Reeling Backward: "The Comancheros" (1961)

I don't regard "The Comancheros" as an exceptional Western. Its production values are exquisite -- gorgeous Deluxe color Cinemascope photography by William H. Clothier, a jaunty and memorable score by Elmer Bernstein, wonderfully detailed sets and costumes, and the steady hand and keen eye of director Michael Curtiz.

But in terms of plot and themes, it's largely a muddle. John Wayne plays Jake Cutter, a Texas Ranger who spends much of the movie undercover posing as a gunrunner. He apprehends Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman), a Louisiana gambler wanted for murder after he won a duel against the son of a wealthy New Orleans family. They part ways, reconnect, evolve from adversaries to allies, and eventually team up to take down the Comancheros -- white and Hispanic men who have been supplying the Comanche Indians with rifles and whiskey.

Oh, and there's a short-shrifted romance, too.

The story seems to meander with the tumbleweeds, following one course for awhile until it grows boring or reaches a dead end, and then picks up a breeze and heads the other way.

What I did find notable about the film is Wayne's character and performance. Despite a life of pain, including having his family killed, Cutter has an upbeat demeanor, always quick with a smile and a joke. He treats even his enemies with a friendly regard and a measure of respect. I can't remember another movie in which Wayne's eye twinkled so brightly and often.

This is at odds with the Duke's star persona, which always had a streak of orneriness running through. Sometimes meanness dominated the character, as with Ethan Edwards in "The Searchers," and sometimes it was barely discernible, like the Ringo Kid from "Stagecoach." Most of the time, though, Wayne's cussedness lay just beneath the surface, like the hard iron of a Colt Peacemaker inside a comfortably worn leather holster.

There's really only one moment in "The Comancheros" when Cutter loses his temper, and that's in his confrontation with Comanchero Tully Crow. Cutter, posing as gunrunner Ed McBain -- complete with foppish grey top hat -- rendezvous with Crow and cuts a deal to sell guns to the Comanche. They get drunk to celebrate, wind down with steak dinners and a game of cards, and get into an argument about cheating.

What's memorable about this scene is how Wayne's character repeatedly and deliberately ignores the other man's threats and insults, and only resorts to violence when Crow draws on him. Most of Wayne's hombres would have thrown done at the first hint of disrespect.

Crow is played by Lee Marvin in a deliciously vicious, brief performance made all the more memorable by the fact that Crow only has half a scalp -- the other having been taken by the Comanche before he gained their trust and began bartering with them. Curtiz aims the camera leeringly at Crow's raw, bizarre wound -- a freakshow counterpoint to the man's even more repulsive personality.

Speaking of Curtiz, "The Comancheros" was his last film. He died shortly after its completion, and in fact he did not actually finish filming. His health forced him to drop out, and Wayne himself completed production in the director's chair ... though he refused an onscreen credit for co-directing.

Curtiz' name is generally not mentioned when lists of the great Golden Age directors are bandied about, but he deserves to be. Because he was largely a journeyman filmmaker, who took whatever jobs the studio assigned him or (later) he could find, most historians and critics regard him merely as a capable gun-for-hire who was lucky enough to find himself attached to good projects.

Bollocks. One does not acquire this sort of astonishing filmography -- "Casablanca," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Mildred Pierce," "Angels with Dirty Faces," "Captain Blood," "The Adventures of Robin Hood," to name just a few -- through happenstance. The very fact that he did not have a distinctive style is what made him great: Curtiz adapted his artistry to the material, rather than forcing his vision on a picture like a Hitchcock or Ford would have.

Stuart Whitman had an interesting career. Though he was never quite a star, he worked steadily in film and television for nearly 60 years, until a self-imposed retirement starting about a decade ago. He's still with us, and contributed to a fantastic new Blu-ray edition of "The Comancheros" to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Ina Balin plays Pilar Graile, daughter of the head of the Comancheros. In the grand Hollywood tradition of Caucasian actors assigned to ethnic roles, Balin was a Jewess from Brooklyn playing a Hispanic woman. Pilar is interesting for her unbending self-confidence, pursuing a romance with Regret -- but only if she can maintain the upper hand.

