Kingfisher a Journal of Northwest Art and Literature

Kingfisher
a Journal of Northwest Art and Literature

Dedicated to the appreciation of poetry, fiction, painting,
literary criticism, drawing, sculpture, music, movies, video,
but not exclusively that produced in the Pacific Northwest

Floral landscape oil by Angelo Franco, of Upstate New York
(See more below, center column)

Visit Our Virtual Art Gallery at Lake Ketchum.com

And Please Take a Look at Our "Life at the Lake.com"

To see some fine Morris Graves paintings, go here :

To view work by Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, and Mark Tobey, click here

Summer 2008, Volume Seven, Number Three

The Poet of Personality; The Poet of Place

Some Notes On Reading Richard Hugo

Proudly, Richard Hugo described himself as a regional poet, but he might have added, "So was Frost, Thomas, Pushkin, Hardy, and Williams." So be it. The poet of West Marginal Way (Seattle) was also a poet of Scotland and Italy, not to mention Montana. Thus, he is a poet of the world, and knew it. He may be having us on a little with his emphasis on regionalism. Yet it is there, all along.

It is probably best to become acquainted with Hugo's poetry by first reading his prose, which can be found in two volumes: The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing (Norton, 1979) and The Real West Marginal Way, A Poet's Autobiography (Norton, 1986.). Also, Donna Gerstenberger's chapbook, Richard Hugo (Boise State University Press, 1983) may be of some help. I say this because Hugo is a difficult modern poet, and it is useful to have a biographical reference to what he is talking about in his poems, which often are intentionally obscure. But the journey through the poems, I assure you, is worth taking.

He had a ragged life, unhappy and neglected up until about age 40, writing poetry out of loneliness and despair, drinking a lot, when suddenly the world began to take note of his talent, and he was offered a teaching job at Montana State University. He then became increasingly secure in his personal relationships, his teaching, and his poetry. But there was always a confidence in his poetry, even during those terrible years at what we all called "The Kite Factory," aka Boeing, where they make commercial airplanes and various war and space machines.

We crossed paths a few times there, but knew each other slightly from a large amorphous group of friends, writers, and artists living on or near The Ave and associated with the University of Washington. When his first book of poems came out in 1961, A Run of Jacks, I quickly bought it, for I had recognized his talent early; so had most of us. The poems seemed so . . . .Pacific Northwest. . . that we might have dismissed them as only local and, therefore, inferior products, but there was a transcending quality about the familiar sites, the fishing themes, the rain and occasional snow, the lakes and the forests that made him and the poems special. Especially the rivers. I think for a time I would have preferred him to be more "English" in his subjects. He refused, of course, and he was right. He was the poet first of self, and secondly of place.

He knew who he was, even if we didn't. The fact that he was growing fat, pasty-faced, scowling, sedentary, and a little more alcoholic than the rest of us who went around with a perpetual cigarette pasted in our face maybe made him stand out a little, but not by much. I thought he was beginning to resemble in terrifying detail his mentor, Ted Roethke, but then so was Poet James Wright, a contemporary and friend of Hugo's. "Papa," they called Roethke, and in true Germanic fashion he loved the appellate, one he used often to describe himself.

Hugo's fidelity to his craft and to the life of a poet was astounding. In time it conflicted with the demands teaching gave to his students, and this was a problem he shared with the other two. He always spoke respectfully of his students and what they asked of him. Again like Roethke, he seemed to prefer their company to that of his peers—teachers who did not write anything except dismal scholarly papers. Or nothing at all.

His life has been chronicled thoroughly and so I only sketch it here: a grant took him and his first wife to Italy, a place he thought he knew well from military service as a bombardier during World War II, but proved a surprise decades later. On the boat he made an acquaintance with the head of the English department at the University of Montana that resulted—after a letter of recommendation from the UW Provost, Sol Katz—in an astonishing job offer.

It seemed too good to be true. He could be a teaching poet, just like Roethke. He seized the opportunity, and his life changed dramatically, though the heavy drinking continued and accompanied him to Bozeman. It caused him many problems there, and so did his mental troubles. (Similarly, James Wright suffered at the University of Minnesota, and was fired.)

