Half-Assed Movie Reviews

August 26, 2008: The Wild Bunch.

I started it early enough in the evening (9pm instead of 11pm, per my new “policy”) to not fall asleep, which was nice.  I had seen this once before (in the theatre when new prints were circulating after the 1995 restoration).  I’m not generally a fan of westerns, but I usually find the “modern” epic ones (A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in the West come to mind immediately) rewarding.  The plot wasn’t as complex as I remembered it being – it seems to follow a fairly straightforward narrative, and departs from the typical Hollywood ending, which I suppose was becoming de rigeur in 1969 and led into a whole bunch of unexpected endings of movies in the 1970s that I tend to enjoy (such as Five Easy Pieces and Scarecrow).

When watching movies alone at home, more and more I tend to do movie-related surfing while watching the movie (mostly IMDB and cross-referencing cast and crew, rather than reading any reviews).  I like to solve the mysteries of cast members I don’t recognize as soon as I can, so that I can enjoy the added depth of the experience, rather than needing to review the movie afterwards and say to myself “Oh yeah, that *was* Ben Johnson!”, while kicking myself for not recognizing him.  This happens both with the older movies (I’m not encyclopedically knowledgeable about most classic era actors), as well as current movies, where I can look up the past careers of some of the up-and-coming stars.  Of course, some might argue that this ruins the flow of the movie – I often pause but don’t always, since picture-in-picture permits a lot of flexibility – but I think the “half-assed” nature of my viewing leaves me happy enough if I pay less attention to a shot or a scene, and I think of it as making the experience more interactive and thought-provoking.  There’s nobody there to argue with it, so there you go.

If I were to open up my Leonard Maltin book, I’d probably see a description of the “breathtaking widescreen cinematography” by Lucien Ballard.  I’m not familiar with most of his work (I could look it up and write it here and nobody would be the wiser, but that would be cheating), but I do specifically recall his work in Ride the High Country, another Peckinpah film from 1962, and it was one of half a dozen movies I cited in the mid-90s as proving that widescreen versions of movies on home video were *required*.  Others included Ghostbusters, A Few Good Men, Pulp Fiction and The Paper Chase – all movies which actually use the full 2.39 Panavision aspect ratio, and do so dramatically.  The Wild Bunch certainly holds its own in this respect, and maybe even a bit more “loosely” or “artistically” than Ride the High Country, which I recall having PERFECT composition in every shot, including tracking shots which would all both start and end with a very careful composition.  I mean loosely in a good way, I suppose, since it could be argued that not every shot needs to be a complex challenge – sometimes you just need a close-up of some grizzled old cowboy laughing.

Of course, as when I watch any movie, I now want to watch every movie by its director, for “context”.  This is how my to-watch list grows geometrically and never slows.  I started trying to look at every Oliver Stone movie a year and a half ago, and still haven’t made it to 1999 yet.  I’ve seen some Peckinpah flicks in the past, but I’m still missing a few key ones.  Earlier this year, I saw parts of The Osterman Weekend on a cable channel in the US.  Uncut at least, but not exactly what I could call a “screening”.  All in good time.