The Western genre is a dying one. Gone are the days of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, et al., and the era of Westerns in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Once a staple in American cinema, those films are now few and far between. Years could pass before a good Western connects with critics and audiences alike. Unforgiven reset the standard in 1992, connecting with critics and audiences alike while earning nine Oscar nominations and taking home four, most notably for Best Picture. Others have followed. Appaloosa, Hostiles, True Grit, Tombstone, and Open Range were big-budget movies that hit the screen with reckless aggression. True Grit was the most successful with the critics (10 Oscar nominations, but no wins), but even the success of this film fails when compared to Unforgiven.
Category Archives: Ben Foster
The Messenger (2009)
Somewhere inside Oren Moverman’s (Time Out of Mind, Rampart), The Messenger is a pretty good movie. It has the right tone. It has the right cast. It has the right setting. It has the right director. It just has the wrong plot. Well, I shouldn’t say it has the wrong plot, but I should say that the plot is a bit flawed. And it’s not even faulty so much as it is incongruent. It follows a timeline that we are uncertain of. Does this movie take place over a few weeks, a few months, a little bit more, or somewhere in between. It’s an integral part of the story to know the movie’s time frame because it helps us justify or not justify some of the actions of its characters. The longer the period that this movie takes place, the more likely it is for me to believe the story. The shorter it is, the less likely I am. The reason for this is the characters change too much. And I am not saying people can’t change over a short period, but it seems a stretch for all characters to change how they did in that brief period. But the time frame is never stated. It is implied to be three months, but it isn’t conclusive. For me, it doesn’t help the movie. It leaves me with the burning question of when to go from start to finish.
Leave No Trace (2018)
When you are the director who helped the likes of Jennifer Lawrence into stardom, actors will be drawn to you. But that doesn’t mean you have to capitalize on this and chug out movie after movie. Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone, Down to the Bone) certainly did not do this. Winter’s Bone, which launched Lawrence into the public eye with her first of, as of 2017, four Academy Award nominations, was released in 2010, but this is Granik’s first non-documentary film since then. And, for critics, it was worth the wait. At the time of this review, her new film Leave No Trace has a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. And, just as a recap, Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregate of critics’ reviews. So a 100% rating doesn’t mean that a critic thinks it’s a four-star movie. It just means she gives it a favorable review. And I’ll be the first to say that if I was a Rotten Tomatoes critic, I’m uncertain if that aggregate rating would still be 100%. Ultimately, I do fall on the side of giving this film a favorable review, but it is far from a great movie. Based on the trailer, I thought I was going to love Leave No Trace. However, I found it to be not just slow but boring. And I wanted to understand one of the two lead characters much more. There was a desire during the middle of the movie where I wanted to learn more. Unfortunately, it never quite quenched that thirst.
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Hostiles (2017)
The very first scene of Scott Cooper’s (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) under the radar Hostiles lets you know one thing right off the bat. We get a good 10-minute scene of a four-person group of Comanche warriors comes rolling out of nowhere, attacks a family of five in the brutalist of fashions before burning down the ranch and taking off with their horses. After this scene, we get the title Hostiles pop up on the screen, and we know quickly we are in for something different than Will Smith’s Wild Wild West. This movie is not for the weak at heart. If you do not like tragedy, this film is not for you. If you have the stomach for, sometimes, senseless killing, characters who carry anger so deep that it burns their souls, and guilt so heavy that it tears lives apart, then this movie could be for you. If you crave a good old-fashioned western, then this movie surely will suffice. And if you want to see A-listers like Christian Bale (The Fighter, The Dark Knight Rises), Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, A United Kingdom), Jesse Plemons (The Post, Other People), Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird) and Ben Foster (Hell or High Water, Lone Survivor) continue to cement their names in Hollywood then you can’t go wrong with Hostiles, easily one of the five best movies of 2017. Though it’s unlikely to dethrone Wind River for me, it’s doing its best to make a case in the 11th hour.
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Hell or High Water (2016)
David Mackenzie’s (Spread, Asylum) 2016 surprise is a movie that you’ll like if you go in with very minimal expectations. If you think it’s going to be your typical bank robbery thriller, you might be disappointed. If you think it’s going to be full of suspense, you might likewise be disappointed. If you are interested in a simple character-driven story with a little more than meets the initial eye, you might enjoy Hell or High Water. It’s a bit more quirky than you might think. If you are expecting a massive bank caper drama, this isn’t it. Mackenzie tries to take a different angle with this movie, adding some humor, recklessness, and interesting side characters to a story that is, primarily, still a bank heist film first. And while this movie has a 98% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, this doesn’t mean that most reviewers are scoring it a 9.8/10. Instead, it means that 49 out of 50 give this movie a positive review. While it is an interesting film (and the first one of 2016 that I have watched twice), it is by no means a Best Picture candidate. I know there was talk that it might sneak into the race. I have no idea how it got a nomination for Best Picture, whereas a movie like Sully did not. While Hell or Hgh Water is a decent movie, I think a lot of people (including myself) expected it to be something far more significant than it was. Continue reading Hell or High Water (2016)