If you love great films and high-quality film making, and, like me, you love Texas movies most of all, I urge you to read “The Top 50 Texas Movies” list compiled by five writers at The Houston Chronicle.
You can read their picks at this online link, as the Chronicle will allow if few views for non-subscribers.
Ben Foster and Chris Pine channeled Paul Newman in Hud and James Dean in Giant in their grade-A performances as a pair of Texas brothers seeking to justice from callous bankers.
As a movie fanatic and a nationalistic, patriotic Texan, I like the Chronicle’s picks, even though it’s not the list I (or you anyone else) would have compiled.
All in all, however, I’m OK with their Top 10 Texas picture shows.
I’ve always thought Hell or High Water, which I’ve watched at least six times as it’s frequently shown on cable movie channels, should have picked up a wagonload of Oscars in 2016.
I really like the Chron’s terse, “Notable Texas Moments” they included with their picks. Their notable moment for Hell or High Water: “When the brothers rob a bank and find they aren’t the only ones who are armed.”
Indeed, there were a LOT of notable, pucker-up Texas moments in this movie.
Jeff Bridges, one of the three or four greatest actors alive, and the excellent Gil Birmingham as Indian partner in the gritty (and oh-so wonderfully politically incorrect) Hell or High Water.
Movies like Hell or High Water, which tell powerful stories about broken-up human beings seeking and finding hard-won grace and redemption, are out of fashion in Hollywood now.
If the filmmakers had made Jeff Bridges’ Texas Ranger a Marvel Comic character, with him able to leap whole West Texas towns in a single bound, it would have would won 15 Oscars and broken box-office records. (Note that the ever-great Jeff Bridges is in the Chron’s Top 2 movie picks, btw.)
In addition, the entire cast of Hell or High Water would have made group appearances on every late night show on TV* and yapped (lied?) about what a GREAT TIME THEY HAD WORKING TOGETHER!!!!
Hell or High Water is the kind of anti-establishment, anti-hero movie that’s a throwback to great films in that genre like Hud and, for that matter, Giant.
And that’s a pretty high commendation in this Texan’s book.
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*(Jimmy Fallon never had a guest on his show who wasn’t a dear friend he loved like a brother or sister and knew to be one of the world’s greatest human beings. David Letterman, please come back and save late night TV!!!)
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