One-Eyed Jacks (November 4 at 8:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

The only directorial credit for Marlon Brando was this very adult western - still a pretty daring concept for 1961 - for which the mercurial and increasingly rebellious star Brando took over filmmaking chores after original helmer Stanley Kubrick withdrew because of (all together now) creative differences.

Now Stanley Kubrick, as we all know, was notorious for overshooting, exposing take after take until he figured he had perfection. Tyro director Brando took it even further, exposing more than a million of feet of celluloid and ballooning the budget thricefold, ultimately costing Paramount a then-astronomical $6 million. The producer claimed that Brando may well have shot literally more than a million feet, a world record. Maybe that’s hyperbole, but the resulting film was a box-office disappointment, needless to say. But it is still respected by many. Of course, it helps to be a Marlon fetishist.

The Magnificent Seven

Review by George M. Thomas

Denzel Washington, center, leads a cast of unlikely allies to avenge '

the wrong imposed on a small town in the west.

Sometimes when a movie is remade, it’s best to not have seen the original.

Confession time:  I’ve never seen the first THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN which starred a legendary cast of actors led by Yul Brynner.

I’m glad I didn’t.  It probably would have tainted my view of the remake which stars Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Vincent D’Onofrio, Ethan Hawke, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Martin Sensmeier.   A classic is a classic, right? 

Will this version of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN be remembered as highly? I doubt it.  But the fact remains there’s little doubt that it accomplishes its goal – though languid in spots, it’s pretty damned entertaining overall.

Hell or High Water

By  George M. Thomas

Chris Pine, left, and Ben Foster star as brothers who rob banks in HELL
OR HIGH WATER.

HELL OR HIGH WATER is the rare, engrossing movie that sticks with the viewer, making it easily the best movie of the summer.

The film's director David Mackenzie and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (SICARIO) can be lauded for telling a gritty, emotionally resonant story, but HELL works on so many different levels that doing so would sell it short.

Mackenzie and Sheridan create a western for the 21^st century.  It’s a morality tale layered with complex themes that will force many to question their belief system as they explore the issues of racism, corporatism, and the times in which we live.

It’s both a love letter to West Texas and an indictment of its past as two brothers, Toby Howard (Chris Pine) and Tanner Howard (Ben Foster), resort to robbing banks for their livelihood. 

Repost: Shane (March 20th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[SHANE screens Sunday March 20th at 3:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Dwelling here in Cleveland you've got to tolerate Cleveland Cinematheque director John Ewing reviving 1953's SHANE in frequent rotation. It's his favorite film, and it's good to be the king.

I probably sound like I dislike SHANE. Not at all, no need for the Sam Kinison clips. I probably just envy Ewing's money, prominence and power. "Cinematheque," yeah, right, like there aren't 500 other movies houses with a name like that. Why not an original name for the place, like, oh, I don't know, "The Cassadyorium?"

Repost: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (March 5th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY screens Saturday March 5th at 8:10 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Little known fun fact: Clint Eastwood's Man-With-No-Name character in the 1964 A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, Sergio Leone's first well-known "spaghetti western," was taken to be a really nasty piece of work for the cowboy-movie genre. He was a leading man who fought not so much for justice but for money and self-interest (though all the guys he killed happened to be villainous all the same). I am given to understand that when A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS first aired on TV, Hollywood was so nervous about the threat level of Eastwood's antihero that a non Sergio-Leone prologue was shot (with an Eastwood stand-in with his back to the camera) establishing that The Man With No Name is really a stalwart undercover US Marshall or something who just pretends to be amoral. I'd like to see that footage, if it exists. [Editor's note: it does exist, and can be found on the recently released Blu Ray edition of FISTFUL (or on Youtube)]

The Hateful Eight

Review by Bob Ignizio

A group of rough and rugged men and one female prisoner on her way to be hanged get trapped in a blizzard and make plans to stay in a tavern for three days in Quentin Tarrantino’s latest film, THE HATEFUL EIGHT. Most of the characters don’t much like any of the others, and fragile alliances can change quickly with just the right story or revelation. It’s going to be a tense, and ultimately bloody, layover.

