Modern warfare is all about ambiguity. Who’s the enemy? Who are the combatants? It’s one reason why the simple morality of a movie lends itself more to the clarity of WWII, the Cold War or similar, where it’s easy to figure out who to root for and who’s the bad guy. From our vantage point in the 21st Century, it’s hard to imagine the anti-communist fear that helped define the 1950’s and 1960’s, with Soviet Premier…Read More
Review: True Grit
The original True Grit was released in 1969 (see my review) was one of the films that marked the end of the Western in cinema. Primarily about the relationship between hard-as-nails teen Mattie (Kim Darby) and grizzled old marshall Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne, in an Academy Award winning performance), it worked because Mattie was fearless and dogged in her pursuit of justice for the ranch hand who murdered her father, and because Cogburn was a…Read More