Top 9 for 2010

9. Piranha 3D

“Hit it, DJ Chocolate Thundaa!”

Douchebag dance/beach parties have plagued the human race for many generations now. Long overdue is a collective middle finger to the herds of idiotic 20-somethings who invade warm climate retreats and gyrate to the sounds of obnoxious club music. Enter Piranha 3D, a brilliant stroke of cinematic genius with a profoundly simple premise: killer piranha eats ‘Jersey Shore’. There are no misconceptions here, as this is a horror movie only by default. Most of the time you’re laughing or downright cheering as prehistoric fishies end lives to the most gruesome degree. I won’t regale you with the gory details, suffice to say that both the male and female human form is mutilated and violated in creative fashion, minus any hint of subtlety – you see everything!

Jerry O'connell aims for Oscar gold as a ‘girls-gone-wild’ cosmic asshóle pornographer. It should come as no spoiler that he dies. Hilariously. Playing the town sheriff, the duties fall on Elisabeth Shue (at 46, she still rocks a sexy bod) to reconcile the lake-wide piranha attack and rescue her two kids, the oldest of whom, her son, played by Steven R. McQueen, is the film’s teen hero. Ving Rhames is the town deputy, Adam Scott a sidekick seismologist and Christopher Lloyd is the raving local pet story owner who also just happens to be an expert on all things thought-to-be-extinct-piranha. Eli Roth hosts a wet t-shirt contest and has the best aforementioned line in the movie. There’s also a special guest appearance by a Jaws alumni. He dies, too. Piranha 3D is a breezy 90 minute circus of t’n’a and wish-fulfilling massacre.




8. Tron: Legacy



“This isn’t happening.” – “Oh, man, this is happening!”

What I initially deemed badly contrived I now see it as something more lovingly indebted. Though I care little for The Matrix myself, I can still appreciated that director Joseph Kosinski takes it as an inspiration and plays tribute with his own computer world techno club sequence. This film also harkens Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Burton’s Batman, Batman Begins and even a quick nod to original Tron contemporary War Games (and, of course, the original Tron itself). However, it’s Star Wars-and-subsequent-installments that leave the biggest mark, with multiple riffs, visual allusions and an action climax that borrows wholesale. Make no mistake, Tron: Legacy does have some high concepts, emergence being one as non-programmed/non-user entities called isomorphic algorithms (ISOs) manifest from nothingness with the potential to unify similar interpretations of sentient life.

Also, and more emotionally resonate, is the duality between Bridge’s Kevin Flynn and Bridge’s Clu, each with mirroring dreams of revolution. Flynn speaks of destiny in breaching The Grid world with intent to make information free whereas Clue seeks to free himself and his follower programs–information itself–from The Grid onto the real world, and, likewise, speaks of it as “destiny”. Poignancy occurs when Clu encounters his own warped reflection in a chrome apple and one of the films most artful moments is a scene of exposition through an abstraction of multiple analog TV sets. The latter mentioned coupled with a scene where Sam Flynn explores his father’s arcade like an ancient tomb renders a kind of mythology around 80s electronic gaming and media. Pacing is still the film’s biggest weakness, but its world is immersive, the action well designed and Daft Punk’s score pulses.




7. From Paris With Love



“Well, they ain’t no L.A. Maravilla gang …just some Asian dudes.”

This movie presents to the average guy targeted audience an intro scenario with Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing young upstart CIA operative, James Reese, who labors the most banal missions of the clandestine circuit, swapping license plates and watching other guys–presumably real secret agents–drive away, onto lurid adventures he can only long for. At the end of the day he goes home to his beautiful girlfriend and she inadvertently proposes to him, and they agree to marry. So there it is. Reese is stuck fast in a world of mundane government chores and domesticated husbandry. That is, until he gets a phone call from the higher-ups, seconds after kissing his new fiancé, who task him with escorting a super-spy named Charlie Wax through the streets of Paris.

This is where the real movie begins and what ensues is a shattering of forms as Reese’s reality is taken through the loops, ultimately leading to a violent but no less heartfelt long goodbye of his old life in a way that accentuates the film’s lyrical title …With Love. This is not a serious, or taken seriously, exploration of character, but rather an R-rated ‘bros-before-hoes’ sonnet with guns blazing and high-five buddy humor. Said Wax is John Travolta, an outrageous merging of the actor’s most extreme personality with a character conceit that engages American male exploit fantasies of the post 9/11, 21st century: he kills terrorist, bangs hookers, eats cheese burgers, snorts coke, crashes dinner parties, mocks foreigners and answers to no one in the process. The man is walking offense, and loves every minute of his impossible existence. The plot is fittingly ridiculous and the action is awesomely over-the-top. From Paris With Love is frothy-light philosophy with bullets and explosions.


