Nighthawks (1981) Review
Nighthawks (1981) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Stallone and Billy Dee Williams are New York decoy cops assigned to an international terrorist, and Rutger Hauer is so much better than the film around him that he…
Tag: Male Friendship
Men in stories talk sideways, and the friendship shows in what they do instead of what they say. This tag collects reviews of films and fiction built on male friendship, the loyalty inside it and the cost when it breaks.
2010sThe King’s Speech (2010) Review
The King's Speech (2010) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A well-made two-hander about a man with a stammer and the unqualified Australian who treated him, which beat The Social Network for Best Picture and Best Director…
2010sGreen Book (2018) Review
Green Book (2018) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two excellent performances inside a road film about a Black concert pianist and his white driver on a 1962 southern tour, which beat Roma for Best Picture and…
2000sShaun of the Dead (2004) Review
Shaun of the Dead (2004) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A comedy that works as an actual zombie film, which almost no parody manages, because Edgar Wright shot the horror straight and let the jokes come…
1960sTrue Grit (1969) Review
True Grit (1969) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. John Wayne finally won an Oscar for playing a fat, drunk, one-eyed marshal who shoots men in the back, and the performance works because he is willing to…
1960sThe Wild Bunch (1969) Review
The Wild Bunch (1969) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Peckinpah cut the violence at multiple film speeds and assembled it at a rate nobody had attempted, and the result changed how every action film since has…
1960sThe Magnificent Seven (1960) Review
The Magnificent Seven (1960) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Kurosawa's Seven Samurai relocated to the Mexican border, shortened by an hour, and improved in one specific way. Every gunman gets an introduction that is also an…
1980sSilverado (1985) Review
Silverado (1985) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Lawrence Kasdan made a Western in a decade that had stopped making them, assembled four leads before any of them were famous, and built it out of every convention…
1950sRio Bravo (1959) Review
Rio Bravo (1959) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Howard Hawks made it as a direct rebuttal to High Noon, which he considered un-American because the marshal asks townspeople for help. It is a hangout film with…
2000sOpen Range (2003) Review
Open Range (2003) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Costner directed a slow, patient Western about two cattlemen who decide to kill a rancher, and then staged the best gunfight in the genre's last forty years. It…
1980sLonesome Dove (1989) Review
Lonesome Dove (1989) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Six and a half hours of television that does what almost no Western film has room for, which is to follow a cattle drive long enough that the…
1960sButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Review
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. William Goldman sold the screenplay for four hundred thousand dollars and the film is a comedy about two men becoming obsolete. The freeze frame…