LOBO TO ME

On the weekend of Our Nation's 250th anniversary, Your Humble Narrator once again had the honor to introduce this week's edition of Reel West Sundays at Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, and lead the post-movie discussion. The selection was...

Rio Lobo (1970)--In the last film that Howard Hawks directed, John Wayne plays a Union army colonel in charge of moving a shipment of gold at the end of the Civil War. Confederate raiders rob the train, and after the war ends, The Duke goes west to get even with the traitors among his men who betrayed the mission.

This was the third Hawks western starring Wayne in just over a decade, after Rio Bravo in 1959 and El Dorado in 1966, all written or co-written by Leigh Brackett. But the similarities run deeper than that; the three films seem almost like loose remakes of each other. All three feature The Duke and his allies guarding a prisoner in a besieged jailhouse from corrupt forces who would like to free him. There are other devices that pop up almost obsessively--prisoner exchanges, dynamite used as a weapon--and all three feature a crotchety old sidekick and a plucky young sidekick; in Rio Lobo the youngster is the lively Christopher Mitchum as "Tuscarora" and the oldster is Jack Elam, having a high time as Tuscarora's maniacally giggling father.

The glamour comes from Wayne's hunky second lead, the Mexican star Jorge Rivera as the leader of the raiders, and from Jennifer O'Neill, one year away from fame in Summer of '42, who looks every inch the Cover Girl model she was. She rocks her leather pants and feels very 20th Century, as do her female co-stars Susan Dosamantes and Sherry Lansing; they come across more like the women in a Beach Party movie. But however anachronistic, they do follow in the Hawks tradition of self-directing, non-subservient women.

Rio Lobo is the least of this odd trio of films, maybe because the seige part doesn't start until the homestretch of the film. Until then it feels a bit aimlessly structured and rambling. But it's still pretty entertaining; Wayne is at his most likable and the movie is full of terrific, reliable supporting players including, among others, David Huddleston, Mike Henry, Victor French, Robert Donner and even a glimpse of George Plimpton, of all people, among the heavies.

MINION SOUP

Now playing in the multiplexes is Illumination's latest, Minions & Monsters...

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine.

BUFFING IT

A week ago today, at Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, Your Humble Narrator had the honor to introduce the afternoon's movie selection...

The White Buffalo (1977)--Charles Bronson plays Wild Bill Hickok, opposite Chief Broom himself, Will Sampson, as Crazy Horse, in this tall-tale weird western. Both men have been plagued by nightmarish visions of the title ungulate, and have decided to try to hunt it down. Eventually their paths converge, and though they're both staunch racists, a tense alliance forms between them. Based on a highly researched, floridly written novel by Richard Sale, who also wrote the screenplay, this was a rare flop for Bronson, though he brings it the same confident bearing he had in his other western roles.

Directed by J. Lee Thompson, a long way from The Guns of Navarone, the movie is terrible, but entertainingly, sometimes hilariously so, and it has a cast of veterans that's hard to resist: Jack Warden as Hickok's crabby sidekick Charlie Zane, as well as Kim Novak, Clint Walker, Slim Pickens, Ed Lauter, Martin Kove, a young Richard Gilliland, and the venerable Douglas Fowley (Roscoe in Singin' in the Rain) as a train conductor. Stuart Whitman and Cara Williams are ignominiously served in their brief roles, and John Carradine plays an undertaker, because of course he does.

White Buffalo are a very real part of the religious beliefs of many indigenous people in America, usually seen as a positive omen, an auspicious harbinger of peace, prosperity and blessings. It would take someone more knowledgeable than I am about such cultures to say if the treatment in this movie is offensive--or rather, just how offensive it is. The animal, one of the clumsier and less convincing creations of the great Italian creature-maker Carlo Rambaldi of Alien and E.T. fame, is treated here basically as a monster; probably Executive Producer Dino De Laurentiis was thinking of Jaws, less than two years earlier, and hoped the movie could cash in on the killer animal vogue, along with the likes of Grizzly, Orca and Tentacles. Even so, especially in his Moby Dick Waterloo at the finale, you may feel a pang of sympathy for the poor beast.

