From: drsteerforth@yahoo.com   
      
   On Sat, 6 Jan 2024 17:28:24 -0500, moviePig    
   wrote:   
      
   >On 1/6/2024 5:01 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:   
   >> Another weekend with the kid who plays games on my computer and in return   
   >> consents to watch a classic movie with me. Today we saw HIGH NOON.   
   >>   
   >> Gary Cooper could just ride out of town on that buckboard with Grace Kelly   
   >> at his side, but he knows the town faces an existential threat and he must   
   >> do his duty. So he turns the horses around (No doubles — that’s really Gary   
   >> Cooper driving that team and Grace Kelly sitting right there beside him   
   >> without even a seatbelt!) and back to town he goes to face his sworn enemy,   
   >> Frank Miller, who will arrive on the train at high noon, meet up with his   
   >> henchman, and come gunning for the man who sent him to jail.   
   >>   
   >> Of course he’s going to need a posse to help him stand up to the bad guys,   
   >> but can he count on his fellow citizens for help? Well the answer to that   
   >> is the heart of the movie. When push comes to shove, will anybody step   
   >> forward and do what is right? It’s amazing and almost amusing to listen to   
   >> the various rationales everybody uses to avoid helping. Everything they say   
   >> makes perfect sense, it’s easy to understand their point of view, they are   
   >> doing what is best, who could expect them to do otherwise? So in the end   
   >> it’s Coop alone against the bad guys.   
   >>   
   >> What a tight script this movie has; not a second wasted on unnecessary   
   >> scenes or expository dialogue. The Dimitri Tiomkin score is brilliant   
   >> throughout – – that earworm theme song will be playing in my head for the   
   >> rest of the day – – and the tick-tock sequence as the big hand reaches 12   
   >> and the cutting of the shots matches the beats of the music is just   
   >> perfection. I don’t know what the 10 best movies ever made are, but I   
   >> believe this is one of them.   
   >>   
   >> The kid thought the movie was great. He thought Frank Miller’s henchman   
   >> were really good actors and was a little sad that they had to be the bad   
   >> guys. At the end, he was grinning ear to ear as Cooper and Kelly were   
   >> riding out of town. He commented, “I’m not gonna lie, I liked STAGECOACH   
   >> better because there was more at the end after the bad guy was killed.” I   
   >> guess HIGH NOON does end rather abruptly, but like I said, it’s a tight   
   >> script.   
   >>   
   >> I knew it was a great movie but I admit I had forgotten exactly how much   
   >> HIGH NOON deserves to be called a masterpiece.   
   >   
   >Yeah, Fred Zinnemann seemed to crank those out.  Meanwhile, a footnote:   
   >   
   >    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082869   
      
   My choice?   
      
   "The Day of the Jackal" (1973)   
      
   Maybe difficult for younger folks to appreciate given the rather   
   obscure historical background.  But I consider it one of the best of   
   its genre.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)