Movie Jibber-Jabber #9: "Hell or High Water," News, and Scary Moments

Welcome to "Movie Jibber-Jabber," your semi-weekly digest of movie news, reviews and local film happenings.

The Fast & Furious Feud

I'm a casual fan and admirer of the "Fast & Furious" series of movies. Rumor has it two of the stars have been feuding. An incendiary Facebook post by The Rock started it, and after some digging it was found the likely target of his ire was none other than Vin Diesel. Reportedly, the two will now be facing off during a WWE event leading up to next year's "Fast 8." Is this the purpose of The Rock's original post or is it a way for Diesel to save face after being called out for his behavior while filming the only one of his franchises that has any legs? I'm a fan of both actors and honestly don't care about their personal lives or whether they're angry. That said, the "Fast & Furious" movies are filled with ludicrous action sequences, characters and cartoonish depictions of hyper-masculinity. It seems like WWE is the perfect partner, real beef or no.

Cranston & Carell join Linklater's "Last Flag Flying"

Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" was my favorite movie of 2014, and this year's "Everybody Wants Some!!" will surely top the list. His next film is an adaptation of Darryl Ponicsan's 2005 novel "Last Flag Flying," a sequel to Ponicsan's "The Last Detail" (which Hal Ashby adapted for the screen in 1973). The story again centers on Navy men Billy Buddusky and Richard Mulhall, who — instead of transporting Larry Meadows to prison — help him bring home the body of his son, who died in the Iraq War. Instead of Jack Nicholson, the late Otis Young and Randy Quaid, the roles will be played by Bryan Cranston (Buddusky), Laurence Fishburne (Mulhall) and Steve Carell (Meadows); Cranston and Carell's additions in particular have made me even more exited than I would have been. The two have had quite a journey from television into film, and I can't wait to see how Linklater works with them.

Review: "Hell or High Water"

Westerns are tricky. During the Golden Age of the Western, they were, all things relative, "recent history." The 1870s were to that era what the 1940s are to us now. A lot of modern Westerns trade off of the aesthetics and mood of classic entries in the cinematic canon; "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "The Proposition," "Sicario," "Bone Tomahawk," "The Hateful Eight," "No Country for Old Men" and "True Grit" are notable recent Westerns, with deconstructionist takes on the mythology. I love most of those movies. But each is, in some way, self-aware about being a Western — a tribute, in a sense, to the genre it inhabits.

"Hell or High Water" is a Western, simply, and a damn good one, a modernization of the core theses of the genre that forwards it for a modern age.

While there are variations to the genre, I've always felt that Westerns are about people experiencing the system shock of a new world order — men and women who are rough fits for the world in which they live. The West was the last great frontier in American migration, ripe for fables and mythology, and even before cinema the genre well accommodated those needs. After the era of the Western? Certainly cop television has mined the moral dilemmas; what of the genre now? I mentioned before many modern Westerns that I love; how does "Hell or High Water" embody the genre any better than they do?

Because it takes the frontier aesthetic — in this cast, West Texas — and adopts the moral dilemmas of today into a smartly built narrative that never celebrates how much it feels like a Western. It simply is a Western. Powerful, effective, violent, tragic.

The Howard brothers, Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster), aren't outlaws in the traditional sense (although Tanner's criminal history comes in handy). Their mother dies, leaving Toby's two children her land, which has potential for oil drilling — but is also under possible foreclosure by Texas Midland Bank, which would rob the family of their spoils.

Land rights, oil drilling and foreclosure create a classic Western premise. Chasing them is lawman Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), driven to do his job on the eve of his retirement. The brothers and Hamilton are both men of a different age, doing the best they can on the new frontier of 21st-century American desolation.

Setting the movie in rural West Texas allows for writer Taylor Sheridan and director David Mackenzie to get the most out of the western aesthetic, right down to civilian men arming themselves like the cowboy heroes they aspire to be. It never dumbs down the story in order to fit in Western cliches or contrivances; it simply brings them into the modern world.

"Hell or High Water" is one of 2016's best films, a film that fully embraces the trappings of its genre while also furthering it.

Local Reviews:

Sam Watermeier fell in love with "Southside With You."

Richard Propes reviewed "Sea of Trees" over at The Independent Critic.

No Sleep October

Back in 2013 I wrote a series of columns called "No Sleep October" that chronicled my experience watching several classic horror films for the first time.

Why? Because I can't really watch horror films. I'm a goddang scaredy cat. So I'll be doing it again this year.

During the month of October, "Movie Jibber-Jabber" will take a hiatus, replaced with weekly reviews of several horror films suggested to me by friends and family. On the list: "The Babadook," "The Descent," "Session 9," "The Exorcist."

Each week of September, I'll be presenting my Top 5 scariest movie experiences, chronologically, from across my life. Maybe this will help illustrate precisely why, when I told my fiancée, Aly, that I was going to do "No Sleep October" again, she looked at me like I am an idiot.

Scary Movie Memories #1: The Cave of Wonders

This week, I'd like to delve into the Cave of Wonders from Disney's 1992 hit "Aladdin." I have two memories. One borrowed, one retained. According to my aunt, this is the first movie to ever scare the piss out of me — literally, as two-year-old Me sat in her lap in the movie theater. I have no way to verify the story, but it seems accurate given my own personal recollections of later viewings.

We owned "Aladdin" on home video, and I remember that each time the Cave of Wonders showed up on the screen I would run out of the room and hide under my mother's desk until it was gone. I was terrified of it. I can still remember how scared I was, almost to the point of immobility once I'd reached a safe place. I can remember my mom coming to get me out from under the desk. I would not watch it. I would not even think about it.

That's it for this week, folks!