FILM REVIEW OF ''MY BLOODY VALENTINE" (2009)

“Dracula 2000” director Patrick Lussier has taken a few liberties with the low-budgeted 1981 Canadian slasher saga “My Bloody Valentine.” Nevertheless, he has retained most of the cliches and conventions of that largely predictable bloodbath and presented them with new vigor in his visually stunning 3-D remake. Eyeballs pop out at you in this state-of-the-art 3-D account, and the villain’s predatory pickaxe plunges through the screen repeatedly to keep you perched on the edge of your seat. Bodies spout blood frequently and various severed body parts fly in your face. A tree branch smashes through the windshield of a vehicle as it careens into it, and it rams through the interior, shattering the rear window, and sticking out straight in your face as the vehicle halts. Clearly, “My Bloody Valentine” will gratify gorehounds, while the squeamish will huddle in abject horror. Mind you, Lussier’s movie is the first R-rated, 3-D slasher in the latest 3-D craze that has hit theatres since 2008. No comparison exists between “My Bloody Valentine in 3-D” and 1982’s “Friday the 13th Part III” in 3-D. This hair-raising hokum looks great even when the axe isn’t altering somebody’s anatomy. “Supernatural” star Jensen Ackles and “Dawson’s Creek” star Kerr Smith vie for Jamie King while veteran character actors like Tom Atkins from “Creepshow” and Kevin Tighe of TV’s “Emergency” flesh out the fringes.

The new “My Bloody Valentine” (***1/2 out of ****) qualifies as a three-star chiller with riveting four-star 3-D special effects. Lussier and scenarists Todd Farmer & Zane Smith have integrated the “Fight Club” sight gag skillfully enough to keep you guessing about the psycho’s identity. Costume plays an integral part in this mayhem. The maniac dons a miner’s outfit, with its anonymous gas mask, goggles, coveralls, gauntlets, boots, and wields a pickaxe with devastating dexterity. You cannot tell who he is and the sound of his breathing strikes terror in the hearts of his victims. Watching this ominous exercise in calculating carnage in its flat, 2-D format is a complete waste of time and money. The only way to watch “My Bloody Valentine” is in 3-D! Lussier spares nothing in his ramped-up remake that features an entire sequence of gratuitous but hilarious nudity as a woman tries to dodge a pickaxe behind the box springs of a bed. A scene in a hospital features more chopped-up corpses than you want to count. You get to feast your eyes on two eviscerated corpses with their torsos cracked open like a slaughtered steers so you can ogle their spines. The original “My Bloody Valentine” combined elements of John Carpenter’s “Halloween” and Sean Cunningham’s “Friday the 13th, but that original independent Canadian horror chiller didn’t coin enough bucks for Paramount Picture to launch a franchise. Lussier’s lurid rehash, however, lets the psycho survive with a “Silence of the Lambs” gag, so a sequel is inevitable. Metaphorically, evil never dies!

The action unfolds in the small mining town of Harmony, Pennsylvania. Lussier relies on a melodramatic montage of banner newspaper headlines to clue us in on the disaster at the Hanniger mine. Young Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles), the local mine owner’s son, made a terrible mistake ten years ago that left five men dead and one in a coma. Sole survivor Harry Warden (Rick Walters) awakens from a year-long coma on Valentine’s Day and embarks on a bloody rampage at the local hospital. Harry suits up in miner’s garb and hacks his way through 22 people, before Sheriff Burke (Tom Atkins) and his deputy fill him with lead. Before Harry dies, the fiend drenches young Hanniger’s face with gore galore. Traumatized by the experience, Hanniger hightails it out of Harmony, abandoning his sexy sweetheart Sarah (Jamie King of “The Spirit”), and heads off to parts unknown. Meanwhile, Hanniger’s best friend, Axel Palmer (Kerr Smith), becomes Harmony’s sheriff and marries Sarah. The death of his father prompts Hanniger to return to Harmony ten years later to sell the mine. Since the mine represents the life blood of the town, nobody is happy to see him. Predictably, horrible things begin to happen. Naturally, Axel suspects Hanniger is the guilty party, but most of the citizens insist that Harry Warden has risen from the grave.

Lussier, who not only helmed “My Bloody Valentine” but also co-edited it, is a protégé of horror master Wes Craven, best known for his “Scream” trilogy. Clearly, Lussier has his head and heart in the right place for this slice of savagery. Lussier doesn’t squander a moment in his concise 101 minute massacre and the climactic showdown in the mine between Axel and Tom with Sarah debating who to shoot generates some suspenseful humor. Unfortunately, despite all his sleight of hand, anybody with a brain will know the identity of the villain. The big difference between this “Bloody Valentine” and its predecessor is that the villain doesn’t just stalk lusty teenagers. Anybody of any age—including a poor midget--is fair game. The big difference between the remake and the original is that in the original, the killer threatened to return to Harmony if the town celebrated Valentine’s Day with a dance. The new “Bloody Valentine” doesn’t have a dance. Lussier’s ending surpasses the original and the film has a couple of exciting scenes, particularly when our heroine and another girl find themselves trapped in a grocery store.

