Recent Reviews
The Cagneys
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Something to Sing About (1937)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
A Lion Is In the Streets (1953)
Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)
Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
Shake Hands With the Devil (1959)
Sunday August 22, 2021
What is Lee Van Cleef 'Known For'?
Apparently, on IMDb, this:
First reaction: Lee Van Cleef was in “Escape from New York”? (I hadn't seen it since its release in 1981.) Second reaction: How the hell do you screw this one up, IMDb algorithms? The Leone movies are always part of the conversation, “Escape” not so much. By your own rating system, it goes “Good, Bad” at 8.8, “Few Dollars” 8.2, “Escape” 7.2. By your own number of ratings it's the same: 714k, 242k, 132k. Sure, Van Cleef gets third billing in “Good, Bad” while he's second-billed in “Dollars” and “Escape,” but that doesn't explain it. Someday I'd love to see what goes into these kooky algorithms.
I watched both “Fistful of Dollars” and “For a Few Dollars More” this week since they were free on Amazon Prime and I hadn't seen either in .... 20 years? Twenty-five? “Fistful” suffers in comparison to “Yojimbo”; “A Few Dollars” is better. They kept adding bounty hunters, didn't they? The first has one, the second two, the third three. Eastwood is handsome, small roles often include a lot of over-acting and bad dubbing, and there's art in the shots if not in the stories.