Nehemiah Persoff has a steely turn as her father, a crippled man who nonetheless rules the Comancheros with the absolute power of a patriarch. (Persoff was also Jewish, so I guess at least there was a twisted consistency.) Even Cutter acknowledges that father Graile must have been "a man to step aside from" when he was young and whole.

The plot seems to have its own, unfathomable rhythm. The screenplay by Clair Huffaker and James Edward Grant is based on the novel by Paul Wellman. Cutter's pressing duty ricochets back and forth between apprehending Regret and tracking the source of the Comanche's guns. They end up in the Comanchero village for the final showdown with the Rangers almost by happenstance.

Speaking of guns, despite being set in the 1840s, the rifles depicted in the movie are lever-action Winchesters not available until after the Civil War. Similarly, the revolvers are not the clumsy cap-and-ball weapons of that era but the more advanced cartridge pistols that were not invented until 30 years later.

Usually, Hollywood would have just rejiggered the period for the sake of expediency. But the Comanche tribes were relegated to reservations by the 1850s, and the Comancheros quickly faded away without their best trading customer.

"The Comancheros" is not a particularly good example of the classic Western, but I found it an engaging movie to see and think about. Some movies are like that -- better when considered than watched.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Super 8"

"Super 8" is nostalgia filmmaking. It is a pretty self-conscious attempt by Generation Xer J.J. Abrams to recreate the sort of movies he fell in love with as a kid -- specifically, the early films of Steven Spielberg.

The fact that Spielberg, a Baby Boomer, served as executive producer of this movie has the potential to turn the entire endeavor into a massive exercise in narcissism. The musical score by Michael Giacchino even seems composed to mimic the trills and crescendos of John Williams, who's scored every Spielberg film.

And yet, even as writer/director Abrams seems bound and determined to follow a template of another's choosing, "Super 8" still has a sprightly life of its own. If it deliberately recalls films from the 1970s and '80s -- "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" and "The Goonies" especially -- then it also powerfully evokes its own distinct sense of time and place.

The centerpiece of the story is a gaggle of kids who seem less written for the screen than conjured out of memory from 1979. They talk, look and act like 13-year-olds stuck between the traditional upbringing of the 1950s and the dawn of the pop culture information age.

Much mystery has surrounded the plot of "Super 8," although after watching it that shroud seems silly and unnecessary. Any halfway cognizant filmgoer will guess what the secret is just a few minutes in.
The movie's appeal is less what it does, and more how it goes about doing it -- with heart, imagination and genuine emotional attachment.

The set-up is that a group of boys are filming a zombie movie in small-town Lillian, Ohio. It's been an off-and-on project for the entire school year, but now that summer's here director and ringleader Charles (Riley Griffiths) wants to finish in time to enter in a Cleveland amateur film festival. He also stumbles upon the brilliant idea of inviting Alice (Elle Fanning), the pretty rebellious girl from their class, to play a role.

Charles is always mouthing off about needing "production value" in his movie, so they all sneak out at midnight to shoot at the train station with a locomotive roaring by. Except, the train derails -- in a spectacular, heart-grabbing sequence that makes the train scene in "The Fugitive" look tame -- setting off a wave of mysterious and alarming events.

Without giving too much away, here are some snippets:
One of their teachers is involved, and they learn more about his dark past beyond his habit of confiscating contraband from students and never giving it back.

A small army of Air Force soldiers gradually take over the town, for reasons they claim are benevolent but increasingly are not.

Eventually, the entire town becomes a war zone and the kids are caught up in the middle, trying to solve the riddle and keep their necks.

The main character is sort of in the background for awhile, but eventually Joe (a terrific Joel Courtney) emerges. He's a shy kid who builds models and does the makeup for Charles' movie, and is flabbergasted when the exotic Alice seems to return his attention.

Joe's relationship with his father, the sheriff's right-hand-deputy, is strained by the recent loss of his mother in an accident at the steel foundry. His dad (Kyle Chandler) wants him to go to baseball camp for the summer, in an obvious ploy to get the boy out of his hair. But when things go south in town, Joe's dad learns how to step up.

I'm still sort of amazed at how much I liked "Super 8," since I pretty much knew in advance everything that was going to happen. And it's a shame that the other boys in the group -- ably played by Ryan Lee, Zach Mills and Gabriel Basso -- never really get fleshed out.

