Year in Reviews 2012: Movie Editon - Part One

Well apparently my 12 Days of Criticismas was a touch ambitious.  Thanks to a pretty bad stretch of The Plague running through my household this month, coupled with a couple of my guest writers not being able to squeeze a post into their own busy schedules, our 12 days ended up being A Week's Worth of Criticismas.  Oh well, even Santa drops the ball every once in a while.  I mean, you have seen the holiday classic Santa Claus:  The Movie haven't you?  Dudley Moore was never better.  We'll give it another shot next year.  I would like to thank Rhett Paro, Josh Carrillo and Peter Brown for their efforts and hopefully they'll be back reviewing bad TV specials, food, and weather phenomena again soon.

Critical Errors isn't the sort of review blog where you're going to get run-downs on all the latest offerings in movies, music, TV, food, products, what have you.  Anyone who's surfed through this humble corner of the Internet at all would know that.  How many reviews of the Ox-Bow Incident written post-1943 do you think are floating around the Interwebs?  My guess is not many, and yet you'll find one on Critical Errors, proudly.  However, I don't spend all my time only watching western morality plays from the war years.  So, I figured I'd do a look back at--nearly--everything I watched in 2012 and would give either a brief two-cents take or a just a link to the review I already wrote for it just in case you had the mis(?)fortune of missing it the first time around.  These are movies I either watched for the first time ever, or first time in a long time, presented in no particular order whatsoever.

Lincoln (2012 - Steven Spielberg) - As popular and successful as he has been for nearly 40 years, Spielberg gets flack from a lot of artsy cinefile types for being too populist and often pulling his punches in service of the happy, or at least happiest possible, ending.  Among other things, these folks will concede his talents as a filmmaker capable of entertaining with the best, but lacking the bravery of a true artist.  Now, my formal film education may only consist of a single community college course, but to those accusations I say, haters gonna hate.  They don't come much braver than Lincoln.  To make a movie about the passing of a piece of legislation, even concerning perhaps the most important piece of legislation in our nations history, in this case the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, and with as compelling a historical figure as there may be, in this case Abraham Lincoln, and have not one minute of its 150 minute running time feel like history class, is a herculean task only a handful of directors could have pulled off.  Lincoln is a masterpiece and Daniel Day-Lewis channels Honest Abe himself.  Even though I have obviously never seen Lincoln walk or move or heard his voice, somehow DDL manages to perfectly capture what I always imagined he would move and sound like, based on whatever still images I have seen over the years.  It's a virtuoso performance to add to DDL's ever growing list of virtuoso performances.  The movie is chock full of other recognizable faces, like David Straighairn, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levit and pretty much every character actor ever.  Lincoln is a great movie, and to the haters that would say otherwise I have a message for you:  shut up.

The Shootist (1976 - Don Siegal) - Great character piece starring John Wayne as a dying gunslinger.  Read my full review here.

Army of Crime (L'armee du Crime - 2009 - Robert Guedeguian) - A French movie about the French resistance in Paris during WWII.  Based on actual events, while a goodly portion of the French people and French police collaborated with the Nazi's, in many cases without much convincing needed, many of the French resistance groups were actually made up of immigrants; in this case foreign Jews, Spainards, Italians, and Armenians.  The army of crime is a rag tag group of resistance fighters with little to no training, harassing and killing Nazi's in the streets of Paris, some questioning the morality of what they're doing, some enjoying it a little too much.  A pretty interesting, and at times upsetting and at times uplifting, look at an often overlooked portion of history.

Four Christmases (2008 - Seth Gordon) - Don't think this one will be making the yearly Christmas movie rotation.  Simple premise:  couple Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon attempt to spend Christmas day with all four of their divorced parents.  Hijinx ensue.  A scenario that should be ripe for comedy gold.  The best this one achieves is bronze...plated.  There's a few decent slapstick moments, especially with the pair visiting Vaughn's blue collar dad Robert Duvall and his idiot brothers, redneck Tim McGraw (irony!) and ultimate fighter wannabe Jon Favreau.  There's also a pretty amusingly awkward sequence when they visit Vince's mom, Sissy Spacek, who happens to be dating Vince's ex-best friend.  Pretty gross, but also kinda funny.  The biggest problem is Vince Vaughn though.  He just won't shut up!  I guess that's what he does, but it gets seriously annoying.  A far cry from his days scoping out the babies in LA diners.

