Rango

Gore Verbinski, 2011 (8.8*)
Academy Award, Best Animated Film

I loved this trippy, clever, irreverent film! You know you’re into something heady when a family's pet chameleon character, hilariously voiced by Johnny Depp, falls off the family car on a highway,  and  gets blown by traffic smack into the windshield of the convertible driven by Hunter Thompson with Dr. Gonzo in the back, and Hunter and the lizard are wearing the same shirt ! That’s an indicator right there that this film may be a little induced by altered states.

Director Gore Verbinski directed the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and once again he seems to have fun directing this wacky stuff.

After falling off the car, he meets various desert dwelling critters that give him advice, with Alfred Molina as an armadillo telling him he needs to find the town of Dirt, out there somewhere. When he does, it’s inhabited by an odd assortment of western dressing animals. He meets a snotty girl, tho tells him, after mutual insults, "strangers don’t last long here", but when he discovers the town needs a sheriff and a hero, he volunteers, being lost and having little choice. He picks up his name in a bar, but I won’t spoil how he gets it, it’s mostly visual.


Much of this film is like that, references to classic westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, High Noon, even the later Quick and the Dead. There are also scenes paying homage to Chinatown and Apocalypse Now, and likely others that escaped me.

Ned Beatty gives his best John Huston (a la Chinatown) voice, as the mayor, who may or may not be involved in a plot involving the town’s water supply. British actor Bill Nighy is a dead ringer for the voice of Jack Palance as the villain Rattlesnake Jake. The plot is eerily similar to that of Chinatown, a parched town needs water, it never rains, and for some reason the town’s supply faucet has gone dry, spewing out mud and no liquid, so everyone is about to die of thirst like the crops already have.

Depp is perfect for this, delivering lines like "and stay out of my peripheral vision", and  "we should follow the pipe to it’s hydraulic origin, capture the criminals and solve this aquatic conundrum".

If you like classic westerns, as well as Depp’s irreverent, inebriated style, this will be right up your alley. Perhaps more enjoyable for adults than kids, it’s still a G-rated comedy that the entire family can watch together with many guffaws – though I’m sure the kids will often ask “what did he say?”, just like the background characters do.

There’s an uncanny scene by Tim Oliphant as the voice of Clint Eastwood, delivering the film’s best line.
Depp: “The Spirit of the West. Hey, is this heaven?”
Spirit of the West (as Eastwood): “if it was, we’d be sharing Pop-tarts with Kim Novak.”

I’m sure all the kids are asking, who’s Kim Novak? Well, she and Clint Eastwood are 60’s stars that both live in Carmel, California now – that should clear that up somewhat, and of course, Pop-tarts imply breakfast, which insinuates.. er, the hokey-pokey – that’s what it’s all about!

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Meek's Cutoff

Kelly Reichardt, 2010 (8.6*)
Independent filmmaker Kelly Reichardt makes sparse and esoteric films that will appeal to the more artistic and discerning cinephile rather than the average cinemaniac. This is not your typical western.

In this western taking place in 1845, a small wagon train of three families on their way to farm in Oregon has hired a mountain man named Meek (Bruce Greenwood) as their guide. Promising them a shortcut to a pass in the Cascade mountains, the group basically becomes lost in the high, arid eastern Oregon desert. With their water running out and food low, the group becomes increasingly split over which direction to proceed, whether to continue trusting their guide or simply head north toward the Columbia River.

Along the way they begin to see a lone Native American almost stalking them. Fulfilling their stereotypical paranoia, some men go capture him and bring him back. Meek especially seems to keep inferring they are little more than animals, and are much better dead, and the living are much safer with them gone. However, deferring to the women, especially a gun-toting and headstrong Michelle Williams, the men decide to keep him alive, but tied up as their prisoner.

Now the group has another dilemna – can this wilderness survivor help them survive? For a western, this is a pretty existential story, from Jonathan Raymond, who often pens Reichardt’s films – and who has also used the name Slats Grobnik. Yo, Slats!

