Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Toilet Review: The grandest ol’ Western that you ev’r did see.

Man, this movie has it all. You want fights? It has it. You want love? It has it. You want bad ass characters with bad ass lines? Yup, has it. You want a love story that isn’t rubbed all up in your face like some sort of desperate cat? Come on down! Breathtaking cinematography? Yes. A score to chill you to your bones? Sure!

A Sergio Leone movie is always going to look fantastic. A master of the long shot, and being able to allow suspense to build without resorting to cheap tricks, Leone was unrivaled in his craft. He brought the Western genre alive in way that I have yet to see bested. His movies are rich and colourful, and always seem to make the West a character in the movies itself. It seems to be a living, breathing character along with Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda, and plays just as important a role.

This movie has several plot threads that all seem disconnected from each other in the beginning but slowly seem to be pulled tighter and tighter into one unmistakably dense mass of betrayals, deceit and the promise of a brighter future.

Our main character, of a sort, is Harmonica. A quiet man who speaks rarely, but can shoot through the eye of a needle.He carries an old harmonica with him that he plays frequently, the same few notes over and over again. We know he is looking for a guy named Frank. Frank, meanwhile, is the meanest sonofabitch that you ever did meet, and ends up framing local bad boy Cheyenne for something that Cheyenne just ain’t too happy about. Let’s add a busty blonde woman named Mrs. McBain who arrives from New Orleans for a better life, and suddenly we got outselves one giant pot of shit that can explode at any moment.

What I really like about this movie is that Leone does not give a crap about run time. He made the movie that he wanted to and if it takes almost three hours to tell the story, then that’s how long the movie will be. It’s full of long, lingering shots that add tension to already heavy scenes.The score accompanies this movie in a way that is just perfection. It suits it so well.

An absolute classic movie in every sense of the word, but a titan in the Western genre. See it, thank me, see it again.

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

Toilet Review: One young girl learns the joys of capitalism, whilst having a snarky talking cat.

This was always one of those movies on my “I totally should watch this” list, which you can imagine is quite the long list, and never quite managing to get around to it. It’s a typical Studio Ghibli movie; its gorgeous. It looks like a fairy tale in every aspect. The dreamy scenery, the snippets of a wider world, and a simple story.

Kiki is a thirteen year old witch, and when a young witch reaches thirteen, it is tradition that they leave home for a year and study to become a full time witch. Kiki does just this, and accompanied by her little black cat, Jiji, ends up in a gorgeous city by the ocean that maybe doesn’t need the help of out fledgling witch but Kiki decides to make the best of her situation.

I really can’t tell you more than that without totally ruining the story. Like a lot of children’s movies in general, this one is pretty straightforward. There is no hidden meaning, no deeper symbolism than what we see. There isn’t really much to look at in terms of the story. Sure its entertaining but it’s pretty thin on the ground, especially in contrast to other Miyazaki movies, like Princess Mononoke and Grave of the Fireflies.

I saw this in one of the local cinemas close to my apartment, and it had a certain charm to it that all movies on big screens do. I did end up watching the dubbed version, which is not my preferred way of watching non-English language movies. I think that dubbing sometimes removes important aspects of the dialogue, or important cultural clues that may be implicit in the script.  I will definitely end up watching the Japanese version, because of the previous reasons mostly, but also because I ended up furiously whispering to my husband about whose voice I was hearing and I was so convinced it was Mandy Moore (it wasn’t) and Phil Hartman (it was!).

Definitely a gorgeous movie, worthy of Miyazaki. Glad I watched it but I’ve preferred some of his other movies.