You couldn’t axe for a better 3-D slasher than “My Bloody Valentine.”

MOVIE REVIEW OF ''THE BIG SLEEP" (1946)

Howard Hawks ranks as one of the least pretentious Hollywood filmmakers. In Todd McCarthy’s seminal biography, “Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood,” Hawks summed up his philosophy about messages into his movies. “I never made a statement. Our job is to make entertainment. I don’t give a God damn about taking sides.” First and foremost, Hawks considered himself a storyteller, and he let nothing come between the story and him. Second, actors and actress either adhered to Hawks’ dictates or he wrote them out of scenes, sometimes movie entirely, and gave their action to others. Not surprisingly, when Hawks hired William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman to adapt mystery novelist Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep,” he told them, “Don’t monkey with the book—just make a script out of it. The writing is too good.”

Between 1944 and 1947, Chandler’s shabby but chivalrous private eye Philip Marlowe appeared in four films, including “Murder, My Sweet” (1944) with Dick Powell, “The Big Sleep” (1946), “The Lady in the Lake” (1947) with Robert Montgomery, and “The Brasher Doubloon” (1947) with George Montgomery. During this period, Hollywood filmmakers made what French critics later called ‘film noir’ movies. Essentially, ‘film noir’ movies occurred at night either indoors or outdoors. The gritty black & white photography stressed gutter realism, while the expressionistic lighting forged haunting shadows with a fatalistic flavor. Urban thrillers more than detective mysteries bore the marks of this movement. Unsavory male heroes and the fallen women that trapped them in a web of intrigue populated these films. The atrocities of World War II and Nazi persecution of the Jews destroyed the innocence of American isolationism and created more mature movies where characters suffered from flaws. Although “The Big Sleep” fits into this oeuvre, Hawks shunned such artificial narrative gimmicks.

In “The Big Sleep,” Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) works for $25 a day and expenses. He uses his wits and fists to relieve the wealthy but crippled General Sternwood (Charles Waldron of “The Real Glory”) of an extortionist. Sternwood has two beautiful but pampered daughters: a divorcee, Vivian Sternwood Rutledge (Lauren Bacall of “To Have and Have Not”), and a drug addict Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers of “Marine Raiders”). An amusing scene occurs early on when Carmen tries to sit in Marlowe’s lap while he is standing up. Later, when Marlowe visited General Sternwood, he has to weather the hot house heat that enables the decrepit General to survive. The General explains that he has to indulge in his vices by proxy. In other words, he sits and watches Marlowe as our hero drinks and smokes.

Arthur Gwynn Geiger (Theodore Von Eltz) demands $5-thousand dollars from the General for a sheaf of gambling debts that bear Carmen’s signature. No sooner has Marlowe gotten onto the case than an assailant shoots and kills Geiger. Marlowe enters Geiger’s house moments after the murder and finds Carmen sitting in a nearby chair drugged out of her mind. He finds a concealed camera but the film has been removed. Marlowe discovers a black book of addresses and hustles Carmen back home. Marlowe’s former boss, Chief Inspector Bernie Ohls (Regis Toomey of “Spellbound”) with the District Attorney's Office, pays him visits at home while Marlowe is examining the black book. Bernie informs him that a Sternwood limo has just been pulled out of the ocean with Owen Taylor, the Sternwood’s chauffeur, dead behind the wheel. Ohls wants information. Marlowe explains the blackmail angle and later divulges what happened to Geiger, but he leaves Carmen’s part out of the murder. Marlowe runs into a cagey gambler, Eddie Mars (John Ridgely of “Air Force”), who is flanked by a couple of goons, while he investigates the death of Geiger. As it turns out, Vivian and Mars are connected to each other. B-movie cowboy hero Bob Steele makes an impressive cameo as murderous gunsel Lash Canino and has a shoot-out with Bogart at the end of the movie.

“The Big Sleep” qualifies as one of the most convoluted murder mysteries to emerge from Hollywood. Hawks and Bogart argued over the identity of who killed the Sternwood chauffeur. They called up Chandler, since he wrote the novel, but he could not conjure up a plausible answer to their question. “I don’t know,” Chandler told them. Eventually, Hawks and Faulkner contrived a solution. The solution to Taylor’s murder, however, remained hidden until 1995 when the original version of “The Big Sleep” was made available to the public. Initially, Warner Brothers showed the original to American troops overseas, but Jack L. Warner shelved the movie until after the war so the studio could release its other war-themed movies before the Axis surrendered.

Meanwhile, after winning the critics’ approval in “To Have and Have Not,” Bacall had received abrasive reviews for her performance in “Confidential Agent” (1945), and her agent, a worried Charles Feldman, pleaded with Warner reshoot several scenes and invent new ones to showcase the insolence of Bacall’s character. When Warner Brothers released “The Big Sleep” in 1946, Hawks had jettisoned the expository Taylor murder solution scene and added other scenes that would have been more appropriate in one of his screwball comedies. One of the scenes that they added contained the risqué horse racing scene that serves as a veiled commentary about sexual relations. Somehow the censors at the Production Code Administration neither complained nor demanded that Warner Brothers delete this dialogue. Ultimately, Marlowe solves the case, eliminates the villains, and woos Vivian, but the plot makes very little sense, which may account for the film’s following. McCarthy quoted Hawks about the director’s own perplexity: “I can’t follow the story. I saw some of it on television the other night, and I’d listen to some of the things he’d talk about and it had me thoroughly confused because I hadn’t seen it in twenty years.”

