NIGHT PASSAGE (1957)

As much as I enjoy Jimmy Stewart, Dan Duryea and Audie Murphy, I can see why Anthony Mann turned this movie down: the script is way more complicated than it needs to be and there's no tension. Instead of being concerned about what happened to who I spent most of my time scratching my head in confusion. From what I gathered Stewart used to work for the railroad as a bounty hunter or something. Anyway, he let a guy (Audie Murphy) escape once and they fired him. Jump back to the present day and the railroad secretly hires Stewart back to deliver $10,000 to a work camp. As luck would have it Audie Murphy and his gang rob the train, but they can't find the money since Stewart hid it on a kid. Other stuff happens including people riding horses and shooting guns, but it's just a mess. Not a disaster, just a ham-handed mess.

All three of the leads are fine, but the direction by James Neilson is dead on arrival. Also a number of the scenes are obviously shot on a sound stage, which I found very distracting. Not really worth watching.

Interesting fact: According to IMDb Jimmy Stewart was so upset with Anthony Mann for refusing to direct the movie he never spoke to him ever again!

Notice Jack Elam on the right?

THE MAN FROM LARAMIE (1955)

The final Mann/Stewart western pairing has Stewart as a man searching for answering about the murder of his brother by Indians, in particular who supplied the killers with repeating rifles.  His search leads him to the small isolated town of Coronado.  It seems Coronado is run by a cattle baron and his psychotic son. There's also an ambitious ranch foreman (Arthur Kennedy) to deal with.

THE MAN FROM LARAMIE is a satisfactory western, but I can't really see any reason to get excited about it.  Nice photography and good acting, but the story was just kinda blah.  Worth a watch for western fans, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it.

Mann - Stewart westerns:

WINCHESTER '73 (1950)
BEND OF THE RIVER (1952)
THE NAKED SPUR (1953)
THE FAR COUNTRY (1954)

TABLOID (2010)

What a wild story.  [Update 03/30/2025: This review blows. Will rewatch the film and fix it. I just deleted some of it, since it was garbage.]

Okay, so what I can decipher from this fascinating documentary by Errol Morris is back in 1977 you have this mildly attractive young woman with mental issues, Joyce McKinney, who becomes obsessed with a local guy, Kirk Anderson, who's also seems to be off his rocker as well.  Anyway, they become a couple(?), but then he goes to England on a missionary trip without telling her.  She becomes a prostitute in order to pay a detective to find Kirk.  Once she locates Kirk, she hires some dudes to go with her to England to free him.  They get Kirk (the story gets foggy here) and take him to a remote cottage where Joyce attempts to un-brainwash him with three days of nonstop sex.  Eventually, Kirk calls his family, they pick him up and press charges against Joyce for kidnapping and rape.  That's when the tabloid newspapers gets hold of the story and it explodes.

TABLOID is a fun lightweight documentary and definitely worth checking out.