Teaching poets are cut a lot of slack, depending on the faculty's estimation of the poet's talent. And that of his friends and colleagues in high places; Wright didn't have enough of the latter, but Hugo did, and they picked Hugo up, dusted him off, and dried him out many times. (An interesting instance of the pot calling the kettle black is the remembrance Hugo wrote of his friend, Wright, when Wright preceded him in a long, drawn-out, and unpleasant death. Both in prose and poetry, this has been detailed in Hugo's writing. It bears close examination because there seems to be some maliciousness involved, along with a lot of friendship that might loosely be called love.)

A Run of Jacks was published in 1961. Hugo was 38. It is a little late for a poet's first book, but then he had been away to war as a bombardier during World War II, gone to college, and worked as a technical writer at Boeing (where I got to know him slightly when we worked together on a project). His life up to that point had been difficult; it was not to get any easier. I cannot make a case for the harshness of a poet's life making him a better poet, but if it were so, Hugo could have had no better preparation.

(Continued on page 2)

AT THE MOVIES

How do we evaluate and rank movies?

Good question. We start with Goethe's three-part criteria for literary criticism: What was done, how well was it done, and was it worth doing? In the instance of movies, we add a few criteria of our own: How quickly does the film capture our attention and involve us in an imaginary world that is complex, realistic, and important?

Memorable movies that quickly achieve this vital, initial feat include Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Once Upon a Time in America, Cries and Whispers, and Gangs of New York. There are of course many, many others that do this well.

Then we try to evaluate the characterization. How well do the actors portray their characters and how rich, complex, and realistic are they?

Finally, there is the highly subjective evaluation of the movie in comparison with all the other movies we've seen--hundreds by the time we have become reflective adults. But above all is the question, How quickly and strongly does it grab you?

This is the ultimate test in a day of easily forgettable video movies.

What are the
greatest movies of all time?
How many are there, after nearly 100 years of film making? Many, but only a few have achieved this wonderful status.

Tell us your favorite movies and maybe we will publish them. Or add some to our list. But to start things off, here are a few that we think must be included, but not necessarily in this order:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Apocalypse Now Redux
3. The Godfather, part 1
4. Once Upon a Time in America
5. The Third Man
6. All That Jazz
7. Casablanca
8. Gandhi
9. Reds
10. Chinatown
11. House of Sand and Fog
12. Ordinary People
13. Gangs of New York
14. Mr. Hulot's Holiday
15. Cries and Whispers
16. The White Countess
17. Blade Runner

The Second Tier

1. Invincible (Werner Herzog, 2002)
2. Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofski 2000)
3. The Usual Suspects (1995)
4. Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino 1980)
5. Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
6. Deliverance (John Boorman, script by James Dickey 1972)
7. Henry and June (Philip Kaufman 1990)
8. Thelma and Louise (1991)

MOVIES REVIEWED EARLIER
(Note: these are all hyperlinks; click on them to see the pictures and the review)

Once Upon a Time in America
Flesh and The Devil
Ingmar Bergman Revisited
The Past Recaptured
Dune Again?
Nora
Things You Can Tell
Lord of the Rings
House of Sand and Fog
Sylvia
The Hours
Return of the Lord of The Rings
Girl With a Pearl Earring
Before Sunset
Before Sunrise
Oblomov
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Piano Teacher
Million Dollar Baby
Aviator
Elizabeth
Elizabeth I
Bad Timing
A Very Long Engagement
The Da Vinci Code
Poseidon
Tristan and Isolde
Swann in Love
Time Regained
Nathalie
An Inconvenient Truth
A Love Song for Bobby Long
Shadrach
The Departed
Notes on a Scandal
Little Children
The Good Shepherd
Frankenstein
The Hours

featured POET: Richard Hugo

Annotated
Selections

from A Run of Jacks (1961)

Since I am no less a dedicated fisherman than Hugo, let's start with a favorite poem of mine, and the first poem in his first book.