This story won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s still a beautifully shot western, subtle and tasteful, with ethereal and sparingly used music by Jeff Grace . The cast is perfect, they all even look like dirty, smelly western pioneers, even veterans Bruce Greenwood and Will Patton.

Director Kelly Reichardt

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Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Yves Simoneau, 2007 (8.6*)
Memorial Day War-a-thon Film #18
Tells the true story of the U.S. war against the Lakota Souix tribe, from the book by Dee Brown. We see a lead up of escalating events until there is the banning of the harmless "Snake Dance", and an eventual historical event the U.S. would rather forget - I won't spoil it here for those who don't know or haven't seen the film.

This intermingles the stories of three historical characters: Charles Eastman, aka Ohiyesa, a college-educated Sioux doctor, 'living proof of the success of assimilation'; the proud Sitting Bull, the Lakota chief who refuses to submit to U.S. policies designed to strip his people of their identity, dignity and their sacred land - the gold-laden Black Hills of the Dakotas, promised to them in a treaty, to 'remain untouched'; and Senator Henry Dawes, who was one of the architects of the government policy on Indian affairs.

This film goes even further by showing how we indoctrinated Native American children into our society - by forcing them to drop their Indian names and choose a "Christian" one out of a big book of approved biblical names. They were forced to denounce their heritage and change names and learn Christianity or they were not given an education.

Stars Aiden Quinn, Anna Paquin, Fred D. Thompson, Chevez Ezaneh, and August Schellenberg as Sitting Bull.
won 22 awards out of 42 nominations, including 6 Emmys out of 17 nominations, including best tv movie.

Note: What most historical records won't say it that it was really just a matter of gold, which was discovered on sacred Souix grounds in the Black Hills, home of their sacred ancestors. The U.S. was in one of its regular bankruptcies or depressions, the government having just borrowed 500 million from J.P. Morgan in 1875 - suddenly there was easy gold in land they could just take back from the Souix, conveniently ignoring any prior treaties.

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Bad Day at Black Rock

John Sturges, 1955 (8.8*)
In one of the more bizarre crime films ever, Spencer Tracy plays a one-armed stranger who arrives one day in the near ghost town of Bad Rock, somewhere in the desert southwest. He is not the only Oscar® winner in this incredible cast - others in the town include Oscar winners Ernest Borgnine, Walter Brennan, and Lee Marvin, and also features Robert Ryan (in one of his best performances), Russell Collins, Anne Francis, and Dean Jagger. Ryan, Borgnine, and Marvin all shine here as despicable bad guys; Tracy, in his dark suit and white shirt, is an open contrast to everyone else's languid casualness and bored apathy.

Tracy is mysterious about his visit, and the locals are all tight-lipped, unfriendly, and act very suspicious, especially when he names the man he is looking for, who is apparently long absent. As the story develops, the narrative evolves from mystery to thriller to crime. This is a short, fact, sparse film, without much dialogue or wasted footage. (Perhaps the real mystery of this film is why anyone would choose to live here in the first place)

This was one of the first films to openly deal with racism towards Asian-Americans, and as such it demands a place in the history of american cinema. It forces the viewer to witness those who take a moral stand vs. those who don't, much like a classic western. As such, it really is an updating of westerns, placing people in the same setting but a century later. The desert setting, and the resulting heat, work as metaphors for the type of ethical vacuum these characters live in.

The entire movie was shot in the Alabama Hills section of the Sierra foothills, near Lone Pine, California in the Owens Valley, east of the Sierras, with a view of Mt. Whitney in the background - it's a famous destination for campers and backpackers (I've been there many times myself - the sun setting on the Inyo Mountains, then rising on the eastern face of the Sierras makes the trip there a lifetime experience).

Nominated for three Oscars®, actor (Tracy, who won best actor at Cannes), director, and screenplay (Millard Kaufman), nominated for a BAFTA for best film, a director's guild award for Sturges. This film has only 7k ratings at IMDB, which is dreadfully low for a classic American movie. Ernest Borgnine won the Oscar® that year (55) for his performance in best picture winner Marty. Awards page at IMDB

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She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

John Ford, 1949 (8.4*)
Despite the terrible title, this is one of the best of the John Ford westerns, my favorite of his 'cavalry' films with John Wayne. In this more believable story, Wayne plays a retiring colonel, who is sucked into one last Indian war, something he hoped was all in his past by this point.

