Stream and Stream Again

  Where to Watch: YouTube (free) ***1/2 This review will probably contain spoilers. I don't know - I haven't written it yet. If you're the kind of person who cares about that sort of thing, I recommend you go and watch the movie before reading this. I give it my seal of approval, it's free in various editions on YouTube, and really there are a lot of worse ways to spend an hour and change. But, truth be told, if you're reading this blog you're probably the sort of person who is already inclined to know a bit about Caligari , and so you probably know the twist endings (both the awesome one that was originally intended, and the puzzling and only mildly successful one that got tacked on after the producers got cold feet). So in the end I'd recommend you read on. This movie came out 105 years ago, for God's sake. I feel like that's well past the statute of limitations for spoilers. The first thing anyone talks about with Caligari is the mise-en-scene . A...

Where to Watch: Plex (Free) ***1/2 I've never been huge on Westerns. I think a lot of this is because of two things. The first is that, as a kid, we drove from New South Wales to Kalgoorlie. As a result, for many years, I fucking hated the desert. The second is that a lot of Westerns deal with the American psyche and the myths Americans  tell about themselves, and as an Australian I've never felt much of a connection to them. Also, as a kid, I just thought watching a bunch of stoic guys shoot eachother because of a land dispute was really boring. Older and wiser, I've come around to this sort of film. But I still prefer the outliers - Westerns that challenge or tweak the standard formula. Your Johnny Guitars , your True Grits . That sort of thing. And The Gunfighter definitely does all that and more.  Describing the plot might make The Gunfighter sound somewhat generic, but it's important to bear in mind that a lot of what it did was pretty new for the times. You'v...