The Frame

from the pen of Jandy Stone

Posts Tagged ‘film-western’

A Fistful of Dollars

By Jandy • Jan 5th, 2008 • Category: Capsule Reviews

I’ve already seen The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which is the third in the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood Man With No Name trilogy of spaghetti westerns of which A Fistful of Dollars is the first. I don’t like watching series out of order, but I don’t think it matters much in this case. Eastwood’s […]



The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

By Jandy • Jan 5th, 2008 • Category: Capsule Reviews

I call Tommy Lee Jones as the next Clint Eastwood-esque actor-director crossover. Jones directed and starred in this very good little contemporary western, playing a landowner who vows to return the body of one of his Mexican workers to his home after he is killed. The film looks beautiful, nearly as good as anything Eastwood […]



3:10 to Yuma

By Jandy • Oct 23rd, 2007 • Category: Capsule Reviews

The western genre has been trying to mount a comeback for years, and this might just be the film to do it. It’s about as perfect a western as this modern era can conjure; the acting is wonderful, the music great, the script perfect, the story superb. Russell Crowe plays the bad guy who needs […]



Johnny Guitar

By Jandy • Oct 9th, 2007 • Category: Capsule Reviews

Okay, I may need to make a no-VHS rule, because watching things on fuzzy VHS seriously tampers with my ability to judge the film apart from its picture quality. This is a cult-film favorite from director Nicholas Ray (best known for Rebel Without a Cause, but best-loved by me for In a Lonely Place), and […]



Ride the High Country

By Jandy • Oct 9th, 2007 • Category: Capsule Reviews

Two aging cowboys (Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea), former partners, meet years after they split up due to their differing sense of morality (i.e., one didn’t have a sense of morality) and tentatively join up on a job, along with a young cowboy. Along the way, a young woman joins them, trying to get away […]