Down in the Valley first published by Film4, 14 March 2006 It may be shot in expansive anamorphic widescreen, and feature an outlaw gunning for mythic glory, but David Jacobson’s latest feature unfolds not in Monument Valley like most Hollywood oaters, but in California’s present-day San Fernando Valley, with its 12-lane freeways and suburban sprawl. …
The Dead Don’t Hurt first published by Sight and Sound, 6 March 2024, for its screening at Glasgow Film Festival 2024 Time plays tricks in writer/director/actor Viggo Mortensen’s mid-nineteenth century oater The Dead Don’t Hurt. For it opens near both end and beginning of its heroine’s life, with the sound of heavy breathing as French-Canadian…
Loïc Tanson’s The Last Ashes (Läif a Séil) opens in 1838, one year before Luxembourg would, in exchange for partition and diminution, gain her independence. Still under Dutch occupation, Luxembourg is ravaged by famine, war, disease and depopulation – although one clan, living in the North of the country and led by Graff (Jules Werner),…
Sue Parker (Willa Holland) tends bar in a small college town in North Louisiana. Here class divisions are demarcated by the river running through the town centre, with massive shoreline mansions on one side and trailers on the other. As Sue states in the voiceover which opens The Dirty South, this Bible Belt community is…
Tremors first published by Little White Lies, as entry 157 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column Ron Underwood’s Tremors opens with Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon) standing on the edge of a rocky cliff, and urinating onto the ground far below. He is first shown from the front in an extra wide shot too distant to allow…
Godmonster of Indian Flats first published by Little White Lies, as entry 152 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column Right from its title, there is something weird going on in Fredric Hobbs’ Godmonster of Indian Flats. It is that word, godmonster. If it were just god, or just monster, the title might be more readily digestible…
Johnny Guitar first published by Little White Lies, as entry 136 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column A stranger wanders into a divided community. This is the plot of George Stevens’ iconic oater Shane (1953), as its eponymous gunfighter drifts into a local dispute and sides with the wholesome, homespun underdogs, before moving on, injured, into…
The Proposition first published by EyeforFilm, 10 Mar 2006 John Hillcoat‘s brutal 1988 directorial debut,Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead, co-starring Goth/blues/punk genius Nick Cave (who also shared credits for the screenplay and score) was then, and still remains, the grittiest, most hard-hitting prison film ever made. So expectations were raised very high when it was…
Ghosts of the Ozarks has its international première at Grimmfest Easter Edition 2022 In 1866, America was a scarred country which, having just emerged from the violent divisions of Civil War, was in need of healing. As a young physician who had served the Union as a field surgeon, African-American James McCune (Thomas Hobson) might…
First Cow first published by Movies On Weekends “It’s the getting started that’s the puzzle,” says King-Lu (Orion Lee) in Kelly Reichardt‘s First Cow. “No way for a poor man to start. You need capital. Or you need some kind of miracle… Or a crime.” It is the early nineteenth century, not that far removed…
True Grit first published by EyeforFilm There is a strange sequence in the middle of Ethan and Joel Coen’s latest film, True Grit. Headstrong 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) and her hired lawman Deputy Marshall Reuben ‘Rooster’ Cogburn’ (Jeff Bridges) are riding through the Choctaw Nation in search of Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man…