kinberg, a veteran producer and screenwriter directing his first feature (after Bryan Singer exited the franchise in a cloud of controversy), has a good eye for action scenes, though some of the talkie scenes are rather clanky.

(He also knows how to shoot Turner to beneficial effect in a way her myriad “Game of Thrones” directors never seemed to grasp, aka chin down.)

Michael Fassbender turns up again as Magneto, conflicted former villain now maintaining an uneasy peace with humans. Other familiar faces are Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, who shoots energy beams from his eyes and is Jean’s beau; Alexandra Shipp as weather-controlling Storm; and Evan Peters as max-speed Quicksilver.

And then, of course there’s the “blue trio”: Jennifer Lawrence as shape-shifting Mystique; Kodi Smit-McPhee as teleportation devil Nightcrawler; and Nicholas Hoult as the Jekyll/Hyde scientist/monster, Beast. It’s weird that it never struck me before they all share the exact same shade of midnight sapphire.

Jessica Chastain is the chief villain as Vuk, the icy blonde leader of a mysterious alien race known as the D’Bari that has a nefarious interest in Phoenix and her dark power.

There’s not a lot of subtext, humor or wasted energy in “Dark Phoenix,” just a straight-ahead thrill-seeker about a woman everyone had dismissed as timid who finds she enjoys the taste of power too much. I admit that if I had that kind of cosmic control in my hands, I’d be inclined to command some more X-Men movies.

Reeling Backward: "The Last Hurrah" (1958)

Despite being so closely associated with Westerns and, to a lesser extent, war/adventure films, John Ford did in fact make straight-up dramas -- and even a romance or two. "The Last Hurrah," a box office disappointment that has been largely forgotten today, is the unlikeliest of John Ford pictures: a political drama.

The story is still a familiar archetype we often saw with Ford's John Wayne collaborations: an aging leader/loner looks back on his life with both pride and regret, and resolves to ride off into the sunset doing what he knows best. Instead of a gunslinger, though, Spencer Tracy's protagonist is Frank Skeffington, mayor of an unnamed New England city who is running for his fifth term in office.

Frank had previously been governor, too, so it seems apparent to everyone but him that he has nothing left to prove. But Frank has been running things for so long that he can't imagine ever giving up the reins of power willingly. He enjoys charging about town in a Cadillac limousine equipped with a police siren so he can run all the red lights, a small group of loyal henchmen always at his side.

Despite telling his nephew, Adam Caulfield (Jeffrey Hunter), that this will be his final campaign, a "last hurrah" -- pronounced "hoo-RAH" in New Englandese -- we suspect that if he had won Frank would be saying the same thing again four years down the road.

Spoiler alert: Frank loses the election in the end. And not just to a talented up-and-comer, but to a spectacularly unqualified young nimrod put up by the bankers, church leaders and newspaper publishers who have dogged him for decades. It's the ultimate humiliation, and Frank succumbs to a heart attack soon after.

Still, this is an ending comparable to the cowboy shootist dying in the ultimate gunfight: he may lose, but he goes out on his own terms.

Frank, lying abed clinging to his last moments of life, is visited by one of his longtime enemies who opines that maybe the old politician, having just made his last confession, would have done things different if he could. "Like hell I would," Frank bleats, opening his eyes just long enough for one last act of defiance.

Frank has lived with a chip on his shoulder his whole life, and it became his defining trait. Born in the town's Irish-Americans slums, he crawled and scraped his way up the ladder, using charm and grit in place of money and prestige. The old Yankee bluebloods who controlled the city's levers of power for centuries resent the Irish upstarts -- just as their children will one day resent the browner wave of newcomers.

The screenplay by Frank S. Nugent was based on the book by Edwin O'Connor, who didn't take much trouble to hide the fact it was a portrait of Boston mayor James Michael Curley, a notorious crook. He served four terms as mayor, including five months of his last while in prison for mail fraud.

Curley was out of politics but still alive when "The Last Hurrah" came out. He threatened the studio, not because he worried about an unflattering portrait but because he harbored delusions of selling the rights to his life for a biographical movie. Columbia Pictures paid him $25,000 to go away -- one last grift for the shady pol.

