Caltrops - Peter Molyneux's The Movies





	[quote name="Brody Wilder"]<b>WINNER: <i>The Third Man</i></b> Orson Welles' most enjoyable film - and he didn't even direct it! Those duties were handled by British maestro Carol Reed, who knew his Hitchcock well, while the screenplay came courtesy of acclaimed novelist (and former MI6 man) Graham Greene. A real Chrono Trigger for the stiff upper lip set. Stars the darling of Welles' own Mercury Theatre company, Joseph Cotten (whose weirdly-textured curls inspired Norman Osborn's iconic striped hairdo), as an American pulp writer who goes to visit his childhood friend in the ruins of post-war Vienna. In the best international thriller tradition, he soon finds himself in way over his head and gasping for answers. To avoid spoilers, I shant tell you who Welles plays; suffice it to say his social darwinist cuckoo clock monologue - the best parts of which he penned himself - has gone down in history as cinema's greatest villain speech. Watch this and get the hypnotic all-zither soundtrack stuck somewhere in the back of your mind for the rest of your life, just like the rest of us. <b>Close Combat: <i>Battleground</i></b> With the Cold War hotting up and Korea just around the corner, it was time for the government-sponsored propaganda machine to start mythologizing the last time we sent our boys off to die on foreign soil. In this case, that soil was the Ardennes region of Belgium, where the American forces found themselves hopelessly encircled in a frozen fairytale forest; that's right, it's our first ever dramatization of the Battle of the Bulge! There's an unexpected authenticity to this generation of military films, made as they were by and for veterans of between one and two wars to end all of those, that sets them apart from the <i>Tropic Thunder</i>-esque LARPing of Hollywood's post-conscription pictures. No matter how thick the bullshit gets, you know these guys were at least self-aware about it. That sense of quiet professionalism permeates every scene of this big-budget blockbuster, the <i>Band of Brothers</i> of its day, and you'll either find it boring as shit or immersive as hell. <b>Duel in the Sun: <i>Twelve O'Clock High</i></b> The stentorian Gregory Peck, for all his commanding presence and moral rectitude, never actually served in WWII; he was disqualified by a back injury suffered during dance lessons (the studio tried to claim it happened while rowing in college, but Peck was too honest for that). Here he plays the stern Army Air Force general assigned to shape up a demoralized and insubordinate bomber group during the darkest hours of America's involvement in the European theatre. Suffering battle fatigue from their remorseless schedule of daylight low-altitude combat flights that essentially made them sitting ducks, Peck daddies his men with a mixture of empathy and tough love. Highly regarded by veteran flyers for its sympathetic portrayal of men asked to do the impossible and be forgotten. I'm particularly fond of the action scenes, including one for which a stunt pilot was paid $4,500 to crash-land a real B-17 Flying Fortress. Safety precautions included having a fire truck on standby, and... that was it. <b>Marion Pax: <i>She Wore a Yellow Ribbon</i></b> The Wayneaissance, like those esteemed caissons, keeps rolling along. The second in John Ford's thematic trilogy of cavalry pictures is both the most expensive and by far the best. John Wayne capitalizes on his newly patriarchal persona to play the aged captain of a remote cavalry post battling Indians on his last day before retirement. It's like he watched Transformers and said, "I wanna be the truck guy". Filmed on location in oversaturated Technicolor, yellow bandanas pop against blue uniforms, red earth, and purple skies - but somehow it's not the least bit garish. (The palette actually reminds me of the <i>Robots in Disguise</i> anime that aired on Fox Kids, if you remember that one.) The soldiers don't transform into horses but they do mount up and ride out on multiple occasions. They also shoot people who look different from them. Yep, it was pretty much all here from the beginning. <b>After Hours: <i>On the Town</i></b> I'm not a huge musical fan, but by God do I like this one. Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and another guy (I think his name was Ozzie?) play US Navy sailors given 24 hours leave in the Big Apple. Their frantic rush to see the sights, find true love, and get back to their destroyer by daybreak drives a non-stop <i>The Warriors</i>-esque odyssey through fantasy Technicolor New York City. This was the first film directed by choreographer Stanley Donen, who would one day give us naked Kirk Douglas wrestle-fighting Harvey Keitel on a space station in 1980's <i>Saturn 3</i> (he also made <i>Singin' in the Rain</i> I guess). If you know one number from this, it's probably "New York, New York", sung to the tune of "Springfield, Springfield" from Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood. They aren't allowed to say "helluva town" on account of censorship, but it's still a pretty good song in a pretty great movie.[/quote]