“The Big Sleep” is really a classic. The Warners Home Video contains both the 1945 pre-release version and the 1946 theatrical version.

FILM REVIEW OF ''GRAN TORINO" (2009)

Two-time Oscar winning director Clint Eastwood of "Million Dollar Baby" directs and stars in his new movie "Gran Torino," (**** out of ****) another top-drawer drama that appears to have been tailor-made for his talents and personality. Three-fourths of "Gran Torino" is as entertaining and amusing as any "All in the Family" episode except that the bigoted hero here indulges in profanity and racism galore. Mind you, this is an R-rated movie. The last quarter hour turns pretty grim and tragic, like John Wayne’s final western "The Shootist" (1976) as the hero asserts his beliefs in the face of insurmountable odds. Die-hard Clint fans will gobble up the first three-fourths of "Gran Torino," while the last fourth will surprise but sadden them. People that thought the ending to "Unforgiven" seemed unrealistic will probably applaud the "Gran Torino" finale. Ironically, despite his animosity toward his Asian neighbors, our hero mellows over the course of the film's 116 minutes, and the Asians become more like family to him than his own blood relatives.

"Gran Torino" qualifies as a first-rate character study about 78-year old, retired Ford assembly plant worker Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood of “Heartbreak Ridge”), who served his country patriotically in the Korean War and whose wife has just died. Left alone to fend for himself, Walt whiles away his days sitting on his front porch and guzzles one beer after another with his docile yellow Labrador named Daisy curled up contentedly at his feet. Walt mows his lawn with an old push mower and watches with disgust as the large population of mountain people—the Hmong--from Southeast Asia gradually take over his Detroit suburb. Indeed, Walt doesn't care for their kind, and they have no love lost for him. Walt's next door neighbors, an elderly grandmother (newcomer Chee Thao), her daughter with her own daughter Sue (Ahney Her) and her introverted son Thao (Bee Vang)living with her try to steer clear of Walt.

The teenaged Thao, who lives next door, doesn't have a job. One day a carload of Hispanic gangbangers give him grief as he is walking along a sidewalk minding his own business. Thao's own kind, another carload of just as unsavory young gangbangers, cruise to his rescue, and warn the Hispanics to watch out. These Asian gangbangers want to take Thao in as their latest gang member, and Thao decides to join them. If he can steal the vintage Ford Gran Torino that Walt has parked in his garage, the gangbangers will induct him as one of their own.

Predictably, Thao bungles the theft and his fellow gangbangers show up to take it out of his hide. While they are using him as a human punching bag, they make the mistake of trespassing on Walt's pathetic little lawn. Walt marches out to meet them with 9.5 pound American M1 Garand, .30-06 gas operated rifle anchored against his shoulder and its sights trained on them. "Get off my lawn," he growls with menace, and everybody retreats, especially the gangbangers. They resent Walt's intrusion and give him dirty looks. "We used to stack you up five deep like sandbags in Korea," he adds with his finger on the trigger. Reluctantly, these hard cases back off. Later, the entire Asian community visits Walt's house after the incident and stack tributes of flowers and food on his front steps as if they were visiting a shrine. Naturally, Walt doesn't understand any of this nonsense.

Sue visits Walt on his porch one day as he runs out of beer and invites him over for a drink. Walt meets the family and the tension between these neighbors gradually abates, enough so that Thao's mother and Sue force Thao to work off his attempted theft of Walt's car by performing odd jobs for him. Walt takes a shine to Thao, and they bond. Eventually, Walt becomes Thao mentor. He shows him how to become responsible, win the girl of his dreams, and obtain a job as a construction worker. Inevitably, the Asian gangbangers come back to haunt both Thao and Walt, but wily old Walt proves that old guys can be tough guys right up to the end.

Despite his age and wrinkles, Clint can still snarl with the best of them, and he looks every bit as lethal here as he did when he played Inspector Callahan in "Dirty Harry" back in 1971. The big difference is Walt wields an M-1 rifle rather than a Model 29 Smith & Wesson. As much as it is a character study, "Gran Torino" also shows how people from different races can see eye-to-eye with each other more than they can with their own kind. Walt admits that he never understood his two sons, and he has little respect for a young Catholic priest Father Janovich (Christopher Carley of “Garden State”) who he thinks is still wet behind the ears. The eponymous car is one that Walt helped build and he maintains in mint condition in his garage.

