Checked off another box this afternoon.

For the first time, I watched what is undoubtedly a masterpiece from the classic director Akira Kurosawa, Seven Samurai.

This movie has inspired multitude of films over the years from The Magnificent Seven to the Avengers.  You could literally see the development of what would eventually become tropes in action movies worldwide begin in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

A village of farmers in 16th century Japan are being threatened by a group of bandits, who are preparing to pillage the village.  To protect themselves, the village decided to hire a group of samurais to protect them.  The samurai warriors were assembled and fought the bandits.

Toshirô Mifune played the rapscallion rogue Kikuchiyo.  Takashi Shimura played Kambei Shimada, the older and respected leader of the samurai.  Isao Kimura played the young and untested son of a wealthy family, Katsushirō Okamoto, who talks Shimada into taking him on as an apprentice.  

All of the samurais received a certain spotlight in the movie, and not just one from the action.  Each character had important pieces to their story that really brought each man to life.  You did care for each one, so when they were in jeopardy, you felt it.

There were other characters among the farmers that received character bits as well.  Keiko Tsushima played Shino, a daughter of one of the farmers who wants her to be a son.  She has a relationship with Katsushiro that leads into struggles for both characters.

This is a spiraling epic of a movie, lasting over 3 and a half hours (including an intermission breaking the film into parts).

The battle scenes in this are absolutely beautifully shot and masterfully planned out.  Each moment is important to, not only, the story, but to each character’s development as well.

There is no doubt this is one of the great movies of all time.

“Who are these guys?”

That was asked several times during the classic Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a film starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as the titular characters.

Iconic outlaws Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and The Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) were leaders of the infamous Hole-in-the-Wall Gang in the Old West.  After a series of train robberies, a seemingly unstoppable posse, hired by the railroad president, comes after Butch and Sundance, chasing the outlaws across the land.  This leads them to flee to Bolivia with Sundance’s girlfriend Etta Place (Katharine Ross).

I really enjoyed this movie.  I am not sure I had seen it before, though I have seen some of the scenes involved here, in particular the iconic cliff jumping scene.  The relationship and banter between Paul Newman and Robert Redford was utterly fantastic and easily the best part of the movie.  They were so quick-witted and engaging that you fall immediately in love with them despite the fact that they were criminals.

The script was written by William Goldman, who would write the book and movie The Princess Bride, and you can see the similarities between the sharp dialogue and the connections between characters.  I laughed out loud several times as Butch and Sundance snipped at each other showing perfect comedic timing in a film that did not make me think would be funny.  Goldman earned an Academy Award for his writing on this project.

The music here is amazing as well.  The happy and bouncy “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” works so well in a beautiful scene with Butch taking Etta around on a new-fangled bicycle.

Robert Redford and Paul Newman showed amazing chemistry with each other and totally make this movie work.  Everything depends on these two actors delivering the characters and their dialogue and they are just great.  I had a lot of fun with this movie, as it becomes one of my favorite Westerns around.

Reach the stars, fly a fantasy
Dream a dream, and what you see will be-eh, yeah, yeah, yeah-eh
Rhymes that keep their secrets, will unfold behind the clouds
And there upon the rainbow is the answer to a Neverending story-eeh

The Neverending Story is a classic tale of fantasy and adventure, a beautiful family film that provides thrills, humor, deep themes and magic.

A young boy Bastian (Barret Oliver), who has recently lost his mother, is getting bullied by a group of kids.  One day on the way to school, Bastian ducks inside an old bookstore to avoid the bullies chasing him.  Inside, he meets an old man who shows him a book that is meant to be more than what it was.  Bastian sneaked away with the book and found a deserted building to read it.

In the story, he discovers a land called Fantasia that is slowly being taken over by the Nothing and the leaders of Fantasia has recruited a mighty warrior by the name of Atreyu (Noah Hathaway), who turns out to be a kid, and they send Atreyu on an adventure to save the Princess, who was dying from the Nothing.

This adventure becomes majorly meta for Bastian as he learns the importance of imagination and daydreams, something he has been told to stop doing.

The movie is truly wonderful.  Yes, visually, it looks like a 1980’s movie, but actually the practical effects involved here are part of the film’s charm.  The creatures and the sets are masterfully imagined and designed.  There is a realness to most of the movie that is sometimes missing in the big green screen epics of CGI today.

