Indé film

APACHE WOMAN

1955

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by Lou Russof

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LXII: Out in the land where the weak are target practice

HOME ON THE RANGE

2004

Directed by Will Finn and John Sanford

Written by Michael LaBash, Sam Levine, Mark Kennedy, Robert Lence, Will Finn, and John Sanford

Spoilers: moderate

If a young man came to me today with similar credentials there's no way I'd hire him

FIVE GUNS WEST

1955

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by R. Wright Campbell

Spoilers: moderate

Cardboard Science: Weird West

THE VALLEY OF GWANGI

1969

Directed by Jim O'Connolly

Written by Willis O'Brien, William Bast, and Julian More

THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN

1956

Directed by Ismael Rodriguez and Edward Nassour

Written by Willis O'Brien, Robert Hill, and Jack DeWitt

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part XLVIII: At the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine

POCAHONTAS

1995

Directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg

Written by Carl Binder, Sussanah Grant, Philip LaZebnik, et al

Spoilers: N/A

Disney's Challengers, part X: A thriving animation studio, somewhere in the world

AN AMERICAN TAIL: FIEVEL GOES WEST

1991

Directed by Simon Wells and Phil Nibbelink

Written by David Kirchner, Charles Swenson, and Flint Dille

Spoilers: moderate

Disinherit the earth

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Written by Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese (based on the book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann)

Spoilers: N/A

A boy and his deer

THE YEARLING

1946

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by Paul Osborn and John Lee Mahin (based on the novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)

Spoilers: moderate

I killed a man who I hated today

REVENGE

1990

Directed by Tony Scott

Written by Jim Harrison and Jeffrey Alan Fiskin (based on the novella by Jim Harrison)

Spoilers: moderate

You're not fast enough for me

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

1995

Directed by Sam Raimi

Written by Simon Moore

Spoilers: moderate

The only law west of the Pecos

THE WESTERNER

1940

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Niven Busch, Jo Swerling, Stuart N. Lake, W.R. Burnett, Lillian Hellman, and Oliver La Farge

Spoiler alert: moderate

You love a fight your style, but I wonder if you've got the stomach for it, gentleman-style

THE BIG COUNTRY

1958

Directed by William Wyler

Written by James R. Webb, Sy Bartlett, and Robert Wilder (based on the novel Ambush at Blanco Canyon by Donald Hamilton)

Spoiler alert: dreams stay with you, like a lover's voice, 'cross the mountainside (okay, okay, moderate)

The meanness of the used-ta-been

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS

The Coens are back with another oddball project, an anthology that, in some ways, is more coherent than a lot of their monolithic narratives; and it's a damn fine thing, too, although that doesn't stop parts of it from being somewhat less than worth your time.

2018
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

Spoiler alert: moderate

Robert Zemeckis, part VIII: Tempus quiescit

BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III

Back to the Future takes a vacation in the Old West, which doesn't seem like it should be the summing up of a box office-shattering, pop culture-redefining trilogy, and guess what?  It really isn't—but there we have it, and there's no changing it now.  And yet it's still an awful lot of fun on its own lessened terms, and that doesn't just count for something; it's damned near the whole ball of wax.

1990
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis
With Michael J. Fox (Marty McFly and Seamus McFly), Christopher Lloyd (Dr. Emmett Brown), Mary Steenburgen (Clara Clayton), and Thomas F. Wilson (Biff Tannen and Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen)

Spoiler alert: severe

Reviews from gulag: The humanitarian diet

Hey, when our own food supply is contingent on patent ecological unsustainability, the brutalization of millions of slave laborers, and the mass torture of billions of defenseless animals, who the heck are we to judge what "ethical consumption" really means?  Today, we dig into Bone Tomahawk, Quest For Fire, and The Green Inferno.

BONE TOMAHAWK (2015)

When two bandits blunder into the territory of an unnamed, heretofore-unknown tribe of Indians not too far from the frontier settlement of Bright Hope, only one (David Arquette) comes out alive.  Making his way to town after his ordeal, it's about two minutes before he runs afoul of Sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell) and his aged deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins) and gets half his leg blown off.  That's how the local medicine woman Samantha (Lili Simmons) happens to be at the jail that night when the Indians track their enemy down; naturally, they seize both.  Thus the sheriff, his deputy, the woman's husband, Arthur (Patrick Wilson), and the Indian-killing fop Brooder (Matthew Fox) embark on a mission of rescue.  Their journey is long, and arduous, and longer and more arduous still thanks to Arthur's broken leg and the random encounters generated by writer-director S. Craig Zahler's twenty-sided plot dice.  Ultimately, however, the four doomed men find what they're looking for, and the fate in store for them is more horrific than they ever could have anticipated.

