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True Grit
Great 100 Points 2010

Darker and more realistic than the 1969 original featuring John Wayne, this 21st Century retelling of a classic Wild West retribution story succeeds in almost every respect — often funny, richly evocative, shockingly brutal, cleverly revisionist. That last comes from the clear hero – a 14 year …

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WikChip Image Tall in the Saddle: Hailee Steinfeld
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Lawless
Really Great 83 Points 2012

Heard of the Bondurant School of Driving? Lawless is the Bondurant school of bootlegging, V8 Fords careening along dirt roads included. Indeed, the story of a legendary family of moonshiners from Western Virginia – the Bondurants – gets a monumental telling in this powerfully assured and ente…

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WikChip Image Guy Pearce's dandy of a villain
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Appaloosa
Very Good 83 Points 2008

Crisp and charismatic Western, done classically yet with an ironic sensibility. Fans of Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen and Westerns won’t be disappointed.

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Hell or High Water
Very Good 83 Points 2016

Hell or High Water arrived with high expectations, which it didn’t meet. So this Rangers and robbers story set in today’s Texas gets scored a bit lower than it otherwise might have. That said, Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine are great moviestars. Figure in a fitfully interesting story, and the movi…

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WikChip Image Jeff Bridges, Texas Ranger
Wind River
Really Great 83 Points 2017

Wind River, the best American crime movie in recent memory, is as American as it could possibly be. Native-American at its core, cowboy on its face, Wind River transcends its stunningly assured procedural tropes to create a haunting tale of Western life in 2017, on the res and off, for India…

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WikChip Video Taylor Sheridan & stars talk Wind River
Three Billboard...
Really Great 83 Points 2017

This oddly titled gem is a crazy crime movie from MidAmerica, set in fictional Ebbing, Missouri, not in Fargo, North Dakota, or Hibbing, Minnesota, or a real hicksville you may know in the Central Time Zone.

Forbidding title aside, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing is readily accessible and se…

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WikChip Video Superlative Actors & Film
Justified
Great 66 Points 2010

Hard-bitten Elmore Leonard criminals and Timothy Olyphant’s 2nd Olympian-quality lawman come together in this great new TV series. A bit of a one-trick-pony, the show nonetheless freshly surveys the darkly humorous underbelly of contemporary American society. As for the trick-pony, Olyphant’s W…

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WikChip Image Raylan & Ava: Sexual tension & compli...
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  • MJ5K – Great review, Wick. I've not had much of an interest...
Rango
Good 66 Points 2011

A Toy Story knock-off inspired by classic Westerns, Rango is populated with reptiles and rodents instead of toys. Unfortunately its uncuddly creatures aren’t especially relatable, even though they’re in recognizable human dilemmas, a la Pixar’s playthings.

Rango’s larger problem is a st…

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High Noon
Great 66 Points 1952

Gary Cooper walking alone down a dusty Western street to confront a gang of killers is as iconic as Hollywood gets, making High Noon an archetype even more than a legend. That’s quite a weight.

Fortunately the movie itself is engaging, suspenseful and tight. A mere 85 minutes, it runs in ne…

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WikChip Video High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My D...
True Grit
Very Good 66 Points 1969

Star power in service to a (then) unconventional story makes for a very good movie. A grizzled John Wayne, shiny Glen Campbell and sharp Robert Duvall provide the star power, while a young girl hiring a de facto bounty hunter to track down her father’s killer provides the novel story.

Rescree…

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WikChip Video Yowza, true Western entertainment