Altogether, "Gran Torino" ranks as a terrific Clint Eastwood epic until three-fourths of the way through when everything changes as Walt takes on the neighborhood gangbangers. Some of the best scenes involve Walt rescuing Sue from a trio of black thugs that scared off her white boyfriend and Walt teaching Thao how to talk like a man in a barbershop scene with Martin (John Carroll Lynch of “Zodiac”), a cantankerous Italian barber. "Gran Torino" unfolds at a leisurely pace, sketches in its plot and characters with affection, but never wears out its welcome.

REVIEW OF ''THE BIG HEAT'' (1953)

Tennessee Democratic Senator Carey Estes Kefauver became synonymous with the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce that convened during 1950. The Kefauver hearings took place in 14 cities, and 600 witnesses testified as a part of them. Prominent gangland figures, among them Willie Moretti, Joe Adonis, and Frank Costello, appeared before the committee. Not only did these televised hearings wreck some political careers but also the hearings advanced others, such as Everett Dirksen, while the hearings publicized for the first time the idea of a criminal syndicate called 'the Mafia.' The Kefauver hearings exerted considerable influence on Hollywood, too. Revelations of organized crime’s pervasive corruption of America furnished filmmakers with fresh plots. The hearings forged an entire subgenre of crime movies about Mafia corruption in city hall, including “The Enforcer” (1951) with Kefauver appearing in a forward, “The Mob” (1951), “Kansas City Confidential” (1952), “Captive City” (1952), and “Hoodlum Empire” (1952). Fritz Lang’s “The Big Heat” (1953) concerned Mafia domination of city government and escalated the levels of brutality and violence. Afterward, movies like "Rogue Cop" (1954) about a corrupt cop (Robert Taylor) would follow in the wake of "The Big Heat."

As a tough-talking, two-fisted, homicide police sergeant bent on revenge, Glenn Ford's Sergeant David Bannion in Fritz Lang's superlative thriller "The Big Heat" served as a kind of prototype for Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" character. This seminal saga about police corruption and metropolitan crime syndicates in the fictional town of Kenport appears a little dated by today's standards with its obvious studio sets and Charles Lang's crisp black and white cinematography, but it still packs a wallop. "Mystery Street" scenarist Sidney Boehm based his screenplay on William P. McGivern's Saturday Evening Post serial. Before veteran cop Tom Duncan commits suicide, he leaves a written record of his corrupt dealings with big-time hoodlum Mike Lagana (an urbane Alexander Scourby of "Seven Thieves") for the district attorney. Duncan's greedy wife wants the payoffs to continue, however, so she blackmails Lagana for $500 a week. Sergeant Dave Bannion finds himself assigned to the case. "When a cop kills himself, they want a full report," he says to a fellow policeman at the scene of the suicide. Bannion generates a lot of hostility in getting that "full report" not only among the paranoid criminal figures but also with his superiors some of whom may or may not be on the take.

Everything comes to a head one evening when Bannion and his pretty wife Katie (Marlon's older sister Jocelyn Brando of "Ten Wanted Men") are bound for a movie. Katie commandeers their car while Dave tells their young daughter Joyce (Linda Bennett of "Creature with the Atomic Brain") a bedtime story. She is going to drive off to pick up the babysitter. Unfortunately, Katie never gets out of their driveway because several sticks of dynamite attached to the ignition explode and kill her when she starts the car. Of course, the criminals expected Dave to die in the explosion. Dave survives and sends his daughter off to live with some friends while he starts smashing heads. Mike Lagana isn't any too happy about this error. Meanwhile, Dave's superiors turn up the heat on him to cool off, but he refuses to and quits the force to take care of business. Along the way, he crosses paths with a dame, Debby Marsh (Oscar winner Gloria Grahame of "The Bad and the Beautiful"), and they chat in his motel room. Word reaches Debby's thuggish boyfriend, Vince Stone (up and coming Lee Marvin of "The Dirty Dozen") and he takes his rage out on his girl by splashing her face with scalding coffee. Earlier, Stone burned a bar girl, Doris (Carolyn Jones of TV's "The Addams Family"), with his cigarette and attracted Dave's interest.

Later, Dave has harsh words with Lagana, and our hero is forced to leave the force to complete his investigation. Dave and Debby become unlikely friends, and he confides in Debby that everything will blow up in Lagana's face if the wife of the dead cop were to release his death note. Debby visits Bertha Duncan (Jeanette Nolan of "Tribute to a Bad Man") and she has an interesting dialogue exchange with her about being 'sisters in mink' before she guns her down in cold blood as a favor to Dave. Actually, Dave turns into a rogue himself and he isn't much different from the scum that he wants to put away for the murder of his innocent, defenseless wife. Women fare horribly in "The Big Heat." Indeed, all of the women involved in the plot, with the exception of Doris, wind up dead by fade-out. . Altogether, “The Big Heat” resembles a film noir thriller, but Lang and Boehm violate one of its chief tenets. Instead of women destroying men, the opposite occurs. Bannion, who is warned by a colleague about his “hate binge,” winds up destroying four women, including his wife, in his crusade for justice.

