Westworld

What became an exciting thriller by Michael Crichton in 1973 was turned into a far more ambitious but also convoluted TV series, set in the 2050s where a corporation is…

Dances With Wolves: Finding Your Tribe

Kevin Costner. Photo: Orion Pictures If Dances With Wolves had been released today, poisonous social media activism and cable news outlets would have made it part of the culture war,…

Red River: Mutiny on the Trail

John Wayne and Joanne Dru. Photo: United Artists John Ford was the man behind the movie that made John Wayne a star, Stagecoach (1939). When he saw Red River nine…

Stagecoach: Introducing John Wayne

Photo: United Artists Today, we remember John Ford as a great director of Westerns. In 1939, that wasn’t really the case. Ford hadn’t made a Western since his days as…

The Magnificent Seven

When a small town is harassed by a robber baron (Peter Sarsgaard), the local townsfolk hire a band of men to defend them. A remake of the 1960 classic that…

High Noon: Waiting for the Whistle

Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. Photo: United Artists In a notorious 1971 interview with Playboy, John Wayne talked about how proud he was to have helped make sure a communist…

Magnificent Seven: It Takes a Village

Photo: United Artists In 2009, Robert Vaughn released an autobiography that revealed the full extent of the rivalry between Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner on the set of The Magnificent…

Rio Bravo: A Sheriff Takes a Chance

John Wayne. Photo: Warner For purely political reasons, John Wayne was not a fan of High Noon (1952). In his view, that film celebrated collectivism, having Gary Cooper's sheriff come…

True Grit: A Spielberg Moment

Jeff Bridges. Photo: Paramount The original True Grit (1969) is a very good Western, well directed by Henry Hathaway, featuring a script by Marguerite Roberts and a part for John…