Young Billy Young (1969)

Based (loosely, it seems) on the novel Who Rides with Wyatt, by Heck Allen (as Will Henry), first published in 1955.

The film starts out with a Mexican militia riding on a train, under the command of a Mexican general. They stop at a village where they execute some men who were being held prisoner at the local church. Two young men, Billy and Jesse, board the train unnoticed and hide in the horse car. After the train leaves, the youngsters invade one of the cars and shoot everyone there, including the general. They flee, riding on two horses they steal, and are chased by the general's soldiers. Billy falls from his horse and is abandoned by Jesse, yet manages to elude his chasers. He finds a jackass and mounts it; he soon comes across a man named Kane, who is camping by a river and advises Billy not to wade in it. This advice goes unheeded by Billy and he gets sucked up in quicksand. He makes it out of the river, but the donkey is gone. Kane refuses to take him and thus he has to walk to the nearest town. To make a long story short, Kane accepts a job as tax collector and deputy sheriff (?) of a town named Lordsburg, taking Billy with him. Kane's motivation for taking the job is to get revenge on Boone, the town's boss, for a past offense. And that's all I can tell you about this film's plot.

This is a melodrama, yet it is not played out with the intensity that has become usually associated with that kind of fictional narrative. On the contrary, the pace is laidback and the characters' interactions approach as much as possible the coolness we tend to associate with real life. As the New York Times reviewer (Howard Thompson) points out, this is closer to TV aesthetics than cinema. As a result, there is an odd mismatch of subject and tone, but this kind of mismatch was increasingly becoming a deliberate choice by filmmakers, in the late 60s onto the 70s, and further on up to some point of exhaustion. The theme of the movie, hiding in plain sight so to speak, is fatherhood, with Billy filling in for Kane's lost son, and Kane filling in for Billy's (presumed) absent father (Jesse and Boone are their mirror image), and all this, of course, as a metaphor for the law coming to a lawless place.

Rating: 50

Fantasia (1940)

Second viewing; the first one happened on an unremembered date before 1987.

This one needs no introduction, I think. It is comprised by several numbers combining music and animation.

A superior product, made by conscientious artists. The film does not seek unity in tone, it is rather content to be a collection, and actually there is change in tone precisely to prevent a sensation of dullness which might arise from the rather long overall length. I only regret the reported modification of a scene for the 1969 re-release, because, it seems, it featured a black centaurette performing a servile function (she rolls out a carpet for Bacchus); this scene did not reappear in the original form in any later re-release. This is where it becomes clear that cinema will never have the same status of the other arts: I cannot see this happening to a novel or a painting (well, who can tell what awaits us in days to come?). In Stalin's Soviet Union, they changed the past to suit the official version of history, and apparently in capitalist countries this gets done without the need of a central authority. The system self-regulates. I read three reviews (New York Times, Washington Post and Roger Ebert) and found them all interesting and well-written. I direct you to the page at IMDB where these and other external reviews are linked to.

Rating: 73 (down from 88)

Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (1990)

The U.S.A. makes repeated attempts to capture a Latin American drug lord. They eventually raid the guy's fortified headquarters.

Routine action movie. As ediaz8 in IMDB observed in the site's discussion board, the "mole" inside the American team is never revealed, probably because the writer just forgot about him, or because he implicitly admitted that plot is not that important in a movie like this. Another IMDB user (mill722002) pointed out the similarity between this movie and the 1989 Bond movie Licence to Kill. The New York Times review may give a better idea of the movie than I can.

Rating: 30

The Delta Force (1986)

Terrorists hijack a plane and then move some of the passengers to a hiding place. An American elite military team is sent to address the situation.

Another disappointing film from the Cannon Group, which specialized in low-brow action movies in the 1980s. The only action film I liked from them, if I remember correctly, was Missing in Action 2: The Beginning, which departed somewhat from that company's extremely standardized style. There is not a lot I can think of saying about The Delta Force that the anonymous review in TV Guide has not covered, so I direct you to it.