For a retread, "Super 8" has plenty of snap.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer"

I am several decades too old to truly enjoy "Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer." It's aimed at a slightly older kids, after Barney becomes lame but before Lady Gaga is cool, when boys and girls can still be friends without a lot of icky hormones and complications.

Based on the books by Megan McDonald (who co-wrote the screenplay with Kathy Waugh), the movie does a nice job of capturing what it's like to be a kid that age -- parents conspiring to stifle all fun, the ache of separation from friends, and the worst curse in existence is having a snotty younger brother hogging all the attention.
Newcomer Jordana Beatty winsomely plays Judy, a red-headed ball of spunk who's determined to not let this summer be the borefest of previous years. She and her friends start a contest to see who can have the most adventurous summer, and the winner gets ... well, they get to be the winner! It is the sad lot of grown-ups that they must dimly recall when just winning was enough to justify a game.

I pause this review to note there are many education experts who want to get rid of kids' summer breaks and hold school year-round (or, more accurately, carve the vacation up into smaller chunks spread throughout the year). It is my considered opinion that these fine folks, despite their undeniably good intentions about improving academic performance, are dangerously misguided poopyheads.

There are many reasons to preserve the grand tradition of children (and teachers) having a large block of time every year to pursue interests other than schoolwork, not the least of which is this: If you look at the best stories and movies about childhood, by and large the critical events usually happen during the summer.

From "To Kill a Mockingbird" to "Stand By Me," these tales show that we develop into the people we are not by sitting in a classroom, but during our adventures outside of them. Education is a critical but hardly solitary factor in how we grow up.

Soliloquy over, back to this movie.

Judy is too caught up in her own concerns to realize that her parents (Janet Varney and Kristoffer Winters) are terrific. When they announce plans to cancel the annual summer trip to grandma's -- which moments earlier Judy had been expressing her dread about -- Judy goes into conniptions. How unfair: An entire summer with just her appropriately-named brother, Stink (Paris Mosteller), and the aunt she barely remembers.

The aunt, Opal, turns out not be the stodgy old lady smelling of mothballs we might imagine from her name. She's actually a super-nice artistic hippie type played by Heather Graham. Yes, I know it seems not that long ago Graham was playing a high-schooler in "Boogie Nights," but she's in her 40s now and playing aunts in childrens movies. Time marches on.

Judy is president of the TP Club -- the initials don't stand for what you think ... it's worse -- and comes up with a great plan to have everyone track "Thrill Points" over the summer. Then she learns her two closest friends, Rocky (Garrett Ryan) and Amy (Taylar Hender), are jetting off to have super-cool summers in a circus school and Borneo, respectively.

That means Judy is left with Frank (Preston Bailey), the low man on the TP totem pole. Judy's attempts to collect Thrill Points are continually confounded by the weak-kneed Frank, who pukes on roller coasters and runs screaming from a monster double-feature at the local cinema.

As a side gig, Judy is occasionally forced into the orbit of Stink, who's become obsessed with finding and capturing Bigfoot. How totally lame, how first-grade, how ... wait, what was that sound in the woods?

"Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer" was directed by John Schultz in a quick-paced, straightforward manner that fits the material. No, this is not top-notch family entertainment in the realm of "Toy Story 3" or "How to Train Your Dragon" -- movies to be enjoyed as much by parents as tykes. But if it is narrow in its appeal, then the movie is earnest about entertaining a certain strata of kid-dom who will appreciate it more than I.


2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "True Grit"

The Coen brothers' version of "True Grit" goes completely sideways from the 1969 film starring John Wayne. It is not really a remake of that iconic Western, but a new interpretation of the novel by Charles Portis.

Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn is not likely to be confused with Wayne's. Though both played the one-eyed, over-the-hill lawman with a penchant for shooting first and asking questions whenever he felt like it, but the similarities end there.

Bridges' character seems not merely ill-tempered but downright morally indifferent to the violence he perpetrates. The only real difference between his actions and those of the men he hunts down is that he has the protection of the law on his side.

