dogwater-1

Here's one. Bone Tomahawk is an adventure story, a horror story, a character-driven western, a dark comedy, a rescue story and an edge of the seat thriller all in one. Need more? Its a love story too. A very well-written script by S. Craig Zahler, who directed and a cast of superb actors headed by Kurt Russell who is the next most unsung Hollywood actor after acknowledgment of Jeff Bridges. Richard Jenkins, one of my favorite actors, gives the "stand-by deputy" role of Chicory such depth and truth that it stands as one of the best performances I've seen this year. Matthew Fox as an off-beat foppish gunfighter with a soul is charismatic. Patrick Wilson, who continues his career of interesting choices is rather heart-breaking as a man so in love with his wife, Lili Simmons, that he suffers mightily in his determination to rescue her. Ms. Simmons plays an unusual combination of a liberated woman and caustic commentator on the "stupidity" of the frontiersmen she lives around in the ironically titled town of 'Bright Hope'. David Arquette and Sid Haig channeling Slim Pickens set the stage at the beginning and from the first scene you know this is not 'My Darling Clementine'. Sure there is some gore of a type I've never quite seen before. Its minimal, but strong enough to unsettle anyone's nerves. As for the savages, well they're definitely savage and scary to boot. Not everyone's tincture of morphine and whiskey, but it's some journey. Fred Melamed serves homemade whiskey in The Learned Goat.

I had never seen 'Something Wild' and I tuned in late on TCM last night. Perhaps I shouldn't review this at all, but I was taken by the 85% of it I saw. Already I feel stupid. This is a very compelling movie with some of the best actors around N.Y. at the time. Two wounded people. One of whose wounds are very apparent and the other more mysterious. It's a love story, but one I've never quite seen before. Two people very vulnerable and troubled who come together in odd circumstance, but find a sort of destined relationship based on gentleness, safety and mutual need. What starts out as claustrophobic becomes a safe place, a room of one's own. Carroll Baker made some of my favorite films of that time, and her then husband Jack Garfein, who co- wrote and directed, brings a tragic personal biography to his work. Ralph Meeker, a very fine actor who never got the roles and acclaim he should have is superb in this as a character I've never seen before in any film. Yes, a lot of time is spent in one shabby room, but that is what its about, isn't it? Mildred Dunnock? Well there was never anyone like her. Aaron Copeland contributed a magnificent score and the cinematography is seamless with the story. Enigmatic ending, perhaps, but that's life. I found it perfectly true to the characters.

Who is not an admirer of the four principals of this show? And they are certainly the only reason to spend anytime with this well-meaning, even brave attempt to stretch the boundaries of the TV Sit-Com. The ultimate failure, and I have seen all the episodes of the first season, I believe, is due primarily to the scripts and the tug-of-war apparent in almost every episode to decide whether to go for verisimilitude or the joke. Well, the joke usually wins in TV as it does here, but because it comes from some idea of a higher purpose unrealized that fell short, the joke falls flat. Dead ends abound in the plot. Interesting characters, played by interesting actors, appear, then disappear. Can you have comedy and truth? Of course. If we believe in the reality of the characters, we will laugh at their predicaments, particularly if they resonate with our own life and experience. The four stars soldier on tugging at our admiration for their skills in mining ore from gravel, but the equally important actors playing their four children do not have these skills and seem to be in something like "Saved By the Bell." And within the episode, is still the tension of the indecision of whether all this means something or is just another set of television circumstances to elicit a laugh or two. And tension is a comedy killer.