In the same scheme in which Jacques Audiard’s Palm d’Or-winning migrant drama Dheepan metamorphizes into a hazy and violent stupor in it’s the final moments, his first foray into the western genre does something similar but this time in reverse.…
The Film Canon: The Great Silence (1968)
At first glance there is little to distinguish between Jean-Louis Trintignant’s spaghetti western protagonist ‘Silence’ and Clint Eastwood’s ‘Man with No Name’. But over the course of Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence we see, not only a completely new figure…
Damsel Movie Review: Zellner brothers’ latest is a darkly funny feminist western
Westerns are big right now, and for good reason. Classic examples of the genre tend to embody American ideals of strong, heroic men triumphing over nature, beating the bad guys, and getting the pretty, helpless girl. It presents quite an…
Western Movie Review
In an interview with Film Comment, Western’s director Valeska Grisebach had some curious words when describing her leading man, nonprofessional actor Meinhard Neumann. “I saw him in a horse market near Berlin. He was sitting there in a cowboy hat, but…
10 Years Later: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Considering that the very title of Andrew Dominik’s 2007 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford spoils a major plot event in the film, it wouldn’t be totally unbefitting of me to start this piece with a…
Comic-Con 2015: Five Things We Learned About ‘The Hateful Eight’
Last week at San Diego Comic-Con, The Hateful Eight panel took place in Hall H. The panel was moderated by Chris Hardwick and introduced director/writer Quentin Tarantino and cast members Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, Demian Bichir, Jennifer Jason-Leigh,…
Jon’s Movie Review: “Slow West” Is A Modern Classic
There is an untamed purity to the West in the pre-colonization period. People were slowly making their way westward in the hopes of getting their own chance at the American Dream. The West not only embodied the American spirit of…