More Movie Reviews--The Ballad of Cable Hogue; Morvern Callar

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

1. No one could ever quite create a complex, well-rounded female character like Sam Peckinpah. The way that most of the first shots of Stella Stevens were of her breasts really reflects his feminist nature.

2. The attempts at "comedy" are questionable to say the least. I suppose that to speed up the camera when things are supposed to be funny could theoretically be a good technique. But I doubt it. Peckinpah sure was having fun with new film gadgets though. Speeding up the characters' movements during the comedic scenes. Split screen too. He was really getting off on that.

3. Jason Robards is solid in every movie that I've seen with him. What a great and underrated actor.

4. Did L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin ever play anything but buffoons? They're really good at it so I hardly blame directors for casting them this way.

5. Stella Stevens fell in love with Robards why? Given the centrality of this to the plot, some sort of thought into why it happens would have been a good idea.

6. This is a pretty solid movie overall, despite my complaints. But I really hated the end. Robards dying under the wheels of modernity (literally) was so obvious. Yes, Sam, we all know you hate the modern age.


Morvern Callar (2002)

1. What the hell was this about? It's not that it was bad exactly and I don't mind movies where people sort of drift around discovering themselves. But this was a little too much.

2. But at least there wasn't a lot of dialogue. Because I couldn't fucking understand those Scottish accents. Is it asking too much to provide subtitles? On a DVD, this seems like a reasonable option. I probably understooc about 40% of what was said.

3. No one can accuse Samantha Morton of not internalizing her roles. Even though I didn't like this movie, I definitely respected her work in it.