Movies

[oilcanboyd23]

"Why was Gretchen Mol so well-fed and soft in 310 to Yuma?"

I don't know, but I'm not complaining.  If it wasn't for Winona Ryder, GM would be the cutest in movies.

As to "3:10 To Yuma"... [SPOILER ALERT]

Let me see if I've got this straight...

When Wade's (Russell Crowe's) gang gets to Contention (the train station town), they enlist the help of local whoevers to shoot anyone holding Wade captive, will pay anyone $200 to do so, etc.   Evans (C. Bale) sneaks Wade out the back door of the hotel, and immediately gets shot at as he makes his way to the train station with captive Wade in tow.

At this point, presumably, Wade is only going with Evans because Evans is holding him at gunpoint.  But wait, how can Evans be holding Wade at gunpoint, and running to the station, and shooting back at his attackers all at the same time?  Okay, that's a question to ponder, but let's move on...

In the stable or whatever, Wade gets the jump on Evans, pins him to the floor, and has a gun in his face.  Presumably, his plan is to shoot Evans, so that he won't have to board the train to prison, and then re-join his gang and resume gang business, etc.  If that's correct, then are we to understand that this was his plan from the get-go, as soon as they went out the back door of the hotel?

However, just as Wade is about to shoot Evans, Evans says, "Wait, I'm not a hero - in the Civil War, I was shot in the leg during a retreat, and it was someone in my own retreating platoon who shot me, by accident, etc.... You try telling that to your 10-yr old son..." or whatever.

Upon hearing this, Wade gets up, gives Evans his gun back, etc.  In other words, the implication is that, AT THAT MOMENT, Wade decides yeah, I've changed my mind, I'm not only going to let this guy bring me to the station, but I'm going to help him do it, etc., with the implication being, up until that moment, Wade was being taken to the train station as a captive, against his will, etc.

Am I right so far?  Did I describe the events and motivations correctly?  If not, then please advise.  If I did describe the events and motivations correctly, then it doesn't make any sense.  Evans' "I'm not a hero" story is told to Wade after several minutes of them running through streets, etc., with Evans shooting at his attackers, etc.   I think I could have escaped from Evans any number of times while he was dodging bullets and shooting attackers, and I'm just a nobody.  Ben Wade is a rootintootin gunfighter in the Old West - are we to believe he didn't think he'd be able to escape from Evans while Evans was dealing with all those distractions?

-------

That whole thing had me very confused - maybe there's a short answer that will make me say "Ohhhh, now I get it" or whatever.

But no matter what the answer is, I didn't find "3:10TY" to be very engaging.  Crowe and Bale were fine, and Ben Foster did some nice sneering, but for some reason I thought the whole thing felt a little uneven or thrown-together or something.  I only saw it once, so maybe I'll change my tune after a home viewing, I don't know.

[TrojanHorse]

Maybe the "spoiler" stuff is why they opened the MOvie Club section?


I didn't have a problem with him running along with him.  I think he felt he could take him anytime -- he was just conflicted about the whole thing.  They developed this emotion all the way through the movie I thought.   Wade unexpectedly liked and admired this guy for doing the right thing even when he didn't have to and also for trying to be a good parent -- which he never had.

And he obviously wasn't too worried about getting on the train if he had to -- since he felt he could escape either from the train or later from the prison.

[oilcanboyd23]

And he obviously wasn't too worried about getting on the train if he had to -- since he felt he could escape either from the train or later from the prison.

"3:10 TO Yuma" [***SPOILER***]

So why go through the whole thing about having his gang come and free him?  If what you say is true, then why didn't he (when he was talking to Ben Foster out the hotel window) tell his gang not to worry about trying to free him?    And why jump on top of Christian Bale in the stable and stick a gun in his face, only to relinquish it after Bale's "I'm not a hero" speech?

[oilcanboyd23]

I didn't have a problem with him running along with him. 

"3:10 To Yuma" [***SPOILER***]

I didn't either - it made sense to me that Wade would be like, "I could get away from this guy anytime I want to, especially with all of these bullets whizzing around, but I like the guy and don't want him to get hurt, so I'll run along with him as if he was really effectively taking me against my will to the train station." 

That worked fine for me, UNTIL Wade pounced on him and was about to shoot him, and then Evans' "I'm not a hero" speech convinced him not to shoot him, and convinced him to go along with Evans to the station.  If I'm intepreting that scene correctly, then the events leading up to it don't make any sense.