About it, he says: "Many years later [after his first trout- fishing experience], arranging my first book of poems, I put the poem . . . at the beginning because, though it is not the earliest poem in the book, it seems to me to have grown out of the earliest experience that could rightfully be called an impulse to write." [RWMW, p. 166]

Trout

Quick and yet he moves like silt.
I envy dreams that see his curving
silver in the weeds. When stiff as snags
he blends with certain stones.

I wedge hard water to validate his skin—
call it chrome, say red is on
his side like apples in a fog, gold
gills. Swirls always looked one way
until he carved the water into many
kinds of current with his nerve-edged nose.

And I have stared at steelhead teeth
to know him, savage his sea-run growth,
to drug his facts, catalog his fins
with wings and arms, to bleach the black
back of the first I saw and frame the cries
that sent him snaking to oblivions of cress.

A bit hyperbolic, it is nonetheless representative of Hugo's taut, charged line and quite beautiful. The powers of observation are strong and impressive. "How true," I say (like Annie Hall in the movie), and "Just like that! Yes!" The powerful verbs make a writer distinctive.

Another fine poem, and one of my favorites, is clearly sited in a place recognized by many of us living in the Pacific Northwest. But it has a larger significance, much greater overtones. The fact that people from all over the world resonate to its rhythms is impressive:

Richard Hugo

Nice fish! Looks like an Eastern Washington holdover of about three pounds or more

Skykomish River Running

Aware that summer baked the water clear,
today I came to see a fleet of trout.
But as I wade the salmon limp away,
their dorsal fins like gravestones in the air,
on their sides the red that kills the leaves.
Only the sun can beat a stream this thin.
The river Sky is running in my ear.

Where this river empties into the sea,
Trout are waiting for September rain
to sting their thirst alive. If they speed
upstream behind the kings and eat the eggs
the silvers lay, I'll pound the drum for rain.
But sunlight drums, the river is the same,
running like old water in my ear.

I will cultivate the trout, teach their fins
To wave in water like the legs of girls
tormented black in pool. I will swim
a week to be witness to the spawning,
be a trout, eat the eggs of salmon—
anything to live until the trout and rain
are running in the river in my ear.

The river Sky is running in my hair.
I am floating past the troutless pools
learning water is the easy way to go.
I will reach the sea before December
when the Sky is turning gray and wild
and rolling heavy from the east to say
late autumn was an Oriental child.

It is a fisher's poem, of course,while at the same time it belongs to everyone who has marveled at the edge of a stream rich with spawning salmon and leaf-choked riffles.

Hugo's persona emerges as a fisherman who wades the stream, full of knowledge of species, run timing, the correlation of fish with seasons, and absence or excesses of rain. He is so impassioned by the sight of the salmon and their nest-building in the stones that in his mind he becomes a trout, one that eats the waste eggs from the spawning process. Nothing in nature is truly wasted, though spawning is a process of great diminishment, looked at uncritically by a mind unaware of the complex biological processes at work. One thing feeds another, so far as the food chain is concerned.

(Continued on page 2.)

More art by Angelo Franco

We depart from our usual Pacific Northwest Artist theme to feature the work of Hudson River Valley Pointillist Angelo Franco, whose work is included in our personal collection. More of Angelo Franco's work can be seen at his website, http://www.angelofranco.com/ He exhibits at Edge Gallery in Philadelphia, TEW Gallery in Atlantic, Georgia, Michael Levy Gallery in Long Beach, California, and sells directly from his generous website. From the number of sales in the past year or so, he is doing very well, yet his prices have remained reasonable.

Kingfisher Journal considers itself part of the print community, in spite of its only online presence. We watch closely what others are saying and will report back. Sometimes we will provide links to writing we think good and worth reading. Though we are a quarterly, with issues that correspond roughly to the seasons, we intend to update our issues frequently with new editions, adding pictures, features, and articles. We hope you'll come back and visit us between issues.

