Started watching 6 Guns (2010) tonight - about 50 minutes in and not sure if I will finish.
Its a remake of Hannie Caulder, so I was curious… it has good costumes, decent set locations and good enough actors for a low budget movie, but unfortunately the director has zero sense of style and its a total bore to watch.
All shots are too tight and up close on the characters - even during outdoor scenes in the desert or in town, shots never pull back to get the scenery. Very boring stuff.
Along with this, the music is typical dull & generic soundtrack
Will be following up sometime soon with another modern remake of Hannie Caulder - Jane Got A Gun starring Natalie Portman - also reviewed very poorly, but we’ll see
Mask Of The Avenger, 1951, with John Derek and Anthony Quinn. A surprisingly uninspiring swordplay-ripoff of Zorro films, taking-place in 1848 Italy. In the hometown of The Count Of Monte Cristo, which is weird. The film-audience is supposed to perceive some association to him. But all we see is his sword behind glass at the base of a statue, at the beginning.
About halfway through, a mysterious hand in a black glove smashes the glass and grabs the sword… and that’s the end of the Count Of Monte Cristo references.
After that, Derek just cavorts around the countryside navigating a ponderous plot involving a greedy Governor and an invasion by Austria, which isn’t really explained. Worse, when the invasion happens, the action stops. Everybody you thought was going to get killed, gets killed in few smoky closeups.
The silliest flaw is when Derek, who comes-and-goes via a secret door leading from his hidden costume-closet, tries to get back in the Governor’s mansion and the door is locked . So he sneaks in a window, where he’s told that the guards had orders to lock every door. Which means they used his hidden closet to lock the secret door… and didn’t mention it to the Governor. The script continues-on without Derek reacting to it. Surreal.
Jane Got a Gun (2015) - This film was everything that 6 Guns wasn’t (which I again attempted to finish but didn’t). Lots of shots making the beautiful scenery part of the visual experience, this director (who followed up with The Accountant) knows how to shoot a western. All around excellent performances from the cast and for such a low attention film, it feels like a bigger budget production.
I wouldn’t really call it a remake of Hannie Caulder though. Its not a revenge story, although there are elements of revenge involved, and its similar in some ways but not the same story.
Great example of why I don’t pay any attention to popular reviews and opinions of films.
Yes, I watched it, and guess what? It was somewhat enjoyable, but no, not good. The Predator, or Pred4tor (as one poster says) is crap of the fourth kind, or at least a close encounter, but it’s also a kind kind of crap
Nice review, could have written that first line myself. Portman will always be a favorite, and I didn’t realize she was a producer for this film until credits rolled.
I thought the flashback driven narrative was largely what worked for the film, and set it apart from the usual western story.
Great film, much more deserving of a wider audience.
Yes, Jane Got a Gun is a quite good modern western, much better than its reputation. And it is of course not in the slightest a remake of the far inferior Hannie Caulder. At least I don’t remember any similarities apart from a woman in the lead.
Jane Got a Gun is a work of fiction, and was written by Brian Duffield, who later gained some notoriety for writing the screenplay for Insurgent . But his script for Jane Got a Gun is what first put him on the map back in 2011, earning a spot on the Black List, a collection of the best unproduced screenplays. But even though the story came from Duffield, he didn’t pull it completely out of thin air. Rather, he was influenced by another film. According to IMDb, Duffield’s script is loosely based upon the 1971 film Hannie Caulder.
Today’s sunday triple feature was The Tall T (pretty darn good), Roma (wow, saw it in the theater, 4K, dolby atmos etc) and Passengers (better than its reputation)
The Predator (2018) - Decided to go ahead with this one after several mentions here and being curious if it was so bad or not. Well at first I was totally on board with some fresh takes like the military research facility with a recovered Predator. The film so far has a vibe to it that is similar to the kinds of sequels that go off the rails a bit and turn into something that is not received well but later develops a kind of following, similar to what happened with Predator 2. But as the movie continues, it becomes more and more goofy in tone - sometimes it works with the joking around, but the general non-serious tone just doesn’t really work in a Predator film. There’s this kind of kid’s movie character present throughout the movie that is hard for me to look past, even the way the actors present themselves with facial expressions and how they move seems more at home in a made-for-kids movie, and dulls all the action, let alone any possible suspense.
Then there’s the Predator dogs which I found awfully silly and taking things too far, this is turning into the Once Upon A Time In Mexico of The Predator series, but then I watched…
Predators (2010) - Somehow I had forgotten that Robert Rodriguez was involved in the making of this film, so when I saw the Troublemaker Studios logo screen, I knew this was probably going to be different than I expected. I had put off watching Predators because I heard so many people say how boring it was, just a bunch of dudes talking in the jungle - well, I don’t know what movie they watched because surely it wasn’t this one… Predators has the more serious tone of the original films while also adding in some of the Troublemaker flavor. Lots of nods to the original with actors that are enjoyable to watch play their roles, and good action.
…and Predator dogs…
And these Predator dogs even respond to their Predator masters whistling them back… so there you have it, precedent set in the previous, actually good film.
Predators: apparently a movie you quickly forget. Or at least parts of it. I remember a pumped-up Brody and a mubling Fishburne, but no dogs, not even a babe scientist
It’s pretty good. Some people even call it a masterpiece, so my expectations were kinda high prior to watching this thing. It turned out pretty good, it didn’t blow my socks off though.