It wouldn’t quite be fair to say that THE HATEFUL EIGHT is an uncredited remake of John Carpenter’s THE THING, but it certainly has some parallels to that movie. A small group of characters are trapped together during a blizzard. None of them can trust each other. And at least one of them is looking to take out some or all of the others through surreptitious means if possible, blatant ones if necessary. Only unlike THE THING, there’s no blood test to reveal who the bad guys are. And if there was, the whole cast would likely come up positive.

Bone Tomahawk (now on video)

[BONE TOMAHAWK is now available on video and on demand.]

Review by Wayne Richards

The extraordinary difficulties in getting a movie made in Hollywood have been well documented. Television shows, books and documentaries dedicated to telling behind-the-scenes stories and the unique struggles in the creation of films are quite prevalent in the realm of entertainment. Getting financing for a film, hiring capable and cooperative actors and choosing a director with the ability to be efficient with time and to stay within a given budget are just a few essential factors in reaching a successful outcome. The fact that first-time director S. Craig Zahler filmed BONE TOMAHAWK in three weeks (shooting 16 hour days) on a shoestring budget is miraculous. And what is even more remarkable is that a directorial debut on such a low budget (estimated $1.8 million) could include such an esteemed cast of A-list talent.

The Salvation (opens in Cleveland March 13th exclusively at the Capitol Theatre)

[THE SALVATION opens in Cleveland on Friday March 13th exclusively at the Capitol Theatre.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Jon (Mads Mikkelsen) and his brother Peter (Mikael Persbrandt) are two former Danish soldiers trying to make a new life in America's wild west in THE SALVATION. After 7 years of hard work getting his homestead ready, Jon is finally about to welcome his wife and 10 year old son to his new home. Tragically, the reunion is short lived as Jon's family is killed by two recently released criminals. He hunts them down and kills them in revenge, but that's nowhere near the end of things.

It turns out that one of the criminals was the brother of Delarue (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a gang leader working for an oil company to buy up land in the town near where Jon and Peter live. Since the local sheriff/preacher (Douglas Henshall) hasn't caught the man who killed his brother, Delarue kills a few of the townspeople and raises his rate for “protection” money, promising he won't rest until he has vengeance. The feelings of the dead brother's mute widow (Eva Green) are less clear, at least at first. Of course it all leads to a great deal of murder, torture, and rape to the tune of a Morricone-esque soundtrack.

The Wild West on the Near West Side at the Capitol Theatre

[Press release from Cleveland Cinemas.]

The Capitol Theatre (1390 W. 65th St., Cleveland) is putting on its 10-gallon hat and cowboy boots as it showcases two great Westerns this March.

On Thursday, March 12th at 7:00 PM, the Capitol Theatre will present a screening of director Sergio Leone’s genre masterpiece, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Claudia Cardinale is a beautiful widow who is aided by a mysterious, harmonica-playing stranger (Charles Bronson) and a notorious desperado (Jason Robards) who protect her from a ruthless killer (played brilliantly by Henry Fonda) in this 1968 classic. Tickets are $5.

A Fistful of Dollars (October 2nd and 5th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS screens Thursday October 2nd at 6:45 pm and Sunday October 5th at 8:25 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

In addition making a superstar out of a cowboy TV actor named Clint Eastwood, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS was the first well-known "spaghetti western." This was the rather derogatory term for Italian cowboy movies made far away from the beaten trails of America's Monument Valley or even the low-budget Monogram Pictures backlot. 

In the 1960s Italians, Spanish, German and even Israelis started making their own westerns, sticking to the classic iconography of gun duels, saloons and desperadoes on horseback, but without the censorship codes of Hollywood. Actually, the Germans were at the lead of the pack in this one, doing “Sauerkraut Westerns” based on the novels of their own uber-popular western novelist Karl May. The Italian movie industry jumped eagerly on board the chuckwagon.

The Lone Ranger

Review by Pete Roche

Ta-da-dump!  Ta-da-dump!  Ta-da-dump-dump-dump!

Yes, the triumphant, galloping finale from Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” features in THE LONE RANGER.  And the titular hero, played by Armie Hammer (THE SOCIAL NETWORK, MIRROR MIRROR), wears a white Stetson and bandit mask, and favors silver bullets.