The featured artist’s work—usually a painting positioned right below the masthead—will change, too, giving Kingfisher a fresh look from week to week. And there are semi-permanent links to artists whose life and work we consider important.

AT THE MOVIES

Kingfisher Salutes the Artistry of
Ridley Scott

An Englishman who made his first movie in America, about 1977 (see below), Scott is largely responsible for introducing many modern technical features to film. He is master of the quick cut, the long shot coupled to the close-up, selective focus (where the background is thrown intentionally out of focus in order to draw the primary attention to the foreground), the short scene (two seconds or less), the long scene in which the camera does not movie an inch), the tight close-up of a face, followed by a cut to a second face, and sometimes to a third, all within a brief period of time. Many other features are now identified with him and used regularly by a host of directors and cameramen. Some of these techniques were used by Soviet propaganda film makers most effectively, and Scott learned from them.

A Ridley Scott movie stays with you, often for days afterwards, through its camera magic and complex plotting, and many times you do not know why. You can't quite put the finger of your mind on it. And when you return to one of his films later, you see things you missed the first time (or the second) and can only marvel at the freshness and variety of the experience. Often his films will make you feel annoyed and impatient at the work of other directors--many of them more famous. (I am thinking of Alfred Hitchcock.)

Let's visit his films in chronological order (as I have recently done) and see how they stack up with others that may come to mind. But I warn you: Scott's competition is mainly with himself.

The Duellists (1977)

I maintain that this is the best of the lot, and the lot forms a rich motoherlode. Scott chose Harvey Keitel (for Feraud) and Keith Carradine (to play D'Hubert), as the dueling protagonists, and the challenge and rivalry, love and hate, anger and deep understanding, follow the two men through a rich period of history, when each rises in military rank to that of general.

What binds them together is the obsession to kill each other through the application of various weapons, at which each is a master: foils, rapiers, cutlasses, and pistols. We watch them chase and challenge each other through the long years of war, and Scott's filming of the French and Russian countryside is tribute to its severity and epic beauty.

Of course there are women, and they are portrayed lusciously, with tight camera shots. Cristina Raines plays Adel and Diana Quick Laura. They are not presented as idealized, unattainable women, but as real-life highly accessible adults, straight-forward and often carnal. The camera makes them seem both real and desirable. Men in the audience will like them, I guarantee.

They are but background to the Napoleonic wars, and the story is told from the French point of view, hard as it may be to justify. Scott does not glamorize warfare and shows it in all its bloody horror. Yet it is beautiful at times, and Scott directs it so that we see the passion and tenderness war often evokes. If Scott had made no other movie, he would be ranked highly on the basis of this one alone.

Grade: A

Alien (1979)

Though very popular when released, and good enough in theater attendance to merit a series of Alien follow ups, Scott apparently wisely had had his fill of this silly fantasy.

The picture does not wear well, over time. The scary horror effects seem juvenile and the high-tech sets are laughable, nearly 30 years later. And it seems odd to see Sigourney Weaver as so young a girl; in fact, all the actors (and Scott and I and you) have all aged naturally, appropriately. Time is not a friend of movies. So I do not recommend seeing Alien again. It is a part of the movie historic kingdom and belongs in the archives.

Alien Resurrection and Alien 3 are similarly out dated and to be avoided by all but the desperate. And the fine Actress Sigourney has gone on to much better parts.

Grade: C+

Blade Runner (1982)

Ah, here we have it. The quintessential Ridley Scott film. Time has not tarnished or diminished it. But Scott has edited and re-edited it countless times since it was released. And once he was persuaded to shoot a new ending, for nobody much liked not seeing Lovers Harrison Ford and Sean Young separated, even by inevitable death, for she was an android who had a built-in and irrevocable life-terminating program, like the four others. And she was lovable in her vulnerability.

Apparently Scott didn't like this travesty of his fine film and most Blade Runner Purists didn't, either, so he eliminated this bit of phoniness from the other versions he worked on over so many years. And this was to their benefit.

