The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Goodbye Dragon Inn, and a few more films

Good Will Hunting (1997)

It's not about thrifting at Goodwill. Will Hunting is the main character's name.

He's a troubled and occasionally violent janitor at MIT, who solves a heady math problem on a chalkboard at the university. It's a problem none of the students could figure out, so a professor decides the janitor is a math whiz, and tracks Will to one of his numerous court appearances.

As often happens but only to white people and only in the movies, the judge releases the defendant to the custody of someone who promises to tend him. In this case it's the math professor, with a requirement that Will see a therapist for his recurring anger issues. 

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Matt Damon stars, with Robin Williams as the shrink, Minnie Driver as the girl, Stellan Skarsgård as the professor, and Ben Affleck as the best buddy. Script by Damon & Affleck, pulling a 'Rocky' same as Sylvester Stallone did — they weren't getting the good roles they wanted, so they wrote their own movie.

The Boston-boys hijinks with Damon and Affleck gets tedious, and as usually happens in Hollywood, "the girl" is pretty and that's all she has going on. The bulk of the movie, though, is about the psychiatrist trying to get inside Will's wounded head, and young Will figuring out what he wants from life.

Good Will Hunting is more intelligent and awake than most big-time movies, which isn't saying much, but it has a whisper of something to say, and earns a thumb's up from me.

It's a good movie with a stupid title.

Directed by Gus Van Sant. Music by Danny Elfman. 

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

"The good" is Clint Eastwood, though he's barely a good guy. He makes his living in a swindle, turning in a wanted man for the bounty, then shooting the rope at the hanging, making a getaway with the wanted man, and pulling the same ruse in the next town.

"The bad" is Lee Van Cleef, a man of mean eyes and a cruel heart, who's looking for a lockbox full of stolen treasure. He's an honest bad, though. When two men hire him to kill each other, he sees no conflict of interest and follows through, twice.

"The ugly" is Eli Wallach, who starts as the man on the rope in Eastwood's scheme, but wants a bigger cut, so Eastwood abandons him in the desert. "The way back to town is only 70 miles. You know, if you save your breath, I feel a man like you could manage it. Adios."

All three men hate each other, and the lost treasure is the MacGuffin that keeps them at each others throats, with doublecrosses all along the way. Everything is overamped to near-silliness, including the Civil War set piece and the Mexican standoff at the end, but the music and unending eyeball close-ups demand to be taken seriously. 

This is the best spaghetti western ever.

Does the term need to be defined? Spaghetti westerns were set in America's old west but filmed in Italy, with mostly Italian casts, all-Italian crews, and usually a few American stars. The actors and actresses speak in their own languages, dubbed as needed for the flick to play on either side of the Atlantic. Which is a crazy way to make movies, but some were enjoyable, and this is the best.

The story is a series of thinly-connected vignettes, all playing on familiar western clichés, adding up to a fine way to spend three hours of your life. The director is Sergio Leone, a master at these things, and the music is by the magnificent Ennio Morricone. 

Verdict: BIG YES. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

This film takes place entirely at the Fu-Ho Grand Theater, in Taipei. It's a very large, single-screen cinema, and in the first scene it's completely full, with about a thousand people watching Dragon Inn (1967), a Taiwanese epic.

That opening scene, with the packed theater, is a flashback. Dragon Inn packed the place when it first played, but this is the theater's closing night. They've booked Dragon Inn for one last screening before the doors are locked, and there are only perhaps two dozen people in the audience.

Basically, that's Goodbye, Dragon Inn. It unfolds in real time, while Dragon Inn plays in the background. It shows the theater's audience, and its staff. It's eerie, it's sad, and obviously very unlike ordinary movies.

The subtitles relay Dragon Inn's dialogue, since Goodbye, Dragon Inn has nearly no dialogue of its own. (And at the link above, click 'closed captions' to launch the subtitles.)

Dragon Inn is a rousing adventure, but Goodbye, Dragon Inn is slow, and by movie-standards almost nothing happens. Many shots last a minute, and some last much longer — no MTV quick cuts here. Also no action, and no drama unless you're paying close attention (which I recommend).

In the audience, a woman eats nuts, cracking the shells, annoying the man in front of her. A man puts his feet up, uncomfortably close to another patron's head.

