Weekend viewings

[trekgeezer]

The Missing -  Cate Blanchett  and Tommy Lee Jones  - I thought this was a good , sort of spooky western.  Jones is Cate's father who ran off to live with the Indians (apparently several different tribes) when she was a little. She's had a hard life and is the local healer and has two daughters of  her own, one that looks about  10-12 and seems pretty tough  and one older who wants nothing more than to leave and go live in town.  Bad Indian shaman is on the loose kidnapping young women to sell in Mexico.  So when Cates' older daughter is kidnapped and her hired hands murdered she has to get the old man to go with her, because the law and the army are of no help.  

Some pretty good action and a lot more to the story than I 've told.  Some interesting means of torture used by the bad guy . He wraps one guy in a freshly skinned cowhide and hangs him above a fire so when the skins dries...........

Beloved - Oprah Winfrey  and Danny Glover -  It is a psychological ghost story and delves quite deeply into the psyche of runaway slaves .  I don't know that it 's particularly scary, but some of it is rather shocking.  (I never thought I would see Oprah with her skirt hiked up taking a pee).    

My wife and I watched this and our one real complaint is that is was too long.

[Yaddo 42]

Haven't seen either film, but "The Missing" sounds like a spooky variation of "The Searchers". Also sounds like a twisting around of  Gregory Peck 60s Western "The Stalking Moon". There the Indian was chasing Peck, an aging Indian scout, who was escorting the Indian's white wife, who had been kidnapped years earlier and recently rescued when the film begins, and his child.

I seen the torture by cowhide used in other western movies and shows. One involved wrapping a guy in a wet hide, while staking him out in the blazing sun so the hide could dry. Can't remember the name of what I saw that in, but I think it was a TV show rather than a film. Maybe an episode of "High Chaparrel" or "The Big Valley"?

[Scott]

THE MISSING is a good film, but I liked OPEN RANGE just a little bit better out of the more recent Westerns to come out.  I found Tommy Lee Jones a bit of a distraction. Couldn't get into him playing that role.

Your observation Yaddo of THE MISSING being similiar to THE SEARCHERS and THE STALKING MOON is correct, but THE MISSING also adds a bit to both movies so it's worth seeing.

I hope someone comes out with another good Western soon. Anyone know of any Westerns coming out in the next year?

[Mr_Vindictive]

I didn't dig on The Missing that much at all.  My wife watched it and loved it.  If my memory serves me, I was asleep within an hour into it.