Lang directs "The Big Heat" without any pretensions, and it is better for this treatment. He never wears out his welcome at 90 crisp, no-nonsense minutes. The coffee burning incident happens off camera. We see Marvin grab a boiling pot of coffee and Graham screams. Later, Graham returns the favor, but this time the action occurs in a semi-darkened room and we see liquid flying across a room like a serpent lashing out. The only complaint of mine is that we don't visually see Lagana suffer as a result of Bannion's investigation. Although Bannion has banished chaos and restored order by the last scene when his new superiors reinstate him, the cost has been catastrophic. Indeed, in Lang’s sadistic mise-en-scene, the hero must wipe out virtually everything—sometimes even his loved one—before peace can be regained.

Representative of several film reviews that appeared during the initial showings of "The Big Heat" is Robert Kass' review in "Catholic World: "The present vogue for sadism and violence reaches some kind of apex in "The Big Heat," a truly gruesome crime thriller in which a detective-sergeant singlehandedly battles corruption in city government controlled by a ruthless racketeer." Later, Kass adds for effect: "I wonder that someone hasn't protested about the frightening display of viciousness which must have an even greater impact on young minds. Apparently, though, sadism is not considered on a par with sex."

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE GENERAL'' (1927)

Ironically, Buster Keaton’s all-time favorite film comedy “The General” (1927) flopped at the box office during its initial release. Critics and audiences alike panned this superlative American Civil War saga. Most of the critics didn’t think it was “funny” or that Keaton was “funny.” Forty years later critics hailed Keaton’s film as a masterpiece, and it ranks among the top ten on virtually every critical short list of silents. Unlike his closest rival the English comic Charles Chaplin, who ingratiated himself with audiences as the homeless little “Tramp,” Keaton remained aloof, never cracked a smile and earned the nickname “The Great Stone Face.” Not surprisingly, Keaton’s trademark is that he consciously strives not to appear “funny” and therein lays the humor in his work. In other words, he doesn’t draw attention to his buffoonery. Keaton is the kind of comic who wouldn’t laugh at his own joke.

The fun of watching any Keaton film is the deadpan acrobat’s titanic struggle to gain mastery over some form of machinery and adapt to the people around him. For example, in “Steamboat Bill, Jr,” Buster must win the girl, reconcile with both his father and her father, and master operating a steamboat in the midst of a cyclone. This theme recurs in his best films, including include “Our Hospitality” (1923), “The Navigator” (1924), “Sherlock Jr.” (1924), “Steamboat Bill Jr.,” (1928), and “The Cameraman “(1928), More than any of these Keaton topped himself with “The General.” He must operate the trains by himself when the intrigue starts and he continues to operate the trains with minimal help.

Introverted railroad engineer Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton) has two loves: a locomotive named ‘The General” and Annabelle Lee (Marion Mac), his girlfriend. While visiting Annabelle, he learns that the Confederacy has fired on Fort Sumter. Annabelle’s father and brother storm off to the recruiting station to perform their patriotic duty and sign up. Johnnie takes a short-cut to beat them there and be first one in line. Complications arise when Confederate officials refuse to enlist him. They judge Johnnie more valuable to the South as train engineer rather than a soldier. Repeatedly, Johnnie tries to enlist, and they finally give him the boot. “If you lose this war, don't blame me,” Johnnie complains as he walks away. Annabelle’s father and brother spot him leaving and urge Johnnie to join them. Johnnie remembers what happened to him in the enlistment office and walks off massaging his sore rump from where he has been kicked. Johnnie is too ashamed to tell Annabelle the truth. Annabelle’s father and brother both sign up and go off to fight the war. Meanwhile, she refuses to talk to Johnnie until he is in uniform.

A year later, at a Union encampment north of Chattanooga, General Thatcher (Jim Farley) meets with his chief spy, Captain Anderson. Anderson (Glen Cavender) assures Thatcher he knows every foot of the Southern railroad between Marietta and Chattanooga, and he cannot fail on his mission with ten hand-picked men. They travel dressed as civilians. During dinner at Big Shanty, Georgia, they strike and hijack Johnnie’s train. Worst, Annabelle is caught in the baggage car and Anderson’s men take her hostage. Johnnie pursues them on foot, by hand-car, and later by bicycle, but he cannot catch them. He stumbles into another station and commandeers the locomotive called the ‘Texas’ and pursues Anderson with what he thinks is a train load of Confederate troops. He learns too late the troop train wasn’t coupled to the locomotive. At one point, Johnnie hooks a flatcar with a mortar and tries to blast the Union spies ahead of him on ‘The General.’ Johnnie almost blows himself up. Anderson and his men don’t stop because they believe Johnnie has them outnumbered.

Eventually, Anderson realizes Johnnie is alone and Johnnie has to abandon the Texas. He gets lost in the woods during a thunderstorm and turns up like a drenched rat at a house where the Union Army is about to convene to discuss their plans. Johnnie sneaks into the house and raids dinner table. He avoids narrowly being caught by climbing underneath the table and eavesdrops on the Union plan to attack the Confederates. At the same time, he spots Annabelle who is being escorted into the house by two troops. After the Union officers conclude their meeting, Johnnie knocks out a guard, steals his uniform, finds Annabelle and they try to sneak through Union lines. Johnnie decides to steal his locomotive—the General—back and Anderson and his men pursue him in the ‘Texas.’ Johnnie manages to stay ahead of them long enough to burn the Rock River Bridge. When a Union train crosses the bridge, the structure buckles and train and trestle crash into the river. Johnnie discovers the Union officer he knocked unconscious in the cab of the General is General Thatcher. The Southern General awards Johnnie a commission as a lieutenant. Annabelle is as overjoyed as Johnnie until they have to pause in their kissing for him to salute an entire army of privates marching past him.