Hailee Steinfeld is a revelation as Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old farm girl who hires Cogburn to capture -- and preferably kill -- the man who murdered her father. Mattie is smart as hell and even more stubborn, and insists on tagging along. Along the trail they throw in with a Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) with similar motives but very divergent sensibilities.

With its deliberately stilted, formal dialogue and black moodiness, the new "True Grit" is an entirely novel take on familiar material.

Video extras are a bit pokey. The DVD version comes with four featurettes about the cast, the costumes, re-creating Fort Smith and the character of Mattie.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, and you get three more featurettes about the weapons of the Western genre, Charles Portis and the film's bleak cinematography. It does at least come with a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

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Reeling Backward: "The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel" (1951)

The fact is not lost on me that this column is posting on June 6, the 67th anniversary of D-Day -- quite possibly, the most pivotal day in the history of mankind. If the Allied invasion at Normandy had failed, there's no telling the dark path down which humanity might have been set.

The man charged with defending the German beach defense was Erwin Rommel, regarded by many of his enemies as the finest military mind of his generation. His exploits in North Africa are legend, and if he hadn't spent most of his time fighting with one or more arms tied behind his back -- short on men and weapons, and under the thumb of a madman -- Rommel might well have resisted the invasion by British and American forces.

It is strange that figures such as Winston Churchill felt compelled to memorialize the man who briefly held the fate of the world in his hands, but such is the vagaries of war. Had Rommel been able to direct the defenses to his own design, we might be spitting his name as a vile oath now.

The film about him, "The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel," is a muddled mess. Despite the title, there is little to nothing in the way of narrative about his African exploits -- the way his tanks commanded the desert, and he himself acquired an almost supernatural reputation for avoiding harm.

Call me a literalist, but a biopic that does not even touch on the defining period in a man's life is doomed from the start. Imagine "The Spirit of St. Louis" confined to Charles Lindbergh's life after his historic Atlantic flight.

The story opens with the failed mission by some British stealth soldiers to assassinate Rommel. Then there's a brief sequence about Desmond Young, the English colonel who briefly met Rommel while a prisoner of war. Young, playing himself (though his supposed narration was dubbed by an actor), returned to Germany after the war to find out the truth about Rommel's death. His book formed the basis of this movie, screenwritten by Nunnally Johnson and directed by Henry Hathaway.

The purpose of the book and movie is not to tell the complete story of Rommel's life, but to set the historical record straight about his death. To wit: Rommel did not die of a heart attack or succumb to war wounds, as Hitler's Nazi regime reported to the German people, but was forced to commit suicide in retaliation for Rommel's tacit approval of the failed assassination attempt of Hitler.

As Germany's most celebrated soldier, the revelation of Rommel's participation would have been a tremendously demoralizing blow, Hitler's cronies felt -- never mind that Rommel didn't actually collaborate with the assassins, and in fact was hospitalized in a coma after his car was strafed by enemy airplanes at the time Hitler's bunker was bombed.

Faced with certain conviction, public humiliation and a painful death by garroting, Rommel still demanded a public trial -- until Hitler's henchmen warned that his wife (soulfully played by Jessica Tandy in an undersized part) and son (William Reynolds) would not be spared. Faced with no choice at all, Rommel agreed to be driven to a remote forest, swallow a cyanide capsule and let the lie about his death be spread.

This should be riveting stuff, and if the entire movie were about Rommel's last days and his final choice -- to die a good soldier -- it might have been better for it. Perhaps the film could start with the presentation of Rommel's stark decision, and flashbacks to his life would paint a picture of why he could only arrive at the choice he did.

But I learned from Gene Siskel way back when that a reviewer should criticize a movie for what it is, not for what it is not. So rather than wishing for the film that might have been made about the life of the Desert Fox, I can merely express my disappointment at the one they did.

James Mason plays Rommel, his hair cropped so short his fleshy scalp peeks through, in a performance of clipped diction and ramrod-straight posture. Mason plays Rommel as a man so consumed by his sense of duty, and to an Old World sense of chivalry about the gentlemanly art of war, that he refused to act upon the clear evidence before him. The man who could have best ensured an orderly transition from the insanity of Hitler's regime to peace was simply incapable of an overt act of treason.

