This morning, I finished the “Dollars Trilogy” by Sergio Leone, by watching what is considered one of the best, if not the best, spaghetti Westerns ever made.  An argument could be made that this is the best Western period, spaghetti or not.  While I may not go that far, there is no denying that this is an iconic classic in the world of cinema.

The Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) returns for the third installment, carrying on a con with his partner Tuco (Eli Wallach), where “Blondie” (what Tuco called him) turns Tuco in for the bounty and then saves him just before he is hanged.

“Blondie” leaves Tuco because he was never going to be worth enough reward for this to be worthwhile, which ticked Tuco off and sent him on the path of revenge.

Meanwhile, Lee Van Cleef, playing a character named Sentenza (or Angel Eyes), and he is in search of a Confederate officer named Bill Carson, who had stolen $200,000 in gold and had buried it away.  Angel Eyes was in search of the gold.

The three of them interact along the way and you never know what each of them may do next.

Lee Van Cleef made his second appearance in this trilogy, but it feels as if he is playing a different character.  Though it is implied that the Man with No Name had met Angel Eyes before, and it makes it feel as if he was the same as the character he played in For a Few Dollars More, he had enough different character traits to make me think that he was meant to be a different person.  Perhaps they just used the character to do whatever they needed.

Early in the film we find out that The Man with No Name is the “good,” Angel Eyes is the “bad” and Tuco was the “ugly” of the triumvirate.  This must be one of the themes of the film because it is hard to classify Eastwood as “good” when he really is no different than either Angel Eyes or Tuco.  The three of these characters are shown as equals in their actions.

The finale of this movie was just tremendous.  It was filled with tension and uncertainty where the three of our characters facing off over the gold.  The filming, the close ups, the music did an amazing job setting the tone of the Western.

I did think the film was a bit too long and there were a few scenes that I think could have been removed to tighten this up.  The whole Civil War part of the film seemed to be tossed in for no reason.  Admittedly, the way the two sides of the Civil War are shown as neither being heroic could fall into that theme I mentioned earlier.

So I was engaged with this movie and it truly was the best of the three.  This trilogy sent the career of Clint Eastwood into the stratosphere.

The second film in Sergio Leone’s “Dollars trilogy” was called For a Few Dollars More and it was the next Western I watched today.

This saw the return of the Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood), although he was called Manco early in the film (as he was called Joe in A Fistful of Dollars).  The Man with No Name met up with, as one of the posters called him, the Man in Black.  This was Lee Van Cleef, who played Colonel Douglas Mortimer, another “bounty killer” who joins up with the Man with No Name on a mission that was more personal than the Colonel let on.

As with A Fistful of Dollars, Eastwood was the major star of this film, but he and Van Cleef worked together brilliantly.  Their pairing was tremendous in many different ways.  Not only were they a great pair, you were never quite sure what was going to happen.  You always felt as if either one could turn on the other in a split second.  Even when it appeared that they were working together, the thought of betrayal hung in the air.

There were several things that were similar to the original film, but the sequel takes them a bit further.  The action was fine, but the gunfights were pretty repetitive.  I did like the reveal at the end of the reason for the Colonel’s pursuit of the villain El Indio (Gian Maria Volontè).

The score was a true standout in this Western.  Ennio Morricone created a score that presented the perfect soundtrack for what was happening on screen.  Many times I do not hear the score as the film is going on, but this one seemed to work in such a tandem that it was easy to hear.

I do believe that the film was a tad long and could have done with some tightening up in the middle, but I think I liked this more than the last film in this trilogy.

I have been wanting to improve my knowledge of Westerns and so I decided that I would watch the “Dollars Trilogy” to begin the stretch.  These Italian “spaghetti Westerns”  from director Sergio Leone starred Clint Eastwood and really catapulted him into stardom of the genre.

I chose to go in the order that the films were released, which meant I started with A Fistful of Dollars.

The Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) arrived in a small border town where two gangs are at conflict.  The Man with No Name began working on setting the two gangs against one another in hope of gaining wealth himself.

Eastwood is the star of this movie and he stands out among all of the other actors in the film.  His presence really brings The Man with No Name to life and provides him with his gravitas.  The screen simply fills when Eastwood is on and he is powerful and dominant in this Western.  It is clear why they went ahead with two more movies featuring this character.

The film did not hold back with the violence of the West, especially in the third act where the body count truly picked up.  However, the film did not have blood or any kind of really gruesome moments in it, so the brutality was dampened somewhat.

A Fistful of Dollars had a plot that was heavily borrowed from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) and, in fact, faced a lawsuit over that.  This film was another of the “dubbing” issues I have been having lately as most of the voices, excluding Eastwood, did not completely match the lips of the speakers.  This was an initial distraction, but I tried my best to ignore that.

The first of this trilogy got off to a fantastic start and really set the tone for the Westerns of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Okay, this one is a kick to the gut.

Clemency is a film about Warden Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard) and the stress and psychological pain and demons that comes with watching the executions in her prison.  This comes to the head when a young man named Anthony Woods (Aldis Hedge) is scheduled to be next to which she connects.

Alfre Woodard is heartbreaking in this movie.  Her anguish is sapping her will out of her body, effecting negatively not only her own job but her relationship with her husband Jonathan (Wendell Pierce).  Woodard is easily the standout in this movie as the entire basis for the film is riding on her performance and she knocks it out of the park.

Not to be overlooked though is Aldis Hedge, who has been coming on strong over the last few months/year.  He brings his best work as of yet in this film.  His scene with the Chaplin (Michael O’Neil) is crushing.