Review: 36

Man of Aran (1934)

From Wikipedia:
*quote*
Man of Aran is a 1934 British fictional documentary (ethnofiction) film directed by Robert J. Flaherty about life on the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland. It portrays characters living in premodern conditions, documenting their daily routines such as fishing off high cliffs, farming potatoes where there is little soil, and hunting for huge basking sharks to get liver oil for lamps. Some situations are fabricated, such as one scene in which the shark fishermen are almost lost at sea in a sudden gale. Additionally, the family members shown are not actually related, having been chosen from among the islanders for their photogenic qualities.
George Stoney's 1978 documentary How the Myth was Made, which is included in the special features of the DVD, relates that the Aran Islanders had not hunted sharks in this way for over fifty years at the time the film was made. Man of Aran is Flaherty's re-creation of culture on the edges of modern society, even though much of the primitive life depicted had been left behind by the 1930s.(...)
*end quote*

From IMDB:
*quote*
The islanders hunt a basking shark for its oil, but they hadn't done so in generations. The filmmakers had to bring an Inuit hunter to show them how to do it as their ancestors might have.
*end quote*

I liked the film. In addition to being enjoyable, it made me think. For starters, what is it that makes this kind of film (I am also thinking of Nanook of the North) aesthetically pleasing? I think it is because there is a nice balance of people and nature. Another question (which perhaps loses some of its appeal after  one reads the above information about all that is false in the movie) is, how do these people stand life in such conditions, and moreover seem happy? Well, never underestimate natural selection. I think they are genetically adapted to this kind of life. Anyway, I am not exactly happy in the environment I live in, so who knows if I too am genetically more adapted to live in a rougher one?

It is strange that Flaherty is credited on IMDB and Wikipedia as its sole writer. The credits that are shown at the beginning of the film credit John Goldman as editor (for which those two sites also give him credit) and scenarist (which is an old word for screenwriter).

Rating: 54

The Toy (1982)

A writer in desperate need of money ends up accepting a job as a rich kid's toy.

A borderline watchable film where the humor seldom works. The inspiration for the storyline may have come from a passage in Machado de Assis' Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (also known as Epitaph of a Small Winner) where young Bras plays horseriding with his slave. In that case, this remake brings it closer to Machado's original idea (in the French movie the titular character is white). The message seems to be that money really buys what you need. In this case, the kid needed a lesson and he sure learned it. Same thing may or may not have happened to American politician Eric Cantor and his backers (except in his case he was more like the toy).

Rating: 31

A Erva do Rato (2008)

English title: The Herb of the Rat.

A man of eccentric personality marries a widow. She accepts her strange wifely duties with resignation, until an intruder in the household comes along to disturb the routine.

Rather than an adaptation, this is more like a psychoanalysis of Machado de Assis fiction, working from two short stories (The Secret Cause and A Skeleton) of his. I cannot say the result is exciting, although intriguing it is, if you have a certain amount of literary inclination and have read the stories.

Rating: 33

Spartacus (1960)

Second viewing; the first one happened between 1983 and 1986.

Highly fictionalized version of the slave revolt which occurred in Rome in the first century B.C.E. In this version it all starts as an unplanned riot at a gladiator school, and from there expands into a massive rebellion which eventually is crushed by the Roman army.

Quite entertaining epic, both for its spectacular aspect (it is very well filmed throughout) and for its ludicrously idealized depiction of a social conflict. I always like to have a few laughs at the lies Hollywood tells, and afterwards compare them to an account of the historical events in which they were based.

Rating: 54 (down from 58)

Beloved Infidel (1959)

The love affair between a novelist working as a screenwriter and a gossip columnist, in thirties Hollywood.

Stupendously well made (a given, since it is a Hollywood 50s 'A' production), except I was unable to enjoy the widescreen (watched it in pan-and-scan). The great artist who is constrained to work for a medium that is not his, under the orders of philistines, and forgets his calling, and is forgotten by most everyone, and to top it all is fired, and then attempts a comeback, only to see his new literary output rejected, seems to be struggling against the world, a world in which he seems to be just an alien. And yet no one could have been less alien to America than him, or so he was always led to believe. The crux of the movie is his relationship with this woman who seems to be his best friend, yet stands for that same philistinism that is completely alien (and hostile) to him. This is not fully fleshed out in the movie, a superficial love story, and thus a reflection of its own theme.

Rating: 51

Terror by Night (1946)

Sherlock Holmes is hired to escort an elderly lady and her son on a train to Scotland, because they are carrying a diamond with them.

The plot is mediocre, but the film is one of the funnier ones in the series. Try not to laugh, for instance, at the dialogue at the luncheon car, which is transcribed on IMDB (it's the one about curry, but they're all good on that page). And there is more, for instance how Holmes keeps pushing Watson into investigating on his own, with interesting results.

Rating: 53