Requiescant (aka Kill and Pray) 1967 Carlo Lizzani

If you're like me, the title of this movie is just a big question mark.  What does it mean?  How do you pronounce it?  What's going on?  It's Latin.  It comes from the phrase "Requiescat in pace", better known as "Rest in Peace".  Make sense now?  The main character's name is a version of "Rest in Peace"!  Awesome!  Bad guys everywhere look out!

Requiescant (Lou Castel, Fists in the Pocket) is the only survivor of the Mexican people who lived around San Antonio/  When he was a small child, they all met at a fort outside of town to celebrate peace between the Mexicans and Americans.  So what do the Americans, led by former Confederate soldier William Bellows Ferguson (Mark Damon, Johnny Oro), do?  They turn a machine gun on the Mexicans and kill them all, except little Requiescant.

He's saved by a traveling preacher and his family, and raised as their son.  One day their daughter Princy runs away to see the world and Requiescant heads off to find her.  This brings him into conflict with the evil Ferguson and his gang, and the surrounding Mexicans just looking for someone to help them get San Antonio back.

This movie has everything - gunfights, lynchings, hookers with a heart of gold, and an underdog hero who just happens to be a crack shot, and the great Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salo).  He plays Reverend Juan and his whole life is dedicated to eradicating Ferguson and retaking San Antonio for the Mexicans.

It also has a lot of quirky touches, too.  Requiescant rides his horse backwards sometimes and he spurs him on with a cast iron frying pan instead of a whip.  Ferguson likes to refer to himself in the third person when he berates his servants and friends.  He's also quite the fancy dresser.  Check out his pancake makeup and Dracula cape that he wears for the final showdown.  He's one of the great Spaghetti Western villians.  It's also interesting that he happens to look like Christopher McDonald, Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore.  So if you're not a huge fan of Italian Westers, you could always quote lines from that movie or take a shot whenever he refers to himself in the third person.  You'll be loaded 15 minutes in.

Otherwise, if you do like Spaghettis, you should definitely check this out.  It's on a double feature DVD from Wild East.  It comes with the movie Dead Men Don't Count, also starring Mark Damon, along with trailers, photo galleries, and an interview with Mark Damon himself, discussing these films.

Dead Men Don't Count (aka Cry for Revenge) 1968 Rafael Romero Marchent

Most Spaghetti Westerns seem to be about one man, alone, taking on entire towns full of thugs in order to set something right (i.e. Django, Fistful of Dollars, The Great Silence). It's not often that there are two like-minded gunfighters who join forces to rid a town of it's evildoers.  If there are two protagonists, one usually antagonizes the other protagonizer (see For A Few Dollars More, The Mercenary).  It's rare to have an Italian western that's actually a buddy picture, but that's the case here.

Anthony Steffen and Mark Damon play bounty hunting brothers Fred and Johnny Dalton.  They like to roam from town to town with their handfuls of wanted posters, killing bad guys and collecting their meager bounties.  When they come across the town of Blackstone, Arizona, they run afoul of the sheriff Bob Watson.  He gives them a day to get out of town, the guys agree, but of course things come up and the town needs to be set right.

I wish that Anthony Steffen and Mark Damon were able to make more buddy pictures.  You can tell they're having a blast making this.  It's just a shame that this movie is so run of the mill.  There are a few nice moments, like the Dalton brothers approaching every situation with a statement like "..just like Abilene?" and then shooting up the never ending supply of bad guys.

There's also an interesting subplot concerning the town's leading citizen, Steve Rogers (Captain America, hah!) and his wife.  She gave up her son as a baby to be with the rich Rogers, and Johnny Dalton just might be her long lost son.

The tone of this movie is a little too jokey for me, but once I got used to it, I had fun.  These guys might not be Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, but they do okay.

The DVD is a double feature by Wild East, a company that specializes in limited editions of Spaghetti Westerns.  As such, this is probably the best this movie will ever look.  Extras include a photo gallery and an interview with Mark Damon, who became quite the movie producer after his stint in westerns ended.  The other movie included on this DVD is called Kill and Pray.  It also stars Mark Damon, this time as the bad guy, and it's defiinitely worth watching.

Hanna 2011 Joe Wright

I put off seeing this movie for a while.  I thought the trailer was fantastic, but I thought there was no way the movie could live up to it.  Besides, they give away the whole thing in the trailer, don't they?  Nope.  This movie is awesome.  I spent most of my time in the theater thrilled that I was watching a movie as uncompromising and balls out as this one.

This movie concerns a young girl named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan, Atonement) who lives with her father (Eric Bana, Hulk) near then North Pole.  She knows nothing of the outside world, except what her father taught her.  Plus, he's trained her to be a kick ass assassin (but not in the way that Nicholas Cage taught his annoying daughter in the excruciatingly stupid Kick Ass) so one day the can take down her family's big bad wolf, Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth).

One day, she decides she's ready.  Dad disappears with instructions to meet up in Germany.  The CIA comes busting in and snatches Hanna up.  This is where the fun starts.  It becomes one long chase, with Hanna desperately trying to meet her father in an abandoned amusement park dedicated to the Brothers Grimm.  Whoever found this place or designed it is amazing.  The whole movie, in fact, looks like one big fairy tale, with their house by the North Pole, the amusement park, the German club where Marissa recruits a scary German guy and his cohorts to hunt Hanna down - it's all fantastic.  There's even a nod to Jean-Jacques Beineix's film Diva worked into this movie.

I never would have expected this kind of movie from the same guy that directed Atonement and The Soloist, but maybe he was just as tired of directing sensitive period dramas and uplifing human stories as most people are of seeing them.  It was especially nice to see a movie that doesn't cheat it's ending or sugarcoat it for the audience.  It did seem, though, that this movie was edited down from it's original version in order to obtain a PG-13, but it doesn't matter.  It was kind of nice that not everything was spelled out.  So pay attention when you go see this and you'll have one of the best times at the movies this year.