Though this movie has undeniably brilliant performances, the fact that it is a difficult film to watch and an even more challenge to enjoy.  It is dower and painful.  There was very little hope on display in the film.  Though gripping, it is a film that I have no desire to see again.  So while I recommend that you see it, I will not want to see it again.

“They call me Mr. Tibbs.”

I had a friend who would use that line while we were gaming and, at the time, I did not know where it was from.

Of course, I found out.  In the Heat of the Night was a successful film during the sixties and was developed into a television series in the eighties.  As I was looking through the Amazon Prime list, I came across the original movie from 1967 and thought this was a good chance to see it.

Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) was a homicide detective from Philadelphia who was traveling through the south.  While waiting for a train to take him back to Philly, he was picked up by local police on suspicion of committing a murder of a wealthy local businessman.

Of course, the only reason he was picked up was because of his skin color.  He was in Sparta, Mississippi and African-Americans were not exactly welcome, let alone a well dressed, intelligent man with a wallet filled with cash.

They brought Virgil to the office of Sheriff Gillespie (Rod Steiger), who discovered that Virgil was a police officer and that he was a homicide expert.  Gillespie asked Virgil to look at their case, but pressures from the community tried to get Gillespie to run Virgil out of town.

This was a very engaging movie to watch, but it was also quite difficult.  The people portrayed in this movie from Mississippi were about as backwoods as you could get when it came to their thoughts and actions toward a black man, especially a black man as successful and intelligent that Virgil was.  Watching the hatred displayed by the locals for no other reason than his skin color was disturbing.  The attitude of Gillespie was not too much better, to be honest.

The cruelty made me really want to see Virgil lash back at these racist humans, but he did not engage with the hatred.  You could see how he wanted to respond, but staying stoic was a much better choice.  However, he was not shown as being perfect either.  There was a suspect in the murder that Virgil was convinced was guilty because of his own personal feelings, and, when he realized his own biases, the case was able to get broken open.

The film also made me wonder just how many people were arrested in the south during the 1960’s just because it looked like they could have done it and that there was pressure to solve a case.

Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger were amazing in the movie.  Steiger won an Academy Award for his role and it won for Best Picture.  Quincy Jones’s score was another major piece of the film, creating an atmosphere of uneasiness.

This is a hugely important film taking on the concept of race in the south.  It is also a highly entertaining and thrilling movie.

“They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all”  -D.H. Lawrence, Whales Weep Not!

I’m ready to review a film that should cause some division.

I know there are a lot of people, including several of my friends, despise this movie.  They call it the “whale movie.”  However, I think that Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is second only to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as the best in the series.

Earth in the 23rd century is being attacked by an alien probe approaching from space.  The probe’s message was the song of the Humpback whale which, unfortunately, was extinct at the time.  So the crew, led by Admiral James Kirk (William Shatner) and Captain Spock (Leonard Nemoy), time traveled back to 1986 to try and find some whales to bring back to the future.

The Star Trek adventure turns into a clever “fish-out-of-water” story as the crew interacts with the world of 1986, the medical community, the language, the engineering.  Some of the lines of dialogue from the deadpan Spock are very funny.

The crew split into groups, each with vital missions in the past, in order for them to accomplish their mission and return to their own timeline.  The time travel aspect here is not really touched on much, though they implicate some ideas that, may or may not, work together.

The fact that this movie is willing to not take itself deathly serious really makes this a fun movie to watch.

Catherine Hicks joined the cast of the movie as the 20th century marine biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor, who helped Kirk and Spock find the humpback whales.  She is a nice addition to the group, if not fairly unnecessary.

In the end, this was a lot of fun.  I disagree with the complaints of the bits of the whale being dumb or that it is too preachy.  The reasons behind the probe communicating in whale song is unimportant.  It is simply a plot point to lead to the adventure.  And a message of preserving the animals of the world cannot be bad.

Almost three years ago, I saw the remake of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express starring Kenneth Branagh.  I had never seen the 1974 version, and, though I did not hate the new version, I did not love it either.  I thought maybe one day I would watch the original, but, with the knowledge of the solution, it did not become a top priority.

Seeing it on Amazon Prime, I decided that this was the perfect chance to see the murder mystery.  I am glad I did.

When noted Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) wound up on the Orient Express, he found himself in the middle of a murder mystery.  American businessman Ratchett (Richard Widmark), who had approached Poirot to be his bodyguard on the train (which Poirot refused), was found dead in his cabin, Poirot began an investigation which was hampered by red herrings and the train being stalled by an avalanche of snow in remote Yugoslavia.

Directed by Sidney Lumet, this film featured a remarkable cast of Hollywood stars, led by Finney, including Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Jacqueline Bisset, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Martin Balsam, and Michael York.

Even though I knew the eventual solution to the mystery, the process getting their by Hercule Poirot was fun and entertaining.  Finney was just wonderful as the Belgian detective flexing his “little grey cells.”  Much of the fun of watching Poirot piece together the seemingly unsolvable case is truly part of the pleasure.

There is a definite flair to the look of the movie, style throughout.  The direction of the film is impeccable.

The only piece that might knock this down a bit is that the solution is something that is far fetched.  Still, it really works here and became iconic in mysteries moving forward.

The Murder on the Orient Express (1974) was beautifully done and expertly put together.  It features one of the strongest casts you will ever see and a great mystery.  Hercule Poirot deserves his spot as one of the most epic of the “gentlemen detectives.”