Though this western’s goals are lofty, the end result comes off lugubrious, arch, and self-satisfied.

Director Ty West takes his inspiration from the spate of second-rate Hollywood and third-rate Italian spaghetti westerns of the early- to mid-’70s.

This neonoir will not surprise you. That’s not a criticism. In fact, that very predictability is central to the film’s success.

As has been reported often over the past year, The Revenant was a troubled shoot, where the budget rose to great heights and crew walked off over the unendurable conditions on location in the woods of Alberta, Canada, where the temperature went down to minus 40 below. To the actors’ credit, most of all Leonardo […]

Let’s get the premise out of the way first, shall we? John Ruth “The Hangman” (Kurt Russell) is gonna take Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh, sporting a big black eye that is never explained but doesn’t has to be, to Red Rock, Wyoming, circa early 1870’s (give or take a few years). There she’s set […]

“Why do you come like you want a war?” protagonist Augusta (indie-darling Brit Marling) asks her Union soldier attacker. He states that, after all the fighting he has done, it is impossible to stop. Set during the last days of the Civil War, The Keeping Room presents a distinctly revisionist Western, taking a feminist approach […]

John C. Reilly was a triple threat at Cannes, costarring in Lobster and sharing screen time with Salma Hayek in Tale of Tales, two films in the competition. He also popped out of nowhere in a cameo in Thomas Bidegain’s debut, the French-language Les Cowboys, one of the most ambitious films in the entire festival. […]

Written and Directed by Pablo Fendrik Released by Participant Media Spanish with English subtitles Argentina/Mexico/Brazil/France/USA. 100 min. Not rated With Gael Garcia Bernal, Alice Braga, and Claudio Tolcachir In the beginning, an intertitle explains that residents of the northern Argentine rainforest beseech river spirits to aid them when they feel threaten. Thus, early on, Gael […]

Written and Directed by John Maclean Produced by Rachel Gardner, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, and Conor McCaughan Released by A24 UK/New Zealand. 91 min. Rated R With Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Caren Pistorius, and Rory McCann The feature debut of former Beta Band member John MacLean is an arty little Western that has […]