I also enjoyed moderating the lively post-movie discussion...

The movie was presented as part of Museum of the West's excellent ongoing Reel West Sundays film series, in connection with their exhibit Still in the Saddle: A New History of the Hollywood Western, which runs through December 31 of this year (the 2 p.m. Sunday flicks are free with regular museum admission; $10 just for the movie). Still in the Saddle includes artifacts of The White Buffalo, like a dinky little jacket that the apparently very slight Bronson wore in the film...

Before the event, Chief Curator Andrew Patrick Nelson took me to lunch, along with film historian Richard M. Roberts...

...at The Frybread Lounge, a native-owned cafe in Old Town Scottsdale, where, to prepare myself for the task ahead, I had a bison burger...

..."Rez style," that is, on frybread instead of brioche. A seriously lean and delicious burger; if you're in the neighborhood, I highly recommend.

GIRL, INTERRUPTED

 Check out my review of Supergirl...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

RED ROBIN

Happy Monday! Check out my review of The Death of Robin Hood...

...with Hugh Jackman in the title role, online at Phoenix Magazine.

OH, THE HE-MANITY

Now playing in the multiplexes:

Masters of the Universe--The Mattel toy line which started this franchise was launched in 1982. I was in college at the time, so any nostalgic associations I have with it come from my nephews, both of whom were ardent enthusiasts, of the toys and of the Filmation cartoon series.

 The dolls, that is to say action figures, were sword-and-sorcery fantasy warriors from a realm called Eternia. The signature hero was the blond, brawny swordsman He-Man; his badass friend was Teela, and his stalwart sidekick and mentor was Man-at-Arms. The main villain was the diabolical usurper Skeletor, who had a skull for a face but the same chiseled physique as his enemies (one of my sisters used to say Skeletor was a "double-bagger"). Their clashes and conflicts were played out in various playsets, most notably "Castle Grayskull."

I always imagined the characters were on some higher order of existence than ours, governing the vagaries of good and bad in our Universe. If, say, He-Man and Skeletor were fighting and Skeletor landed a blow, that was a famine or a war somewhere; if He-Man landed a blow, that was a cure for a disease. Something like that.

In any case, there was a 1987 film version, with Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella playing it admirably straight as Skeletor. I remember having a good time at that film with some friends back then, but the new film, opening this weekend, is an improvement.

It stars Nicholas Galitzine as Adam, aka He-Man (the retro term is mocked in the film), who fled Eternia as a runty little boy when Skeletor's hordes invaded Castle Grayskull, and landed in Oklahoma City. Adam had been entrusted with the Sword of Power, which he promptly lost upon arrival in OKC.

Now a grown-up, he's good at his job in HR at some office, so he knows his way around teamwork and respecting the feelings of others. But when he tells his cosmic backstory to, say, a first date, or when he searches the computer in his cubicle for swords, the results are unfortunate.

Before long, boy and sword are reunited, and he and Teela (the appealing Camila Mendes) are back in Eternia hacking it out with Skeletor and his scurvy followers. The good guy allies include the giant greenish feline Cringer/Battle Cat, the “human periscope” Mekaneck and such walking double entendres as Fisto and Ram Man.

Director Travis Knight, working from a script by a gaggle, wisely deflates the grandiose material for laughs, and the cast is only too happy to abet him. Galitzine embraces the silliness, giving us a splendidly manic, machismo-free He-Man.

Idris Elba makes a genial, relaxed Man-at-Arms, and Alison Brie is droll as the half-heartedly wicked Evil-Lyn. Best of all is Jared Leto, lending rich, mellifluous line readings to Skeletor, constantly frustrated by his slow-on-the-take minions, who don't give him proper villainous support when he goes on a cackling jag.

As so often with American fantasy, sci-fi and superhero epics of recent years, it may be hard for many of us not to read political allegory into this goofy, glitzy mash-up of Arthurian legend, Star Wars and Sid and Marty Krofft. The troubled times we're living in seem, at most, only a little less weird and cartoonish than what we see onscreen in Masters of the Universe. And no less needful of heroism.

DAY, DREAM BELIEVER

Check out my review of Spielberg's newest, Disclosure Day...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.