And speaking of The Ox-Bow Incident (1943 - William Wellman) - here's my 102 word review of the western morality play starring Henry Fonda.

Stay tuned for Part Two of the Year in Reviews 2012:  Movie Edition.

The Shootist

Its hard to imagine a more fitting final film for a well known movie star then director Don Siegel's The Shootist starring John Wayne.  It's 1901 and the West, for the most part, has already been won.  Many towns of the West now boast running water, electric lights, telephones, and, soon, electrified street cars.  The once Wild West is becoming increasingly tamed.

The Duke plays aging gunslinger J.B. Books, a legend from that bygone era rapidly fading away into history, when men settled their differences with hot lead.  To further underscore the transition from one epoch to another, both in the history portrayed in the movie and the history of movies, a series of clips from John Wayne westerns through the decades stands in as evidence of J.B. Books' exploits in the Old West.  Diagnosed with a cancer of an advanced nature, Books arrives in Carson City for a second opinion from a trusted friend, Doc Hostetler, played by Jimmy Stewart.  Hostetler not only confirms the original diagnosis, but paints a vivid and painful picture of what Brooks can expect in his few remaining weeks and insinuates that for a man of courage there are other, much less painful ways to die.

Brooks takes up residence in the boarding house of widow Bond Rogers, played by Laruen Bacall, and her hot headed son Gillom, played by Ron Howard.  Brooks hopes to live out his final days in peace, anonymously in Carson City.  No such luck.  Before long word gets around the legend has moved into town, much to the chagrin of both Rogers and the loquacious Sheriff Thibido, played by Harry Morgan, who both fear his presence will bring to town those who wish to settle old scores or take up new ones now that Brooks is wasting away with disease.  Their fears are not without merit, as Brooks encounters old enemies and makes new ones upon his arrival, and there is at least one attempt on his life at the boarding house.

Besides the assassins  Books is beset with fortune seekers of every kind.  Books encounters newspaper men, aspiring gunmen, even an old flame, all looking to make a name, and a dollar, for themselves by cashing in on Books' legend.

There are only a couple of scenes of gunplay, as the movie is really a character study of Brooks as he takes stock of what his life has been in his dying days.  This is arguably The Dukes best acting performance, right up there with his role as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers and his two turns as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969) and Rooster Cogburn.   John Wayne isn't for everybody, but I've always liked him, and no one can deny his place as one of movies all time legends.  He's a more reflective sort in The Shootist, as I suppose dying men often are, and you have to think that given the circumstances John Wayne must have seen quite a bit of himself in J.B. Books and vice versa.  Yet, he is without a doubt still John Wayne, quick with a quip and a gun, taking no lip from anybody.

As Books lives out his final days, his relationship with Bond is contentious--she does not approve of his life of work--but as two lonely souls brought together in the face of death, they develop a mutual respect which may have become something more if not for Books' dire diagnosis.  Then again, maybe if he wasn't at death's door he wouldn't have softened enough for a respectable woman like Bond.  Books also forges a relationship with her son, Gillom, who idolizes the legend of Books and thinks he knows the sort of man Books is and wants to emulate him.  He discovers he might not have what it takes, or even the desire to acquire it, to be a man like Books.  And maybe Books isn't exactly what Gillom thought he was in the first place.

In the end, Books decides that Doc Hostetler was right, and there are other ways to meet his finality then his insides being eaten away, and he engineers the final act of his life to that end.

If a western can be heartfelt and still be a western, this is it.  Great performances all around and a fitting end to a legendary career in the movies.

Here's a trailer: