From Charles Burnett, this is a quarter of an hour on a lazy afternoon in the modern but barren west, with four white guys sitting around a crumbling shack, smoking and talking and killing time, waiting for someone to kill a horse.

A black man’s been hired to do the task, but before he arrives his young son comforts the horse. The white guys watch. Then the boy’s father comes, to do the work he’s been hired to do. It’s not clear why the horse has to die; it doesn’t seem to be ailing.

The film is short and enigmatic, but it doesn’t take a degree in film studies to figure the point here. The black boy is the only one who cares, the black man is the only one who works, it’s work that might or might not be needed, and the white men don’t do squat. It’s abstract American History, distilled to about fifteen minutes.

Verdict: YES.

Animator Stephen Irwin made two short films, one called Horse and one called Glue, which play together at the same time.

There’s a little kid who’s having a grand time at a parade, then wanders off to a forest, where he’s attacked. Meanwhile, war scenes play out, on the bottom of the screen.

As with most avant-garde, if you’re looking to make sense of it, that’s your first mistake. It’s about seven minutes, and it’s art, not entertainment. It’s successful art, though.

Verdict: YES.

This is an 8-minute short, made by Robert Breer and dedicated to just-plain Julie.

A hat becomes a bird, the bird becomes a man, the man becomes a frog, the frog becomes a rabbit, and there’s a woman with an umbrella.

Maybe watching three odd, enigmatic, avant-garde pieces in a row is a bad idea. This one’s nice to look at, but I don’t get it.

Verdict: MAYBE.

John Wayne plays Colonel John Marlowe, commanding a brigade of Union soldiers, sent sneaking deep into Confederate territory. Marlowe’s grumpy by nature, but he’s grumpier because he and his men are accompanied on this mission by Army doctor Henry Kendall (William Holden), who’s so namby-pamby he thinks soldiers with malaria shouldn’t be fighting. Wayne and Holden annoy each other all across the American South, providing most of the movie’s amusement.

Several times, Marlowe leads his 800 or so men on horseback, all riding single file and belting out songs like they’re the Gay Men’s Choir — and then he’s surprised when Confederates spot them and open fire.

Ken Curtis from Gunsmoke, Hoot Gibson, Strother Martin, Denver Pyle, Bing Russell, and especially Constance Towers fill out the cast. Music by David Buttolph, which I mention only to childishly snicker at the name. Directed by John Ford, who made a dozens of westerns better than this, but it’s passable. Lots of Confederate soldiers get killed, but not enough.

Curious, I did some googling: In all his westerns, John Wayne played a Confederate only once, in The Searchers, but he never appeared on screen wearing the traitors’ uniform.

Verdict: YES.

A kid gets injured in a horse accident, but gets back in the saddle again, in this formulaic movie about a yuppie family so rich they own horses.

It’s only sort of about horses, though, and the accident, and the girl getting back in the saddle, and her semi-psychotic horse. Mostly it’s about the girl’s annoying mom, a movie-trope hard-working executive type, who might or might not have the trottin’ hots for a Montana “horse whisperer,” Robert Redford wearing full LL Beanery.

For a horse movie, the staged horsey action isn’t very good. The horse wreck that gets the story going is less than convincing, and toward the end there’s a big horse-action scene with about 500 quick cuts edited together so feverishly, I don’t even half understand what was supposed to be happening.

The horse is the movie’s most interesting character, and Scarlett Johansson, at 13, makes the girl the only human who’s give-a-hoot-worthy. Wish the movie was about the horse and the girl, but they’re on screen maybe half an hour each, including about 10 minutes together.

As I may or may not have mentioned a few hundred times, my wife had a leg amputated, which leads into my biggest gripe about The Horse Whisperer: the movie’s fairy tale treatment of the girl’s prosthetic leg. Get a leg chopped off, and the wait will be months as an amputation heals, before technicians start measuring and fitting a prosthetic. Then wait another month while it’s made, more months while it’s tweaked to fit better, along with months and months of arduous physical therapy learning to walk on a fake leg. The movie condenses all this to a mild limp and an instant prosthetic, with no appointments or issues at all.