Barret Oliver does a really solid job as Bastian.  Some of his reactions as he reads through the book are well done.  Some may be over the top as well, but he is solid enough to keep the narrative going.

Noah Hathaway is a good looking young boy for the role of Atreyu.  He does get a little whiny at times with his voice. but I am guessing that he is directed to do so.  However, there is no denying… this kid had some magical hair.  One scene he turned from the camera and his hair flowed like the mane of a lion.  It was epic.

Then the film pulled out the tissues for us early on as Atreyu was trying to get his way through the Swamp of Sadness with his horse Artax.  You have to have a heart of stone to not be affected by this scene.  It came out of nowhere but it does a great job of setting up the difficulties that Atreyu would be facing while being a metaphor for depression and how dangerous it can be for individuals.

The Neverending Story was a beautiful story with all kinds of emotional beats in it.  The young actors do a decent job and deliver when they need to.  The tale is remarkably meta, although the ending when Bastian uses Falkor the Luck Dragon to get revenge on the bullies who had dumped him in the dumpster may not have been the most evolved message to give.

I was scrolling through Netflix to try and find a movie for tonight and I found something new on the streaming service from 2014 that featured Dan Stevens.  It was a movie called The Guest.  However, that had not sold me on watching the film as of that point.  Then I saw that the list of actors included Brendan Meyer, and I was in.

Brendan Meyer is an actor who also participates in the Movie Trivia Schmoedown as Brendan “The Kid” Meyer.  I liked the Kid a great deal and getting a chance to see him work in a movie was a great opportunity.

David (Dan Stevens) arrives at the house of the Petersons.  He tells Laura (Shelia Kelley) that he was a friend of her deceased son during their time in the military and that the last thing he had promised to her son was to look out for his family.

Laura’s other son Luke (Brendan Meyer) and her 20-year old daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) started to bond with David as he showed that he was capable and helpful.

However, David has a dark secret that threatens to put the entire family in jeopardy.

Dan Stevens does a very solid job as the machine-like soldier who never seemed to be out of control.  You could understand why, just by the way he carried himself, this family took him in so quickly.  He was clearly a skilled manipulator, finding specific way to endure himself to each member of the family.  Plus, he seemed to be going out of his way to make their lives better.

Little did they know there was a darkness inside him and that he could snap and turn on them all at any moment.  The film does a great job of playing that tone of uncertainty, always suspecting but never being totally sure what was going on.  In fact, there were chances that the story might flip on us and that what we were being led to think was not that way at all.

When the tables turned, it went violent very quickly, putting our protagonists in desperate situations.  There some moments of brutality that was tough to watch.

Now, David’s motivations did feel muddy.  I was not sure I understood in the end why he wound up in this place and what his true motivations were.  I understand why things happened the way they did, but I am not sure what brought him here in the first place.

The film moves briskly and gives you some good thrills and some exciting moments.  The performances are decent and there was an appearance by Abaddon from LOST (Lance Reddick) too as Major Carver.

This is a fine watch on a Saturday night if you’ve got nothing else to do.

Maybe the news networks should take a closer look at this film.

Network was the story of an aging anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) whose ratings had slipped and was going to be fired until he flipped out live on television.  The ratings for his diatribe soared and he became a network standby.

This is still completely relevant in today’s world, especially in the world of 24-hour news networks as we have now.  The ratings are the most important factor.  The networks spend more time with the darkness than in the light.  They try to get viewers to believe/do certain things, mainly to keep tuning in.

Network is full of amazing performances including Oscar winner Finch (who became the first winner to receive an Oscar posthumously).  Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight also won Academy Awards for their performances.  William Holden and Ned Beatty were nominated for Oscars.

Directed by the iconic Sidney Lumet, Network won for writing as well.  Everything was brought together in the perfect package at the right time.  The United States had just gone through Watergate and the desire of the public was ripe to respond to such work.

The movie was a satire on the media and the influence of ratings.  It provided some ridiculous situations to show how responses could be just a bad.

News networks such as FOX News, MSNBC etc can easily be seen and recognized in the fictional UBS network in Network.  It makes one wonder why we have not come fartehr.