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  • 千曜七七 (Angell)

I thought “Traffic” was a pretty decent movie. It tried to do a lot with one topic, and in some ways, it really executed its point well, and in others, because it was trying to do so much, it glossed over getting into any sort of depth with any one cha…

This was probably one of my favourites this term. Thinking about it, it was pretty similar to Touch of Evil: US and Mexican authorities attempting to solve a problem, corruption, etc.This movie provides many interesting perspectives on the drug war. …

This was probably one of my favourites this term. Thinking about it, it was pretty similar to Touch of Evil: US and Mexican authorities attempting to solve a problem, corruption, etc.This movie provides many interesting perspectives on the drug war. …

I do not agree with a lot of the comments made in the article “You are Alright, but …”. For example when the author says that the sex scene between the black american and Caroline dehumanizes him because his face is not shown. I think that the way th…

I thought this movie was really funny. It was very interesting how they made fun of all of the aspects that are normally present in western movies. Everything was exaggerated and people seemed to see things that were completely out of place as normal…

In response to Hudson404: It was interesting how the women were portrayed in vast contrast with those women in previous movies we have watched. I think this, in fact humanized the villians because El Guapo talks about his emotions and his inability to …

It has been a long time since I have seen The Three Amigos and I really enjoyed it again! It kind of brought a lighter side to the films that we have watched so far as many of them centered on difficult themes. I find that this film was the comedy vers…

This movie was funny but something someone said in class got me thinking. This movie is about three amigos that believe they’re in a show, because of a silent movie that shows them as being heroes. Now… they’re Americans. Carmen actually states that …

Racking my brain again…Recalling all of these movies i’ve watched up to now (including Traffic) concerning Mexican culture, tradition, and custom, i have a vague feeling of the existence of a significant margin b/w the first 7 (Que Viva Mexico is cou…

Three Amigos!
Comedy!
…for kids?
So much death, and yet such juvenile humour. Martin Short had the only distinct, interesting character so he stood out to me as the funniest of the three. It seemed like the film had been hastily edited down to a more reasonable time thus sacrificing the comedic timing necessary for the jokes. Either that or children need some sort of accelerated physical joke telling to keep them interested.
Anyways, regardless…
A film like this can easily be dismissed as "fluff" or unworthy of any academic discussion, but I think there are some interesting elements to the film that stand out.
The most noteworthy for me was this double removal of a film within a film, and the clear portrayal of the assumed actual reality as totally synthetic and ridiculous.
Immediately, during the old fashioned black and white film, we as the audience recognize Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short as famous comedic actors. We then see the Mexican audience watching these three actors as if they were action stars, or strong, manly actors (This reinforced by the German who idolizes Ned). Of course, we know this isn’t true at all and that sets up the humorous misunderstanding that drives the plot. 
Then, Steve, Chevy and Martin leave Hollywood for Mexico, and we never hear their actual character names as the actors who play the three amigos. They continue to call each other by their stage names.
It’s almost as if some fantastical reality has been set up where the Three Amigos escape the confines of the cinema and go to Mexico where they eventually discover that they truly are the Three Amigos, and yet all this is shown to us the audience within a film.
It reminds me of a children’s comedic rendition of David Lynch’s "Inland Empire" where the actor can never escape their act.
Even furthermore, I am tempted to read the entire film as a sick, hunger and desperation induced hallucinated adventure by Steve Martin’s character who so distraught about losing his job invents this story in his mind. That would be one way to justify the absurd "real" singing animals, bush and the invisible swordsman.

I am not a fan of Steve Martin.  At all. Nor the other main actors (the other two amigos) in this movie, based on the types of movies I know them to usually be in.  When we started the film and I saw the cast, I thought I was going to hate it.  And at […]

When I was around twelve, I recorded this movie off of the Disney channel on TV like I did other with a lot of other movies. I really liked this one though, I thought it was funny, I liked the music in it and I watched it a lot. Now it’s really hard …

I think this is going to be one of the harder blogs to write, considering I can’t really take much of this movie seriously.Seeing movies like this with Steve Martin in them make me really sad because he has the ability to be a very funny, talented man,…