The title comes from a young lady, Joanne Dru, at the local fort who's playing one young lieutenant vs another (John Agar and Harry Carey Jr.), and doesn't appear to care which one wins the game. This provides an unnecessary distraction to the real story; unfortunately they chose this particular plotline for the film's title.

I think what I liked about this film vs. the other Ford-Wayne collaberations is that Wayne is finally human, he's simply old and worn out from decades of warring with no end in sight. He's no longer the superhuman ass-kicking American, he's ready to retire in his armchair in front of the tv or radio or perhaps drowsily fishing on a lake somewhere with his dog.

Beautifully photographed, winner of a cinematography Oscar® for Winton C. Hoch

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We of the Never Never

Igor Auzins, 1982, Australia (9.0*)

A beautifully filmed true story of the first woman in the Northern Territory of Australia, based on the memoirs of Jennifer Gunn, played with independent spunk by Angela Punch McGregor. An educated urbanite from Melbourne married Aeneas Gunn (Arthur Dignam), who managed a remote cattle station, or ranch, in the northern outback, known as "the never never". While there she faces both anti-female and anti-aborigine bigotry from the all male cowboy population. In spite of this, she grows to love both the rugged wilderness, which is green in this region due to the rainy season, and also the local inhabitants who live the same primitive lifestyle they have for millenia, and who are slow to adapt to more 'civilized' conventions.

This will remind Americans of our classic westerns, just sans gunfights, and substituting more friendly indigenous people who work for and help the white immigrants survive in a harsh land. This is a must-see for fans of classic Australian cinema, and makes the perfect complement to the film My Brilliant Career, from director Gillian Armstrong, about another strong-willed Aussie woman, but one who prized her career more than any man. This film followed that one by just three years, and displays a respectable homage to people with courage and heart

Note: nominated for six Australian Film Institute awards, including picture, actress, screenplay, and music, it only won one for cinematography, which is well-deserved as the film is beautiful to watch with innovative camera movement.

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Australia

Baz Luhrmann, 2008 (7.8*)
This epic adventure, romantic western war film is actually an enjoyable piece of fluff, in spite of the mixed reviews (Roger Ebert gave it 4/5*, and it's got a 3.6/5 at netflix, I'm right between). The story takes place in the northern territory of Australia, around the coastal port of Darwin; beyond that is just desert, canyons, and huge cattle ranches. The first half of this 2.5 hr epic is a western, featuring an incredible cattle drive - you'll feel like you're in a John Ford film. The second half becomes a war film, as it's 1940 and the Japanese are advancing toward Australia.

Throughout each half, it's is also a romance, between a ranch heiress from England played by Nicole Kidman, who arrives to sell the property, and a contract drover, who gets cattle to market then moves on, played by buffed-up Hugh Jackman, who really should've been less Conan and more Indy Jones. Nice to see Aussie vets with meaty character parts here: Bryan Brown, as a competing cattle baron; Jack Thompson (Breaker Morant) as her boozing accountant; Road Warrior fans will also recognize gyro captain Bruce Spence. Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil from Walkabout plays a wise old shaman in the wild, named King George, who "has the magic".

A sidebar to the main plot involves the plight of mixed-race children (called "creamies" by the white racists), those with one white and one aborigine parent, who were taken away by officials and placed in their own type of orphanages, called "locky-locks" by the kids. One such child on Lady Ashley's ranch wants to hear a story one night, and Kidman, having just seen the film, recounts the Wizard of Oz to the child, teaching him Over the Rainbow, which becomes their special song. Now the story uses Oz as inspiration, and could even have been called "Ozstralia". This also "self places" the film in that historic era of film classics, whose look it emulates pretty well, thanks to modern special effects.

