WINCHESTER ‘73 (1950)

The first of five Westerns from director Anthony Mann & James Stewart not only reinvigorated the genre (on screens big & small), but also paved the way for big-time profit-participation by movie stars. If only the film were as interesting as it was influential. It’s a fairly standard revenge tale with the eponymous rifle setting up a portmanteau of episodes as we follow a doomed line-up of temporary rifle owners. Meanwhile, Stewart (who opened the film by winning the prized Winchester fair & square) moves ever onward in his obsessive hunt for a killer, and the accumulating pressure is relieved at regular intervals thanks to the Winchester ‘73 trickle-down theory. The secret behind Stewart’s quest is conveniently held for the last two reels, but you’ll be neither satisfied nor surprised. You will get to see a set of youthful turns from rising stars like Shelley Winters, Tony Curtis & Rock Hudson (all seriously miscast), and a grandly scaled perf from slimy Dan Duryea as a scaldingly amoral killer. He’s worth all the fuss.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Two years on, with BEND IN THE RIVER/’52, Mann became Stewart’s go-to director; seven films in four years, thru THE MAN FROM LARAMIE/’55 which may well be best of the lot.

SLINGS AND ARROWS (2003-2006)

SLINGS AND ARROWS is just about the best tv to come across our Northern border since Hockey Night in Canada. If you’ve ever been a regular at a major theatre fest (especially Stratford in Canada), the three series (6 episodes each) will prove irresistible. But you don't need even a nodding acquaintance with Shakespeare or backstage politics to get hooked. Year One, which is keyed to a production of HAMLET, is the most balanced of the series (with a pre-Hollywood Rachel McAdams acting out her future career arc), but years Two (MACBETH) & Three (LEAR) aren’t far behind. (Year Two takes a couple episodes to get in gear, but the final season gets a grand emotional charge from its guest-star, longtime Stratford alum William Hutt who is alternatingly terrifying & tender as Lear.) Paul Gross is enormously appealing as the new artistic director who's hounded by the ghost of his late predecessor/mentor. And he even gets to have an age appropriate romance with the festival’s leading tragedienne. If your kids are old enough to handle the sex & language, have them watch along with you. You can bet they'll want to see the next available production of HAMLET, ROMEO & JULIET, MACBETH and LEAR after seeing how much sheer fun, drama & devotion these works engender.

THE FAR COUNTRY (1954)

This penultimate of eight collaborations between James Stewart & helmer Anthony Mann was their fourth Western. And if it pales next to their final work (THE MAN FROM LARAMIE/'55, Western #5), it’s still a strong film on its own terms, with particularly fine location shooting. Stewart, in atypically uningratiating mode, is a calculating loner who brings a herd of cattle up to Gold Rush territory for a big payoff. But the life-is-cheap/lawless frontier he finds along the way knocks a dent into the surface charm he’s long maintained as armor against real human contact. Stewart doesn’t have much rapport with his ambivalent leading lady Ruth Roman (who did?), but spars nicely with Walter Brennan, Corinne Calvert & J. C. Flippen, and against a convincingly amoral John McIntire. But the climax of the pic belongs entirely to Stewart’s longtime equine co-star, Pie, who proved a one-take wonder at taking direction.

PORT OF SHADOWS/LE QUAI DES BRUMES (1938)

Everyone talks a poetic blue streak in this famously fatalistic collaboration between writer Jacques Prévert & helmer Marcel Carné. Jean Gabin stars as a man on the run from the law who would rather see his love one more time than make his getaway by sea. Wait! Wasn’t that PÉPÉ LE MOKO/’37? A bit of a flip-flop, actually, but PÉPÉ holds up better than SHADOWS, as do a host of Gabin pics from the same period. Still, there’s a tasty cast of French ‘types’ to enjoy, Michèle Morgan is heavenly and the great Michel Simon can make your flesh crawl, plus the astounding look of the film thanks to the legendary designer Alexander Trauner. Prévert & Carné would be back soon enough with DAYBREAK and CHILDREN OF PARADISE to brag about, and, in its own happily derivative way, this one’s most watchable, too.

KILLER’S KISS (1955)

Stanley Kubrick kept his earliest work out of circulation, but he may have had a bit of affection toward this little noir which he lensed, wrote & megged. It’s a modest thriller, made for a pittance, about a mid-weight boxer who misses his shot at the bigtime, but finds love. No kidding! Kubrick! Love! The film is mostly a technical exercise, and he stumbles a bit shooting & editing some of the action stuff, but the use of both famous and out-of-the-way NYC locations is fabulous, obviously the work of a natural. What an eye! And what a shame that he ended up cocooning himself in studio-bound work in his late works. The big climax, an extended (all right, over-extended) fight to the finish in a mannequin warehouse, shows a surprisingly strong influence from Orson Welles (THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI/’48 and (double surprise) Vincente Minnelli (THE BANDWAGON/’53). Whodda thunk?

CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR (2007)

This spry political parable about the eponymous hard-partying Texas Congressman who got Afghanistan the funds & weapons needed to fight the Russians in the ‘80s, is just the sort of sophisticated, yet ultimately shallow thinking-person’s entertainment that’s perfect for helmer Mike Nichols. His previous pass at D.C. politics, PRIMARY COLORS/’98, was 40 minutes longer and took on just the sort of misplaced seriousness scripter Aaron Sorkin sidesteps here. They're both having too much fun detailing the complications & odd-couple partnerships in Wilson’s unlikely international network. (A brief moralistic coda let’s too many players off the hook and is best ignored.) Tom Hanks has recently been working out his characterizations thru homage and he makes the obvious choice to go all Larry Hagman here, to good effect. (Hagman himself, that is the real Larry Hagman, gave a knock-out perf in PRIMARY COLORS.) Julia Roberts gets a mighty pay check and mighty billing for little screen time, but Philip Seymour Hoffman gives good weight, as always, and surely dumbfounds anyone who’s just seen his Truman Capote. And, as the President of Afghanistan, Om Puri is his typically sublime self.

THE TWO OF US (1967)

The late Claude Berri was a true Jacques-of-all movie trades, an omnipresent figure in French cinema. But since most of the projects he had fingers in never opened Stateside, we only know him from his early and (from years later) his more prestigous pics as director. It’s a mixed blessing since so many of these pics don’t live up to their promise. His well regarded Marcel Pagnol adaptations are scenic, but stiff. His mighty attempt at Zola’s stupendous GERMINAL is buried under its own prestige.* And his Jewish-life-in-France comedies tend to be too damn cute. So, it’s a relief to see that his famous debut feature looks both tougher & funnier than you might recall, almost Truffaut worthy. The autobiographical story takes us to 1943 when Berri, a hard-to-handle 9 year-old Jewish kid, was sent to hide in the country with fake Grandparents as a good Catholic boy. Fortunately, Grandpa is played by that great shaggy dog of an actor, Michel Simon, a true force of nature. In many ways, he’s the nonconformist gramps of your dreams, unless you happen to be Jewish since just past his endearing ways is a dyed-in-the-wool Anti-Semite. Berri gets a natural swing going between these two (it’s very Charlie Chaplin/Jackie Coogan) and doesn’t push the emotional buttons too hard at any point, settling to show how tough it is for any city kid to survive rural hazing and acknowledging the gray areas that allow a sweet, caring old man to also be a bigot of the first order. It’s a very grown-up kind of sentimental pic. (Be sure to watch the hilarious short subject, THE CHICKEN, included on the Criterion DVD edition.)

*READ ALL ABOUT IT: GERMINAL, Emile Zola’s epic of coal mining, early communist organizers, company towns and social revolt, is truly a hair-raising read. Berri turned it into an expensive dud. Get a good translation and read yourself a great movie. Then try to see THE ORGANIZER (I COMPAGNI)/'63, Mario Monicelli 's magnificent work with Marcello Mastrioanni in one of his greatest roles. It shows just the sort of film GERMINAL could have been.

DEATH PROOF (2007)

The Quentin Tarantino half of GRINDHOUSE, a faux double-feature ‘70s exploitation B-pic (originally paired with Robert Rodriguez ‘s PLANET TERROR) is now an expanded stand-alone release. Kurt Russell has a grand time as Stuntman Mike, a psychotic has-been stunt-driver who gets his kicks by chatting up nubile ladies half his age and then plowing them down with his customized ‘death proof’ car. Tarantino uses a simple mirror-image structure, with Russell as the only link, for a win one/lose one morality tale. Alas, the same success ratio applies to the film. The first encounter is nicely realized, especially the extended bar sequence that’s all hilarious talk about guys, gals, sex, booze & philosophy. It’s as if William Saroyan had written for American International Pictures. (It’s this part of the film that’s lovingly etched with mock dents & bruises such as you might have found on a battered Drive-In movie print. My favorite bit shows just the sort of color-value tone variation you’d often get on reel changes.) But the second half of the pic fritters away our good will & interest with some of the worst writing & acting ever seen in a Tarantino pic. No doubt this was intentional, but the phony camaraderie and ‘You go, girl’ attitude of the revenge-minded gals is hard to swallow.

THE FOUR FEATHERS (1939)

The Korda brothers (producer Alex, director Zoltan & designer Vincent) got just about everything right in this tremendous version of the oft-filmed British Empire tale. John Clements is the seemingly weak scion of a long line of British officers who redeems his valour (Anglophiles, note the spelling) after he resigns his commission and receives four white feathers of cowardice. There’s a late silent version from 1929 that sounds pretty marvelous, but certainly none of the many sound versions comes within shouting distance of this Technicolor gem. Love, honour, derring-do, native disguises, Fuzzy-Wuzzies, a grand score from Miklos Rozsa & stunning studio lensing from Georges Perinal & Jack Cardiff, plus legendary location footage from Osmond Barradaile that was pilfered for years after. Ralph Richardson is a standout as the officer who loses his heart and his sight, and character actor supreme, C. Aubrey Smith is at his most iconic. The story is cleverly designed so that it comes down on all sides of the usual debates on British colonialism & the military, but no one takes sides against this classic telling, yet another 1939 winner.