Angie Lowe (Geraldine Page) and her son Johnny (Lee Aaker) live on a secluded ranch in the middle of the mountains, surrounded by Apache lodges, which would normally not bode well for settlers, since they were living in a time when there was enormous tension between Native Americans and European settlers. However, Angie has an…

As a cinematic population, we know better than to question Jane Campion or the decisions she makes when he endeavours to produce a film, even if this a surprisingly rare event (which only adds to the mythology surrounding the director, who is often regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of her generation, her name…

There aren’t many genres that have been revived, reinvented and rebooted quite as much as the western, with its long and storied history going all the way back to the earliest days of motion picture filmmaking, and persisting in some form or another for as long as audiences have been going to the movies. Far…

The western genre is a peculiar one – most of the time, it produces films that are mostly enjoyed by devotees to the genre, with those who may not be enamoured with it normally keeping their distance. Yet, it’s one of the few instances where every entry into the genre that is classified as a…

When a work of literature has already received a film adaptation that is as close to perfect as one can get (or at least cherished as such), it can be difficult for future filmmakers to work with the same material. True Grit, the novel by Charles Portis, was previously turned into a starring vehicle for…

Referring to Doc, one of the many films that focused on the eponymous legend of the Wild West, John “Doc” Holliday, as a western is both technically accurate and theoretically false, since despite its setting, there is very little that can be compared to traditional westerns, even those that fall under the revisionist category. A…

Buck Gordon (Buck Jones) is the sheriff of a small town, and he works exceptionally hard to maintain the peace. Most of the residents adhere to his strict but understandable rules, and there is very little trouble. However, a recent event has come to the sheriff’s attention, whereby two local landowners, Turner (Will Walling) and…

There is a lot of value in a film that recognizes its limitations, and very few directors knew this better than Budd Boetticher, whose name is almost synonymous with low-budget, but highly-popular, westerns that grew to amass quite a fanbase in the 1950s. Known mostly for a series of films lovingly-dubbed the “Ranown Cycle” (taken…

There are really only two reasons for anyone to actively seek out One-Eyed Jacks – this first is because it contains one of the rare truly villainous roles played by one of history’s finest character actors, Karl Malden. The second is to bear witness to the first and only film directed by Marlon Brando. Neither…

Not since Alejandro Jodorowsky made El Topo in 1970 has there been a western film as beautifully deranged as Bacurau, the incredibly audacious collaboration between Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, who work together to evoke the spirit of the dormant acid westerns that never fully manifested as a feasible area of filmmaking in their…