Gave them a second chance and they improved.

The Will Smith thing, you mean? I remember when it came out in the summer of 1999, but it has never interested in me. Since TBS is airing the film a week from now, though, I may give it a chance. 

If you possess a historical interest in Westerns, The Lone Ranger might interest you. The film features homages to several Westerns from the past, and its fatalistic theme about the tragic saga of Native Americans is quite stirring and poignant. Of course, this theme is nothing new—Little Big Man, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and others have covered it long before—but it receives a refreshing rendition in The Lone Ranger, and the film's ability to blend it with the movie's droll, pyrotechnical high jinx proves surprisingly effective. At the same time, that blend is not quite seamless, and I found it too chaotic after a first viewing. But I found the mix much easier to digest upon a second screening, and I ultimately viewed The Lone Ranger four times in the theater. 

I first viewed Citizen Kane at twenty-three years of age, and the film did little for me. I viewed it again over two years later, at twenty-five, and I found it to be a riveting and daring dark fable about the American Dream—a man's meteoric rise and spiraling self-destruction. 

I initially saw The Tall T as a freshman in college as part of a course on Westerns, just after I had turned eighteen. The movie seemed bland and boring to me then, but I gave it another look nearly fifteen years later, at thirty-two, and I loved it. Director Budd Boetticher's sense of color, composition, visual form, and landscape is impeccable, and he creates a powerful sense of atmosphere, delicately unearthing primal instincts and carnal energies. And his use of star Budd Boetticher is both classical and ironic.

I first viewed Psycho as a junior in college as part of a course on Alfred Hitchcock, at twenty years of age, and I found the film overrated. I suppose that I thought that it represented a manifestation of style over substance. I viewed the movie again three years later, in my second year of graduate school at twenty-three years old as part of a film course, and I appreciated it much more. I have now seen Psycho about six times (twice in the theater), and what I now recognize is that the film fuses style and substance sublimely, with the style serving to instinctively reflect primal fears and desires, along with rather sophisticated forms of social subversion. Psycho may be as lean and coolly dynamic a film ever created, taking horror movie conventions and mannerisms, boiling them down to their absolute essence, and then extending them to places where cinema had not previously ventured. 

Already well-familiar with director Sergio Leone's three preceding Westerns (with Clint Eastwood), I initially screened Once Upon a Time in the West during the summer after I had graduated from high school, when I was seventeen. I enjoyed the film's opening and closing, but what transpired in between did not especially compel me. I appreciated the movie more when I viewed it on my own during my freshman year of college, but not until my third viewing, the following summer, did I fully recognize the epic's rich tapestry and poignant ironies. (I have now viewed the movie six times.)

I first saw The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean as a freshman in college, although not as part of a course. Someone recommended the film to me and sent me a letter-boxed VHS copy recorded from a laser disc, but I did not especially care for the movie. I found it tonally inconsistent, with Paul Newman's ambiguous performance alienating rather than entrancing the viewer. But I gave the film another chance about four and a half years later, early in my second year of graduate school and shortly before I turned twenty-three, and I appreciated it much more.  Roy Bean is something of a roller coaster, but it is witty and creative, moody and atmospheric. I have now seen the film about four times, and here is a review that I wrote on January 12, 2005:

woozy weaknesses serve as scintillating strengths

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (John Huston, 1972) is a delightful (if delirious, disjointed, and sometimes desultory) Western where woozy weaknesses serve as scintillating strengths. At first glance, the viewer will doubtlessly be jarred by the film's abrupt shifts in tone, ridiculous vignettes, and failure to explore its thematic depths. But if its warped eccentricity ultimately renders Roy Bean a less than substantial venture, it still manages to be brilliantly, nostalgically decadent while offering a smattering of melancholy as well. Its satirical-sentimental take on our Western folklore is evidenced in Paul Newman's nuanced performance, mixing whimsy, vulnerability, and violence, as well as Maurice Jarre's sweetly haunting score and the heavily back-lit and sepia-inflected cinematography of Richard Moore. To be sure, one may wish that Huston and writer John Milius had examined the convergence of vengeance and justice, along with the cruel and capricious nature of dictatorial law, with a greater sense of sobriety and seriousness. And without a doubt, the film becomes a bit stunted in places, thanks to a paradoxical admixture of detachment and self-indulgence along with such dizzy diversions as a pet bear and a "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"-style musical montage. Then again, without these seeming flaws, Roy Bean wouldn't be so curious and charming and its decadent nostalgia would lose its potency and poignancy. Again, the film's weaknesses also happen to be its essential strengths, thus making it an oxymoron that flummoxes at first but fascinates upon reflection and review.

I first viewed The Eiger Sanction at seventeen years of age, as a high school senior, and I instinctively sensed that the film was one of Eastwood's weaker ventures from a dramatic perspective (not in terms of suspense, but human interactions), due to the nature of the material. But while I was still a teenager, I saw the film about three more times, and my appreciation of it grew over the viewings (six in total now). Despite its inherent limitations, Eastwood still gets a lot out of the movie—on multiple levels: cinematography, location shooting, outdoor suspense, atmosphere, humor, thematic commentary. Here is what I wrote on IMDb on January 1, 2006:

Personally, I find it more realistic than nearly all the James Bond films. If a Bond story (From Russia with Love aside) were actually to have a toehold in realism, it would manifest itself as The Eiger Sanction. While it's not a terribly substantial film, it's surprisingly intelligent, classy, and elegant, more thoughtful and subversive than most espionage thrillers. The film's wry theme about the duplicity, amorality, and futility of Cold War espionage is quite sharp and startling, and its biting, cynical commentary exposes the ignorance, hypocrisy, and delusions that fuel the patriotic defense of barbaric policy. In this movie's context, patriotism is a sham, an excuse, a mindless and misguided exercise in self-indulgent savagery and criminality. Sure, a stronger narrative could have elevated this theme even further, but it's still memorably expressed in a pair of passages.

And of course, the film's real stars are Eastwood (who gives a more voluble performance than usual) and Frank Stanley's cinematography. Handsomely mounted, the movie's rich attention to color and composition, along with its spiraling camerawork steeped in high/low angles and verticality, is a testament to the visual potential of the filmic medium.