The Assassination of Jesse James
…By The Coward Robert Ford
Who’s seen it? Any thoughts.
Long-winded but great, by my opinion.
Another decent recent western: 3:10 To Yuma
Comments
I saw it and liked it a lot, very pretty to look at.
I thought it was lousy. Which is a shame, cause Casey Affleck was pretty good. Great, even. I put a lot of the blame squarely on the shoulders of Brad Pitt who pretty much just played himself the whole time. Super disappointing, considering he can and has played some pretty fantastic characters. This time, though, I feel you could have taken his Jesse James, replaced his cowboy hat with some frosted tips and stuck him right in the middle of Oceans 14 and been none of us would have been any the wiser.
And while I love a movie that takes its time, this movie felt like it had nowhere to go. It was like they were trying to build up that Sergio Leone atmosphere, but had neither the Morricone kick in the pants or the well-defined, morally-ambiguous characters it needed to sell it.
So yeah, it didn’t nothing for me. And neither did the lousy remake of 3:10 to Yuma. The original was fantastic, the remake was totally over the top and unnecessary.
If you’re on a western kick and if you haven’t already seen them, by all means, watch Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (my all-time favorite) and his Man Without a Name trilogy. True Grit was another great one, and while I’m wouldn’t call myself a John Wayne fan by any stretch, he was fantastic as a grizzled, one-eyed alkie. And while Pat Garret and Billy the Kid wasn’t my personal favorite, it’s definitely worth checking out for how Peckinpah turns the whole western mythos on its head and reveals it for what it is.
…I really like westerns. Good topic, even though I disagree.
Oh! And The Magnificent 7, which was sort of my entry point into westerns. I’d been on a huge kung fu movie kick and I’d heard that The Magnificent 7 was a westernized version of Kurosawa’s 7 Samurai so I checked it out and loved it.
And the Wild Bunch!
The Assasination of Jesse James was amazing.
John, you couldn’t be more wrong about Brad Pitt. Since when is the typical Pitt role dark, menacing, and paranoid? He was great in it and so was Casey Affleck. It also contains Roger Deakin’s best work, which is saying a lot.
i agree with john a little bit. I mean, i see where he’s going with his dissertation.
but i mostly agree with travis – in that Brad Pitt was great in it.
And John i agree with – in that Casey Affleck was magnifique. He was phenomenal in Gone Baby Gone.
And 3:10 To Yuma I loved. I read the book – and every Elmore Leonard book for that matter.
The movie was good. Both performances were great. I’ve been really digging Russell Crowe lately.
You know what I hate about Gone Baby Gone? the fact that it has a Title Time.
Wait.
That’s what I liked about it. Everything else was terrible.
Wait.
I didn’t like anything about it.
heheeheh. 41:16 → http://titletimes.arbitrarynoun.com/
haha! I was recently looking for that site but couldn’t remember the name/address. Now I can’t remember the movie I was going to enter.
did anyone like Gone Baby Bone? I know- the title kept me away for quite some time. So did Ben Affleck directing it. But once I saw it I thought it was pretty good.
Never saw it.
the book was better.
i’m late on this.
“The book was better” is damn near the most useless fucking comment anyone could ever make about a movie. Ever.
OF COURSE THE BOOK WAS BETTER! When is the book not better?!
the book is not better in the case of high fidelity.