3:10 to Yuma
Yuma looks like someone is dumping money into a quality western, working with people who want to make a quality western and tell a good story. The trailers have been solid from the beginning, and Christian Bale is one of those guys who will get me into just about anything. I'm more hit or miss with Russell Crowe - he gets points in this one because I very much liked the last western he did (Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead). I still haven't managed to get Walk the Line into my DVD player, but I hear nothing but good things, so director James Mangold behind the wheel on this one is tentatively ok by me. The way I see it, westerns are one of the most fun genres to watch, because you're playing in a world where there are inherently no rules. In every other genre, there are societal rules, and your film stands out primarily by how you break those rules in order to present an original story or idea. To me, a good western feels like something that started with a blank canvas. Just like everything else, the genre fell prey to idea sniping, piggybacking and copycats, but Yuma looks like something I haven't seen in awhile. Yes, I understand the hypocrisy in hoping for fresh ideas and originality from a remake, but that's the vibe I'm getting off of this one. I think I'm going to preface that cinema trip with The Proposition, an Aussie western from 2005 that I've heard great things about. It's sitting on my coffee table via Netflix right now.Shoot 'Em Up
Changing gears more or less completely, Shoot 'Em Up looks stupid. Real stupid. But stupid in the best possible way. I can appreciate when a film completely identifies the audience it is gunning for, and makes no concessions for other groups. This one is clearly going after the action video game crowd, and what it looks like they've come up with is a no-strings-attached actioner: competent star that I can easily believe as a badass, a beautiful girl, a truly evil, scene-chewing villain, and a shoestring plot that puts them in the same room with guns in their hands. As far as I'm concerned, this is the stuff that Clive Owen was built to do. The guy's not the most charming or convincing guy out there (I need something else at the level of Children of Men in order to be convinced otherwise), but tell him he needs to be the uncompromising badass, and you'll get exactly what you need. I've never been a huge Paul Giamatti fan - there are more downs than ups in my mind when it comes to him - but his over-the-top crazy guy looks to fit perfectly here. And I'm all for Monica Bellucci in roles where she's just supposed to be sexy. In an interview I skimmed at one point with writer-director Michael Davis, he started describing one of his sequences (the helicopter thing, I think), and the interviewer stopped him and asked if maybe it wasn't a bit over the top. Davis absolutely agreed that it was, but said he did it because "he'd want to watch it." Directors approaching movies as fans can be a very dangerous thing - I'm pretty sure that's how we got Michael Bay - but in the right hands, this can come off beautifully. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg are, I think, the perfect example of that. So long as Shoot 'Em Up commits to its concept without taking itself remotely seriously, we should be good. Everything I've seen indicates that none of this should be a problem.I'll be back with a by-the-week preview as soon as I can be. I imagine at least next week will be up today. Until then...
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