6. Unstoppable: From an earlier review
 

5. Winter’s Bone

“Hold his arm out straight, child.”

It’s already been fittingly described by numerous reviews as an American Southern Gothic, driven by a mystery narrative deeply rooted in rural Missouri Ozarks culture. Yet the environments are not overly romanticized via blatant picturesque scenery. This isn’t a “painting” film. The inhabitants largely maintain scene focus, the gothic atmosphere evoked as much through plot and character. We follow young Ree Dolly on the search for fugitive father, not for his sake, but for the sake of her vacant mother and two kid siblings, as their home has been rendered bail bonds collateral. Playing Ree, Jennifer Lawrence gives the kind of stark commitment often found in inexperienced but naturally gifted actors. The role of her Uncle Teardrop is played by John Hawkes – arguably the finest performance of his career as a character actor, and is the scene stealing role of the film. Teardrop is a dangerous man and the question as to whether he is Ree’s ally or enemy is not immediately answered.

What I find most interesting about Winter’s Bone is that even though we never see the father, he really is the main character. This is his story being told, after the fact, through the repercussions of his actions, the choices he made and how he affected those around him, particularly his family. It’s a kind of existential thread on how a man’s life and journey is weighed by his daughter as she follows in his wake. Ree is our conduit and it is up to her to face the music, in all its horrid melody. In doing so, by merely surviving the gauntlet, she is heroic. Code, courage and loyalty are the central themes; the stage set, though contemporary, almost feels medieval. These are clans people who live amidst harsh landscapes and skullduggery. From this turmoil the film’s ending finds both peace and doomed resolution.


4. Shutter Island  



“It's Saturday, honey. School's not in on Saturday.”

“My school is.”

This movie is all ‘oldies but goldies’. There’s really nothing here we haven’t see before, neither from Martin Scorsese or the hard boiled mystery thrillers of yore. But technique trumps novelty (at least it can) and Scorsese is nothing if not an adroit filmmaker. Shutter Island is a spook-fest about a man–a Federal Maashal–who follows a trail of breadcrumbs through a rogue’s gallery asylum then deep into a psychoanalytical wormhole. And eventually he blows up a car with a tropical tie. Make of that what you will. Is it rewatchable once you know the twist? Yes, because the truths revealed are not as important as how the lies reveal our main protagonist along the way. Imagery galore is the main course with ghosts, delusions, hypnotics and reversed memories.

The film is beautifully edited using confined framing and fragmented sound design to isolate our prospective in varying altered states of reality: as the two Marshals are first welcomed into the office of the head psychiatrist the introduction is routine and the conversation formal, until Teddy (DiCaprio) lingers over to a wall of framed, vaguely expressionistic illustrations depicting the 19th century “pre-civilized” treatment of mad souls; the camera closes in and the background dialogue fades out. Momentary silence. Then normality resumes, oblivious to the brief laps and the audiences is left wondering for a split second what the hell just happened. Again, if the whole thing is little more than a manufactured genre film then it’s at least manufactured with TLC, as Scorsese’s allusions to past pulpy cinema & novella are undoubtedly heartfelt.




3. Black Swan



“It’s my turn!”

Everything that happens in Black Swan is actually fairly ordered and systematic, even cliché in some cases, and we’re presented with only so many options as to what is really happening to the main character. There are no major epiphanies. Nina Sayers is either a lesbo mutant haunted by phantasms or is totally bat-shít crazy (or both). The real question is to what extreme does Darren Arnofsky take this conceit and, most important of all, will it entertain us in the process. In fact, the only reason to even watch a movie about a downward spiraling ballerina is to see just how far down the rabbit hole she goes. Nina goes all the way. And, yeah, you get your money’s worth. Despite the illusion of loosey-goosey handheld camera work, Arnofsky’s visuals and editing are very controlled. The film is virtuoso in movement but always specific to the subject matter and never disorientating. As mentioned, the story unfolds methodically at 108 minutes with no one sequence that drags or outstays its welcome, important for making such eccentric material accessible to the widest audience.