It probably ought to be a spoiler, though obviously it isn't, to say, "They're cannibals."  This is the selling point of Bone Tomahawk, as well as its Achilles' heel: it is a movie, written and produced in 2015, about a bunch of white guys following the trail of a bunch of red guys who turn out to eat white guys, and thus need to be eradicated with all the force the white race can bring to bear upon them.  But Tomahawk takes some of the edge off with a helpful token Lakota professor played by Zahn Mcclaron, who has the thankless role of explaining why nobody ought to get mad.  These Indians, says he, are better described as "troglodytes," and they're sure as hell not part of any tribe that he recognizes.  The real shame of it is, that despite being onscreen for just a couple of minutes, Mcclaron occupies the screen with a sufficient force—particularly as he pushes back against the arch-racist Brooder—that you kind of wish that he had accompanied the gunslingers on their quest, and maybe even that Tomahawk had more of a point beyond, "We wanted to do a Western with cannibals."  But, you know, there turns out to be an awful lot of wisdom in the Professor's refusal of the Sheriff's invitation.  So perhaps the point is that Indians are smarter than us white folk.

John Carpenter, part XXV: Did you get any wood? Huh? You get a little mahagony from that little ebony?

VAMPIRES

The one Carpenter film I hadn't seen yet turns out to not be the diamond in the rough I had hoped.  And, as you know, Late Period Carpenter is very rough indeed.

1998

Directed by John Carpenter

Written Dan Jakoby (based on the novel by John Steakley)

With James Woods (Jack Crow), Daniel Baldwin (Anthony Montoya), Tim Guinee (Father Adam Guiteau), Sheryl Lee (Katrina), Maximilian Schell (Cardinal Alba), and Thomas Ian Griffith (Jan Valek)

Spoiler alert: moderate

A savage is a savage

THE REVENANT

Go west, young man—and get yourself right torn to shit by a fucking bear.

2015

Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Written by Mark L. Smith and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (based on the novel by Michael Punke)

With Leonardo DiCaprio (Hugh Glass), Tom Hardy (John Fitzgerald), Domnhall Gleeson (Capt. Andrew Henry), Forrest Goodluck (Hawk Glass), Duane Howard (Elk Dog), and Melaw Nakehk'o (Powaga)

Spoiler alert: moderate

A bounty hunter picnic

THE HATEFUL EIGHT

It's a real, painful shame that it's not much, much better than it actually is—but Tarantino's new nihilistic Western surely remains entertaining enough to while away three hours with.

2015
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

With Samuel Jackson (Maj. Marquis Warren), Kurt Russel (John "The Hangman" Ruth), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Daisy Domergue), Walton Goggins (Sheriff Chris Mannix), Demian Bichir (Bob the Mexican), Tim Roth (Oswaldo Mobray), Michael Madsen (Joe Gage), Bruce Dern (Gen. Sandy Smithers), and James Parks (O.B. Jackson)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Yippee-ki-yay

SLOW WEST

It's awfully pretentious, like every modern Western must be, but at least Slow West isn't that slow, and it's fitfully beautiful, too, despite the many importune choices first-time feature director John Maclean makes while bringing his vision of the American West to a certain kind of life.

2015
Written and directed by John Maclean
With Michael Fassbender (Silas Selleck), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Jay Cavendish), and Caren Pistorius (Rose Ross)

Spoiler alert: moderate

A million ways to die in the West

THE HOMESMAN

The Homesman is an uncompromising vision of human nature that, nonetheless, seems a little too selective in what it wants to look at.  Even so, it's as good a Western that came out in 2014 (and since that's a bar that basically does not exist, let's also say it's very good in its own right, too).

2014
Directed by Tommy Lee Jones
Written by Kieran Fitzgerald, Wesley A. Oliver, and Tommy Lee Jones (based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout)
With Hillary Swank (Mary Bee Cuddy) and Tommy Lee Jones (the homesman d/b/a "George Briggs")

Spoiler alert: moderate