Spike is Best

I've been trying to make a point of watching movies every now and again lately. Movies are quite good for me to relax. The shared (free) Netflix and Disney + accounts from siblings have beckoned, yet I often just go for a nighttime walk instead. My nighttime walks are epic. Nonetheless, I've made the feat of watching a good number!

First I watched The Irishman (aka GoodFarts) in one sitting, no problem. Interesting to some degree and tense, but yeah, what a yawn fest. I'm sure part of that feeling is the intended point, like look how sad and lonely this sort of life is, if life you could call it. But how pathetic is it all! Killing people to have some stupid crummy mammon. This movie just felt like the final nail in the coffin of all mafia films.

I watched The Walk, and...can I ask a question? How is it possible for people to watch this film without having to get out of their chair/seat and pace about the room while shielding their eyes from the screen? Holy Toledo this film did a number on my nerves. And those images, if I even just recall them in my imagination, I'm done for.

I watched Jack Reacher. LOL. Tom Cruise - he's just this strange combination of excruciatingly annoying and no problem you're great in a LOL kind of way. And Robert Duvall - he is not in enough movies. He's always superlatively great.

I watched some not-so-new flicks, like Deepwater Horizon (not too shabby) and London has Fallen (LOL).

I watched The Last Jedi, which was 500 x better than The Force Awakens. It's interesting how the intentional nostalgia of The Force Awakens was a colossal fail, but The Last Jedi turned out to be way more Star Warsy. And I was surprised at how interesting and habitable they made Luke Skywalker's hermit island. We haven't seen that sort of thing since Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back.

For some reason I felt compelled to watch the original 1975 Escape to Witch Mountain, which I hadn't seen before. I can't believe how much I actually ended up liking it. The first half hour I was like, "What am I doing, this is so lame, O frick I hate Disney so much..." and then things took a turn.

They took a turn when Jason showed up. Man, what a great guy that Uncle Jason! Good old Jason! Not like the rigid millionaire villains, he has the capacity for belief and thinking on his feet. Reminded me of Pope Francis. The chase scene with the winnebago is actually quite good, and when the winnebego takes off into the air, and the upside down helicopter...it was so painful it was delicious. Yet, even with the seriously outdated effects, there was something...magic.

Watching that scene and putting everything together, I was like, "I see, I see - so...Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Starman, A.I., et cetera et alia - they all just basically ripped off Escape to Witch Mountain. Good to know, good to know!"

Then I watched the original 1982 Tron which I hadn't seen before, strangely enough, and I was like, "I see, I see - so The Matrix just basically ripped off Tron. Good to know, good to know!"

Then I watched Holes (aka Escape to Thumb Mountain). Again, hadn't seen it before. But I remember from that time 2003 hearing so many good things about it. I liked it! The back and forth between time lines is hard to do without getting tiresome, but in Holes, on the contrary, it gets more and more interesting, making you even ponder time - right up there with Citizen Kane. Five stars out of five stars and two thumbs out of two thumbs!

Seriously, it was a really good movie. I got the sense that as good as the movie is, the book is even better.

But the cream of the crop for me was The Highwaymen. This is the kind of film that makes me start spouting all kinds of cinephile praises. This is easily one of the best films I've seen in a long time. This film is like the perfect coinciding maturation/fruition point between actors, director, writer, etc.

The director, John Lee Hancock, is the one who wrote A Perfect World. His staid, four-square direction in The Alamo here finds a fluidity of language, an elegant and taut selectivity that gives more as it gives less; but not minimalist. Sustained, really good cinema. Devoid of Hollywoodizing scene-for-scene drama. Instead, full on locale, on sense of place and traversing stretches of country and town, and retracing certain locales, full on the sense of dogged effort in the old bodies of these two rangers, it's clear these two rangers are good, really good, but there's also doubt if they can really do this; full on how really murderously dangerous the people are who they are hunting.

Kevin Costner (who was in A Perfect World, a Texas cross country escapee manhunt story) here as the greatest Texas ranger hits the right notes. The way he physically moves, sort of tight in the shoulders and chest, a smoker who can't run to catch up to a kid, clearly in "retirement", is a visual story to itself (which we find out about later in the film). Woody Harrelson (who was in Oliver Stone's Bonnie and Clyde take Natural Born Killers) here is equally great, if not more. This is his best performance to date. Both Costner and Harrelson settle into these aged roles so well.

But then there's all of Costner's western stuff and The Untouchables and Open Range (Duvall!). I caught a number of little references and nods throughout The Highwaymen. So yeah, all of these merging sort of overlaps. I feel like they just settle and simmer so perfectly and organically together in this film.

But it's the direction, the film as a whole, the construction not by scene, but continuous, the way it moves, the world-feel, the sense of time, the suspense that comes out of nowhere. This film is great cinema. Like all great cinema, it is born out of understanding the limits of the medium. I love how we don't get to see Bonnie and Clyde's faces real good until just before they - well, I know for some of you youngins it would be a spoiler, so I won't say.

I really recommend this film. I don't understand the low tomato rating, and I don't want to read people's stupid reviews. This film is great. It is superb cinema. It is immersive, a good story that moves along yet takes its time. Doesn't try to gin things up with revisionist drama stuffing. And because of it the characters, and their personal dramas, become palpable. A good, solid, straight up anti-Bonnie and Clyde flick.

Do watch it!