Believe the hype: Natalie Portman disappears entirely, really, for the first time in her career. It’s like watching a fictional character being played by a specter with a mere Portman likeness. The performance shows discipline and her ongoing expressions of pathetic vulnerability and manic paranoia somehow never tire or come off repetitive. Proof that it’s not just a role catered to Portman’s natural demureness comes in the final act when white swan becomes black – the actress uncorks a carefully pressured alter-ego that feels as true to character and form as if she were with us from the film’s beginning. Mila Kunis steps in as Portman’s easygoing opposite with a perfect balance of questionable motives and carefree sex appeal. This movie is absurd, in the best possible way.




2. Tangled



“I could get used to a view like this. Yep, I'm used to it. Guys, I want a castle.”

Working within the envelope–adhering to the conventions of traditional Disney princess fairytales–sounds like recipe for mediocrity. But when the finer details in form are treated anew and the story told with utmost sincerity, the results can be coolly refreshing. Tangled is a rarity, an old fashioned charmer void of pretentiousness, unnecessary angst melodrama or pithy-hipness that plagues just about every other computer animated film these days. It follows a near pitch-perfect narrative that effortlessly balances humor, romance, song and adventure. I’m all but aghast that the film has not received more technical praise; the animation here is the most expressive and accurately nuanced I’ve ever seen! And the lush atmospheres evoke classical Rococo oil paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard. The world rendered is so delicately beautiful and yet equally busting with verve.

The slapstick mayhem is fluid and the sit-comedic timing is nimble and rhythmically edited. Though criticized as a shallow marketing ploy, the title of the film (changed from Rapunzel) better appropriates the interweaving of the three main characters, each with their own separate motives. Yes, the movie is funny, but there is also a genuine hinge on the personal choices our two heroes make as they venture together; compelling, despite its absolute predictability, because both Rapunzel and her scoundrel opposite, Flynn Rider, are so imbued with good writing and strong voice cast performances from Mandy Moor and Zachary Levi. Donna Murphy rounds out the trio as Mother Gothel with show tuney sass. She’s wicked, calculative and fun. The whole movie is fun. It deserves and Oscar nod at the very least. Personally, I think it’s better than the somewhat overrated Toy Story 3




1. Somewhere


.............

Sofia Coppola makes films for sensitive people. When using the word “sensitive” I’m not speaking generally about cry babies or anyone whose feelings, good or bad, are easily triggered by trivial things. That, in fact, has more to do with (over)sentimentalism, which is a spectrum that Coppola dabbles in the least, if barely at all. No, I’m going back to the root definition of the word regarding those endowed with acute perception through the senses – seizing and interpreting on a tonal level made whole, in this case, through naked image, sound and music. Somewhere is a visual/aural piece stripped of conventional plot and narrative. This isn’t a movie where you have to decode via academics or intellect a particular scene or shot in order to determine its relevance. If you take it that far, you’re already thinking too hard. Don’t analyze; relax. Somewhere is an experience, not a thesis. Nor is it in any way pretentious. When critics make such accusations I can only wonder if they even understand the meaning of the word.

Coppola’s films, chief among them the film at hand, are far too casual and unassuming to be pretentious. Somewhere makes no haughty claims about how important it is. It doesn’t force upon you seemingly incomprehensible characters, imagery or situations in the name of “art”. The setting and circumstances are almost entirely circumstantial. This movie could take place anywhere, which is the very point of the title: the Chateau Marmont is as genuine a place as any and the meditative introspection of its long term guest, action star Johnny Marco, is no more or less human than spending an hour and 40 minutes with Farmer Ted, which is not to say that such lives are uninteresting, but that all lives are uniquely profound. Coppola is merely being honest by depicting a lifestyle and father/daughter dynamic that she’s more familiar with. Somewhere is quiet, beautiful, subliminal and chilled.

Movie Posters

Some analysis

This simple but tantalizing image promises a kind of hardboiled spicy Euro exploit, a B-time killer with sex and intrigue. Of course, what the movie actually delivers is a rather complex character dilemma, but likewise succeeds equally as neo-noir entertainment. Yet the poster itself isn’t just romantic for the sake of romance, but thematically resonates as well. Miranda Richardson is not the main character, not even the leading man’s foil; but there’s something inherently cool in the way she’s assigned as the film’s visual selling pitch – the pivotal antagonist lurking in the narrative’s shadow. Interesting to note that her appearance here is subtly androgynous, hinting, almost subliminally, things to come. The black and white scheme indicates an issue, a world, with binary resolve, as if the story will be summed up either one way or the other, which, in and of itself, emphasizes the upper tagline “Nothing is what is seems to be”. 

