Extra Credit: Five Modern Westerns to Stream After ‘Hostiles’
In the weekly column Extra Credit, Charles Bramesco recommends supplemental viewing for moviegoers whose interests have been piqued by a given week’s big new release.
Howdy, pard’ner. Scott Cooper’s new Western Hostiles has been trottin’ around metropolitan cinemas for pert near three weeks, and on Friday, audiences everywhere will be able to cinch their saddle up on this bloody, solemn oater. Transitioning out of Black Mass’ criminal milieu like a horsefly swished off a mighty stallion’s hindquarters, Old Man Cooper brings a classicist’s sensibility to the modern day with his adoringly old-fashioned take on the cowboy picture. In the story of a racist soldier (Christian Bale) and grieving widow (Rosamund Pike) escorting a dying Cheyenne chief (Wes Studi) back to his home territory, Cooper gets the chance to genuflect to the Wild West masterworks that have very clearly (perhaps a little too clearly) influenced him.
But he’s far from the only director working right now to proudly harken back to the heyday of America’s defining film genre. Read on for a sampling of other modern releases that have carried on, deconstructed, or entirely done away with the legacy of the Western: