Sweet and Lowdown (1999)

2/5

Sweet and Lowdown may have been funny, but it was not an enjoyable experience. My laughter hid my inner frustrations with the movie. The story had no arc; it was merely random event after random event with nothing to link them. There was absolutely no characterization; everyone had one character trait or tic, except for Sean Penn's Emmet Ray, who had three traits. That does not make them a character. The movie was vastly uncreative, something immensely disappointing given Allen's previous films of such exceptional creativity and quality. The abundance of music was overbearing and added very little to the overall piece, unless the intent of the piece was to annoy me. Some parts were good: it was funny and the acting was good. The cinematography and camera movement were good as well. But that does not make this a good movie. It is still a bad movie. I am disappointed in Woody Allen.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0158371/

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

4/5

3:10 to Yuma is one of the most interesting westerns to come out since Unforgiven. It follows the story of rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale) as he escorts the notorious outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to a prison train, the 3:10 to Yuma. The cast was well-picked and the acting by Crowe and Bale was nearly flawless (and I traditionally do not appreciate their acting). The storyline entranced me from beginning to end. I kept trying to figure out what would happen and kept finding myself unexpectedly surprised. I loved how nearly every character got introduced and eliminated in measured amounts--very fitting of the genre. The character evolution of everyone except Ben Wade was mesmerizing. The landscapes were beautifully shot, the editing perfectly well-paced. And 3:10 to Yuma has an absolutely amazing score.

I really disliked the character of Ben Wade. Everyone else was really interesting and fascinating, but Ben Wade was just disappointing. I got really excited as the film progressed, because it seemed as if he was actually getting more and more evil. What most movies that try to humanize bad guys do is show his evil side first and then his human side at the end. This movie started out by flipping that, slowly increasing his brutality as time went on, but in the end it flipped back to his sympathetic side. Didn't really like that. Also, it kind of went crazy at the end and I didn't buy the shift in Wade's character. It felt like he did stuff out of character to fit the plot. How disappointing in an otherwise stellar movie. I highly recommend it though if you like westerns, because maybe you will take a different message out of the character of Ben Wade.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0381849/