This week's weeks review is High Noon. Now I actually was looking forward to watching this movie but that may be due to last week's movie (I mean anything compared to that will be better). I do not have much experience with Westerns, but that most likely stems from the fact that Westerns aren't as popular as they used to be and I hate old things, speaking of, despite this being made in 1952 it is still in black and white (ugh). Anyways given this wasn't The Philadelphia Story it was a lot easier to cowboy up and watch the film this week.
High Noon was one a the first movies to be set in real time. Meaning that movie time and real time move at the same rate. This caused me to think of this every time they looked at a clock
Except instead of Jack Bauer kicking ass it is a sheriff. This film was also selected from preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". I have no idea what this really means but it makes this movie seem really important. Also feel free to look up what this means for me, I'm to lazy. Also John Wayne hated this movie because it was an allegory for blacklisting......Anyways! This film is also referenced in Die Hard:
High Noon was also nominated for seven academy awards, including Best Picture, winning four for Best Acting in a Leading Role - Gary Cooper, Best Film Editing, Best Music Score, and Best Music Song. All of this is neat but nothing is still as cool as being mentioned in Die Hard. Oh, did I mention Die Hard is my favorite movie.
Now we will take a look at how the wise people, like yourself, who rate thing on the internet felt about this movie:
IMDB= 8.3 out of 10
Rotten Tomatoes (Critic Rating)= 96%
Rotten Tomatoes (Audience Rating)= 87%
Once again we see that these movies, so far, have continued to be well received. Though this film did not rate as high as The Philadelphia Story I just assume people didn't realize John McClane is a fan of this movie (If they did everything would be at 100%).
Enough with the critics' opinion now its time for mine. Starting with the characters. First off there were many characters in this movie but most of there were small characters who were only in a few scenes. The acting ranged all over the place. Some actors were great while others were horrible. My mom even pointed out how far acting has come since then. The delivery of their lines just seemed so bland and they were sometimes be long pauses before the other person spoke. It was very awkward. The bad guys in this film I felt were under used. The movie would continue to show them sitting around yet they never developed these characters. I know one of them had a name but I am not sure if the other two did. This surprised me since the "bad" in The Good, the Bad, the Ugly was one of these nameless baddies. Now to continue on with the bad guys they did have a leader named Frank. Once again he was still not developed really, this is really strange since he is the main antagonist. Katy Jurado played Helen Ramirez, who was a pretty main character of this film, might have been one of the worst actors in the movie. Every time she came on the screen I would let out a sigh just due to her horrid acting. Even my girlfriend felt she was a horrible actress. Then to top it all off she said one of the stupidest things ever:
I hate when people say this. Also by people I mean girls. I haven't met a guy who has said this. Then we have Lloyd Bridges playing the Deputy. This character was very interesting I felt but once again I wish he was in it more and his conflict was a bigger plot in the film. Now we have the very attractive Grace Kelly who plays the wife of our main character. I really liked her character and I felt they not only gave her a good background to help define her character but she also had some nice character development through the movie. Gary Cooper, who played main character in this practically one-man-show, was awesome. He was just one of the main characters who is just so cool and tough that it is hard not to like him, which is really good since he is the only character who gives a great performance, is developed well, and is given adequate screen time. Some character had some of these qualities but Gary Cooper's character was the only one who had all three.
I really liked the story of this film. It was simple and yet I was extremely engaged. The real time aspect of this movie made it really interesting and I found myself looking at the play time on the DVD payer to see how much time was left. There were some funny things with the script like a few bad lines and a weird no cursing thing (I mean a character really said "Well, I'll be......" That's it, nothing else. What will he be? What was he trying to say?). Anyways, the great stroy made up for this thought I did learn some things from this movie:
#1: No one likes cops
#2: Kids hate going to church
#3: Loitering is a popular activity for troublemakers
#4: Helping people doesn't pay off
Interesting how somethings never change.
Now, lets look over some of the miscellaneous things that also add or subtract from this movie. I know the music won academy awards but I do not understand why. The music was so over dramatic all the time. I even started to jokingly gasp each time they played it, escpeially becasue it didn't take much at. Pretty much all it took was someone entering the room:
Also the set looked cheap at times but it wasn't horribly noticeable. On the positive side the cinemotogrpahy was great in this movie. There were a lot of really cool shots and I was impressed that they were able to do given the time the film was made.
In conclusion, I really liked this movie and many of its flaws did not seem to matter where compared to the film's strengths. This is still one of the few Westerns I have seen and this one made me really excited to see more which is good because there are a lot of them on the AFI top 100. Hopefully they will have better acting though. So, my grade for this movie is a solid B.
No comments:
Post a Comment