Now we have The Final Cut, The Theatrical Cut, The Director's Cut; the Theatrical and Director's Cuts are on the same DVD and last some 234 minutes, together, so it is easy enough to compare them and even to jump back and forth between them. (Available free to Netflix members, by the way, and can be beamed with streaming video to one's personal computer.)

I have seen the movie countless times, though I could probably count most of them and am sure they do not total more than half a dozen. (Okay, maybe eight or ten, but who besides me is counting?) The film holds up will, given a little space between viewings.

In the original version, Harrison Ford (who plays Rick Dekhard) narrates the film--though it is hardly noticeable. This bothered Scott, who later eliminated it, and this caused him to reorder the film in order for it to make sense to the viewer without this narration and not confuse him. (Still does, though.)

The plot is fairly simple for such a complex film. Cop Dekhard is called out of retirement to snuff a quartet of escaped "replicants" -- androids consigned to slave labor on remote planets -- seeking a way to extend each of their short life spans through a return to earth.

Each of the characters, and all of the ones in the LA-like city of perpetual darkness and rain, now a colony of Japan after WWII ended with our defeat in Philip Dick's original short story, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is finely hued and exquisitely acted. Rutger Hauer and Daryl Hanna are excellent in their roles, which helped advance their careers, but Joanna Cassidy and William Sanderson are no less memorable and seem to be real people, in my long-term memory. And a young Sean Young is made up to beauty's perfection, even though she too is a replicant.

The world Scott and his assistants created from Dick's story is fantastic and wonderful. It is so real, or so real seeming, that, years later, one feels as if he or she could step right into it and function as yet another character, even a replicant. To me, this the result of consummate casting and character-creation by director and writer. And the result of Dick's great imagination.

If you haven't seen it, see it immediately. Buy or rent it. I repeat, "Time has not tarnished or diminished it." And Scott's repeated reediting over so many years probably has not hurt it any, just as the various versions do not help it much. It is a pure thing, a thing unto itself, and seems to exist out of time (1982) and place (mythical post-nuclear LA).

Which is another way of saying it is one of the handfuls of immortal films.

Grade: A+

Someone To Watch Over Me (1987)

Not one of Ridley's best, it is nonetheless an engaging film, with a socialite (played by Mimi Rogers) who is eye-witness to a murder and is threatened by the killer, who fears she can identify him. A meat-and-potatoes type cop (Tom Beringer) is assigned to protect her. Naturally, opposites attract, but consummation of their love affair does not last for long. In America there are class differences and they are insurmountable. This is not widely recognized, but Scott makes it palpable.

The cop breaks up with his wife, played by Lorraine Bracco, as a consequence, and the wife is the one who conveniently kills the killer and saves her rocky marriage. This is not believable, but if you see it happens you will accept it as happenstance. The socialite goes to Europe to recover from her sexual/social ordeal, and order is restored to society. Or so we are led to think.

It is a weak plot, but beautifully filmed, with those famous close-ups of Scott's, his quick cuts, his coupling of long and short shots, his secondary images forming a momentary subtext in the background, and his great use of reflected light contributing largely to the dramatic effects of the film. But not quite enough, all in all, to raise the quality of the movie to first-rate.

Grade: B

Black Rain (1989)

We go to Japan to catch another killer in this engrossing movie in which two detectives (Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia) witness a double killing in a restaurant in NYC and learn afterwards that the killer, a certain Mr. Sato, will be extradited to Osaka. The detectives are naturally suspicious that justice won't be served there, so they pursue him and, sure enough, a team impersonating the police whisks him away and the real police soon arrive to take custody of a killer who has vanished. This travesty of justice greatly angers Douglas and makes him vow revenge. Which he takes, with it takes him time, as well. And the plot further contrives, which is good for the drama, which never flags.

When Garcia is captured by the gang, tortured, and killed in front of Douglas, this strengthens his determination to right matters. Arrested himself for interfering and extradited back to the USA, Douglas escapes from the plane while still in Japan and takes off again after Sato. He learns that counterfeit USA $100 printing plates are involved as part of a revenge plot for the bombing of Hiroshima, and that was Sato's purpose in being in America.

