Change Your Image
rps4-1
Reviews
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
No, no, no, no
After seeing the Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Ballad of Cable Hogue, and this stinker, I've come to the conclusion that Peckinpah must have spent his talent on the first of the four.
Part of the appeal of Wild Bunch to me is the fact that it is a real, old fashioned, Saturday afternoon TV western. The blood, the editing, and a few half-glimpsed breasts are all that really separates the movie from its older cousins. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid takes the modernity and the breasts and runs with them (all to the accompaniment of 1970s pop music).
I like Sam, and I wouldn't even bother to complain if there weren't so many unwarranted positive reviews of this movie. Nothing much really happens here. Billy and Pat wander around and that's about it. The only thing that (barely) held my attention was Dylan; I thought he had only a bit part, and I was happy to see him pop up throughout the film.
La section Anderson (1967)
solid documentary
Highlights include: soldiers marching through a rank jungle to the tune of Nancy Sinatra's "Boots" (sound familiar?); entertaining and poignant footage of a very young infantryman on leave in Saigon rapidly blowing his pay on prostitutes; scenes of grunts throwing dice in a torn cardboard box full of cash and then receiving communion from a duded-up priest shortly before going on patrol.
If there is a DVD version, I have not seen it; the picture quality on my VHS is rather low quality but tolerable.
Steve-O: Out on Bail (2003)
Steve-O makes people happy
Most of this dvd was shot in Scandinavia and the British Isles, with some Girls Gone Wild-type Spring Break interludes in Florida and Cancun. Less than half of the footage is from Steve-O's live show; most of the action occurs in hotels, planes, and buses. The production values are decent, with competent editing and professional graphics. Director/producer Nick Dunlap is also an active and belligerent participant, making Out on Bail a harder-edged and more improvisational affair than the Jeff Tremaine-helmed Jackass movie. I mail-ordered my copy, and it contains a great bonus disc with around 1/2 hour of a messianic, delusional, feces-flinging, PCP-feuled Steve-O.
*** out of **** (extra points for the bonus disc)