[Donotremove]

Oilcan, that's why I love watching Gloria the first one, with Gina Rowland.  On the run, she takes on her old mob friends--to save a boy from certain death--and she doesn't talk anybody to death.  She shoots 'em dead as soon as she sees 'em.  God love her, she did the whole movie in high heels.  I didn't watch the remake.  Why in the world would I?  Glad you made it back from the train station in one piece, to tell us "don't go there."

[oilcanboyd23]

Damn, Jbottle should appreciate that, but he seems to me to be too narcisstic to notice anything but praise.  Correct me if I'm wrong.  It happens.  I enjoy his posts.

He used to be a happy-go-lucky, not-a-care-in-the-world type poster, but ever since they canceled "John From Cincinnati", it's nothing but doom and gloom.

[Donotremove]

Oilcan.  Is that what's wrong.  Well, I can't do more than buy him a beer.  I can't commensurate at all, ignorant as I am of what went on.  I watched the first episode and that's it.

Not movies alert--I watched an episode of Sunny in Philadelphia the other night.  Hot dog.  That show is BUSY.  Non-stop dialog along with mile-a-minute action and background you need to pay attention to.  Sheesh, I couldn't keep up, got off track on the timing for the jokes and stopped laughing out loud like I had been for the first 15 minutes.  The show plumb wore me out. I'm going to give it another go, though.

[madupont]

donotremove,

Taking your recommendation with high praise, I decided to look at Tommy Lee Jone's direction in the film: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

It has all the things that concern him,  friendship, equity, justice,and an extremely beautiful shooting location: that crossover into the deserts of Mexico is incredibly gorgeous(especially as to why Melquiades described and referred to Jimenez as his home).

T.L. Jones not only ages well, he just gets better with age.

I don't know if it was him or Arriago's writing for the production that brought this about but someone here is responsible for catching and revealing the real characteristics of the "Tex-Mex" cross-over population's personality.  It is true of all those that I've known who make the circuit through my former home and sometimes have chosen to settle there permanently because they came  at the time when the getting there was good.

[jbottle]

T.L. Jones has aged well?  Huh.

Clint Eastwood has "aged well," Tommy Lee Jones is wearing every drink and restless night all over his face.  Why does Clint not see 20 yrs. older than T.L. Jones.  Because one has aged well and one has aged badly.  Now Wings Hauser, that cat...

[TrojanHorse]

SPOILER ALERT CONTINUES

That worked fine for me, UNTIL Wade pounced on him and was about to shoot him, and then Evans' "I'm not a hero" speech convinced him not to shoot him, and convinced him to go along with Evans to the station.  If I'm intepreting that scene correctly, then the events leading up to it don't make any sense.

As I said, I thought he was just conflicted and had not made up his mind so he was just sort of going along.  When the opportunity presented itself, he reacted to it.  The "speech" made him consciously aware of his feelings and it is then that he decided, consciously, to help him.

There were lots of points throughout the movie where he could have harmed the rancher but chose not to and in fact even helped him.  He also looked at him with a strange puzzled look on more than one occassion when the rancher did something that surprised him and you could see Wade trying to put the guy into a neat package so he could treat him like anyone else -- but he just never was quite able to...

Wasn't there also some sort of emotional trigger that caused him to get angry and pounce on the rancher in the first place?  I think I recall him kind of saying "Ok look you've had your fun, but I've had enough now."  words to that effect...   the rancher then tried to go against him and this is when he reacted angrily--but again this was just reaction, not thought out.  I think he was pretty clearly not in control of his emotions as evidenced by him offing his entire gang later after they upset him.

I guess any two people could interpret it differently--but that's how I saw it...

[madupont]

I look at it somewhat differently, aging well is something I learned about among Plain people who work long into their old age. So it is less how well you have preserved youthful appearances, as long as you can do the labor that has to be done and that you've done all your life; and, granted, the character he was now conveying lived just as he ought to have been according to everything he had learned out of life, Jones looked about as expected given the endurance of his long career.

I recently saw some flash-backs to his beginnings, and I'd fogotten how he was at that time which was somewhat overbearing as one is at that age. Now he exercises authority from experience.