Twice Douglas fails to nail Sato in thrilling encounters, but eventually does. In partial atonement for an earlier corruption charge which has hounded him and his career, he doesn't kill Sato (as Sato had killed Douglas's fellow cop) but turns him over to Japanese authorities and, we hope, justice, if only Japanese justice. (Yes, there is some racism in the narrative and it is clearly identified as just that.)

Once more it is the chase scenes that enthrall us and carry us along mindlessly in the complex plot. Fighting and speed chases are central to watching and enjoying, and are brilliantly executed. Scott is master of these. The backlighting and framing of short shots are a joy to behold and lift the drama almost onto an almost epic plane. Scott is able to achieve this in most all of his films and his skill is intrinsic to one's full enjoyment of them.

Grade: B+

Thelma and Louise (1991)

These two beauties are on the run. We learn why through the dramatic action and the reasons become more complex and terrifying as the story unfolds. At first, the women's trip to Mexico is just a weekend lark; each woman has her personal problems that she needed to get away from. But the trip quickly gets out of control and soon they are fleeing from Thelma's killing of a bar room drunk who is raping a drunk and sickened Louise. We enjoy watching Louise shoot him in the head.

Gena Davis plays Thelma, Susan Sarandon, Louise. Their different personalities are finely developed and well contrasted to go with their very different personalities, or types. Both women play their parts beautifully.

A kind of terrible, tragic ambience soon colors the trip, and it is no longer fun but escape. The audience develops a terrible sense of despair that moves in the inevitable direction of tragedy. One dire event compounds and creates another.

They rob a convenience store and now they is something more to flee from, with the authorities (headed by Scott's standby charming bad guy, Harvey Keitel, in pursuit. He is sympathetic and; reflects the audience's concern, as the journey becomes a picaresque nightmare that can only end in more deaths. Led to accept death as the inevitable end of such a tragedy, Scott does not disappoint us.

The version released on DVD contains the theatrical version plus his director's cut. He indicates that he was not satisfied with the original version, and has been working on a slightly different ending for years. This seems to have become standard Scott operating procedure. It is understandable in light of his drive for perfection. But it complicates his life and, sometimes, ours.

Both old ending and new vary only slightly from each other and involve only timing elements and camerawork. Most viewers would be satisfied with either the theatrical version or the director's later edited version. But not Scott, who offers both and urges the movie goer to take his pick.

I go along with his last and modern version, but only by a little. Both endings are first rate. All that precedes them is, too. Scott's careful cutting and editing is what makes them so satisfactory to watch.

Often we don't know why. But he does.

Grade: A Grade: B+/A-

Hannibal (2001)

The constant element in the Dr. Hannibal Lecter Series of horror/cannibalism movies is Actor Anthony Hopkins, not the director. (But not in the first, Manhunter, which neither of them had anything to do with.) For the second film (or third, depending when you start to count) Ridley Scott takes up the challenge and handles it most admirably. Of course a script by David Mamet helps, as does Actress Julianne Moore who plays the part of Clarice Starling, most memorably identified with Jodie Foster, in Silence of the Lambs, which comes second in the sequence.

Some critics disagree with the excellence of Hannibal. Roger Ebert writes: "The film lacks the focus and brilliance of The Silence of the Lambs for a number of reasons, but most clearly because it misplaces the reason why we liked Hannibal Lecter so much. He was, in the 1991 classic, a good man to the degree that his nature allowed him to be. He was hard-wired as a cannibal and mass murderer, true, but that was his nature, not his fault, and in his relationship with the heroine, FBI trainee Clarice Starling, he was civil and even kind. He did the best he could. I remember sitting in a restaurant with Anthony Hopkins as a waitress said, 'You're Hannibal Lecter, aren't you? I wish my husband was more like you.' Hopkins returns here as Lecter, although Jodie Foster has been replaced by Julianne Moore as Clarice. We do not miss Foster so much as we miss her character; this Clarice is drier, more cynical, more closed off than the young idealist we met 10 years ago."

