We are in the middle of a small western film boom. Some of the titles are high profile projects with acclaim and wide theatrical release. For every high profile release there may be ten low-budget, straight to VOD or streaming service westerns that go practically unnoticed.
The new westerns seem to fall into three categories.
There are your big budget, high profile, wide-theatrical release movies like The Revenant, True Grit, Hateful 8, Django Unchained, Magnificent Seven, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and others.
There are your Independent releases that are often acclaimed but don't get as wide a theatrical release. Movies like Meek's Cutoff, Slow West, Jane's Got a Gun, The Salvation, and others.
There are your low-budget/no-budget westerns that drop somewhere with little to no fanfare. They may feature a "big name" actor in a small role, used more for promotional purposes. A fair bit of them seem to be filmed in Canada and may use filming locations not typically associated with the traditional western, lots of wooded/forest shots for example. What marks them most is lower production values, wooden dialog, and stiff acting.
With these low-budget/no-budget westerns, curiosity is getting the better of me, I'm tired of scrolling passed these movies so I'm going to start taking a look at some of them. There has to be a diamond in the rough, right?
As I said, those movies won't be all I watch. I want to re-watch some classics, dip into some TV shows (both old and new), and just create place to talk about western movies.
Frequency: whenever I have enough to justify a post, I'll post. If something deserves it's own post, I'll do that. These could come weekly, or once a month. We'll see.
Enough rambling, after the jump is what I've watched recently.
