Do You Know What I Idi Amin?

Now making their way back to Netflix headquarters:

The Culpepper Cattle Co.

This 1972 western suggests what Lonesome Dove might have been like if Call and Gus hadn't been around and we'd just been left with the idjits, goons and callow youth. It starts out about as gritty as The Apple Dumpling Gang, with gee-whiz kid Ben Mockridge signing on with grumpy Frank Culpepper’s cattle drive to serve as the cook’s “Little Mary.” Stick with it, though, and it does get rougher as it goes along, especially once Ben is sent to a truly dank and dangerous looking cantina to recruit some desperate characters for the drive. Pretty good Peckinpah Lite ending, as the gang comes to the aid of creepy preacher Brother Efram, who doesn’t exactly seem grateful for their efforts.

The Passenger



I taped this movie back during my big Nicholson phase in the ’80s and never did manage to get more than 10-15 minutes into it, despite at least a half dozen attempts. It’s finally available on DVD and now that I’ve seen it, I’m not sure why I had so much trouble with it back then. True, it’s a little pokey in the early going, but this is Antonioni after all, the guy who takes a thriller premise (reporter switches identities with dead arms dealer) and turns it into an existential quest. With a car chase. And a very long continuous shot at the end that should be more famous than it is. At least, I don’t recall it ever coming up whenever folks discuss the first shots of Touch of Evil or The Player. It’s a great one, though, encompassing many mysterious elements as it pushes out the barred window of Nicholson’s hotel room, into a courtyard, circles around and comes back again. I re-watched this scene with Nicholson’s audio commentary, hoping to get some insight. Here is my recreation thereof:

(Nicholson voice): “Still the same shot…still the same shot…still the same shot…still the same shot…”

Really, that’s about it, although at the end he does reveal how the camera got through the window bars (which I had already guessed). Anyway, the movie as a whole is moody and intriguing, albeit somewhat flawed by Maria Schneider’s performance, which was…just odd, really. I do have an inexplicable fondness for movies set in tumultuous African countries in the ’60s and ’70s – something about the contrast between the Space Age, jet-set look of the cities and the jungles hopping with machete-wielding guerillas conducting an endless series of coups and counter-coups. The best script I ever read during my stint as a reader in Hollywood was about CIA agents carrying on their three-martini lifestyles while destabilizing the Congo. Of course it was never made. But anyway, The Passenger captured that whole scene beautifully and led me to take another look at…

General Idi Amin Dada



Barbet Schroeder’s “self-portrait” of the Ugandan dictator is more an example of great access and a great subject than a great documentary – it’s fascinating but feels incomplete somehow. As the narrator freely admits, many of the scenes were staged by Amin in hopes of showing himself in the best light – but his idea of the best light is somewhat flawed. He’s a jolly enough fellow for a mass murderer, a bit fuzzy on his own political philosophy (though he’s a big fan of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion), and basically obsessed with the military and all the toys it has to offer. He’s certainly more comfortable directing a mock heavy artillery assault than leading a cabinet meeting, although the looks on the faces of his ministers are priceless as he lectures them on the importance of loving their leader. The dangerous side of Amin is mostly submerged beneath buffoonery, although it does surface occasionally, notably towards the end when he is addressing a group of doctors (telling them not to be drunks) and a truly terrifying death-stare replaces his usual goofy grin. Talk about having final cut – in an interview included on the DVD, Schroeder tells of Amin demanding that two and a half minutes of footage be trimmed. When Schroeder initially refuses, Amin takes a hotel full of French citizens hostage until he agrees to the changes. (The missing footage has since been restored.) Amin also plays a mean accordion.