There's some slight cruising, straight and gay, hinted at but never shown. From their seats, people eye each other for longer than I'd consider socially accessible, and in the men's room, a dozen urinals are available, but three men stand side-by-side in three adjacent urinals. 

There are only two employees at the theater: a young woman who walks with a laborious limp, and the projectionist. She might have a crush on him. We watch her struggle up a flight of stairs to share her lunch with him in the projection booth, but he's not there; the movie is unspooling without him. Maybe he's one of the guys in the men's room. She sits and waits for a while, then gives up, and struggles down the stairs again. 

When Dragon Inn concludes, the house lights come up, and the limping woman sweeps the aisles. The camera lingers, watching an empty auditorium for several minutes.  

Then Goodbye, Dragon Inn concludes, with two small but big scenes I can't tell you about because I don't do spoilers. Suffice to say, there's an emotional payoff, but again, only if you're paying close attention.

Finally, the camera leaves the theater, where a sign says "Temporarily closed," but I've seen similar signs on locked cinema doors. It's not temporary.

Not quite changing the subject, let me mention Seattle's Coliseum Theater. It opened in 1916 and had almost 2,000 seats, with two balconies. I saw Jaws from the upper balcony, where the seating was so steep it scared me more than the movie.

The balconies had been roped off by 1990, when I watched Tremors with about two dozen other customers on the theater's last night. Goodbye, Dragon Inn captures that feeling, the last night in a grand cinema, a sadness bigger than the big screen.

The film is audacious, never winks or cheats on its concept, and it's unforgettable for anyone who's ever loved seeing films in a theater.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Goodbye, Mr Chips (1939)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

This is the prototype of the teacher-who-changed-my-life genre, based on a novel by James Hilton (Lost Horizon). The teacher is Mr Chipping, called 'Mr Chips' by generations of loving students, and the setting is the olde Brookfield School, fictionally founded in 1492.

The movie wants you to love Brookfield, but the appeal of such upper-crust private boarding schools, full of well-behaved boys from wealthy families, all in matching uniforms, eludes me. I instantly hated the place.

A more serious problem is Robert Donat as Mr Chips. At the start of the movie he's supposed to be 83 years old, but he's obviously a young man wearing pounds of aging makeup, and way overplaying the charming-but-doddering bit.

Then we flash back to the beginning of Mr Chips' teaching career, where Donat is age appropriate and plays the part better, and the students are a bit more rambunctiously disobedient than they'd been in the opening scenes. This lifted my hopes for the film, but unfortunately, as the story's years roll by, Donat's fake mustache gets bushier and his performance hammier.

There's an unconvincing romance with Greer Garson, but the primary thrust of the story is Mr Chips' yearning to be the school's headmaster, and instilling a patriotic fervor in the boys, necessary for the looming War to End All Wars, a/k/a WWI. 

I yawned a lot, but most people think it's a classic.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Gorgo (1961)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

Gorgo is an oversized ugliness discovered in Ireland, shipped to England and put on tawdry display. An orphan boy on loan from Oliver Twist keeps telling the adults that what they're doing to Gorgo is wrong. The critter's mother agrees, and goes on the rampage for her baby. 

Is the movie good? As schlock, yeah. It's the first Godzilla-ripoff from the UK, so the screams have an accent, and seeing London stomped instead of Tokyo is a pleasant variation. Tower Bridge, Parliament, and Big Ben are going down.

"Piccadilly Circus? There's no telling where this thing will strike next."

The monster effects are average for the genre, but it's in color, and the destruction effects are fine. And it certainly offers a strong female lead, in the form of Monster Mom. Gorgo isn't King Kong or Godzilla, but it's pretty good if you're in the mood for this sort of thing. 

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Interview with Tsai Ming-Liang, director of Goodbye, Dragon Inn
from TylerCoburn.com

Was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly "the truest western ever made"?
from I Hated Black And White Movies

6/9/2024   

• • • Coming attractions • • •     

Gosford Park (2001)
The Graduate (1967)
Grammar Revolution (2014)
Gran Torino (2008)
Grand Central Murder (1942)

... plus schlock, shorts, and surprises

— — —

Now accepting movie recommendations,
especially starting with the letter 'H'.
Just add a comment, below.

— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

 

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