This poster is all about raw conviction. It may not seem like much in terms of design, and it isn’t. But the point is made with utmost clarity: this movie isn’t fucking around! What makes it work is the ambiguous wall/structure, an indefinite concrete barrier of OCP Detroit built to totalitarize in favor of the corporate corrupt; that is, until RoboCop shows up. He’s all but crashing through the poster into your theater lobby.

If the previous two are overly simple than this poster seems downright plain. At first, anyways. But there’s a ‘magic eye’ effect going on here. See it? Yeah, okay, maybe it’s obvious for some of you but there’s no denying how the rad graphic imagery is telling a story in a single still shot. I also dig the seemingly unreadable expression on RoboCop’s face. Sure, such can be attributed to the fact that said face is mostly obscured by immobile metal-wear, but in turn it actually reinforces his personality (in the same way we project our own expressions on Darth Vader’s mask). RoboCop is about to combat his most terrifying enemy, and his blank reaction conveys at once both a comically understated dread and an iron-willed determination.

Foreign posters at their best

Polish

Faux French

All things Star Wars

'60s

Clever Crossovers

Minimalist

 Vintage

Weird

Small world, Doctor Jones!

Unstoppable

Runaway freight train, deadly chemicals and physics – The Periodic Table of Movie Elements broken down to the bare essentials. Trains truly are an awe-inspiring technology that we so often take for granted. They represent the most enduring, unrelenting and even terrifying nature of Man’s dominion over-and-through his environment. We are the Gods; they, our Titans. A theme made all the more poignant when one becomes unmanned and let loose upon the world. In other disaster movies Man must contend with the natural world run amok or cosmic apocalyptic plots like asteroids or warmongering aliens. But in Unstoppable Man fights himself, his own creation, engineered from top to bottom, front to back, with steel and raw power.

In this particular battle the heroes are a couple of working-class analogs newly assigned as mentor and apprentice, neither with any enthusiasm. They’re regular guys with regular problems, namely marital issues, infringing unemployment and just life in general. Frank Barnes plays Denzel Washington, a screen persona that chiefly lubricates the action/expository narrative with warm familiarity. Chris Pines is the younger Will Colson who comfortably adheres to the rookie archetype. Rosario Dawson humbly plays the critical thinking dispatcher, Connie Hooper, who’s forced to negotiate company politics in parallel.

There are a few other colorful personalities that weave in and out of the crises as aids or hinderers, but the main character is the train, which, through clever sound design, roars like a tyrannosaur. The formulaic script may be an easy target for anyone expecting some avant-garde reinvention of the disaster movie wheel, but it is there to service the cinematic experience, not the other way around. So get over it, or don’t, and go watch something else. This is a movie for community folk who want to see a problem solved with guts and skill… and explosions.

Other filmmakers have long since barrowed from Tony Scott’s pioneering directorial style partially and generically to such an extent that the style itself is regarded unfairly as something derogative and often associative with the current popular rant against all things “shaky cam”. The problem is that most critics are holistically challenged. Lacking in sensitivity, they generalize over a handful of familiar camera techniques without any understanding, let alone appreciation, for the potential artistic context of the film as a whole. In so doing, whatever similarities are superficial at most.

Scott’s visual fragmentation and editorial kinetics is by far the best of its kind because it has evolved organically from the beginning of his career, thus rendering a shot-flow signature that connects to his very nervous system as a commercialist storyteller. Others replicate it (badly) for stock effect, but only Scott feels it intuitively, resulting in a visual language that maintains a more artful and thematic relevance to whatever the subject, be it the acid-trip fantasies of Domino or the multiversing imagery in Déjà Vu.

