While there’s no denying the Disney/Depp relationship went stale a long time ago and his clownish buffoonery has entirely consumed the once-great screen actor, there is still plenty to appreciate in Gore Verbinski’s beautifully realised, mean-spirited western. Quite why $250 million was pumped into it, or why anyone thought this was a suitable topic for […] Read more »
Some of you may remember that I watched this as recently as January, in preparation for a feature I was writing for the Hong Kong Film Archive. Well, now the reason for that article has come to fruition and the HKFA has begun its season of classic westerns. The opportunity to see John Ford’s masterpiece […] Read more »
Another of the grand restored classics to play at this year’s HKIFF was the fully restored 216-minute version of Michael Cimino’s calamitous Western. This was not the first time I had seen the film, but witnessing this ponderous tale of immigrant farmers being ousted from their homes by the bloodthirsty Wyoming Stock Growers Association gives […] Read more »
After completing his “Dollars Trilogy”, Sergio Leone was done with the Western, until Paramount offered him a huge budget and the opportunity to work with his favourite actor, Henry Fonda. The result is a more sombre, elegiac affair than his previous films, but one which in which Leone attempted to have the final word in […] Read more »
Sergio Leone’s third and final chapter in his loose “dollars trilogy” with Clint Eastwood is also the first of two back-to-back masterpieces of the genre from the king of the Spaghetti Western. Eastwood’s “Blondie” (aka The Man With No Name) is as cool and mysterious as ever, while Lee Van Cleef is suitably villainous as […] Read more »
In preparation for a piece I’m writing for the HK Film Archive, I’m re-visiting a number of classic Westerns this week. After John Ford’s The Searchers, next on my list was Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo, a film I had only come to late, but one in which I took great pleasure re-watching. Perhaps more than […] Read more »
First watched this as a teenager and failed to get too much from it beyond the spectacle of Monument Valley. The new HD restoration makes the film worth re-watching for the vistas alone, but the story really hit home this time. John Wayne plays a disenchanted Confederate soldier, looking for a cause and a direction […] Read more »
Quentin Tarantino delivers another rip-roaring slice of reverential exploitation Cinema, this time dressing up a condemnation of the American slave trade as a blood-soaked spaghetti western. Read my full review here Read more »
It was a foregone conclusion that Quentin Tarantino would one day produce his take on the spaghetti western. There are glimpses of this distinctive genre’s style in many of his films, most prominently Kill Bill: Volume 2 and Inglourious Basterds, and he has frequently heralded Sergio Leone’s masterpiece, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly […] Read more »
Gary Cooper plays the newly-married Marshal, set to leave town and start a new life with pacifist Quaker wife, Grace Kelly, when he learns a vicious criminal is heading into town on the noon train. As the minutes tick by in real time, Cooper scrambles to recruit more deputies, only to discover nobody is willing […] Read more »
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in his first leading role in almost a decade, as a veteran small-town sheriff forced into action by a South American drug lord, who is heading for the Mexican border at high speed. Could have been worse, but should have been a lot better considering Korean wunderkind Kim Ji-woon was at the […] Read more »
Coming off the back of two hugely successful Iron Man movies for Marvel Studios, director Jon Favreau chose a high concept comic book adaptation as his next project, focusing on an alien invasion during the American Wild West of the late 19th Century. Produced by Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard, Cowboys & Aliens takes its […] Read more »