“‘Old’ Is the Keyword in Familiar Nicolas Cage Western ‘The Old Way'”

Way, way old. Continue reading →

“‘Saloum’ Is A Kinetic, Genre-Bending Revenge Story [TIFF Review]”

This movie kicks ass. Continue reading →

“‘News of the World’s Handsome, Old-Fashioned Western Is Premium Late-Career Tom Hanks”

An actor who has been good through much of his career, and great in the rest, continues striving to be better, and that’s why he’s an icon. Continue reading →

Review: Buffalo Boys, 2019, dir. Mike Wiluan

Of buffaloes, and boys, and western / martial arts revenge tropes. Also they have a grenade launcher. Take it from me, this one’s pretty wild. Continue reading →

Review: Five Fingers for Marseilles, 2018, dir. Michael Matthews

Cool story: I somehow wrote my entire review of Michael Matthews’ Five Fingers for Marseilles not realizing that, when I copied the HTML code to paste the title as needed throughout the piece, I managed to cut off the “s” at the end. Oh well! I’d pester my editor about it, but truth to tell, I’m … Continue reading →

“Let the Corpses Tan Is An Exhausting Movie. That’s What Makes It Great.”

I’m pleased that The Week gave me the go-ahead to write about Let the Corpses Tan, the new film from married filmmaking duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, whose last feature, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, came out about five years ago; it’s an oddball movie, grimy, sleazy, and likely way off-radar for a portion of their … Continue reading →

“In ‘Damsel,’ It’s The Men Who Are In Distress”

In retrospect, this piece I wrote about Damsel for The Week might be a little unkind to poor Parson Henry; he is indeed pathetic, and he is in distress, but he’s genuine and honest and frankly every other character in the film takes advantage of him or otherwise abuses him without thinking twice about it. It’s nigh-impossible … Continue reading →

Review: Mohawk, 2018, dir. Ted Geoghegan

I’m not against genre movies being “elevated,” but if you’re going to elevate your genre movie, you need to have a good reason. Otherwise, just make an honest genre movie, and make it well, like Ted Geoghegan does in his latest movie, Mohawk, and in his previous movie, We Are Still Here, which I adore.  You can … Continue reading →

Review: Hostiles, 2017, dir. Scott Cooper

Poor Scott Cooper. This guy, he just can’t make a movie I’m capable of tolerating. I bet he’s pretty bummed. I hated Out of the Furnace; I also hated Black Mass, a movie I took personally as a Bostonian. (Seriously, someone make a fucking movie about Boston that doesn’t hinge on bad accents for once, please.) Cut … Continue reading →

The 20 Best Westerns on Netflix

I must confess that I found the utter dearth of really great Western films available for streaming on ye olde Netflix not only perplexing, but disturbing. You’re telling me that Netflix can’t manage to put twenty great Western films up on its site, and instead can only manage to put a much smaller number than that, plus … Continue reading →

Paste Magazine’s 100 Greatest Westerns Of All Time

Here’s the deal: I worked a really, really, really long time on this list, and so did the people I worked on it with, and you just know by the title what the whole thing is all about. I’m not going to slow walk you through it. Just take this magical link to Paste Magazine to scope … Continue reading →

Review: The Hateful Eight, 2015, dir. Quentin Tarantino

“‘Looks can be deceiving,’ says Michael Madsen to Kurt Russell upon first introduction in The Hateful Eight. No four words could be more appropriate to the moment, or to the movie: Russell’s character, a bounty hunter named John Wayne Ruth, is distrusting by nature, even more so because he has a prisoner named Daisy Domergue … Continue reading →

Review: The Salvation, 2015, dir. Kristian Levring

“Don’t bother playing the “name that reference” game with Kristian Levring’s The Salvation; his film owes much to the titans of the Western archetype, but he makes few if any nods to them. For whatever reason, we tend to expect our genre films to pay visual or aural tribute to their sires as though homage … Continue reading →

Review: Meek’s Cutoff, 2011, dir. Kelly Reichardt

Meek’s Cutoff feels something like an oddity in the western genre, and I mean that in the best way possible. There’s no denying the western influences clearly embedded in its cinematic DNA; Kelly Reichardt’s fourth feature very much draws from that celluloid tradition, but she’s not telling a story about cowboys and Indians or marshals … Continue reading →