The Magnificent Seven 1960 Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, and Charles Bronson.
I finally watched the entire movie. I’d seen bits and pieces channel surfing. Cable tv used to air it frequently.
It lives up to its reputation. Very enjoyable and well made.
Eli Wallach, a Jewish Stage Actor from New York is so convincing as a Mexican bandito. His role as Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is equally as good as Calvera in The Magnificent Seven. I remember reading Eli and his wife Anne Jackson loved performing on stage. They often costarred together in plays.
I love it, too (especially for the Elmer Bernstein score, which Marlboro cigarettes used for their TV commercials)
But I have to admit that I like the original, Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai better (It was called “The Magnificent Seven” for its original US release, which is undoubtedly where the Western got its title). Longer and more nuanced – they combined two of the roles for Horst Bucholz’ part in TM7. Well worth a watch.
I submit that the Samurai/Western/Gangster recycling machine is always viable.
Japanese movies are surprisingly accessible on their own, and easily remade. Even as weird as Realm of the Senses. They could have ended 9-1/2 Weeks with Mickey Rourke’s dick in Kim Bassinger’s purse and the audience would have bought it.
This movie has one of my favorite scenes of all time, ever: The town people are trying to decide what to do with a dead Native American and Yul Brynner says, “Aw hell. If that’s all that’s holding things up, I’ll drive the rig.” Steve McQueen follows his example and the two risk their lives to help bury someone. Why? Just to stick it to bigoted assholes.
Truly heroic. While fictional, it’s a great example of how I’d like to live my life when put to the test.
If you liked him in that role, you have to see The Mighty Quinn. There’s a scene near the middle where he sings a kind of cakewalk song while playing the piano. Damn, he just ignited the screen. It’s a fun movie, too. I thought the ending faceoff with the villain was a little cliched, but the story was intriguing and all the other actors were great. Robert Townsend and Sheryl Lee Ralph in particular.
It’s one of my favorite non-blockbuster movies.
You didn’t mention Natalie Wood. I loved that she wasn’t a syrupy little goody-goody. She was a really good child actor.
Just watched Blood Fest on Prime. A fun throwaway little horror movie. Basically horror fans get invited to a huge convention. Unfortunately, the masked “psychos” and monsters turn out to all too real…
The bad guys seem to be having a ball, and it’s pretty entertaining. I found the “last girl” much more interesting and a better actor than the hero, but all in all not too shabby.
I prefer The Seven Samurai to The Magnificent Seven overall, but the latter had this moment from Charles Bronson’s character that has always stuck with me:
You had The Seven Samurai becoming The Magnificent Seven and Yojimbo becoming A Fistful of Dollars. But arguably the weirdest (and least familiar) was Rashomon becoming The Outrage
I’d love to see that film. Not only does it translate the medieval Japanese drama to the 19th century West, but it has one of the weirdest casts around:
Paul Newman as the Mexican bandit Juan Carrasco (!)
Laurence Harvey as Colonel WAkefield (the young samurai in Rashomon)
Claire Bloom as his wife
Edward G. Robinson as a con man (equivalent to one of the people sheltering from the storm in the Rashomon gate)
William Shatner as a Preacher (same)
Howard da Silva (Ben Franklin from 1776!) as an Old Prospector (ditto)
Apparently it’s available on DVD, but I’ve never seen it. I read part of the script, though.
In its own way, it’s weirder than Kurasawa’s The Hidden Fortress sorta becoming Star Wars
Bonhoeffer (Theater) The blurb: As the world teeters on the brink of annihilation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is swept into the epicenter of a deadly plot to assassinate Hitler. With his faith and fate at stake, Bonhoeffer must choose between upholding his moral convictions or risking it all to save millions of Jews from genocide. Will his shift from preaching peace to plotting murder alter the course of history or cost him everything?
Not recommended.
The film was both dull and a mess. Essentially a series of formative moments in young Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life that colored his conviction that the Nazis are bad and Christians should lead the resistance. It also took the time to tell us racism is bad. I am certain the script was written in crayon.
If you liked Oppenheimer and Napoleon you may enjoy this entirely accurate and yet entirely nonsensical bullet point retelling of a persons life along with a menagerie of unrelated yet historical social and political themes for the film to sample but largely go unexplored.
I suspect the higher Rotten Tomato fan ratings are linked to this film perhaps being seen as a sly invitation for modern Christians to resist current perceived Fascism.
For the 2016 version, watch the showdown in the middle and the end finale so that’s 10 minutes of violence. The Original has it beat for the rest of the run time.
I still can’t decide which of the True Grits are better, I like both for different reasons.
The Outrage came out when I was of middle school age, and I remember the billboards for it. I think it was the cause of my first having inklings of what rape is (I didn’t see the movie, but I heard about it).
Arthur the King @wolfpup has been touting this movie for a while now, and I usually enjoy animal movies, so when I saw it On Demand I decided to watch it.
Great story. I understand why they changed the protagonist from Swedish to American (“big” star for box office), but I’m not a big Marky Mark fan. He wasn’t that bad, but he wasn’t that great. It was a decently put together movie, but there were some draggy spots for me. The dog was awesome! None of the cliched animal behaviors you’d usually see in a dog movie. Just amazing. Lots of emotional hits, but the sponsors replacing the oversized picture in their boardroom with “that” picture is the one that really got to me, for some reason.
I liked most of it. The last 45 minutes gets extremely chaotic. It’s science fiction but this alternative reality at the end is hard to swallow.
Matthew’s character realizes the horrific ending for humanity happens in the past and can’t be reversed. Yet some morse code sent to the second hand of a watch can miraculously allow the survivors to relocate on space stations.
It’s a hopeful message that himanity can survive. I don’t see how the ending makes any sense. New scientific knowledge isn’t that usesful if the highly trained scientists are dead. You need a massive technological society to build those space stations.