Before Dodge City. Before the badge. Jim's Bad Deed is a Gunsmoke origin story set in the Dakota Territory, where one man's lie set a tragedy in motion that wouldn't catch up to Matt Dillon for a long time.
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Mel Gibson at his peak, Jodie Foster at her most charming, and one of the most likable supporting casts of the nineties. Maverick (1994) is still an absolute blast.
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Retro WedNESday finally features an actual NES game. Gun.Smoke swaps the spaceships for cowboys and the result is one of Capcom's best early shooters. Here's why it still holds up.
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John Wayne was reported to have been offered a part in Blazing Saddles. After reading the script he called back and said “I can’t be in this, it’s too dirty… but I’ll be first in line to go see it when it comes out.” Imagining Wayne in the Wilder role makes me glad he turned it down. The other casting question that often comes up is why Richard Pryor did not play the part of the black sheriff in the film. That one apparently came down to a studio call, which is unfortunate since Wilder…
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This is a hell of a year for Kurt Russel fans. Not having done a western of any kind since Tombstone, 2015 will see him star in two oaters, this being the first, and the second one being QT’s upcoming ‘Hateful 8’. Bone Tomahawk (a truly great title) is billed as a genre-crossing horror western, although I would say that’s really only applicable to the final act of the film, which to be fair, cranks up the intensity level to eleven as far as the gore and terror are concerned. My wife is a huge…
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Spaghetti westerns might have just as easily been called Sergio westerns---as the three greatest directors of the genre all shared that same first name. Everyone knows Leone was the first, but probably at this point only real history/movie nerds know the other two--Sollima and Corbucci. Sergio Corbucci directed this classic Pasta Western back in 1966. The story is yet another play on Yojimbo, with a silent but deadly hero wandering through the desert who finds himself caught in the middle of two…
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I just saw “Little Big Man” and am amazed that it has managed to stay under my radar for so long. It stars a very young Dustin Hoffman playing a very old (120 years to be exact) former Indian fighter being interviewed by a snobby and bookish looking journalist with an old reel to reel tape recorder. Hoffman plays Jack Crab, AKA “Little Big Man” a name he receives from a tribe of Cheyenne (or as they refer to themselves---the Human Beings) after he is captured at the age of ten and raised with…
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“You can call me father. You can call me Jacob, or you can call me Jake. You can call me a dirty son of a bitch. But if you ever call me daddy again, I’ll finish this fight.” Welcome to a special Sunday Morning Westerns installment of my Quick Daily Reviews column here on TVE. Today I’m taking a look at a guilty pleasure, childhood favorite kind of movie starring none other than the Duke himself (John Wayne for this taking notes)Richard Boone (Have Gun Will Travel) and Maureen O’Hara once again…
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When I think back on the elements that most of my favorite westerns share, a few things come back time and time again in nearly each of them. First, great cinematography and epic settings. Check. Then you must have a memorable score such as the whistling in the “Dollars” trilogy or the old standard title songs from “My Darling Clementine” and others. This movie has one of the most dramatic and enduring scores of any movie ever. What makes it even more effective that it goes against the grain of…
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There’s an old divide among western fans that is probably mostly forgotten by modern viewers. A few years back I wrote what I consider to be the review I am the proudest of here, of my all time favorite western, Rio Bravo. Rio Bravo was made as answer to “High Noon” starring Gary Cooper since both Howard Hawks and John Wayne disliked the storyline of the lead hero having to slunk around town asking for help from cowardly townsman for a problem that, according to their more Hemingway like way of…
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We picture the west in vast panoramas, great big blue skies, open prairies, with miles upon miles of amazing, yet challenging and often life threatening terrain, symbolizing opportunity and risk, the “Manifest Destiny” of the 19th century and the quintessential “American Dream” of the 20th century, all punctuated by a booming Elmer Bernstein soundtrack and Big John Wayne smiling at us from afar atop his trusty mount. Seth MacFarlane pictures the west as a giant sweaty pile of cow manure with no…
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Has there ever been a movie that more effectively utilized a ‘cold opening’ better than Rio Bravo? We start with a dark and murky but still well crowded bar, a down on his luck and desperately drunk Deputy and a smug Gunman who first jokingly offers the Deputy a drink, and then tosses a silver dollar into a spittoon for him on the floor. These are the first images we witness in this classic Howard Hawk’s western released all the way back in 1959. The Deputy, played here in a show stealing…
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A smart director knows when he has pushed the limits far enough in one direction and needs to find a new approach and come at us with something altogether different and fresh. To be sure Sam Peckinpah did push the limits to the very outer edges and much more in terms of violence and bloodshed with his classic 1969 western masterpiece known as ‘The Wild Bunch’. So with that, in much the same way as the Coen brothers normally take a break to reboot after a big serious film like their classic…
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I don’t know why I’m writing this, everybody should already know this is a fantastic movie…what? There are people that haven’t seen this? You’re kidding…my God, those poor bastards. Ok, for the six people in the universe that haven’t seen this movie, allow me to give a brief summary. Tombstone is the story of legendary lawman Wyatt Earp (Russell) and his brothers (Elliott and Paxton), who have moved out west to Arizona in order to make their fortune. The Earps’ reputation precedes them…
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Now here is a movie deserving of its title, as True Grit, is truly, as tough and gritty as they come. I must confess that I do ever so love a good western. Like many, I grew up watching countless westerns with my dad and my grandfather. There's just something very special and timeless about that period of history just after the Civil War up until start of the 20th century, at least as far as movies are concerned. And when it comes to westerns, few of them were as watched and re-watched by me and…
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Daniel Evans (Bale) is a poor rancher trying to make it out West with his wife and two sons, and having a hard time making it work. Evans is figuratively and almost literally a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest (he lost one of his feet in the Civil War). His youngest boy has tuberculosis, and in order to pay for medicine, he had to take loans that he can’t make enough money to repay, as it’s not easy to raise good cattle with a drought. About to lose his small ranch and become homeless…
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