Hot Spur (1968)

This feels like an Italian film, but I'm not for sure on that as there is remarkably little information about this movie online. It's a boobs, gore and guns exploration film (mostly the former). Set in the old west, near Mexico, the lead character is a Mexican stable hand named Carlos, who doesn't say much. After a prolog where he attempts and fails to stop a rape, Carlos ends up employed at the same ranch as the rapists. The ranch owner is an asshole, and his wife is trying to sleep with all the stable hands, except for Carlos as he (as this movie keeps reminding us) is Mexican. The boss fires Carlos as he thinks he has the hots for his Mrs. Shortly after being fired Carlos kidnaps the rancher's wife while she is out horseback riding. He ties her up and keeps her in a abandoned cabin. He explains that he intends to use her as bait, as he has been systemically hunting down and murdering the men who raped his sister when he was a kid, with the ranch owner being the last living participant in that childhood shattering event. This movie is slow and really takes its time with the nude scenes, every woman in this movie you end up seeing nude, often more than once. Far duller than it should be. * 

Nightwatch (1997)

Ewan McGregor is in his senior year at a California law school. He gets a job as a night watchman at a medical building that houses the local morgue (I hesitate to call it a hospital because there are no overnight patients). McGregor took the job because it would give him the opportunity to study, however he soon starts having weird experiences, including possible hallucinations. Nick Nolte is the chief investigator on a series of prostitute murders; he and McGregor strike up a friendship after one of the murder victims is brought in late at night. Also going on in McGregor's life is a somewhat strained relationship with his girlfriend Patrica Arquette, who comes from money, and an increasing odd one with his best friend Josh Brolin, who he discovers (despite dating Lauren Graham) is seeing prostitutes and has sexual kinks related to power imbalances. Brad Dourif and John C. Reilly also have small rolls. 

A remake of a hopefully better Danish film, 'Nightwatch' is going for a Stephen King vibe, but its lesser King, a stinker. This is a suspense movie with little suspense, a thriller with few thrills, a character piece with flat characters. It does a decent job at atmosphere, and there are pieces of a good film here, but the movie feels tossed together and disjointed. A talent bomb. *1/2  

Remarkably Bright Creatures (2026)

'Remarkably Bright Creatures' is based on a bestselling book. A book in which a wise old octopus named Marcellus (here voiced by Alfred Molina) comments upon --- and later managers to get himself involved in --- the somewhat melodramatic goings on outside his tank, chiefly involving two of his caretakers at a Pacific coast aquarium. Played by Salley Field and Lewis Pullman, she's a widow, whose only child has also died and she's working mostly to keep busy, he is a van dwelling aspiring musician who is working because he needs the money. They live in one of those quirky towns populated by quirky residents, including Colm Meany, Joan Chen and Kathy Baker. There's a mystery or two, both leads get love interests and it's cozily pleasant. The material is perfectly suited to a modestly budgeted Netflix film and a mildly heartening 111 minutes. ***

The Criminal Code (1931)

 Boris Karloff and Peter Bogdanovich watch some of this movie in the 1967 film 'Targets'. Directed by Howard Hawks and based on a 1929 play of the same name by Martin Flavin, Columbia Pictures would go on to adapt this an additional two times as 1938's 'Penitentiary' and 1950's 'Convicted'. Phillips Holmes accidentally kills a man in a bar fight he did not initiate, district attorney Walter Huston believes him, feels its a bad brake, and is confident that if he were the defense attorney he could get him off; however, as DA he justifies to himself that it is his job to get convictions so he gets him convicted and sentenced to a dozen years. Huston has political aspirations he intends to build on a strong record as DA, to his disappointment some six years later he losses the gubernatorial race and winds up being appointed prison warden as a sort conciliation prize, or perhaps as a perverse joke by the winning administration. Many people in that prison were put there by Huston and they are not happy that he has been put in charge. Things get restive. 

Huston had more or less forgotten about Holmes, but a kindly prison doctor brings him to the new wardens attention, stating that he has been treating hardened criminals for years and that Holmes is not one, and shouldn't be there. Persuaded, Huston goes to bat for early release and in the mean time makes him his official chauffer, allowing Holmes to spend some time outside the prison, and inadvertently creating a situation in which he and the wardens daughter Constance Cummings can fall in love. 

The situation in the prison remains tense, and a stoolie tips the administration off to a planed prison break, in the process of foiling which a particularly well liked prisoner is killed. A cell mate of that man, played by the aforementioned Karloff, plans revenge. Huston sends his daughter away to visit family; the stoolie is killed, the circumstances of which lead the warden to believe that Holmes knows who did it. Holmes does, but adhering to the prisons unwritten 'criminal code' he refuses to rat him out. Huston threatens to rescind Holmes early release, leans hard on the poor man and ends up sending him to solitary confinement. When his daughter gets back and confesses her love for Holmes, Huston lets him out of solitary. Karloff interprets this as meaning that Holmes sold him out and makes plans to shank him, leading to the films climax. 

This is one of the better prison films of its time, dated, kind of silly in places, but still rather watchable. ***

The Outfit (1973)

 There was a chapter about this movie in Tarantino's Cinema Speculation, which is why I watched it. Adapted from the 1962 novel The Hunter, this feels both timeless and like a throw back to the FDR era. Robert Duvall gets out of prison for a robbery of 5ish years before, very shortly there after attempted hits are made on him, and his partner Joe Don Baker, and a successful one on Duvall's brother, the three perpetrators involved in that bank job (I guess there wasn't enough evidence to convict the other two).  Come to find out that that bank they hit was a mob front, so mob boss Robert Ryan decided to wait until all 3 were available to attempt and extract revenge. This backfires as Duvall and Baker successfully go after various mob operations, so eventually Robert Ryan decides to make a peace offering to end it. However Ryan double crosses them, so the war escalates and I really enjoyed enjoyed the ending. Smart and unhurried, everything you could want from a heist/revenge movie, done with sophistication and confidence. Deserves to be a classic. ****

Stay Away, Joe (1968)

 Elvis Pressly plays a Navajo Lothario, in this low plot comedy in which multiple actors, including Elvis and Burgess Meredith, sport red-face. Story threads include Elvis's sister trying to make a mixed race engagement work, and Elvis trying to get a lethargic bull to mate with his father's government subsidized cattle heard. The film ends with the collapse of a tenement house played for laughs. This might be Elvis's worst movie, extremely bad. *

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)

 Clint Eastwood directed crime-drama, adapted from John Berendt's 1994 "non fiction novel", inspired by a 1980's Savannah, Georgia murder trial. Scanning through reviews I read someone comment that Eastwood directed this movie 'as a tourist would'. I think that is true, but I also think it is to the movies benefit. That this decent murder plot is filtered through a reading of Savannah as Mecca for eccentrics, is what makes it memorable and fun to watch. A remarkably queer friendly for the 90's, let alone Clint Eastwood. ***1/2