What does the perfect murder look like? The victim deserves it, the murderer is just, and no one gets caught. Turns out if you've got enough education you can justify any of those points.

Brandon (Dall) and Philip (Granger) have strangled their friend David to death. Believing themselves to be above reproach of the law and David's friends and family, the two then throw a party with David's body stuffed in a chest they use as a buffet table. As the party goes on, their old schoolmaster Rupert (Stewart) becomes suspicious.

I won't say everything everyone else says about this movie. Alfred Hitchcock's grand experiment in long shots, the film composed of ten long shots with a few edits, Rope is a novelty of a movie. I won't mention how the homosexual undertones inform on the rather problematic motives of the upper crust privilege. I won't even say how the plot was based on a stage play and was based on the real life Leopold and Loeb murder. Not going to say any of that.

Not Jimmy Stewart's favorite of his work with Hitchcock, the movie holds up as both a cultural artifact and a damn good movie. It's a masterclass in blocking and small space acting. You have no choice but to rent this or do what I did and get if from the library.

18. Wild Bunch (1969) Movie Review: Because the old west myth had to die

January 18, 2018 by Banned Library in Reviews

A man in a white hat on horseback saving the locals from a gang of evil black hats. That's the image of the west, of John Wayne and heroes, until Sam Peckinpah destroyed it. All it took was two hours and change and all the bullets in Mexico.

It's just around World War I and the old west is dying. A group of outlaws with a code, the Wild Bunch, are robbing banks and escaping to Mexico. Two men oppose them, an ex-member of the gang hired by the railroad and a general of the Mexican army with a violent side. From the opening bank robbery gone wrong to the ending bullet-filled spectacle, the Wild Bunch caused a turn in our national obsession with violence by turning the dial way up.

We follow the Wild Bunch as a dangerous group of men, not the heroes of yore. The first scene we see, the bank robbery, shows the men threatening everyone there to die. The town shoot out that follows continues this. Men and women die at random, children clutch each other in the street. The chase of sex and violence that continues the narrative hammers home the death of the heroic ideal, acted brilliantly by Holden, Borgnine, and the rest as aging outlaws coming to their end.

Best viewed on a large screen, see this movie however you can. Modern audiences may see it as tame compared to modern violence (there are no robots destroying cities), but the strong characters and melancholy on the production reaches across the decades.

16. I'll Push You (2017) Movie Review: Man, they really like each other

January 16, 2018 by Banned Library in Reviews

In 2004, my best friend and I went to Key West for New Year's Eve. We drove the whole way, seventeen hours down Florida and seventeen hours up. Near the end we were just about done and still had to live together as roommates. I thought about that while watching I'll Push You.

This documentary tells the story of two men, Patrick and Justin, and their hike on the Spanish pilgrimage trail of El Camino de Santiago. What makes this special is Justin, wheelchair bound and totally dependent on Patrick during the journey. We watch as the two cross the Spanish countryside with help from friends.

That's the bulk of the story. One guy laying there, the other struggling to walk and push and pull and get his friend where he wants to go. We learn about Justin's degenerative condition. and Patrick's utter devotion to his lifelong friend. The story becomes one of hope for humanity, a call to go out and help others by giving the extra mile. To realize that humanity is one thing, not seven billion separate lives struggling.

At the end, I revisited my friendship with my oldest buddy. We've known each other since I was four and he was five and I poked my head under a fence to see what all the noise was and who my neighbor was playing with. Over thirty-four years of knowing each other, facing tragedy and heartache, supporting one another. Would I push him across mountains and through mud and down slopes until I bled?

Hell no. And he'd do the same for me. But we'd laugh about it.