REVIEW: Murder at Yellowstone City [2022]

You killed hope. Nobody in the Montana Territory circa 1881 is watching a former slave like Cicero (Isaiah Mustafa) walk into town without keen interest. That goes for friends and foes alike. Luckily for him, Yellowstone City is a progressive settlement in many ways. It has its fair share of racists and bigots to be sure, but you can’t help feeling heartened as far as seeing a saloon owned by a gay couple (Richard Dreyfuss‘ Edgar and John Ales‘ Mickey) who act as fathers to wayward souls like the young…

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REVIEW: The Power of the Dog [2021]

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Bronco Henry made Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) a man and the latter won’t let anyone forget it twenty years after his mentor’s death. Everything he does is a testament to his late friend as a result. Finished with the long trek herding cows back to the family ranch run by him and his brother George (Jesse Plemons)? Drink a shot to Bronco. Find yourself in need of a task to take your mind off the gradual deterioration of a life you thought you…

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REVIEW: The Harder They Fall [2021]

Now it’s us and y’all. How can you not get behind a project like Jeymes Samuel‘s (aka The Bullitts) feature debut The Harder They Fall after hearing him describe the decision to put real life men and women, who may have never met, together in one story with the words, “I just assembled them like Black Gods.” Growing up loving westerns, that’s exactly who they were to him: historical people of color from the Old West who’ve too often been pushed to the fringes as their white counterparts gained legendary…

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REVIEW: Old Henry [2021]

Who are you? Henry’s (Tim Blake Nelson) been living and farming his Oklahoma territory land for almost two decades, if not more—the last ten as a single father to the now teenage Wyatt (Gavin Lewis). Despite having help from his brother-in-law down the way (Trace Adkins‘ Al), this life isn’t an easy one and the kid is desperate to escape it as much because of the work as the stone wall his dad has become. Wyatt feels as though he’s still being treated like a child when he knows he…

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REVIEW: Bisbee ’17 [2018]

Thank you for riding the deportation express. On the surface it appears to be an illegal deportation of anti-union Americans at the hands of newly deputized company loyalists in Bisbee, Arizona. Approximately 1,200 copper mining strikers and sympathizers were rounded up at gunpoint in 1917, ushered into cattle cars, and driven over the border to New Mexico with the declaration that returning home would end in their death. Maybe the illegality of the incident was enough to keep it all a closely guarded secret, but digging further reveals another truth…

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REVIEW: Jauja [2014]

The desert devours everything. Colonialism, Manifest Destiny, and any other act by a foreign nation to claim the land of an indigenous people as its own are performed with a desire for power and prosperity. It’s about ego and entitlement—the search to create a mythology that glosses over genocide for the “heroism” of a brute that stumbled upon something he didn’t like to think wasn’t automatically his to own. So while Jauja itself is a fabled city of riches and happiness, writer/director Lisandro Alonso uses the word to describe conquest…

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REVIEW: Little Woods [2019]

Your choices are only as good as your options. There’s a great documentary about what life is like in the fracking boomtowns of North Dakota entitled The Overnighters. In it we witness an example of humanity at its simultaneous best and worst. Desperate men seeking an escape from troubles back home arrive to find a different sort of struggle that they may never overcome despite promises sold. Angels prove themselves to be demons and vice versa as director Jesse Moss collects candid interviews that reveal just how bad things are…

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REVIEW: The Wind [2019]

How did she get my gun? A suicide. A stillborn baby. A woman holding the latter as she leaves the former to show her husband and the now widower father the results of the harrowing night thus far kept off-screen. We hear the wind blowing as the camera pushes in towards Lizzy Macklin’s (Caitlin Gerard) haunted face in silent shock. Only after she washes the blood from her body and sees Isaac (Ashley Zukerman) place her rifle against the table does she speak and only after mother and child are…

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REVIEW: The Kid [2019]

You gotta learn to trust inna fella. With so many different iterations of the same exact story flooding the cinematic market every year via reboots and sequels, it’s nice when someone decides to look at a common narrative through a new lens. This is what director Vincent D’Onofrio and screenwriter Andrew Lanham hope to accomplish with The Kid—a glimpse at the oft-mythologized game played by former friends turned enemies Billy the Kid (Dane DeHaan) and Pat Garrett (Ethan Hawke) from the eyes of a fourteen year old boy (Jake Shur‘s…

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REVIEW: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs [2018]

Well don’t let my white duds and pleasant demeanor fool ya. You know the whole enterprise will be a bit cheeky just by directors’ Joel and Ethan Coen‘s statement of intent. While explaining that their love for anthology movies stems from the format’s ability to unite multiple directors with a common theme, they admit their hopes of doing the same with a sextet of Western tales written and adapted over the years. Instead of lamenting the fact they couldn’t make it happen before deciding to direct everything themselves, the duo…

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REVIEW: The Rider [2018]

Don’t give up on your dreams. Whether you’ve ever rode a horse or not, you know what happens when they’re injured. It could be that you saw the black and white decision to put one down in a movie. Or maybe you heard about a bad break during one of the televised derbies people get all crazy about. This is generally what happens with all animals. If a pet is sick to the point of having its way of life decimated, euthanasia becomes the humane choice. And yet assisted suicide…

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