I think I disagree, who may have been writing against a deadline and was thoughtful, as usual, but hurried. Whether or not he enjoyed the movie as much as its predecessor is immaterial. It is a different movie and a top rate one. It is probably wrong to compare two good movies and have to find one of them superior. At the time, it may seem a perfectly natural thing to do. In retrospect ,it can seem foolish and a bit fatuous, even to the one who chooses to do it.

The movie is a genuine horror show, with a cannibal act so grotesque that many will not be able to stomach it. Ray Liotta plays the despicable Paul Krender, who is drugged by Hannibal and induced to eat his own brain, which is severed, sliced, and cooked before his very eyes by (who else?) Hannibal. Earlier, Hannibal wasted Mason Verge, grotesquely and unrecognizably played by Gary Oldman and convinced him that he should slice off most of his face with shards from a broken mirror. Which he then proceeded to do, and we view the healed results. Ugh!

Such plotting intentionally tests the limits of our mental and visual credulity. But it is hilarious, if you can stomach it, and in the director's narrator we learn how cleverly it was done and the delight the cast, director, and producers had in shooting the horror scenes. But as one of the cast points out, "You laugh because it is so horrible it is the only way you can stand to watch it."

Words to live by, I suppose. But what a movie, all in all. It is Scott's direction and his post-production cutting of the film that make it excellent once again It is camera work (especially the panoramic views of Florence), coupled to the painstaking editing, that produces the movie's high quality and the great enjoyment of watching the story unfold. If you haven't ever seen it, or not seen it in quite a while, do so. It is a rewarding experience.

Grade: A-/B+

Black Hawk Down (2000)

This is the ultimate war movie for our time. Men no longer march into battle; they are flown into combat, often in a populous city, by helicopters, such as the burnt helicopter, Black Hawk, shown in the picture above. Or else they are trucked in by armored vehicles subjected to Improvised Explosive Device attacks. And sometimes trucked out again, for the Army is trained to bring out its casualties, including its dead.

There is no question as to whether or not they will do it; they are hardwired for the act, and it is, I suppose, what gives a certain kind of courage to men going into combat for the first and repeated times: they will not be left alone to die, nor will their corpses left behind, as a form of military expediency. Instead, they will be brought home ceremoniously, honorably, respectfully, and this knowledge sustains the troops and their inevitable uncertainty. But it poses other problems, not all of them logistic.

In Black Hawk Down, this policy leads the death of more troops and the destruction of expensive vehicles and helicopters. The waste of lives and the costs of evacuating the dead and dying is a important question. Scott does not blind us to the problem.

We behold soldiers blasting off with automatic weapons of great fire power and velocity The streets around them are littered with what we used to call "brass" and other times of military waste. We see our men killed in futile actions that can lead to no victory, no lasting peaceful result. Such is war, yesterday and today. And no doubt tomorrow.

I suppose this knowledge is important for us to learn again today, as the war in Iraq wages on and on, and the action in Afghanistan worsens. The actors (with the exception of Sam Shepard, who plays General Garrison, and Ewan McGregor, who plays the soldier Grimes, and is largely unrecognizable) are previous unknowns. For authenticity, they went through one week of vigorous basic training, complete with getting GI haircuts. They look their parts and convincingly act them.

Well enough, anyway, to convince this old soldier of their authenticity.

Grade: Grade: B+

Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

This flick might be subtitled, Ridley visits the Crusades. But whatever he does, ancient times or modern, he does well and convincingly. Kingdom is no exception. It is a visual delight, with a bunch of early Christian history thrown in to boot, respectfully and carefully, for great effect. It is one of those "you are there" movies, well, almost.

If you are male and love scenes of battle, including ancient ones, you should enjoy this movie, with all the fencing, hacking, horseback fighting, mace swinging, and assorted butchery going on. It brings out the little boy in many of us, playing war. Come to think of it, many of Scotts films involve just these element. It is not to depreciate them very much to call them little boy games. But they are for adults, too. The fight scenes and the character motivations are convincing and seem real. It is a good yarn, well acted and directed. We'd be disappointed with Scott if it wasn't.