There's a lot of both cinematic and aboriginal magic here, with an almost painterly look at times, and it has the grand adventure epic feel. It's perhaps not as gripping or original as modern critics expected, and the war half seems in intrusion into a nice Aussie western, but it does have the old Hollywood formula and atmosphere - we even see big maps of Australia, like those in Casablanca and Indy Jones. Seen in that perspective, it's another grand entertainment in the over-the-top style of Cecil DeMille. Australia deserves their own grand national epic, for now, this is it.

Note: fans of this should enjoy see the four-hour miniseries "A Town Like Alice", based on Nevil Shute's romance novel of WW2 and Alice Springs, Australia.

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Johnny Guitar

Nicholas Ray, 1954 (7.6*)
This is an absolutely bizarre western, featuring gun-toting women and music loving gunmen. The title character is a guitar-toting, peaceful outsider, played by Sterling Hayden, in his "glamour boy" days, with curly blond hair. He drifts into a dusty town where saloon-keeper Joan Crawford has a feud going with local rancher Mercedes McCambridge and the locals, including sheriff Ward Bond, all seem to do her bidding, which can be pretty vindictive. There are also hints of romantic jealousy between the two over Dancing Boy (Scott Brady), who has a gang of illiterates led by perfectly cast tough guy Ernest Borgnine.

There are few western cliches here, as if Ray intentionally set about to break traditions. Little in the plot is "black and white", it's all intense hues of color - literally. By way of introduction to the town, Sterling Hayden's fingers fly over the guitar, while Dancing Boy illustrates his nickname as well, wheeling McCambridge around he room. Even the settings are bizarre: Crawford's saloon, which stands by itself outside of the town proper, has a desert rock wall and resembles a cave, the outlaw hideout is on a hilltop approached by going through a waterfall. Written by blacklisted author Ben Maddow (credited to Philip Yourdon) from a Roy Chanslor novel. Oddly listed by IMDB as "film noir" - a western?

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The Assassination of Jesse James

By the Coward Robert Ford
Andrew Dominik, 2007 (7.8*)
This is a fictitious account of the last days of Jesse James, from a novel by Ron Hansen. A bit slow, the film nevertheless has a leisurely grace and almost epic length, and with some stunning cinematography by Roger Deakins, becomes another in the line of elegaic westerns (The Claim, Open Range).

Casey Affleck shines as the Ford brother who ultimatey shot Jesse James, and this film is really all about his life, as it continues after the incident. Brad Pitt is good as James, but Affleck is really the better actor in this, and garnered an Oscar® nomination, and several smaller awards as best supporting actor.

Director Dominik, in only his second film, evokes Terence Malick's Days of Heaven for style and pace. For me, down a star for length, 2 hrs would have been enough, and since his first film was Chopper, maybe next time he can find the middle ground with the title's length.

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Unforgiven

Clint Eastwood, 1992 (8.4*)
Best Picture (AA)
AFI/Time Top 100
This is a violent and unforgiving western, and the best one in the long career of director-actor Clint Eastwood, and earned him a Best Director Oscar. This was his first best picture, followed by Million Dollar Baby. The story involves a cowboy cutting up a woman with a knife and being protected by a corrupt sheriff, brilliantly played by Gene Hackman in an Oscar-winning supporting role. Retired gunslinger Eastwood is hired to seek vengance and what follows is a relentless pursuit similar to John Ford’s The Searchers. Morgan Freeman, as a friend of Eastwood’s, is also terrific as usual, and look for Richard Harris as the “Duke of Death”. Good western, not sure if it’s the year’s best film (I preferred Robert Altman's The Player that year), it likely gets overrated due to Eastwood's popularity. If you like this, check out Kevin Costner’s brilliant Open Range. Four Oscars.

Note: NOT to be confused with John Huston’s 1960 western,The Unforgiven with Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn. Either too bad or a good thing: you can’t copyright a title - hence the film Crash, by J.G. Ballard with James Spader and Holly Hunter as crash survivors involved in s-m, and the more recent Crash, the boring police drama with Matt Dillon in what resembled a tv police show yet somehow won best picture as well due to a lack of competition.

