WELCOME THE FUCK BACK. In 1889, as South Dakota is celebrating its entrance into the Union, a few familiar faces are coming back to Deadwood where a significantly weakened Al Swearangen (Ian McShane) is still holding court. It took many years to get this TV movie, a bittersweet and very engaging conclusion to the 2004-2006 … Continue reading Deadwood: The Movie
NEVER FORGIVE. NEVER FORGET. Shortly after the Civil War, two families in the West Virginia-Kentucky area begin a feud that takes on epic proportions over the following three decades. The story of the most notorious family feud in American history gets an exciting and handsome treatment in the History channel’s first stab at scripted drama. … Continue reading Hatfields & McCoys
RIDE WITH THEM TO THE ADVENTURE OF YOUR LIFE! On the way to Silverado, four men (Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover) get to know each other and form a union against those who do them wrong. Lawrence Kasdan successfully took on an erotic thriller (Body Heat) and a nostalgic drama (The Big … Continue reading Silverado
HOW THE WEST WAS WON (MORE OR LESS). It was going to be the Coen brothers’ first collaboration with Netflix, a project that started out as a TV series. In the end, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs turned into a feature, their first digitally shot Western. I had no idea what to expect. It had … Continue reading Ballad of Buster Scruggs: The Wild, Wild West
THIS IS THE LAND OF YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN. When a tracker (Jeremy Renner) finds a frozen body of a teenage girl on the Wyoming Wind River Indian reservation, the FBI sends an agent (Elizabeth Olsen) who’s ill-prepared for the conditions… As a director, Taylor Sheridan follows the style set in his scripts for Sicario … Continue reading Wind River
WELCOME TO NO MAN’S LAND. The outlaw Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell) is on the run from his boss and adoptive father (Jeff Daniels), arriving in a small town where almost every man was killed in a huge mining accident… Much of what Scott Frank has written before (including the same year’s Logan) echoes Western symbolism, … Continue reading Godless
HIS MOUNTAIN. HIS PEACE. HIS GREAT HUNTS. HIS YOUNG BRIDE. WITH ALL THAT, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT. Sometime after the Mexican War, Jeremiah Johnson (Robert Redford) heads into the Rocky Mountains to become a trapper, but it’s a hard life… Sydney Pollack reunited with Redford after This Property Is Condemned (1966) for a drama … Continue reading Jeremiah Johnson
MAY THE LORD HAVE MERCY AND GRANT YOU A SWIFT DEATH. When Arthur O’Dwyer’s (Patrick Wilson) wife is kidnapped by a cannibalistic tribe, he joins sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell) and a few other men on a search party, even though he has a broken leg. S. Craig Zahler’s feature debut is a horror-Western that … Continue reading Bone Tomahawk
… AN ARMY OF ONE. After the murder of his family, Missouri farmer Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) joins a Confederate militia; when the Civil War ends, he refuses to surrender… A Western that became a hit with audiences and critics. It’s largely the kind of revenge story we’ve seen many times before, with Josey chased … Continue reading The Outlaw Josey Wales
BAD MEN WILL BLEED. Jon (Mads Mikkelsen), who emigrated to America after fighting in a Danish war in 1864, is finally reunited with his wife and son… but then evil men cause a tragedy. A Western written and directed by Danes whose ambition seems to have been creating a stylish genre exercise, but perhaps it … Continue reading The Salvation
BLOOD ALWAYS FOLLOWS MONEY. This film, surely one of the best to screen in the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes festival, may take place in West Texas, but it wasn’t shot there. The filmmakers opted for Eastern New Mexico instead, a region that is sometimes called ”Little Texas”. As far as culture, … Continue reading Hell or High Water: In the Land of the Comanche
SHE TURNED TO HER PAST TO PROTECT HER FAMILY. When her husband (Noah Emmerich) comes home with bullet wounds, Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman) teams up with a neighbor (Joel Edgerton) to fight a criminal gang. A troubled production eventually brought together director Gavin O’Connor and Edgerton (who both worked on Warrior (2011)) and they’ve staged … Continue reading Jane Got a Gun
HOMBRE MEANS MAN… PAUL NEWMAN IS HOMBRE! After being raised by the Apache, John Russell (Paul Newman) returns to “civilization” to claim an inheritance; after deciding to sell a house, he leaves on a stagecoach full of people who have reason to resent each other… One of the “revisionist” Westerns of the 1960s, a film … Continue reading Hombre