I did not know anything about this film previously. Therefore, when I first heard the title, I thought it would be another one of those cliche Western movies. Instead, it was a refreshing change from the films we have seen previously, especially as of …

What I noticed most about this film was the playing upon tropes by the film’s portrayal of Mexico. Like we said in discussion, the film parodies the Western genre, but what I noticed most was the playing upon particulars within Mexican representaion.Fo…

Three Amigos provides a satire of the portrayal of Mexico in cinema. Beyond all the gaffes and seemingly silly acts in this movie, a lot of insight can be gained. This movie was definitely an extreme parody, everything was overdone, overblown and ove…

Another movie set in Revolutionary Mexico. The 1920’s violent scenery, virginal and vulnerable women and chaotic macho society living in the leftovers of colonial times are all portrayed in the movie. Even though by 1970 most of the Mexic…

It was a really long film and I didn’t like it much at the beginning but it kind of grew on me. Close to the end of the movie, I was quite attached to the Wild Bunch and their emotions. However, it was also because of this attachm…

In response to Miguel:When the prostitute was insisting that the men pay her, I was confused by the woman, brushing her hair. She and the protagonist were exchanging suggestive looks or rather, looks of empathy and compassion. Yet on hearing the other …

Im really curious what is going to said about this movie in class. I really want to know why this movie is considered such a classic when I thought that although had some things to offer, it didn’t have much. This is actually the first time that I ha…

Two things caught my attention in this movie, the apparent lack of values in everyone in the movie and the tension between the characters in most of the scenes. From the begging the wild bunch seemed to me as a group of American bandits with a code of …

Ah, the last of the westerns and the western hero.
Symbolically dying at the end of the film along with the genre.
Peckinpah creates a western world that is fluxuating and changing before the very eyes of these traditional cowboys.
Chased from the north and forced to go south, their aging bodies are apparent and detrimental to their survival.
It would be impossible to watch a Peckinpah film without making mention of the representation of violence within the film.
And if you’ve ever seen "Straw Dogs" you’ll know that this is a re-occuring theme.
The violence is absolutely crude and messy in "The Wild Bunch" 
The visual proponent of spraying blood from bullet wounds, bodies falling off buildings and cliffs, and horses slamming into the ground are all extreme in their depiction and scarily realistic.
HIs editing style is very succinct, hardly giving longer then a second before each cut ( during the opening sequence in the town especially ).
This method of editing really rackets up the feeling of utter mayhem during the scene and lack of control.
The innocent town folk are caught up within the gunfight and are mowed down by stray bullets.
There are children clutching each other in the middle of the fight, looking scared and evidently bound to be affected their entire life by these events. During the last scene, one of the characters uses a mexican woman as a body shield to absorb any bullets that come his way.
Peckinpah also uses slow motion to add to these violent outbursts too, for example a horse crashing through a window in slow motion.
Handheld POV camera work is also used as a disorienting tactic and evokes even more mayhem. 
As for the portrayal of Mexico, we are introduced to a ridiculous, indulgent military group who hire these men to steal rifles.
They are seen as untrustworthy and cutthroat, everything you need to survive in these tough lands.
The other Mexican group we see are the fighters from the village near where Angel is from, who are amazingly stealthy, calm and seem to give off a sense of earthly wisdom. It’s funny that there is no in between shown. The Mexican men are either drunk, rowdy fighters, or, stealthy, wise fighters.
Funnily enough it is Angel who the Mexican military group torture and embarrass as opposed to an American, even though there is a clear tension and dislike between the Americans and this group in the film. Perhaps this speaks to a lack of national identity at these times, keeping in mind that this is also shown through the storytelling of Peckinpah.

I don’t particularly like Westerns. They bore me and I think they’re all predictable. The only western I have liked has been High Noon. And Unforgiven, although I wouldn’t consider it a Western. This movie is no a western in essence either. It is a mov…

What I noticed most about this film was the portrayal of women it presented. Even though Mexican men are shown as characteristically diverse, the women in this film are not given that benefit.Just like the excessive violence of the film which becomes s…

Personally I don’t have much special feeling about this moive.It’s definitely long and the plot is huge, composed of a series of stories. All roles seem “bravo”,and the last shootout is tremendous, so perhaps for guys, this is really exciting. I don’t …

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