Keaton’s timing is impeccable throughout “The General.” The scene where Johnnie loads the mortar on the flat car and the muzzle dips so that it is aimed at Johnnie while the fuse burns is hilarious. Miraculously, Johnnie’s locomotive cruises off onto another set of tracks, while the mortar trundles along the original set and the cannon ball narrowly misses the Union spies on their train. Later, Anderson’s men follow a switchback that takes them onto a towering trestle where they halt their locomotive temporarily and bombard Johnnie with railroad ties as his engine runs under the trestle.

Keaton drew “The General” from a true-life Civil War incident where Union spies stole the eponymous locomotive. William A. Pittenger wrote about it in a book entitled “Daring and Suffering: A History of the Great Railway Adventure.” Tom Dardis quoted Keaton in his biography “Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn’t Lie Down” as bragging, “No pains were spared to make the film as authentic as they possibly could.” Keaton converted a tragedy into a comedy for the Confederacy. Keaton explained his reason for this decision: “You can always make villains out of the Northerners, but you cannot make a villain out of the South.” Moreover, the stone-faced comic tried to use the authentic locomotive “The General” that had been housed in a Chattanooga railroad station. Originally, he had sought to shoot on the actual terrain, but he hated the scenery and wound up reenacting history in Oregon with 500 Oregon State Guardsmen impersonating Union and Confederate troops. Reportedly, the money shot of the collapsing bridge cost Keaton and company $42-thousand dollars.

The important thing for contemporary audiences to gleam from “The General” is that it was made with no digital computer enhanced effects. Virtually everything in “The General” is genuine. Keaton drove the train and they actually destroyed the bridge that the train sets on during the big battle. There were no models or mock-ups made for this film.

Keaton’s “The General” dwarfs the widescreen 1956 Walt Disney produced release “The Great Locomotive Chase” with Fess Parker and Jeffrey Hunter and depicts the events from the Northern perspective. Indeed, “The General” is one of my all-time favorite movies. The Library of Congress preserved “The General” in 1989 in the National Film Registry as a film that qualified as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

FILM REVIEW OF ''MARLEY & ME" (2008)

Anybody who wants a pet Labrador retriever should watch the new Owen Wilson & Jennifer Aniston canine comedy “Marley & Me” (*** out of ****), so they’ll know everything that Labs chomp. Clearly, director David Frankel, whose last movie was the Anne Hathaway career comedy “The Devil Wears Prada,” wanted to explore entirely different themes, and he succeeds on the whole with this sentimental, shaggy dog saga. Ostensibly, scenarists Scott Frank of “Get Shorty” and Don Roos of “Bounce” adapted former “Philadelphia Inquirer” columnist John Grogan’s memoirs about the 13 years that his family and he spent with a Lab. Basically, Hollywood makes two kinds of dog movies: those where the dog lives and those where the dog dies. Smuggle in a box of Kleenex if you see “Marley & Me.” Mind you, “Marley & Me” amounts to suburban schmaltz, nowhere as realistic as the Disney classic “Old Yeller” (1957) where the boy shot his dog after the animal contracted rabies. Despite some mild profanity, “Marley & Me” qualifies as family-oriented fare. Indeed, this aw-shucks, PG-rated, feel-good flick about a loyal but neurotic Alpha Lab will amuse you and make you chuckle, even though it wears out its welcome with its two-hour plus running time. Aside from one scene involving a dog obedience trainer, you shouldn’t have to explain anything to your little ones.

John (Owen Wilson of “Drillbit Taylor”) and Jenny Grogan (Jennifer Aniston of “Derailed”) marry in snowswept Michigan and promptly move to a warmer climate. They settle in Palm Beach, Florida. Jenny lands a job as a features writer at The Palm Beach Post. John’s college chum Sebastian Tunney (Eric Dane of TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy”) gets him an interview at The Sun-Sentinel. Grumpy Sun-Sentinel editor Arnie Klein (Alan Arkin of “Inspector Clouseau”) hires John on the spot and sends him off to cover stories about speed bumps, methane fires, and the latest Rotary Club row. Jenny likes to make lists, while John tries to accommodate those lists. No sooner has our cute couple settled into a three-bedroom house than Sebastian warns John that Jenny will want a baby unless he sideswipes her biological clock. Sebastian suggests John buy her a dog. John sells the dog idea belatedly to Jenny after he blindfolds and takes his wife out to a dog farm. They pick what comes to be known as ‘the clearance dog.’ Jenny has to cover an out-of-town trial, so John gets to pick up the pooch. On his way home, John hears Bob Marley reggae music on the radio and decides that the musician’s last name is ideal for his hound. The Grogans learn quickly that life with Marley won’t be a picnic. Marley devours dog food like a glutton. Moreover, this incorrigible cur chews up pillows, bras, sofa cushions, and even Jenny’s necklace. He likes to chase the UPS man, the mail man, and he steals a next door neighbor’s turkey dinner.

