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Revisionist Westerns pack a punch, especially when shorn of everything non-elemental. Terror on the Prairie packs one hell of a punch, simultaneously elemental (Gina Carano plays a totally traditional wife and mother.) and revisionist (She’s also an ultra badass.). Plus, she’s smarter than the …
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Gina Carano cleans up well.
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Good, legendary, and disappointing. Yes Sergio Leone’s classic is a good movie, legendary even. Disappointing too, a bit mannered and dangerously close to self-parody given its protracted length. Whining out of the way, let’s now sing the praises of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
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The Bad & the Ugly switched in trailer
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Samurai cowboys save a poor village in ye old Mexico, riding in to one of the greatest themes of all time. Fifty years on, the all-star cast impresses less than the bravura music — the Marlboro jingle still arouses. The Magnificent Seven famously remakes Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai…
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Elmer Bernstein's Magnificent Theme
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Just as Goodfellas is the ne plus ultra of mob movies, Unforgiven is the apotheosis of Westerns. In classic Western form the movie endorses the ethos of the lone righteous man doing what needs done, while at the same time baldly debunking the glorification of gunfighters in the Wild West. T…
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Terrific Western: Howard Hawks behind the camera, John Wayne in front. Also the movie in which Dean Martin proved he could act, even if he was playing his typecast role of drunkard. |
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Heard of the Bondurant School of Driving? Lawless is the Bondurant school of bootlegging, V8 Fords careening along dirt roads included. Indeed, the story of a legendary family of moonshiners from Western Virginia – the Bondurants – gets a monumental telling in this powerfully assured and ente…
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Guy Pearce's dandy of a villain
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A Million Ways to Die in the West is highly recommended for Seth MacFarlane fans, of which I’m sadly one. Those capable of being offended should stay away. The F-bombs rain down thick and hard, as does the scatological humor and sexual bombast. Sound funny? Yes, step right up. Heavens no, …
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Self-Absorbed in the time of Self-Rel...
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Denzel Washington is Yul Brynner caliber, but Chris Pratt ain’t no Steve McQueen and the music in The (2016) Magnificent Seven is a very weak imitation of the all-time great theme from the 1960 original. Hence, Antoine Fuqua’s remake is a solidly entertaining Western, but will hardly go down as…
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Denzel talks Magnificent Seven
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The American Indian Wars were mostly over by 1892. Bad blood ran deep, with bands of crazed killers roaming the land, as other combatants tried to move on with life after wartime. Writer-director Scott Cooper adroitly uses this brutal and beautiful milieu for a piercing story about a cavalry capt… |
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The Old West ended when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hightailed it to Bolivia. Old Westerns ended when Paul Newman and Robert Redford became Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, outlaw charmers the likes of which the Silver Screen had never seen before. Four Oscars plus three additional n…
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Bewitching Musical Interlude
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