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| I'm going to use this thread to talk about really good movies I've seen lately. by Brody Wilder 02/28/2020, 3:01am PST | ||||
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| We'll start with two hillbilly melodramas from 1941. The first is Swamp Water, directed by Jean Renoir, and filmed on location in Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp. It starts out like Great Expectations, with a young man meeting an escaped convict in the wetlands, but instead of dropping that thread to focus on frou-frou wedding dress shit it develops with purpose into a violent backwater noir. The black and white outdoor photography was unusual for the time and still looks fucking great, with the iconic image being a human skull on a cross.
While Swamp Water is a dark picture with a humanist streak, my second recommendation, The Shepherd of the Hills, is borderline Christian allegory. Don't let that put you off this meditative story of an old man returning to the Ozarks and the son he abandoned, the son who's sworn to kill him for reasons of bizarre mountain superstition. This one was filmed in naturalistic Technicolor somewhere in sunny California that looks nothing like the Ozarks, to its benefit, and features some fantastic acting in a primitive American dialect that's fittingly Shakespearian. This is a good one to cite when people try to tell you John Wayne couldn't act, though he's essentially in a supporting role as the wrathful son - it's Harry Carey as the civilized old man and Betty Field as his barefoot teenaged guide who run away with the show. Ward Bond appears in both films, playing the Ward Bond character. |
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I'm going to use this thread to talk about really good movies I've seen lately. by 02/28/2020, 3:01am PST  Have you seen Wind Across The Everglades NT by 02/28/2020, 7:07am PST Not yet, but it's going on my list. Any good? NT by 02/29/2020, 9:30am PST It's supposed to be, another swamp pitcher by 02/29/2020, 10:28am PST The new Rambo and Terminator movies are both excellent. by 04/01/2020, 4:07am PDT I have to talk about a movie I hated to get to one I loved. Spoilers for both! by 04/23/2020, 6:25pm PDT |