It’s based on a novel by Nicholas Evans, which must’ve been better than this movie. Redford directed, and he’s competent, so it’s OK, if you can get past the easy prosthetic, the rich people with horse worries, and Redford’s “Aw shucks I’m a country guy” performance, surrounded by his alleged Montana family of other movie stars, all doing the “Aw shucks” routine.

Verdict: YES, barely squeaking past MAYBE.

If you’ve been hospitalized, you’ll remember that they put an itchy plastic ID band on your wrist, and never cut it off. Every dang time a doctor, nurse, or technician sees you in a hospital, they start by asking your name and date of birth, and comparing it to what’s on the wristband.

That’s an important safety doublecheck, but wristband technology hadn’t been invented by 1970. In this flick full of mishaps and mayhem and murders in a hospital, the story is built around the wrong patients getting the wrong medicines, which happens several times.

It’s by Paddy Chayefsky, who’s a brilliant writer, and the hospital stuff is darkly hilarious. Mostly, though, the movie is focused on the psychological troubles of Dr George C Scott, and virtually every word from love-interest and Apache medicine woman Diana Rigg is ludicrous. I never cared about either of them.

Verdict: MAYBE.

The first rule of monster movies is, let the tension build by not showing the monster for at least half the movie, maybe more. The Host doesn’t play by such rules, and shows its monster quick and often.

It’s an absurd but awesome monster — a fish the size of a hippopotamus, and angry. But wait, there’s more. It has legs and comes running out of the water at 30 mph, does spinning acrobatics, and if you’re touched by the fish-monster, or even near it, you could be contaminated with a deadly strain of fish-monster flu.

This is both a fine modern horror movie and a parody of modern horror movies, with a wicked sense of humor. And it’s political, with a mild but clear statement against pollution, and against tyrannical government, and an un-subtle, unmissable critique of the American military’s presence in South Korea. Plus, the story will dropkick your gut in the end.

This flick does all these things and more, with pretty good special effects too, and does it all very well. It’s directed and co-written by Bong Joon Ho, who previously knocked me on my butt with Parasite, and has half a dozen presumed butt-knockers in my watchlist.

Verdict: BIG YES.

… and out of alphabetical order …

The energy of a live performance always affects the audience, which is why I’ve never seen a bad play. This is a filmed performance of an original play, staged at one of Seattle’s alternative/indy venues, The Annex. Every playhouse should offer such videos — this one is “pay what you can,” with a $10 suggestion, and that’s what I paid.

Watching it is like being there — the sound is not up to Dolby snuff, in-house audience members’ heads block some of the bottom of the imagery, and no expense has been spent on post-production or editing — you get the entire 16 minute intermission.

The curtain rises: Walter Diaz is a Mexican-American comedian/prankster famous for filmed encounters that expose people’s meanspiritedness and stupidity — basically, he’s a Hispanic Sacha Baron Cohen.

In the first half of the play, Diaz hosts a market research focus group, showing a preview of his next movie and getting feedback from a few viewers. Then Diaz steps out of the room, and locks the door behind him, leaving the participants trapped and mystified. The second half of the play gets all metaphysical and kinda confusing, but things mostly come together in the end.

I’ve attended a few of those godawful focus groups, and the mockery of that is spot-on. Goes without saying that I loved the bits toward the end, critical of Jesus and the church and MAGA Republicans. And I’m on board with having Walter played by a woman, because it’s 2024 and woohoo, gender is fluid.

This ain’t Sammy Beckett or Thorny Wilder, but it crackles and it’s good.

Verdict: YES.

10/23/2024

• • • Coming attractions • • •     

Hot Potato (1976)
The Hot Rock (1972)
Hot Saturday (1932)
Hot Spell (1958)
… plus schlock, shorts, and surprises …

— — —

If you have trouble finding any of these films, say so below, and maybe I can help.

— — —

Now accepting movie recommendations,
especially starting with the letter ‘I’.
— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

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