William Wyler's big-budget, large-format, star-studded epic, The Big Country, just may be the first anti-western. It condemns, rather than celebrates, the macho behavior of the mythical cowboy. The hero only fires a gun once, and he's not aiming at anyone. Gregory Peck plays that hero, a sea captain named James McKay, who's traded in his … Continue reading Critique of Macho: The Big Country on Blu-ray
Category: Westerns
The Rider must discover his own limitations in this excellent film
A Western drama Written & directed by Chloé Zhao When we first meet Brady (Brady Jandreau), he appears to be doing brain surgery on himself. Not quite, but he's removing massive bandages and even metal staples from his head. You get the very strong feeling that he shouldn't be doing this on his own. Brady, … Continue reading The Rider must discover his own limitations in this excellent film
The Greatest Western: Stagecoach
Nine determined people face mortal danger, their own demons, and society's built-in prejudices as they journey from one town to another in John Ford's classic western from 1939, Stagecoach. I first saw Stagecoach in a film history class almost 45 years ago. It immediately became my all-time favorite western, and remains so to this day. … Continue reading The Greatest Western: Stagecoach
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly all look pretty good on new Blu-ray
Sergio Leone's masterpiece - without doubt the greatest western shot entirely in Europe - gets a near Criterion treatment (without the Criterion price tag) in a two-disc Blu-ray set containing two versions of the film and a massive collection of extras. An Italian epic set during the American Civil War, The Good, the Bad, and … Continue reading The Good, the Bad and the Ugly all look pretty good on new Blu-ray
A+ List: Rio Bravo
Director Howard Hawks proved his talent in many genres, including westerns. He made four of them, and the first two, Red River and Rio Bravo, are masterpieces. Both belong on my A+ List of all-time greats. And yet, they're so different that it's hard to imagine they were made by the same director. Red River … Continue reading A+ List: Rio Bravo
Heaven’s Gate becomes its own kind of hell
Saturday night, I finally saw the film that destroyed United Artists: Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as legend proclaimed. Nor was it as good as recent revisionists insist. The Heaven's Gate disaster changed Hollywood. In 1979, Cimino was riding high as the writer and director of the Oscar-winning Deer Hunter. … Continue reading Heaven’s Gate becomes its own kind of hell
High Noon Blu-ray Review
Small, compact, and brimming with suspense, High Noon feels nothing like the other A westerns of the post-war period--epic movies like Red River, My Darling Clementine, and The Searchers. With its 85-minute runtime and looks-like-every-other-western sets, it feels more like the forgettable B oaters Hollywood was cranking out weekly in those days. But unlike those … Continue reading High Noon Blu-ray Review
