Shaky hands, bloody beers.
Racy tights, calm melodies.
With my three good companions:
My Hawks, my Wayne, and Dean.

How do you write about perfection? Not much left to be said, so I'll just jot a few of my favorite new revelations from this viewing.

-There's a great moment where Chance has a beer in his hand while talking to Stumpy and Dude keeps reaching for it and missing. the indirect punishment is most amusing.

-This exchange between Nathan Burdette and Stumpy:
"I see you still hold a little grudge against us."
"Four hundred and sixty acres might be little to you, Mr. Burdette, but it was a lot of country to me."
Stumpy's entire back history echoed in one…

I realize I had some unfair expectations when I watched this picture last night. Having read that Rio Bravo is John Wayne's response to the "un-American" High Noon, I found myself looking for that film's gritty, real-time suspense. So when this one dragged on and on and ended in an exciting but fairly anti-climactic fashion, I walked away disappointed.

But I decided to sleep on it before rendering my verdict. I also re-watched the first few minutes with the superb commentary by John Carpenter. Listening to Carpenter describe the opening sequence, which has been shot like a silent film, I understood that Howard Hawks wouldn't have let me down. After all, he made three of my favorite movies: Bringing Up…

Tumbleweed rolls down the empty street of border town Rio Bravo. A town under siege.
A wealthy land baron wants to bust his murderous brother out of the town's jail, and is willing to send wave after wave of hired thugs to do it. Standing in their way is the man wearing the Sheriff's star: John Wayne.

Wayne, with his lazy, halting swagger matching the rhythms of his drawling voice, dominates the screen. Has a neckerchief ever suited anyone more? Even in '59 he must have felt like a man out of his time when he wasn't making westerns, but he's completely at home here in Howard Hawks' deeply traditional, old-fashioned oater.
As Wayne's Sheriff fends off the gunmen, he…

"A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" - Pat Wheeler

Well, hot damn, is this a cool movie. I just want to start by saying that this is one bad-ass movie from the very beginning, with the two main characters (John Wayne and Dean Martin showing that they can actually act) strutting their stuff through their dirtied pasts. These are three-dimensional characters in a genre which is sometimes lacking that vital element of empathy, and this has that in shed-loads.

I can see why this is one of Tarantino's all-time favourite movies, as most of his trademark dialogue can be sourced from here. The script is quick and witty, and not afraid to make the occasional…

Shaky hands, bloody beers.
Racy tights, calm melodies.
With my three good companions:
My Hawks, my Wayne, and Dean.

How do you write about perfection? Not much left to be said, so I'll just jot a few of my favorite new revelations from this viewing.

-There's a great moment where Chance has a beer in his hand while talking to Stumpy and Dude keeps reaching for it and missing. the indirect punishment is most amusing.

-This exchange between Nathan Burdette and Stumpy:
"I see you still hold a little grudge against us."
"Four hundred and sixty acres might be little to you, Mr. Burdette, but it was a lot of country to me."
Stumpy's entire back history echoed in one…

This is the most wonderful western and one of my favorite movies. It started out as Howard Hawks' and John Wayne's response to the "communist" High Noon. It ended up being Wayne's best movies and one of his most entertaining performances.

John Wayne is sensible, gritty, funny, and a man's man. Dean Martin give his best screen performance as an alcoholic on the wagon. As a borderline alcoholic, I feel his pain. You can see it on his face and in his body language. Walter Brennan is the best crazy, old coot. He's not one-dimensional like Gabby Hayes always was, there is depth to him. Angie Dickinson is sultry and emotional, everything you want from the gal in a 50's…

This is really quite an interesting film for me, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I'm not sure why, but I never really tied together all the Howard Hawks films I've seen before until watching this. I knew the name of course, but it didn't really occur to me that some of my favourite classic Hollywood era films were all directed by the same man; The Big Sleep, HIs Girl Friday, Scarface and Bringing Up Baby. It's also interesting because Dean Martin is in it, and I didn't really realise he was an actor, except the original Ocean's Eleven, which for some reason I figured was a one-off. Also it's interesting because of its place in HUAC history and the…