Out West

Sep 13, 2004 — Fifteen years ago I received a letter from a young film director in Texas, who enclosed a tape of his first film, with the unlikely title It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books. It might as well have...

Dec 15, 1986 — It has been estimated that one out of four feature films made in America before the mid-1960s was a western. Since approximately 35,000 features were released in this country in the 70 years after the introduction of film, this would...

Jul 25, 2023 — The protagonists in Budd Boetticher’s five classic Columbia westerns are paired with opponents who, venal though they may be, almost always have their reasons.

Feb 27, 2026 — Tony Kushner revisits Munich, a Satyajit Ray restoration hits theaters, and the new Film Quarterly is out and free.

Jan 15, 2025 — Edward Berger’s improbably entertaining follow-up to All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) scores twelve.

Feb 27, 2024 — Hollywood legend Raoul Walsh’s first movie for Warner Bros. is an epoch-spanning tall tale that takes inspiration from the New York City of his childhood and closes out a run of influential gangster films he inaugurated in the silent era.

May 22, 2023 — Blending a tragic love story and a terrifying, slow-motion genocide, Killers has premiered out of competition in Cannes.

Nov 14, 2022 — Most reviewers are getting a kick out of Tarantino’s blend of memoir and film criticism.

Jul 20, 2022 — Bristol’s showcase of restorations and rarities will head out across the UK and Ireland next month.

Oct 26, 2021 — Considered his first directly political film, Satyajit Ray’s 1960 masterpiece explores how the denial of self-knowledge, a void neither religion nor Western rationalism can fill, takes a toll on women in Indian society.