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Ms-Bunnyears
Reviews
La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (1966)
This film puts the French Baroque period into sharp focus.
Louis XIV was not judged by his contemporaries to be much of anything while Mazarin was alive. This film shows how with brains and style, he consolidated power by subtly weakening the nobility of France with "circuses and bread." Aristocrats obsessed with the King's latest style of coat while competing for his favor were not going to wage petty wars or rebel again. To keep them placated and diverted, Louis built Versailles - L'Île Enchantée, the 17th century version of Disneyworld. In that island of wonder and diversion, he turned his fractious nobles into groupies, hanging on is every word and gesture. He gave them plays, operas, masques, fine cuisine, wine, fabulous gardens to play in, and a style of living that required more money than their estates could earn. Versailles was their golden cage, and even with the door open, none wanted to fly out. A little more than a century later, his great-grandson would die on the guillotine, an end whose beginnings were sown in the isolation and excesses of the court he created to consolidate his power.
The Cowboys (1972)
Old fashioned male weepy filled with clichés
When Wayne as Andersen gets ready to tell the boys that he'll be signing them on for the cattle drive, he tells their teacher that he's got nothing to say to the girls. The "schoolmarm" ushers the girls out of the classroom with some words about it being a man's world. The movie really suffers from the worst form of typecasting. Roscoe Lee Brown as the courtly, elder-statesman cookie is priceless. Bruce Dern was again cast in the familiar role of the nerdy, crazy villain that he did so effectively all through his career.
Well, this is a movie for the guys, a typical male weepy that makes much of macho stoicism (can anyone actually believe the way Andersen keeps getting up as he is shot first in the arm, then in the leg, then in the other leg, etc.) and glorifies the boys' first foray into binge drinking while protecting them from the cleanest and most wholesome prairie prostitutes ever put on film. Only a very undiscriminating man could love this one.