Best Walter Hill Movie

Hard Times playing in Brooklyn in a few weeks, I'll finally see it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgarwright/6057245137/

― RudolfHitlerFtw (Hungry4Ass), Tuesday, February 28, 2012 4:53 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

holy shit, that is awesome.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/sylvester-stallone-will-reportedly-recut-bullet-to-the-head-himself-for-a-november-release

great line in Hard Times by James Coburn's fight fixer, to a madam, before grabbing a whore and heading upstairs: "I don't need a sales pitch, mama, I just came to get my hat blocked."

New Orleans locations, art direction look so great in a good widescreen print of HT. Apparently Bronson was pissed how Hill cut down Jill Ireland's part (what's left is utterly disposable -- she and Bronson don't even kiss).

Strother Martin's opium-addict cut man seems entirely gratuitous -- Bronson hardly gets marked -- but he's just there to give Strother cadence to lines like "Some are born to fail, others have it thrust upon them."

if only Walter Hill had directed some SNL shit, this thread wd be getting some attention

48 hours began as an SNL sketch right?

if only Walter Hill had directed some SNL shit, this thread wd be getting some attention

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Friday, March 30, 2012 1:43 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if it makes you feel better brewster's millions was like my favourite movie when i was 8

God, I had no idea he ever sank that low.

Good Grief, that p&s Hard Times dvd is horrid. I got it from netflix but missed Morbs warning upthread. A bunch of scenes literaly cut in half image-wise. Why were they still doing this in 2004 (when the disc was issued)?

bc they don't want to invest in a new transfer and use the 1980s one.

the driver should have won this, of course.

he'll be appearing at a NYC screening of Southern Comfort next Monday

http://www.92y.org/Tribeca/Event/Walter-Hill.aspx

Twilight Time have announced limited edition blus of Hard Times and The Driver for release in June.

Stallone film is out

GK likes it, but I don't trust him: http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/bullet-to-the-head/

Re-watching The Long Riders tonight. The casting (real-life brothers playing real-life brothers) works really well, and plot-wise it's basically Justified 150 years earlier, told entirely from Boyd's POV.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/944123_593874047297932_938811487_n.jpg

^^out next month

omg how weird I am watching the driver RIGHT NOW! and it is awesome but the lovefilm player suddenly cut out & is now doing the "infinite buffering" thing. 20 minutes before the end :-(

I just watched Hard Times last night and it was awesome! Some beautiful location shots and I loved the visual contrast between the two leads - Coburn all teeth and limbs, Bronson stocky and tight-lipped. Strother Martin as the quack with "a weakness for opium" was great too. Bronson's crappy apartment and cat reminded me of Le Samourai a bit

The Driver now on Blu-Ray

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/the-driver

Stallone film is out

― Gukbe, Friday, February 1, 2013 4:07 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

GK likes it, but I don't trust him: http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/bullet-to-the-head/

― Gukbe, Friday, February 1, 2013 4:08 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark

he's way too generous, and i actually liked the movie.

i'm going to rank them now. (just the stuff that he directed, not the films he wrote but did not direct, which are fairly many.)

The Driver
Hard Times
Southern Comfort
The Warriors
48 Hrs.
Extreme Prejudice
Last Man Standing
Johnny Handsome
Streets of Fire (have very mixed feelings about this one)
Geronimo: An American Legend
Trespass
The Long Riders
Another 48 Hrs.
Red Heat
Wild Bill
Undisputed
Brewster's Millions
Bullet to the Head
Crossroads (has some nice moments, but concept is just too aggressively stupid for me to give it anything like a pass)

Haven't seen:
Supernova (not so good, I hear)

the 1st four are totally unfuckwithable, with 48 hours close behind. the rest, to my mind, are all quite mixed. not really sure how I feel about Streets of Fire. I think I'd have to see it on a big screen.

could easily switch Southern Comfort/The Warriors

latter is more audacious but also maybe a bit more flawed
former is close to perfect

I have to admit with a few exceptions, I'm really glad even his lesser films exist, I get a lot of pleasure watching them

I'll take this challenge! My rankings:

The Driver
Hard Times
Southern Comfort
The Warriors
The Long Riders
Extreme Prejudice
Trespass
48 Hrs.
Johnny Handsome
Last Man Standing
Undisputed
Wild Bill
Streets of Fire
Brewster's Millions
Red Heat
Another 48 Hrs.
Wild Bill
Undisputed

Have not seen:
Bullet to the Head
Crossroads (has some nice moments, but concept is just too aggressively stupid for me to give it anything like a pass)
Geronimo: An American Legend

do the two appearances of wild bill signify your ambivalence?

I like many of these movies without falling in love with'em

when you start to think too much about 48 hrs it begins to fray (the characterizations don't completely make sense, and the villain isn't interesting) but it's so much fun to watch. i just try to keep the misogyny out of my mind i guess. i would never show that to students, because you just don't see that kind of bawdy man-humor (and all the contempt for women it implies) in movies anymore, and they would probably be startled.

No, they signify that after I copied it to paste it higher up, I forgot to delete it. (Same with Undisputed.) The higher rankings are the accurate ones.

(I have to admit that as directors of manly action movies go, I prefer don siegel. not to mention howard hawks. but hill was about as good as we got in the 1980s, a few films by john mctiernan aside.)

A long time ago I wrote about Extreme Prejudice for my blog.

(spielberg is good at action, but I don't really think of him as an "action director." hill started out as a stranger animal, but by the 1980s he wears the label comfortably.)

i kind of like red heat, but it doesn't feel like a walter hill movie, whatever that means. brewster's millions is probably his most uncharacteristic film and also very nearly his worst. I don't blame hill for bullet to the head btw; stallone is just a horrible presence these days, and it sounds like he really crowded hill out of a lot of the decision-making.

can we attribute hill's fallow years solely to the failure of his big westerns in the 1990s and the underperformance of stuff like johnny handsome and last man standing? (i don't count trespass and undisputed, since those were barely released.)

mostly agree with your ranking amt. 48 hours i always liked a lot more than bev hills cop

bullet to the head frankly would've been a lot better if sly didnt push wayne kramer off the picture. I thought hill did a solid job though...

i think his best moment though might be this one shock zoom in the deadwood pilot

too bad the rest of the series

great interview: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/17/walter-hill-action-movie-interview

love this guy so much, too bad he can't seem to make good movies anymore :(

I guess I need to watch 48 Hours.

The amount of hack work he wrote and/or directed is crazy: Brewster's Millions, Red Heat, Another 48 Hours, Undisputed.

he directed a couple okay movies (the Warriors, the Driver) and a lot of crap. don't get the love. He's no Don Siegel.

He's better than OK: add The Long Riders, Southern Comfort, Extreme Prejudice, bits of Wild Bill (I don't get Streets of Fire.

he directed three flat-out great movies in a row: hard times, the driver, the warriors

southern comfort is near-great

48 hrs and a few others are very good

i don't really get streets of fire either, though a lot of walter hill cultists really love it

seems like a misfire to me, albeit a almost grotesquely strange one

yeah i like extreme prejudice, it's like three movies in one--for better and for worse

Streets of Fire is a cheapo MTV-indebted future shock movie with a good-looking cast.

He's no Don Siegel.

who is?

xpost

yeah i get that hill was trying to do MTV w/ streets of fire but it doesn't really come across like MTV per se, it's like hill's weird-ass version of MTV