When director David Frankel and his scribes aren’t depicting Marley’s next prank, they dwell on the ups and downs of domesticity. The Grogans have a tough time getting their family started, but they wind up with three kids, two boys and a girl. Jenny quits her job to play house mom and discovers the toll that some young moms encounter after having kids. John sacrifices his dream of being a reporter and reluctantly accepts a cushy columnist’s job. As it turns out, John’s editor Arnie loves our hero’s columns about his rambunctious yellow Alpha Lab who destroys restaurants, causes traffic jams, and assaults dog obedience trainers. Anybody who loves Kathleen Turner had better be prepared for a shock. Turner turns up in a cameo as Ms. Kornblut, gravelly-voiced battle axe, far from the delectable dame of “Romancing the Stone.” Marley drags Kornblut around on his leash and then . . . well, you’ll have to take the little ones aside and tell them about the birds and the bees. Eventually, Marley grows old and we know that something dire is in store.

It’s difficult to believe that the real-life Grogans lived this sunny lifestyle. Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston maintain their fluffy blond mops and slender waistlines. Rarely do they blow a fuse. Occasionally, Jenny screams about Marley’s problem with thunderstorms. He howls like a conscientious bloodhound that has just cornered a raccoon in a tree and he doesn’t stop until the rain stops. Eric Dane plays John’s best friend and babe magnet Sebastian who snags all the great newspaper stories and eventually becomes a New York Times reporter. John envies Sebastian and then when John leaves the Sun-Sentinel for The Philadelphia Inquirer to write real news, he realizes how much he loved being a columnist. Nobody told him how to write his own column and everybody loved to read it. It’s also pretty hard to believe that John Grogan pulled down the kind of salary that enabled him to buy a sprawling house with a swimming pool in Florida and then later an even bigger one in rural Pennsylvania. Reportedly, from young puppy to old dog, Frankel had to use as many as 22 dogs to impersonate Marley.

As far as canine comedies go, “Marley & Me” doesn’t spring many surprises, but this harmless potboiler about a bad-to-the-bone dog does a good job of straining on your heart strings.

FILM REVIEW OF ''RIO LOBO'' (1970)

According to Todd McCarthy, in his 756-page biography “Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood,” the legendary producer & director repeatedly admitted that he didn’t care for his final film “Rio Lobo.” Editor John Woodcock remembers Hawks advising him to whittle down scenes that didn’t live up to the director’s high expectations. Reportedly, Hawks enjoyed the American Civil War prologue, but his feud with lead actress Jennifer O’Neil and her appallingly callow performance as the heroine marred later scenes, such that Hawks eventually wrote her out of the finale altogether and gave Sherry Lansing the privilege of killing the vile villain. McCarthy’s opinion of “Rio Lobo” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) mirrors that of Hawks, too. He contends the entire film resembles a made-for-television feature with perfunctory dialogue and “shoddy” visuals and everything appeared “tired and unengaged, with the repetition of previous situations and conceits played out to diminishing returns.” Indeed, “Rio Lobo” isn’t the greatest western. Nevertheless, with its comic byplay between the principals, Jerry Goldsmith’s evocative music, and his scenes of violence, Hawks’ last collaboration with John Wayne manages to be a lot of fun. Moreover, “Rio Lobo” neither dawdles nor wears out its welcome. As bad as Jennifer O’Neil’s performance is, the cast seems to work together quite jovially and the dialogue—nothing memorable—flows with a rhythm. Hawks ribs John Wayne’s character for his increased girth and age and the girls ridicule Jorge Rivero’s romantic Frenchman without mercy. Let’s not forget Jack Elam as the cantankerous Mr. Phillips who chews the scenery with vigor as much as he loves to shred anybody and everybody with his double-barreled ‘splatter’ shotgun.