Poor old Clint, on the other hand, sometimes gets that look about him with which I am familiar,and I refer to as "delicate"; from there on, people who have that look begin to look "fragile". I'm the one that they always called in to sit with the sick so that I could let everybody know when their time had come and the patient was about to die.  It is so obvious to me that I can't imagine why other people can't discern it, unless they have got a mental block from allowing that to cross their perception? However, I was raised in hospital as my father did his rounds and basically started my work life like that , on and off, away from it now because we live in one of those more unlivable periods although everybody likes to appear to be having a lot of distracting fun to keep their mind off those gd dots they are always told to connect.

I noticed that particularly in a sequence that I caught last night of a rerun no doubt of that Dennis Leary thing, or fireman gone fraught with whatever fright did it, he is at a ball game with Charles Durning(long past his "Tootsie" days") and they keep doing sequences that look like commercials buried in the shooting sequence, with people having fun and more fun, as long as the refreshment stands are stocked and there are lots of people making noise in the background, gives it a tacit authenticity of being real life, then I watch Charles Durning die in the midst of a natural nodding to sleep in a stadium full of guys mostly being guys watching a ball game and Leary suddenly notices that Durning is not asleep and how he handles it is an acting lesson in appropriate behaviour to the emotion of respect and grief while life goes on around you.

I must say that I hadn't quite expected Charles Durning to be this way, as he makes his living on camera. Or, what can you do, you've been an actor all your life, and there are a few retirement homes for aged actors on both coasts.  I last saw him when he was shooting I.Q. with Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins, and Tony Shaloub, with Walter Matthau as Albert Einstein.  Durning was playing a guy named Louis Bamberger. They had the roads blocked off at the front of Einstein's old house and the t-that runs up hill to Nassau Street; but, so many people wanted to watch the shooting or had originally tried out for casting calls.

I just went shopping and noticed that Durning was pushing a shopping cart through McGaffery's with one of those people who are not necessarily an assistant but whom the municipal borough assigns you who will tell you where everything is and how to find things, in case you need anything.  Which everybody always does.

About the time we were parallel in the aisle, you know as a human being you really expect yourself to say something, although in utter candor, if you do so, the recipient will consider you quite mad because it always comes out as if you are being overly familiar, which you are, as if you are intimately involved in this celebrity's life, the very thing that they hate about their public.  He looked at me with a Charles Durning look that says it all, realizing he would get no assistance from the assigned personnel but, just for a split second, it was as if he was asking himself is this somebody I am supposed to know but I've forgotten where I know them from? and then he just glowered at himself as much as at me.

I was so embarrassed at myself but on the other hand I'd just witnessed him do what he has normally done on camera in numerous performances.

Who was the great "director" who said, "To thine ownself be true."?

[thanatopsy]

I'm not a big movie fan but do occasionally watch indy produced movies from overseas.  There is a certain depth and symbolism that characterizes these gems which is something lacking in USA productions.

My two  latest viewings:

''Whisky'' by Rebella + Stoll  [2004]

''Fear + Trembling'' by Corneau [2003]


Unlike American movies whose characters are virtually the same and whose plots (if any) are predictable, these gems reveal real people in realistic settings.  Frustrated people who dream on because their lives are miserable. Yet, they are constructive people who work to enhance their lives despite seeming insurmountable problems.  Both movies will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps most significantly, they will make you think.

[kidcarter8]

Pfuckkkkk youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Foreign snob.

It's not correct just because you say it, pal.

[barton]

Oilcan, I think Trojan covered some of answer that I had framed in my head when I read your question about Wade's motivations -- Wade was conflicted, and figuring things out emotionally where he stood with Evans.  In a way, I thought that made a better movie, where the "bad guy" is complex and unpredictable.  It's pretty clear that his "gang" has always been a utilitarian thing, i.e. a business alliance with guys who he ultimately finds to be worse scum than he will ever be.  At the end, he's sort of feeling his way towards just being rid of the gang, and also towards having a real connection with another person, i.e. Evans.  Evans is the first person who has been really honest with him, and it takes a while to process something so...mind-boggling.



 

[Dzimas]

Psssssssssttttttt.
Confidentially, my dear young man,
I do believe thanatoooopsy is a lady...
and I should know... 

I made the same mistake, thanatopsy is a man and can fend for himself against the pathetic likes of kidcarter, who should stick to the football forums.