A Fair Hanging: Part 3 …… Gone are the Days / 2018


further on up the road / memphis mae & johnny bluth

Save the last bullet for yourself

Never believe Reviews.
I’ve seen some very bad Movies with high ratings. So have you.
While some damn good Movies get pissed on. Ditto.
Likewise, never judge a Movie by Production values.
Many ‘Big Budget’ Movies are horrific.
While ‘Small Budget’ Movies can be Masterpieces.
Consider the Lilies of the Field …
amen.

IMDB rates Gone are the Days as 4.8/10.
But I figured I’d give it a ‘Fair Hanging’ and make my own judgement.
Verdict: This is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.
Not just as a Western, but it’s just a really good movie.
I’m giving it an easy 8.
You make your own judgement.

Lesson: Don’t always buy Reviews.

Acting: Lance Henriksen and Tom Berenger are both excellent. Billy Lush and Meg Steedle give outstanding support. Danny Trejo also does a nice job in his small role.

78-year-old Lance Henriksen is perfectly cast as the bygone badman. Lance has a good body of work under his hat and you’ll likely recognize him from Alien 2, Aliens 3, The Right Stuff, PowderDamien: Omen IIJagged Edge, Prince of the City, Dog Day Afternoon, … along with several Westerns: Dead Man, The Quick and the Dead (Boo!), Appaloosa (Yay!) and Millenium (TV). He’s a good Actor.

Berenger? I hadn’t seen him a while and I wondered how he’d be? He’s great. He’s done good work in the past (Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Platoon (1986); more recently Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance miniseries Hatfields & McCoys (2012) and he’s equally good here.

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So we definitely give credit to Director Mark Landre Gould for his first film. May he make many more.

Gone are the Days is not a conventional Western and it will not be everybody’s cup of whisky. (What is?) BUT I do hope you can appreciate good movie making when you see it.

IMDB says that “The story, and characters
are based loosely on Dante’s Inferno.”
This is good to know. It’s a effective component in the movie.

Fees for the Ferryman

 

A Fair Hanging / Six New Westerns


Tom Dooley / David Summerford

A Fair Hanging. 

Every year a fistful of new Westerns try to sneak past me. Some succeed. Some are so bad they outta gallop past me at high speed. Yet there’s others that don’t get a fair hanging. And to Western Fans – like me – I figure they’re worth a watch.

The problem is not that we aren’t in the Golden Age of Westerns anymore – there’s still plenty of talent and good tales to be told. And will be. It’s other things. Mainly Money. Even though Westerns are usually fairly inexpensive to make (as Movie go) they still need to bring in some decent loot. It’s business. Art – as I’ve said – is not at the top of the list. Also, most movies these days are pre-screened (likely to audiences that are not Western fans) And if they figure the movie is not going to make good money (even if a good Movie/Western) they won’t distribute it to the theatres. It will then likely go directly to Video/DVD – or some other place like Netflix (if we’re lucky). But in a lot of instances they can become almost invisible right away – hard to find – and hard to get – even if you do know about them. Whether they deserve such treatment or not (in some instances they do). But in other instances we might well be missing a decent Western that you could rightly enjoy. Because like you, I often don’t agree with the Critics – or the general masses.

Six New Westerns 

Which brings to what I’ve been leading up to: Six new Westerns that I’ve discovered which are upcoming or relatively new – that you probably don’t know about. So I’m gonna preview each one individually in next few days.

Here they are: 

Yep you’re reading it right:
Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Should be interesting.

This looks pretty good.

We’ll have to see …

Of the Horror Western genre.
Not my thing, but doesn’t appear to take itself too seriously.

Looks offbeat … might be good?

An Australian Western. Looks possible.

Alright ! We’re gonna check these out.