April, 18, 2003 archives

last man standing is a remake of akira kurosawa's excellent yojimbo, set in a prohibition-era mexican-border town. it's a reasonably faithful reinterpretation, but vastly inferior to the original, and also inferior to sergio leone's spaghetti western remake, a fistful of dollars. one of the things that absolutely kills this most recent version is the narration, which just sucks any mystery or tension out of the film.

yes, one of the things about watching movies mostly on dvd is that i'm usually running a year or two behind on current films. amélie is simply an enchanting film. going into watching it, i didn't realize it was from the director of delicatessen and the city of lost children.