Many of us guys are repeated suckers for such movies. Oh, yes. My wife didn't enjoy it so much.

Grade: Grade: B

Matchstick Men (2003)

Apparently con men called themselves "matchstick salesmen," back in the old days, so they would have a respectable line of trade with which to impress their marks, or so one story goes. Another story cites a European variation on the old pea and three-shell game.

When Nicholas Cage read the novel, he bought the movie rights and convinced Ridley Scott to make the movie, which is good to know. Cage is excellent in the role of the anxiety-ridden, pill-gulping, tic-obsessed, super-phobic con man. I'd never been much impress with him before, but he is absolutely hilariously in-character here. And the plot becomes convoluted and somewhat incredibly reversing at the end of the film, when he gets his comeuppance and is, in effect, reborn into straight life, complete with an imaginary daughter and a new, pregnant wife, as a rug salesman.

The movie seems ordinary enough throughout its considerable length, then doubles back on itself at the end to pleasantly confound and please its viewers. Well, at least it did this one. Roger Ebert found it absolutely top rate. I found it slightly less great.

Grade: B

White Squall (2006)

Try not to be trapped off the Cape of Good Hope on a trainee sailing vessel, at least not one skippered by Ridley Scott and Jeff Bridges. It does not portend well for a viable life and the future.

If you do not yet know what a white squall is, you soon will. It will smash your ship and turn it upside down, and the unfortunate will drown, which includes almost everybody. A few randomly survive and feel guilty. How this occurs is the plot of the movie, so authentically filmed and directed that you will wish for a lifejacket merely to watch it.

It is a coming of age yarn, too, based on a true story, which makes it difficult to assess, for how can you pass dramatic judgment on something that is true to life? Well, you can't, and sometimes the drama seems stretched to the point of self-justifying melodrama. The long, post-disaster courtroom scene has the dramatic elements of Perry Mason TV drama in it that no self-respecting judge would allow it to take place in his courtroom.

All the same, a very fine movie, well acted and engrossing, even if you have no sea legs to steady you and help you get through it.

In one of those director/lead-actor dialogs that no movie is compete without today, Bridges and Scott discuss and reveal the camerawork that produces such extreme effects. Very interesting. What an ordeal they went through, along with the other actors, to produce it and make it seem authentic. It is.

Grade: A-

American Gangster (2007)

One of Scott's favorite actors, these days, is Russell Crowe, who co-stars with Denzel Washington in this fine drug-trade drama. They counterbalance each other well. Washington plays the part of Frank Wallace, a limo driver for a gangster who dies suddenly of a heart attack and then takes over the vast complex empire of thugs and hoods. He turns it into a Viet Nam-sited heroin-running enterprise in which heroin is imported into the U.S. in coffins of dead soldiers. (The symbolic statement cannot be ignored.)

His foil is Richie Roberts (played by Crowe), an honest cop, who sets out to nab Wallace. Roberts turns in $1 million cash when he comes across in his line of work, which alienates him from the other cops, who would have routinely taken the money. Roberts gets Frank and Frank is tried and sent to jail on Robert's testimony, but here we come to the twist. The rivals have a lot in common, including a kind of fond bond that develops over the long pursuit. The cop goes to law school, while the bad guy is in jail, become a trial attorney, helps the bad guy get an early release as a result of defending him in court as the lawyer from the prosecutor's office, and they part friends. Maybe more than friends. Each has undergone a great personality change.

The themes of competition and rivalry repeat in many of Scott's films. From Scott's first film, The Duellists, the themes repeat and resonate. This sometimes seems bewildering in the sense of personality reversals with the good guy going over to the enemy camp. People like to have movie characters remain consistent, good guys and bad. The paradox may be the result of Scott's long veneration with the fiction writer, Joseph Conrad. The two men from such different times and with such different media to work within share a strong sympathetic bond and dramatic affinity.

This element strengthens (rather than weakens) the dramatic structure and characterization of their art. And both principal actors are first-rate and well-cast.

Grade: B+