With Unstoppable said language acclimatizes for pure action and forward momentum. Note how the camera is constantly panning 360’s closely around the cab of our heroes or the rail station HQ room. Contrary to sanctimonious dogma, there is more than one way to tell a story visually; and while spatial master shots and traditional continuity would certainly impress audiences with a full and clear view of the rogue train spectacle, Scott, with a more abstract aesthetic in mind, frames and edits for chaos where the train is not a mere thing to be viewed objectively, but a monster that overwhelms the senses, blasting its way through scenes wholesale. The telephoto lensing doubles its size and separates the heroes, caught up on the mayhem, from a background of motion blur. One very cool shot is of Washington’s POV from atop the speeding train as he spots his rookie partner a hundred yards down riding the back of a pickup truck alongside the locomotive, the long lens rack-focusing the image into a single intense frame.

The running motif of technology fills every corner of Unstoppable, defining not just the central conflict, but the larger experience from everyone involved down to the smallest details. Stretching over the arc of his filmography but blossoming with Enemy of the State, Scott continues to explore the idea of reshaping events into media reality, as the train rampage is alternately viewed from live news footage and as blinking graphics on a computer console. Also, the manner in which radio and cell phones are the primary connection between characters across the film’s geographical canvas; only Washington and Pines are privy to intimate human interaction, and even they are split apart by the climax with walkie-talkies.

Unstoppable is a simple, adrenalized filmgoing experience and a continuation of director Tony Scott’s unique pop-artistry that delivers the goods with zero pretense.

Tombstone



 The executive producer for Tombstone is Buzz Feitshans, whose other producing credits include Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, Uncommon Valor, Extreme Prejudice, Total Recall, Die Hard With a Vengeance and the Rambo trilogy. Clearly, we’re dealing with an exec who favors pro-masculine action films (likewise for fellow producer Andrew G. Vajna); Tombstone is certainly no exception. However, to think the film a mere stupid, dimwitted-macho reduction of the Western is grossly insensitive to its touching lyrical qualities. Most would agree, at the very least, that Tombstone is an entertaining Western; personally, I think it's one of the best of the genre, and would rank it among my favorites of any genre.

First of all, the question of the film’s historical accuracy regarding the Earps at the O.K. Coral is all but irrelevant. The opening intro involves a series of film reels, partly authentic and partly fabricated, of cowboy and gunfighter reenactments from the early 1900s, at least 20 years past the events that take place in the story. Narrating the intro is Robert Mitchum, himself an icon of numerous Western classics. Hence, Tombstone establishes itself thematically not as a historical telling but as a figment/homage of early Hollywood Western lore – as much a legend of cinema as it is told through cinema. And yet within this romantic conceit there is an equally credible and semi genre-unique depiction of the Old West.

You’re average contemporary Western feels just that: contemporary – a genre often rendered moody, in muddled browns and depicting the West as a dry and desolate, rudimentary existence. Tombstone, on the other hand, shows a place and era of vibrant color and theatrics. The West was not just a booming economic enterprise, but a frontier of culture, intellect and style--on the verve. The heroes are enthusiastic prospectors; the villains, cheerful gallants. The whole world of Tombstone feels very alive, an exciting place to be. At various points throughout the film are themes of liberation from archaic social lifestyles, notably the romance between Wyatt and Josephine, and even New Age thought; in one scene, the youngest brother Earp muses spiritual literature, the afterlife and the existence of God. Other more general references include Shakespeare, poetry and gunslingers dueling in Latin. The theme is so persistent that it even reaches a certain satirical point; when the corrupt county sheriff praises the town for its sophistication, Doc Holiday, taking his cue from a bloody gunfight in the street, sarcastically rebukes: “Very cosmopolitan.”

If the narrative of the film seems a bit jumpy in the chronology of its events, the overall story is never-the-less told handsomely, with a certain brazen for conflict and action, shared with quaint romantic interludes. The whole movie is very… old fashioned in that way. Like all Westerns, the narrative drive is appropriately simple. The men of Tombstone (a man’s world, no doubt) are choice makers: Wyatt and the brother Earps come to town as honest businessmen who must then choose to enforce law when the lawless terrorize the innocent. A man of the lawless, the gang known as the ‘Cowboys’, chooses to side with justice. Holiday chooses his friend over his own fading health. Death ensues on both sides, all sides.

By the end, our hero must choose a new life, after having his old one obliterated. None of the characters are ever fully explored in any biographical sense, but each of their actions and behaviors are clearly outlined, and the range of acting allows for a great deal of nuance and individual personality. Beyond its two lead stars, Tombstone features some 18 familiar, hard working actors, from Powers Booth to the awesome Michael Bien, then Stephen Lang, Dana Delany, Michael Rooker, Terry O’Quinn, Billy Zane (etc) – a well fed Billy Bob Thorton and even a cameo by Charlton Heston.