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How the West Was Won

John Ford, George Marshall, Henry Hathaway, 1962 (7.4*)
This panaromic epic attempts to tell the story of the American western frontier as it advanced historically by using separate family stories connected to one family, the Prescotts, fathered in the beginning by Karl Malden.

Earlier versions had these awful vertical lines from a extreme widescreen process using three cameras and overlapping images, but they finally remastered this digitally and removed the lines, so its now worth watching again. However, the different sections and stories don't really mesh and the film lacks pace, perhaps from having 5 segments by three directors, actually tries to use lots of narration by Spencer Tracy to tie it together, so it seems like a History Channel special at times.

Many major stars are in this: James Stewart as a trapper, Debbie Reynolds as Malden's daughter who heads west, Gregory Peck as a gambler who romances her, Walter Brennan as a river pirate, John Wayne as a union general, Henry Fonda as a buffalo hunter. However, many of these talented actors are basically wasted without much to do; Fonda was the best to me. An ambitious attempt, worth watching for the sound, scope, and color cinematography, and the best buffalo stampede in cinema history.

Quote: I'm a God-fearin' man and I tell the truth as I see it (Malden)
Quote2: I settled down for a year once and it took 10 years off my life (Fonda)

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The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

John Huston, 1948, bw (8.6*)
A classic study of greed and morality, a tale which earned director Huston Oscars for directing and screenplay (and he directed his father Walter to another, the only one to direct a parent to an Oscar). Three men of dubious ethics get together out west and decide to go to Mexico to discover gold. Grizzled prospecter Walter Huston, who won a supporting actor Oscar, shows tinhorns Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt both the ropes and what gold dust looks like. Three Oscars
Mexican actor Alphonso Bedoya delivers the greatest line in movie history:
Quote: Badges? Badges? We don got to show you no stinkin badges!

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Ned Kelly

Gregor Jordan, 2004 (7.3*)
This rampaging Australian western tells the story of Irish livestock theif Ned Kelly, well played by Heath Ledger in one of his best roles, and his gang of four, two friends, one played by Orlando Bloom. A small misunderstanding with a British policeman led to a major war between the gang and British authorities, making Ned a folk hero, while the Irish farmers refuse to help in spite of a large bounty.Naomi Watts has a small role as romantic interest for Ned. Based on a true story from the late 1800's.

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The Big Country

William Wyler, 1958, 3 hours (7.6*)
The stars of this film are nearly overwhelmed by the panaromic scenery and symphonic music score, so this makes a perfect 70mm film for remastered dvd. Gregory Peck plays a former ship's captain coming to the prairie to marry the daugher (Carroll Baker) of a ranch owner, played by Charles Bickford, who's mired in water rights feud with his "trailer trash" neighbors, the Hennesseys, led by Burl Ives, in an Oscar winning supporting role. His evil son is perfectlly played by Chuck Conners (who knew?), and even Charlton Heston takes a supporting role as Bickfords ranch foreman. Schoolteacher Jean Simmons has inherited the key ranch in the area, which has the water everyone else needs to keep their cattle alive during droughts. Wyler, one of the best ever (Ben-Hur, Best Years of Our Lives, Little Foxes) makes long, thoughtful films, so don't expect lots of action and gunfighting, this is a more intellectual, leisurely paced, and personal film, and it's terrific in widescreen. One Oscar

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Jeremiah Johnson

Sydney Pollack, 1972 (8.1*)
Just a simple story about "a man called Jeremiah Johnson who wanted to be a mountain man". He was told to "go west of the sunset, turn left at the Rockies", and from sparkling dialogue like this, we thankfully have a quiet film about a pioneer played by Robert Redford who attempts to survive alone in the western wilderness. This is a very well-made and unique western, definitely not the standard good vs evil plot; it's more about survival, cooperation, coexistence, independence. The film introduced Redford to the Wasatch Mountains of Utah (not far from Salt Lake City), where he later built Sundance after falling in love with the incredible scenery there. This is the kind of western that you can watch over and over, and it even casts Native Americans in a positive light. Sydney Pollack would later win a directing Oscar for Out of Africa, also with Redford.
Quote: I know who you are - I've been hearing you for 20 days and smelling you for three!