“Rio Lobo” opens with an entertaining and inventive prologue about a Civil War gold robbery. Four Union troopers load a strong box into a yellow caboose at the Plainsburg railway depot. Colonel Cord McNally (John Wayne)awaits the train at Rocky Ford. He remains in close telegraph communication with Plainsburg and orders Lieutenant Ned Forsythe (Peter Jason of "They Live") to proceed with caution and remain inside the caboose until he bangs on the door. Meanwhile, Confederate soldiers have been monitoring the telegraph and prepare to rob the train. Specifically, they grease the railroad tracks that the Union train transporting a shipment of gold is traveling on and then hurl a hornet’s nest into the caboose where the troops stand guard over the strongbox. Between the hornets and the Confederate gunfire, the Union soldiers are either shot or bail out. After they smoke the hornets out of the caboose, Captain Pierre Cordona and his men uncouple the caboose from the rest of the engine and the wood car. Just to make sure that the locomotive cannot follow them, the Southerners blow of the engine’s steam. Talk about a slick piece of work. The rebels ride the caboose and flat car down the mountain and halt the runaway vehicle with heavy ropes stretched across the tracks, the same way the Navy used to suspend a net across their carrier decks to stop careening jets. As soon as they discover that the telegraph lines are down, McNally and his men ride breathlessly to the scene of the robbery, and McNally finds one of most dependable officers, Lieutenant Forsythe lying in a field with his neck broken. Forsythe's last words to McNally are "catch them will you." McNally and his men split up as they trail the rebels into the woods. The rebels single out McNally and take him prisoner, among the Confederates are Capt. Pierre Cordona aka Frenchy (Jorge Rivero of “Soldier Blue”) and Sgt. Tuscarora Phillips (Robert Mitchum’s son Christopher of “Big Jake”), who are both pretty handy with this six-shooters. Eventually, McNally outfoxes them and leads them into Union territory. He offers to release them if they divulge the identity of the traitor who has been giving them insider information about the gold shipments. Cordona and Phillips refuse and serve their time out in a prison camp.

After the war ends, McNally visits Cordona and Tuscarora as they are being discharged and buys them some drinks. The colonel still wants to know who sold him out because he refuses to tolerate treason. When Tuscarora asks him why he doesn’t bear a grudge against them, McNally reminds them that what they did constituted an act of war. Selling information is on the other hand treason and McNally wants to get the soldier in his command who sold his country out. McNally gives them some money to supplement the two dollars that Union authorities have given them so that they are head west. Cordona and Tuscarora agree to alert McNally when they have any useful information. The time between the prison scene and the subsequent scene in the Texas town of Blackthorne is compressed and McNally shows up in civilian garb in response to a summons from Cordona. No sooner does McNally show up than trouble breaks out because a bunch of deputies from Rio Lobo, operating out of their jurisdiction try to arrest a willowy girl, Shasta (Jennifer O’Neil of “Class of ’42) for questioning in connection with a snake oil medicine show she was running. Blackthorne Sheriff Pat Cronin (veteran character actor Bill Williams of “Son of Paleface”) tries to intervene, but the Rio Lobo thugs get the drop on him. One of the villains is none other than journalist George Plimpton in a cameo. Shasta pulls a derringer out of her purse under the table where she sits and fires through it, wounding Deputy Whitey Carter(Robert Donner of “High Plains Drifter”) while McNally disarms the gunman with a rifle (Plimpton) who stands behind him. Cordona appears half-dressed at the top of the stair in the saloon/hotel and helps gun down the opposition.

Cordona explains that the man that they think sold them the information about McNally’s gold trains is a wealthy rancher in Rio Lobo named Ketchum. Veteran heavy Victor French of “Charro!” is the slimy villain who is forcing everybody to sell their land at rock bottom prices. Ketchum has the notoriously corrupt sheriff, Blue Tom Hendricks (Mike Henry of the “Smokey and the Bandit” movies) on his payroll. Hendricks’ chief deputy is played by future “Dallas” patriarch Jim Davis. Shasta guides Cordona and McNally to Rio Lobo, and they arrive under cover of darkness. The next day McNally watches as couple of Blue Tom’s deputies give Tuscarora a beating, charge him with stealing his own horses, and lock him up. McNally, Shasta, and Cordona visit Tuscarora’s father’s ranch where Blue Tom's gunmen have besieged old man Phillips. Our heroes and heroine shoot their way into Phillips’ ranch and convince him to accompany them to Ketchum’s ranch. McNally catches up with Ketchum who he knows better as Sergeant Ike Gorman. He roughs up the former noncommissioned officer. Our heroes kidnap Ketchum after busting heads and shoot their way into Blue Tom’s jail to free Tuscarora. Meanwhile, Cordona heads off to fetch the U.S. Calvary, but the villains capture him and engineer an exchange, Cordona for Ketchum.

Leigh Brackett, who co-wrote both “Rio Bravo” and “El Dorado,” contributed to Burton Wohl’s original script, and the result is a retread of many earlier scenes that have been altered to fit the new movie. Instead of the heroes slinging dynamite as they did against the villains in “Rio Bravo,” the villains get to sling dynamite at the heroes. Nevertheless, the pace is fast, the shoot-outs are vigorous enough, and the dialogue bristling with enough humor to make the all-too liesurely “Rio Lobo” a pleasure to watch. Nevertheless, "Rio Lobo" emerges as the least entry in this western trilogy. John Wayne is the only star left over from "Rio Bravo" and "El Dorado." "Rio Bravo" and "El Dorado" boasted famous co-stars. More importantly, "Rio Lobo" lacks a strong heroine like Angie Dickinson in "Rio Bravo." As a result, "Rio Lobo" seems almost lightweight and awkwardly comic by comparison. Future movie studio chief Sherry Lansing has a bit part as Amelita, a Mexican girl that Blue Tom disfigures. “Rio Lobo” has a solid plot and makes good use of foreshadowing. Of course, the real star is Howard Hawks' distinctive dialogue. Bob Steele and Don “Red” Barry have cameos.