But director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer—who updated the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN mythology for modern audiences—re-imagine just about all other aspects of the iconic western hero in the new Walt Disney film.

Hammer is John Reid, an idealistic young county prosecutor who gets caught up in a jailbreak by gunslinger Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) and rogue Comanche Indian Tonto (Johnny Depp) while returning from the big city.  John is deputized by his Texas Ranger brother, Dan (James Badge Dale), gifted his father’s badge, and recruited for a posse to track Cavendish’s gang into the canyons.  The first of several double-crosses results in an ambush that leaves the Reid brothers bleeding to death in the hot sun. 

The Mercenary (February 7th and 8th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE MERCENARY screens Thursday February 7th at 8:40 pm and Friday February 8th at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Set during the Mexican Revolution, Sergio Corbucci's THE MERCENARY tells the story of three men whose lives intersect during this turbulent time. Paco Roman (Tony Musante) is a lowly mine worker who finally gets fed up with the lousy food (beans, with the occasional unfortunate lizard that has fallen into the pot for meat) he and his compatriots are served while on the job. So he holds his bosses the Garcias at gunpoint and gives them a taste of how the other half lives. But, as the narrator tells us, “taking from the rich to give to the poor is never popular with the rich”. Paco winds up buried up to his neck in the sand, but his friends help him make a last minute escape before he gets trampled by men on horseback.

Shortly thereafter, Polish mercenary Sergei Kowalski (Fraco Nero) arrives in town and is hired by the Garcia's to transport their silver across the border into the United States. Little do they realize that all around shady character Curly (Jack Pallance) notices their meeting and rightly assumes something big is going on. Once he ascertains from the Garcia's exactly what that is, he sets out after Kowalski to get the silver for himself. Paco, now leading a group of workers turned bandits/dubious revolutionaries, also returns to the mines hoping to get his hands on the money.

Django (January 22nd at the Capitol Theatre)

[DJANGO screens Tuesday January 22nd at 7:00 pm at the Capitol Theatre in cooperation with the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, then Italian filmmakers in the nineteen sixties, seventies, and early eighties must be among the most prolific dispensers of compliments in human history. Throughout those decades, pretty much any film that turned a profit quickly spawned at least a dozen low budget knock-offs. Often it was American product that would kickstart these trends, but one notable exception was the Italian film A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, that would give birth to countless “spaghetti westerns”.

One of the earliest and best films to follow in Leone's footsteps was Sergio Corbucci's DJANGO, which as could sometimes be the case with these kind of rip-off films, actually wound up bringing enough new elements to the table to wind up a minor classic itself. The success of DJANGO in turn led to even more films using the Django name,whether there was any actual connection to the original film or not. These rip-offs of a rip-off eventually culminated in Quentin Tarantino's DJANGO UNCHAINED, which also stole DJANGO's super catchy theme song and is probably the main reason most people are even bothering to read this review.

The Last Stand

Review by Pete Roche

Arnold Schwarzenegger took leave from cracking skulls back in 2003 to pursue other interests.  Little hobbies, you know, like presiding over the State of California.  The cinema strongman popped up with Planet Hollywood partners Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis in the ensemble actioner THE EXPENDABLES and its recent sequel, but now the Governator really is back in THE LAST STAND. 

Schwarzenegger is Sheriff Ray Owens, a single, over-the-hill cop whose idea of a busy work day in Sommerset begins and ends with ticketing cars parked in fire zones.  But Owens gets a wake-up call (literally and figuratively) when death-row drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) escapes federal custody and makes a dash for the Mexican border in a tricked-out prototype Corvette that does 197 mph on a dark desert highway [yes, a random Eagles reference].  The lead-footed fugitive has carefully orchestrated his getaway from behind bars, anticipating every roadblock and FBI counter move.  Cortez hires Burrell (Peter Stormare) and a band of machinegun-toting thugs to clear his path out of Nevada and takes a hostage passenger to discourage the authorities, who horribly underestimate his freakish skills behind the wheel.