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Into the West

Dir: Robert Dornhelm, Simon Wincer, 2005 (10*)
This 12-hr tv miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg is now my favorite western. It's really six different 2 hour films, each taking a different era or event in the history of the west.

The story starts with a Lakota Souix sunwheel, where shaman receive visions of the future. It then blends into a wagon wheel being forged in Ohio, by a family named Wheeler, for pioneers heading west. The entire series will be held together by the symbolism of the wheel. which the author said came to him 'in a dream', just as the Wheeler family breaks up when some of the younger ones decide to head west themselves.

The Wheelers then interact with the Souix in their individual stories. The major Souix character we follow throughout is named Loved by the Buffalo after surviving a stampede, and he becomes a shaman who has visions of the Wheelers heading west. One troubling vision argued over by the tribe is one of the disappearance of the buffalo, followed by the Souix.

Various historical events are used as backdrops for the personal stories, such as the railroad, the gold rush, the Indian wars. The writers managed to keep it all connected by the individual lives and their offspring, plus there were hundreds of historical technicians on the crew, including over 25 experts in Native American linguistics alone. There's one beaded dress that took one woman six months to make. Only Spielberg could have the financial clout to pull this off and do the subject justice from all sides of the story. A not to be missed event.

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Hud

Dir: Martin Ritt, 1963, bw (8.3*)
This was Larry McMurtry’s first book, called "Horseman, Pass By", which was a tribute to his grandad, last of the ‘old-style’ ranchers, who did things the right way. Oscar winner Melvyn Douglas plays the grandad in this, but the focus was shifted to the ne’er-do-well uncle Hud (just look at the poster!), played by Paul Newman, to capitalize on his box office. Patricia Neal also won an Oscar® who hit perfect tones as the family’s jaded cook, as did Jame Wong Howe’s terrific, innovative black and white cinematography. Not as artistically successful as the book but any film of a McMurtry book is going to be very good, and far above the average screen story. If you're a reader, by all means read his novels, beginning with this one; it's a small masterpiece. The nearby town of Anarene was later featured again in The Last Picture Show, a "town sequel", with none of the same characters reappearing. 7 nominations, 3 Oscars®

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Hidalgo

Dir: Joe Johnston, 2004 (8.9*)
This is based on the true story of the greatest long-distance horse racer of all time. By the film’s beginning, Frank Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen) had won over 500 races in North America without a loss, but of course his horse Hidalgo was the real winner. Arab shiek Omar Sharif hears of this legend, and convinces him to come to Arabia and participate in a 3000-mile desert race in which half the teams don’t survive. Though technically not a western, it looks like one, and does feature a horseman in the wilderness. One of the best horse racing stories ever filmed, also a great adventure film.

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High Noon

Dir: Fred Zinnemann, 1952, bw (8.4*)
AFI Top 100
This seems a little standard by today’s measure of westerns, at the time it was landmark: it’s about a sheriff who arrests the brother of a notorious outlaw, who is now coming to get him on the noon train, with his gang; with the noon deadline, this is known as a "countdown plot". This would be standard but Oscar winner Gary Cooper plays the sheriff in perhaps his best part, as the last man of integrity in a town that won’t help him or stand up to the gang, and the production design and cinematography are outstanding. Katy Jurado is also terrific as Sheriff Kane's former lover. The only thing wrong with this film to me is that out of a town of fifty or more, certainly several men with rifles would have helped while hiding inside as the gang simply walks down main street. Also his wife is Grace Kelly, not exactly a frontier town without amenities type of woman, in any century! This was remade as the science fiction film Outland, with Sean Connery playing the sheriff on a mining colony. 4 Oscars

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The Grey Fox

Dir: Philip Boursos, 1983 (9.0*)
A beautiful, small western about the last known train robber in North America. Richard Farnsworth is perfect as Bill Miner, who does time for stagecoach robbing, and when released so much time has passed that the stagecoaches have been replace by train, so he starts robbing those. This is a small but excellent indie film, based on a true story, even has a good romance (Jackie Burroughs?), and put longtime character actor Farnsworth on the map.

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