The film takes pains not to depict Frank as explicitly corrupt. We never witness him using his powers for evil or self-interested ends, though he's not above a little old-fashioned light blackmail.

In one instance, he persuades a prominent banker (Basil Rathbone) to release loans for a new low-income housing development by pretending to appoint his idiot son (O.Z. Whitehead, complete with a spectacular lisp) as fire marshal, threatening to release photographs of him looking ridiculous in a white firefighter's hat and yachting outfit.

Still, Frank lives in a magnificent mansion that would seem out of sorts with a public servant's salary. (Mayors did not usually have official residences back in that day -- Curley did not, and his ostentatious abode was the subject of much controversy.) Frank also thinks nothing of throwing a $1,000 gift (disguised as coming from his deceased wife) to a new widow whose husband left her in a poor state.

The story doesn't say much about Frank's politics or positions, though it's pretty clear he's a Democrat Catholic while the bluebloods are Republicans and largely Protestant. In the few bits of dialogue relating directly to his acts as mayor, Frank references different statues that competing constituencies wanted to place in a prominent spot, and he compromised by picking a female saint.

Frank's biggest nemesis is Amos Force (John Carradine), publisher of the chief local newspaper; the men openly despise each other with a lifetime's worth of enmity. It seems Amos fired Frank's mother when she worked for him as a maid, "stealing" a few pieces of leftover fruit. Frank can't let go of the affront, and Amos can't believe someone so low rose so high.

This complicates things with Adam, Frank's nephew, since he is the star sports columnist for that same newspaper. Frank invites him to follow him along during his last campaign, not as a journalist but an adored relative. The reasoning is never provided, though I might surmise he hopes to rope Adam into going into the family business someday.

Certainly his own son will not. Frank Jr. (Arthur Walsh) is a happy-go-lucky playboy who seems to do little more than go on dates with girls -- two at a time, even -- and seek out hot bebop music. It's clear how disappointed Frank is in his son, though he takes pains not to show it to the kid.

Adam's character is really a piece of storytelling furniture that never goes anywhere. He doesn't actually seem to follow along during the campaign very much, and his few scenes away from the action detract from the goings-on. He has arguments with his wife, Maeve (Dianne Foster), over father's contempt for Frank.

His only really interesting interaction is when he leaves a funeral in a huff, upset that Frank's presence attracted hundreds of people to the wake of a man who, by all accounts, had few friends and was an ungrateful skinflint. But someone points outs to him that even though Frank effectively turns the funeral into a political event, it's better than the widow having to grieve in an empty room.

The various side characters and hangers-on are a motley bunch of comic stereotypes. There's "Cuke" Gillen (James Gleason) and John Gorman (Pat O'Brien), hard-nosed types and old-school ward heelers who know how to grease some palms and get the vote out.

By far the most colorful is "Ditto" Boland (Edward Brophy), a bald little dynamo of obsequiousness, who always refers to the mayor as "His Honor" and seems to serve no other function than to follow Frank around, fetch and tote, and mellow out the old man's volatile moods. He even buys a peaked hat identical to the boss', which they refer to as a "hamburger."

Charles B. Fitzsimons plays the election opponent, Kevin McCluskey, a war veteran and family man who looks good so long as he doesn't open up his hole. In one hilarious bit, they shoot a live TV promo depicting his family life. His wife is so camera-struck she reads her lines woodenly from a cue card, and a mutt brought in from the dog pound to round out the portrait won't stop barking.

Tracy is comfortable and cantankerous in the role, showing us a man who is genuinely great but also ridden with flaws and faults. He's a brilliant retail politician, eschewing radio and TV for old-fashioned rallies and pressing of the flesh. But Frank has trouble seeing the forest for the trees, looking at the odds stacked up against him and seeing them as just more obstacles to be overcome rather than bellwethers pointing him toward a comfortable, content retirement.

One of the best lessons I've learned later in life is that everything has a beginning, middle and end. The start is usually a struggle, so when you get to the middle you revel in it so much it's often very hard to see the end staring you in the face. When you let your experiences define you, rather than the other way round, the letdown becomes inevitable.