Vincent D'Onofrio's Directorial Debut The Kid Is A Forgettable Trip To The West

Back in the early 1990s, Unforgiven was like a shot heard 'round the world for Westerns as it provided a more contemplative take on the once-omnipresent genre that saw Clint Eastwood do a realistic deconstruction of his fabled Man With No Name persona. Since then, most Westerns have used Unforgiven as a creative touchstone, especially in terms of being more conscious of the gruesome violence that transpired in the Old West compared to many classic Westerns. Such widespread imitations of Unforgiven have meant that the elements of Unforgiven that were once trailblazing are now themselves old hat. By contrast, the best recent Westerns have been films like Rango, True Grit and Slow West that have established their own unique identities rather than do their own variation on the somber contemplative mood of Unforgiven for the umpteenth time.

The Coen Brothers Return To Westerns In Successful Fashion With The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The anthology film refers to movies that are comprised of individual, typically stand-alone, short segments instead of one grander story. Modern examples of this trend are few-and-far-between, but they've been most common in the horror genre which has produced the various V/H/S movies and The ABC's of Death. I guess the wretched 2013 abomination Movie 43 would count as an anthology movie? Easily the most high-profile modern example of this type of feature has to be the newest motion picture from Joel and Ethan Coen, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which sees the iconic duo weaving six separate stories each inhabiting the Western genre they previously explored with 2010 directorial effort True Grit. 

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Sisters Brothers!

The rootin'-tootin' titular siblings of The Sisters Brothers are two men who have developed a reputation for being handy with a gun and getting whatever assignment you give them finished, albeit finished in an unconventional manner. These two men are Eli Sisters (John C. Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix), with the former member of the duo looking to find a way out of this life of being a gun-for-hire for bloodthirsty rich folks while Charlie Sisters see's no other life for himself and his brother than the one they're engaging in right now. Meanwhile, a pivotal subplot involves another duo, this time consisting of Southern dandy John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) and chemist Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), with Morris teaming up with Warm for a potentially lucrative prospecting gig after he was initially hired to hold Warm hostage for the Sisters Brothers.

Back To The Future: Part III Show A Million Ways To Have Fun In The West

Since watching Back To The Future: Part III for the first time and then discussing the film and the larger franchise it belongs to, I've learned something extraordinary: the low esteem I hold Back To The Future: Part II in is considered a "hot take" of sorts. While I love the first Back To The Future to pieces, the second entry in this series just never clicked for me, Marty McFly's journey into the future and various events of the first movie never filled me with all that much excitement. Back To The Future: Part III doesn't get things back to the quality level of the first movie but it does manage to create a movie that's actually fun to watch and fun was certainly something in low supply in the prior Back To The Future outing.

Clint Eastwoods Deconstructs The Very Genre That Launched Him To Stardom In Unforgiven

James Mangold and Hugh Jackman have cited many movies that carried a large influence over the creation of their 2017 X-Men feature Logan and it's no surprise to hear that Unforgiven was one particular movie Jackman saw as a guiding light for that final Wolverine movie (The Wrestler was another, similar unsurprising, point of inspiration for Jackman). Both Unforgiven and Logan star actors who play older weary versions of iconic stock characters they became famous for playing inhabiting a more realistic world low on hope and high on danger. Because Logan is dealing with an ex-superhero, the movie is able to end, after an entire film of bleak nastiness, on a note of hopefulness that the heroics Logan once committed will inspire a new generation to rise up and become beacons of hope in their own right. 

Hostiles Tries To Be A Woke Western But It Can't Quite Get It's Eyes Open

I've been beating the drum on director Scott Cooper for some time now, mainly thanks to how highly I thought of his 2013 feature Out of The Furnace (his 2009 motion picture Crazy Heart is also notably good). Thought it received an overall divisive critical reception upon initial release, I myself thought it was a great movie that managed to take the basic premise of a revenge action movie and imbue both a terrific Christian Bale performance and thoughtful grimness into it. Taking my love for his past works in mind, it breaks my heart to say that Scott Cooper's newest movie Hostiles, handily his most ambitious feature yet in terms of themes and scope, is a mess and an unpleasant one at that.

The 1952 Western High Noon Is As Relevant Today As It Was In It's Initial Release

Will Kane (Gary Cooper) has been good to the town of Hadleyville, New Mexico. He's been a loyal Marshall to this town for as long he can remember, making some enemies on the criminal side of things in the process but also making even more friends as he cleaned up the town and made it a safer place for people to live. Today, he's married his sweetheart Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly) and in the process, he's retiring from his duties as the Marshall of Hadleyville, New Mexico. The wedding between these two is a time of bliss and joy for both Kane and Fowler but it's cut short by news that none other than Frank Miller (Ian McDonald) has returned to town seeking vengeance against Will Kane.