It's the credo of Edmund Burke, writ large: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Alas, all that is necessary for a bad film to be made is for people with good intentions to muddle their way through without a clear sense of purpose. "The Desert Fox" bounces around from Africa to Normandy to Berlin, skipping over months and even years at a time without much rhyme or reason to it.

The film reaches a comically awful low point when Rommel confronts Hitler as one final test for himself before he throws in with the conspirators. Luther Adler plays Hitler as a prissy, chubby little joke of an enfant terrible. That works fine for "The Great Dictator," but for a drama like this Hitler should be unnerving and terrifying -- more Bruno Ganz in "Downfall."

"The Desert Fox" is a well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed account of a great man who was a product of his time.

1.5 stars out of four

Bonus review: "X-Men: First Class"

I was away on a trip and missed the press screening for "X-Men: First Class." That's the bad news, and the reason for the lateness of this (brief) review. The good news is that there even was a press screening. 20th Century Fox has imposed a virtual ban of screenings of any kind in Indianapolis for nearly two years, so the fact that they relented -- after much lobbying by the Indiana Film Journalists Association members, I should add -- is in of itself a wonderful mutation of the status quo. Thanks, Fox.

A reboot of the "X-Men" franchise has both wisdom and foolishness behind it. Foolish, because it has not been that long since the first film essentially kicked off the current comic book movie mania 12 years ago. It has the reek of desperation about it, the familiar tale of a Hollywood bereft of ideas and falling back on recycled ones.

The wisdom is that ... well, the last X-Men movie was something of a disaster, and the spinoff of the wildly popular Wolverine character flopped. So the movies really didn't have anywhere else to go. It sort of built itself up for a dive into the Phoenix Saga, but then backed away.

Not to mention, time is a factor. The first set of films fixed very specific timelines for the Magneto and Dr. X characters, which would put them now in their early 80s. Apologies for pointing out the obvious, but fanboys like their mutants young and attractive, so by going back to the roots of the X-Men the filmmakers are able to accomplish that.

However, there are some timeline issues. We are introduced to Alex Summers, aka Havoc, as one of the new mutants who join Charles Xavier's team of mutant do-gooders. Of course, anyone familiar with the comics world of X-Men knows Alex is the younger brother of Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, who we saw in the original movies as a young man nearly 40 years hence.

Other characters who were contemporaries of the original X-Men -- like Beast, aka Hank McCoy -- are transported back to his early time for convenience. For others who appeared in both films, like the shape-shifting Mystique (now played by Jennifer Lawrence), they simply fall back on the old "they're-a-mutant-so-they-age-slowly" trick. Convenient.

All that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the new flick. At its center is the conflict between Magneto and Dr. X, now played by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy. Xavier is a deeply empathetic character who uses his mind-reading abilities to nurture his students and nudge Magneto away from the path of anger and pain that has ruled his life. For his part, Magneto cannot let go of the horrors of the Nazi laboratories, or ignore the growing fear regular humans have for their mutated kin.

Director Matthew Vaughn, who helmed last year's (in some ways) anti-comic book superhero movie "Kick Ass," has a good feel for this conflict. The movie does tend to waver when the focus slides too long away from the two men's relationship. I found the dilemma of Hank McCoy rather silly -- he works on creating a serum to make fantastic-looking mutants appear normal. In his case, his mutation consists of large monkey-like feet. Put on some shoes, problem solved.

Things are tougher for Mystique, whose natural form is blue and scaly. In this movie Xavier and Mystique have a long sibling-like relationship going back to childhood, but she feels more of a connection with the self-aware Magneto. It doesn't hurt that Xavier is sexually ambiguous about her appearance, while Magneto encourages her to let her freak flag fly.

I don't think the cinematic world really needed a new go-round of "X-Men" movies, but I liked this one so much that I can actually say I'm looking forward to another. And maybe another.

3 stars out of four

"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 1" trailer

Apologies for the slow week -- we were away and I missed the "X-Men" screening.

So, here's a trailer for the new teenage vampire franchise flick.

Missed any of the Twilight films? fear not catch up with the whole series at lovefilm.com. Not only do LOVEFiLM send movies straight to your door with no late fees at all they also allow you to watch a huge range of movies online!

Tags: 2011 MTV Movie Awards, Movie News, Twilight: Breaking Dawn