George Palmer

If you want to talk about formulaic characters, look at the abundance of movies with the boy scout kung fu expert who is so wonderful you can't stand it. That guy isn't a character. He is a formula. Don't get me wrong. I liked "Cinderella Man" and "The Wrestler" precisely because they were able to breath new life into this formula/character. ... I can understand how, if you looked at it the wrong way 27 Dresses might appear to be like the other Romcoms, but the characters have depth, and they come to realizations about themselves that are necessary if they want a long term relationship. ... If the character of Jane is being exploited in this movie it is far more by women than men, but Jane enjoys this work so much that I don't believe she is being exploited by anyone. Maybe some day she will realize that she can charge for this kind of work.

"Unforgiven" is a movie about violence itself. Violence is relentlessly deromanticized in this movie. The reason for it is the money that has been put out to kill two cowboys who have cut up the face of a prostitute, but reasons get swept aside in the pursuit of blood money, becoming the primary presence in the film. In the final scene we see a deference to the violence of Hollywood movies in the past when Clint Eastwood single handedly outshoots twenty men in a saloon. Perhaps the final message of this movie is that violence degrades all its practitioners. Clint Eastwood makes a dire threat to the locals of Big Whiskey, and it is a dire threat, so he can get out of town, but at what price to his soul?