"I Shot The Sheriff But I Did Not Shoot The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"

In his forty years as a notable cinematic leading man, Jimmy Stewart had more variety in terms of the types of characters he played and films he appeared than you might expect given how the default version of the guy is the "Aw, shucks" good o'l boy he played in his earliest works, most notably It's A Wonderful Life. But Stewart also played darker roles in Alfred Hitchcock fare like Vertigo and Rear Window that allowed the guys versatility as an actor to shine. Once the 1960's rolled around, he got to do a couple of collaborations with another iconic Hollywood director, John Ford, with one of their efforts being the 1962 motion picture The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Wild Wild West? More Like Mild Mild West, Amirite?

Wild Wild West wants to be Men In Black so badly. It's coming two years after those galaxy defenders showed up on multiplex screens across the world and broke tons of box office records and tried to replicate that movies financial success by reuniting the star and director of that film (Will Smith and Barry Sonnenfeld, respectively) in another heavily stylized action/comedy romp. This time, though, they were going to be working in the Western genre adapting the classic TV show Wild Wild West into a major motion picture and Smith would be paired off against Kevin Kline. The results were less akin to Men In Black and instead more along the lines of Men In Black II.

Get Up On This Stagecoach Partner!

A lot of times when you go back to the earliest piece of work from a legendary actor, it's bound to be some small-scale role without much in the way of glamor, an amusing contrast to the massive presence they would cultivate in the years to follow. Do you think anyone watching Grizzly II: The Concert back in 1983 would have thought that fella playing the bit character of Ron would end up becoming George Clooney, one of the biggest leading men of all-time? How about the fella who played Detective Fartman in Lenny The Wonder Dog who would end up becoming one of the great dramatic actors of this decade and one of the leading members of the newest Star Wars trilogy?

The Movies Begin: A Treasury Of Old Cinema | 1894-1913 (feat. Eadweard Muybridge & Thomas Edison Short Films, The Great Train Robbery, A Trip To The Moon) Review

Reviewing this Kino Lorber DVD collection of some of the earliest pieces of cinema was a total accident, I'll freely admit. While browsing the shelves at my college's library, I stumbled upon The Movies Begin: A Treasury Of Old Cinema | 1894-1913, without having either heard of this The Movies Begin series of DVD's, let alone this specific entry in the franchise. Upon discovering it, of course, I couldn't pass it up, especially since I had seen none of the numerous incredibly important shorts it contained within. It really is true how sometimes truly awesome experiences emerge from spontaneity.

Giddy On Up With The Searchers

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #7
Placement On Sight & Sound 50 Best Movies List: #7

Certain actors you tend to associate with specific types of movies. Matthew McConaughey, for instance, was the go-to romantic comedy guy for so long that that's what became known for while Adam Sandler was the proprietor of broad immature comedies. Perhaps no single actor is as directly tied to a genre they frequently inhabited as John Wayne is to the world of the Western. That no-nonsense attitude of his that always seemed to have a retort and a bullet ready to go for any situation seems to be the pop culture default for what many classify as a protagonist in a Western motion picture.

The Hateful Eight Review

In his past two movies, Quentin Tarantino went wider in scale than he ever had before, allowing Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained to depict the time period their stories were set in an appropriately sweeping manner. One got a sense of the scale of depravity that Nazi's and slave owners in these movies were inflicting on individuals via the scope that each plot possessed. Now, with his newest film, The Hateful Eight, Tarantino goes smaller, much much smaller. Much more in the vein of Reservoir Dogs, The Hateful Eight sticks to one location for the majority of its run time and centers itself on eight morally dubious individuals existing a few years after the Civil War has concluded. And none of these eight fellows can be trusted.

A Million Ways To Die In The West Review

Frontier Follies Find Fairly Average  Venture

Seth Macfarlane comedy adheres to two different principles; turning the mundane into its most exaggerated form, or taking something zany and bringing it down to Earth. The latter was brought to terrific life in Ted, while the former coheres the humor in A Million Ways To Die In The West. The film takes all the cliches of both western movies and actual frontier life and ratchets them up to their most violent and sexual extremes. For some comedians, this movie would be stepping out of their comfort zones in a big way, while for Macfarlane it feels disappointing he couldn't conjure up something more memorable right on the heels of Ted.