One Paragraph Movie Review: The General

One hundred and seventy-first film: The General from 1926, my first Buster Keaton film, and now I have a massive crush on a dead guy. Set during the American civil war, which I don’t have a deep personal connection to, I do have a deep personal connection to people who take things far past the point where other people would stop. Even if you don’t constantly think about the fact that Buster Keaton does all his own stunts and that this hugely expensive film legitimately dropped a locomotive engine off a burning bridge in Texas, it’s still extremely easy to be impressed by the fact that Keaton’s body can be doing acrobatics and avoiding splinters on every part of a train while his face remains stoical, without a smudge of eyeliner out of place. I love him, and even with my record of attraction to unavailable men, dead before I was born may be the biggest challenge yet. Four cigar-burned tablecloth holes out of five.