Beware of bargains that you can’t refuse, because The Proposition is the Greatest Movie EVER!
Click on the movie poster or title above to download our review of the film, featuring Sean “Hollywood” Hunting.
Review in a Nutshell: A bleak film filled with complex characters and a plot of primal simplicity, The Proposition transplants the modern revisionist Western into the Australian Outback. Savage and starkly beautiful, it can be difficult to watch, but it’s impossible to ignore.
The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast 
For an old black and white movie podcast I cast my vote for a Toshiro Mifune/Akira Kurosawa film.
Either Sanjuro or Yojimbo would make an awesome podcast.
As for the Forbidden Kingdom it was one of those movies that I tried so hard to like. Honestly I consider it mediocre but not bad. Like most of Chan’s movies post 1998 movies, it’s just not that great.
Oh and Sean, I think the guy who wrote to you about “Drunken Master” was not talking about the same movie. Jackie Chan starred in two of those films. There is “Drunken Master” made in 1978 and then there’s “Legend of the Drunken Master” which was made in 1994. The older version is the superior one and the one fans generally like more.
I have not seen the proposition but ill be checking it out thanks to you’re podcast. Another awesome one for the books gentlemen.
Rio Bravo notwithstanding I’m not a huge fan of westerns so I can’t comment to much on the film this time around. I will say that I voted for The Forbidden Kingdom, both because it’s the only one I haven’t seen and because both of the other choices have been commented on to death by others already.
As for black & white movies, PLEASE! I love hearing you (and especially M.O.M.) commenting on the great classics I grew up watching on the Saturday Night Creature Feature.
And because I know you share in the bizarre hatred of The Thing from Another World that seems so common these days, I’ll suggest Them!, the quintessential giant ant movie.
Paul, it’s “LAW & ORDER: CI” (“Criminal Intent”) – not “CSI” (“Crime Scene Investigation”).
I’m with the fans of classic cult movies – in fact, I’d like to see you go further back than you usually do. I’d love you hear your feelings on some of the stranger Thirties and Forties horror/SF/Fantasy movies like THE BLACK CAT (amazingly stylish, with Boris Karloff as the sinister villain and Bela Lugosi as the hero), DRACULA’S DAUGHTER (a direct but very weird sequel to Lugosi’s DRACULA with a female vampire), SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (might be a great double-bill with YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN – see how many places you can spot Gene Wilder channeling Basil Rathbone in Brooks’s version), or THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X – starring Humphrey Bogart(!) as a vampiric mad scientist.
No comment about THE PROPOSITION, because this is the first I’ve heard about it – though maybe Tammy would enjoy seeing it, too….
The Proposition is a great movie. Glad you picked up on the Irish thing too. People forget that the Irish where at one time not considered white and were often called subhuman and attributed the same racial stereotypes that other groups including Mexicans and African Americans have had to suffer with. In the 1700’s Irish slaves were the in thing in the American colonies. Not as brutal as the African chattel slavery, but 5-10 years of hell depending on the contract signed. Another good western that may appeal to you is Outland. http://youtu.be/SfAzRBtLZxE
Holy shit, Sean’s a Nick Cave fan?! And he digs Murder Ballads (that and the Boatman’s Call are his best solo albums IMO, though I do love cherrypicking his earlier stuff)! Honestly I lost touch with his output after his 2001 album but even back then I vaguely knew he was interested in filmmaking/screenwriting. Have either of you seen the early Brad Pitt/Catherine Keener film Johnny Suede, wherein he has a cameo as rock star “Freak Storm”?
I thought The Forbidden Kingdom was awesomely 80s and quite enjoyed seeing it in the theater, so of course I had to vote for it in the poll after hearing how much both of you guys utterly detest it.
The Proposition is one of those movies that I really like but can’t really convince other people to watch on their own. As noted, it’s not exactly a fun time. The only way I can get anyone to sit through it is if I sit down and watch the movie with them, and the last time I did that was maybe a few years ago with my dad. We actually watched it back-to-back with another John Hillcoat film, The Road, after I’d noted to him that Rockstar had gotten John Hillcoat to edit together Red Dead Redemption footage into a short film (it’s on Youtube). Hmm. Now I’m wondering who Paul hates more: Cormac McCarthy or Jackie Chan…
But I hesitate to say The Proposition is cut from the same cloth as Peckinpah, if only because films like The Wild Bunch open BIG and end BIGGER. The Proposition isn’t about the action or the big shootout. It’s a quiet and slow burn where people rarely verbally say what’s on their mind, and the general lack of music separates it from Leone’s “living in the moment before the violence” to result in something that elicits unease. Between that and the fact that the story is so simple, a lot of people watch this film expecting a blood opera and are bored to tears by the relatively low number of shots fired.
If I had to compare the “feel” of The Proposition to a more recent movie that people may have been more likely to have seen, the closest I can manage at 3:05 AM (when I’m writing this) may actually be the Ryan Gosling movie Drive. That’s another really quiet movie of questionable morality punctuated by quick bits of really brutal non-lingering violence, though admittedly it doesn’t share so much of a thematic connection with this. Both films do however have “damn, I just saw an exploding head for a second” moments, and THAT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.
I love the fact you were thinking of Reservoir Dogs when discussing the gutshots, but could not recall it.
Awesome Doomsday half-reference