31 Days of Halloween 2012: The Burrowers

An appreciation by Bob Ignizio

Writer/director J.T. Petty's THE BURROWERS is a blend of classic westerns like THE SEARCHERS and serious-minded ensemble horror films like John Carpenter’s THE THING and Spielberg’s JAWS, with a touch of George Romero style social commentary thrown in for good measure. Set in the Dakota territories just a few years after the Civil War, the film opens with a family of settlers under siege by unseen attackers. Some are killed, while others are taken away into the night. When the carnage is discovered by neighbors the next morning, it is assumed the attack was carried out by Indians despite considerable evidence to the contrary. A search party is hastily formed to look for survivors and exact vengeance, but it won't be long before they're more concerned with their own survival.

Shane (May 3rd at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[SHANE screens Thursday May 3 rd at 6:45 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

This week the anniversary of the Los Angeles riots of 1992 passed with some trepidation, probably because of the incipient Trayvon Martin Riots (or, if you've already scoped out the iPads and xBoxes you plan to loot, the Trayvon Martin "uprising"). I do remember the LA riots most vividly. At the time I was 'enjoying' my first Cleveland apartment, on a rather bad side of town. As the City of Angels burned on live TV that night I sat there in the dankness with the radio on. One of our Cleveland college DJs - I forget who, even though it was just the sort of thing the late Gary Schwartz would have done – commented on the faraway tumult by playing death-rock and industrial-music laments punctuated by a repeated tape loop of shock-comic Sam Kinison screaming "SHOOT ME! SHOOT ME! I LIVE IN HELLLL!" This went on for a few hours.

Blackthorn (January 6th and 7th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[BLACKTHORN screens Friday January 6th at 7:00 pm and Saturday January 7th at 9:40 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

When a legend dies, there are always those who will dispute the official version of events. In modern times this sort of thing tends to spring up around rock stars or other celebrities who meet untimely ends. In the wild west era, it was outlaws like Butch Cassidy and his partner The Sundance Kid. The partners in crime supposedly checked out during a Bolivian shootout in 1908, one of them ultimately killing his wounded partner and then himself. Just as with Elvis, though, there are many who claim to have seen Butch years after his death. In this case, the notion isn't entirely implausible, either, as there has never been any conclusive evidence that Butch and Sundance were the outlaws who died in the shootout. This premise is the starting point for BLACKTHORN.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (August 12 at the Palace Theatre)

[THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY screens Friday August 12 at 7:30 p.m. at the Palace Theatre.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Little known fun fact: Clint Eastwood's Man-With-No-Name character in the 1964 A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, Sergio Leone's first well-known "spaghetti western," was taken to be a really nasty piece of work for the cowboy-movie genre. He was a leading man who fought not so much for justice but for money and self-interest (though all the guys he killed happened to be villainous all the same). I am given to understand that when A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS first aired on TV, Hollywood was so nervous about the threat level of Eastwood's antihero that a non Sergio-Leone prologue was shot (with an Eastwood stand-in with his back to the camera) establishing that The Man With No Name is really a stalwart undercover US Marshall or something who just pretends to be amoral. I'd like to see that footage, if it exists. [Editor's note: it does exist, and can be found on the recently released Blu Ray edition of FISTFUL (or on Youtube)]

Cowboys & Aliens

Review by Bob Ignizio

A man (Daniel Craig) awakens in the desert to find a strange device attached to his left wrist. He has no memory of who he is or how he got there. Only a photograph of a woman lying near by provides any clue to his past. Three men on horseback approach the amnesiac to ask for directions, and spying the device on his wrist assume it to be a shackle. Figuring that the man must be an escaped prisoner they decide to capture him and turn him in for a bounty. Bad idea, as the man makes short work of the riders. It's a nicely staged action scene that wouldn't have been out of place in a classic Clint Eastwood western. Unfortunately it's mostly downhill from there.

True Grit

Review by Bob Ignizio

Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) is a shabby looking one-eyed U.S. Marshall with a penchant for drinking and a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. Despite these apparent flaws, 14 year old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfield) believes Cogburn has “true grit”, and is therefore the perfect choice to track down her father's killer, a man named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). She's considerably less impressed with Texas Ranger LaBoef (Matt Damon). LaBoef is also on Chaney's trail, but wants to take him back to Texas to face justice for a different murder. But Mattie is accustomed to getting her way, and having her father's killer executed for another crime simply wouldn't be justice enough for her.