Bill Paxton is younger brother Morgan and Sam Elliot, the go-to-guy for countless Western movies, is the oldest brother Virgil. Again, their roles are pretty much reactionary, but both are likewise given just enough room for characterization to make for a well rounded sibling trio. Kurt Russell is simply the best Wyatt Earp ever. I say this with total conviction. Consider Kevin Costner in the same role, or more recent non-yanks like Christian Bale and Russell Crowe playing their own Western leads in 3:10 to Yuma. In my opinion, all of these actors act too much like their trying to act like heroes of the genre.

Like John Wayne, Sam Elliot, Tom Selleck and Ed Harris, Kurt Russell is a natural for the material. There’s something so perfectly “sensible” in his portrayal of Wyatt Earp; a dimensional man, weathered, intelligent and regretful, while also believably deadly when the conflicts arise. The “Hell’s commin’ with me!” speech could have been laughable, and in the hands of a lesser or less appropriate actor it may have very well been. Yet Russell delivers it with aplomb – there’s no room to snicker at his war cry. You believe it, without a moments thought.

This, of course, leaves Val Kilmer. By now it’s pretty a much concrete consensus that Kilmer steals the show as Doc Holiday. I’m in no sense to argue otherwise. He’s pretty damn good. It could have merely been a showy, flamboyant performance, but there’s a blackness and a sadness that Kilmer brings to the Holiday character. In fact, the duality between Doc and Johnny Ringo (Bien) is one of the finer aspects of the story and is also, perhaps, the movie at its most philosophical, in a purely narrative/presentational form. Both men are haunted, both men are sick. But while Holiday’s sickness is physical, Ringo’s is internal.

You get the sense that Holiday is as much a damned soul as Ringo but the difference between the two is that Holiday has come to meet his inner sorrow with a certain and resilient, irreverent charm – a black humor mentality. Doc Holiday does not take his wretched life all that seriously, and is therefore free from it in a way; whereas Ringo is all too serious and hateful of everything and everyone. It get’s the better of him, as Holiday says after the climax of their gunfight: “Poor soul. You were just too high strung.” Holiday also has the advantage of having a genuine and loyal friendship with the noble Wyatt – his one lifeline to something worth living for, and dying for. Their scene together at the end of the film is easily the most emotional for me.

Tombstone is directed by George P. Cosmatos (R.I.P.) who also helmed Cobra and Rambo: First Blood Part II. Cosmatos was brought in after the initial director, Kevin Jarre (son of composer, Maurice)–who also wrote the film as well as Rambo: First Blood Part II–was fired for demanding/attempting to shoot his full script, which was deemed too long and over budget. Allegedly, Cosmatos co-directed, or ghost-directed, the film with Kurt Russell. It was Russell who most likely edited the script and prepared the day-by-day shot list while Cosmatos setup angles then staged and blocked the action. The end result is a rather straight forward, classical, none-too-flashy visual approach. However, the gunfights in particular are edited in heavy contrast between masters and mediums, and intense close-ups and inserts, not unlike Cosmatos’ work on the Rambo sequel. So the action, as a whole, is visually striking and powerful.

William A. Fraker is the cinematographer and, along with the production/costume designers, usurps the conventional Western pallet with lush primary colors, deeply saturated, under natural desert sunlight, in-camera street lamplights and amidst smokey saloons. Still, black is the dominant color, at least on a tonal level, and for obvious-and-ominous reasons via the heroes’ black hats and long dusters. The anamorphic aspect ratio fittingly emphasizes large groups around card tables, lateral rows of men in the street, extreme facial (eyes) close-ups and, of course, the wide Arizona landscape. Bruce Broughton scores the film broadly with a bold title and romantic theme, and surrounds the rest with high-tension bombast. It’s not a notably complex score, but, like the rest of the film, clearly states its purpose.

Tombstone does not end with our hero riding off into the sunset. Instead, he and his true love waltz together happily in a Christmas lit snowy street, laughing about room service, as Mitchum concludes his narration. The last words spoken are that of Earp’s funeral in 1929 and of legendary Western star Tom Mix who wept in his passing, bringing full circle the aforementioned theme of American history mythologized by the silver screen.