Slow West (2015) - Maclean's contemporary-minded, digital, forgettable West

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Its four stars' faces against blue cloudy skies make up this untraditional poster for John Mclean's Slow West

A bounty hunter helps an enamored teenager with his young lady, who has a high prize on her head, through the perils of the deadly wild west.

Slow West is written and directed by debuting John Maclean (Man on a Motorcycle (2009, short)).
It is a kind of reconstructivist western, which conjures up a portrait of the mystical west, which doesn't conform to the established facts that the genre's past classics have taught us as moviegoers. Instead character after character here share related reflections, which more seem to come from our present day, (and surely hail directly from writer-director Maclean.)
No one really distinguishes themselves in Slow West, and I continually wondered why Michael Fassbender's (William and Mary (2005, TV-series)) character continually helps the smitten Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road (2009)) character.
In terms of style and technique, the film also doesn't lean on the genre's traditions and conventions, and its very digital texture (or in actuality a lack thereof; a crisp, modern smoothness) is profoundly hard to swallow for this western fan.
Slow West is a small, easily forgotten, and not very promising debut, - and an extremely overrated film.

 

Related post:

 

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Estimated 2 mil. $
Box office: 1.2 mil. $
= Huge flop (returned 0.6 times its cost)
[Slow West premiered 24 January (Sundance Film Festival, Utah) and runs 84 minutes. Shooting took place in New Zealand and Scotland around October 2013. The film opened #36 to a 67k $ first weekend in 50 theaters in North America, where it peaked the following week at #35 and in 54 theaters and grossed 229k $ (19.1 % of the total gross). The biggest market was the main production country the UK with 559k $ (46.6 %); North America was 2nd biggest and Germany 3rd biggest with 225k $ (19 %). In North America, the film was simultaneously released as video-on-demand, which may have contributed to the low gross. Numbers from its performance on VOD are unreleased. The film won a Sundance award and was nominated for a British Independent Film award and a European Film award, among other honors. Maclean has stayed clear of directing since but made some music instead. Fassbender returned in Macbeth (2015); Smit-McPhee in Gallipolli (2015, miniseries) and theatrically in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016); Caren Pistorius (Mortal Engines (2018)) in The Light Between Oceans (2016)) and Ben Mendelsohn (Vertical Limit (2000)) in Mississippi Grind (2015). Slow West is certified fresh at 92 % with a 7.47/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Slow West?

Dead Man (1995) - Jarmusch's bold, poetic, rich Americana masterpiece

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Johnny Depp is Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man

QUICK REVIEW:

William Blake arrives with train to the little town of Machine, where he doesn't get the job that he had expected. Instead he gets into a fix that makes him kill a man, and he is thereafter hunted through the wilderness with an Indian named Nobody by his side.

Dead Man is a fairytale-like, postmodern, philosophical western in B/W (photographed by the great Robby Müller (Breaking the Waves (1996))) with a superb ensemble cast, led by Johnny Depp (Donnie Brasco (1997)): Gary Farmer (Twist (2003)) as Nobody, Crispin Glover (Back to the Future (1985)), Lance Henriksen (Aliens (1986)), John Hurt (The Elephant Man (1980)), Robert Mitchum (The Night of the Hunter (1955)) - in his last screen performance, - Iggy Pop (Persepolis (2008), voice), Gabriel Byrne (Miller's Crossing (1990)), Jared Harris (Mad Men (2009-12)) and Mili Avital (The Human Stain (2003)). - And that's not even all of them!
Neil Young (Year of the Horse (1997)) has composed an outstanding score, which perfectly compliments the psychedelic feel that master filmmaker writer-director Jim Jarmusch's (Down by Law (1986)) characters spark.
Whether Dead Men hits you like a spiritual kick in the gut or as a more intellectually meaningful offering, the film is a rich, rewarding and very unique experience. - And one that requires an open mind.
It is possibly Ohioan Jarmusch's best film, equaled perhaps only by Mystery Train (1989).

Related reviews:

Jim Jarmusch: Broken Flowers (2005) - Hip search for son and self with Jarmusch and Murray
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) - Pleasant, precious vignette sit-down with some wonderful people  
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) - Whitaker serves ancient samurai justive in Jarmusch's cool treat 
Top 10: The best B/W movies reviewed by Film Excess to date  

Watch the long trailer for the film here

Cost: 9 mil. $
Box office: 1 mil. $ (US only)
= Some uncertainty
[But most likely Dead Man should, appallingly, be counted as a huge flop. I have only a few international figures for the film's performance: It made 0.8 mil. $ in Australia, and in France, Germany and the Netherlands together, around 600k paid admission to see it. The film premiered in Cannes, and it is highly esteemed among Native Americans, who regard it as an extremely well-researched depiction of their different tribal cultures, use of different native languages etc. Critics reacted very differently to the film: Roger Ebert gave it a paltry 1½ stars; it seems he didn't understand the film at all! - While others, like Greil Marcus, Jonathan Rosenbaum and A. O. Scott, recognize it as a masterpiece.]

What do you think of Dead Man?
Do you think it is Jarmusch's greatest film?

Only God Forgives (2013) - Refn's violent vigilante beauty in Bangkok

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+ 3rd Best Movie of the Year
+ Best Danish Movie of the Year

Visually restrained yet fiercely energetic and powerful, this sun-drenched French poster for Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives

Danish master filmmaker, writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive (2011)) returns to his old strange, twisted self with Only God Forgives, his 9th feature, which resembles his Mads Mikkelsen-starring mute viking psych-out Valhalla Rising (2009) and his John Turturro-starring crime mystery Fear X (2003) more than his preceding smash hit Drive. Perhaps therefore it disappointed a lot of critics and audiences at the time of its release, who, after the more conventional and very popular Drive, just didn't seem to get it.
- But pay no heed to that negative hype; Only God Forgives is an unmissable film. And how often does a phenomenal filmmaker invite us on a sword-and-martial-arts-mixing modern western myth with big stars in Bangkok? Frankly, I think that many critics and audiences were blinded by conventions and ungrateful, wrong expectations.

Only God Forgives is the story of two brothers. One is bad; he kills and rapes a young girl and gets murdered for it. The other tries to be good, but is damaged and put under new pressure by their ruthless, drug-running mother to avenge her lost son. Meanwhile, a fierce local cop exerts a kind of Old Testament justice in Bangkok's grimy netherworld of criminal filth.

In other words, it's a totally straightforward and perfectly understandable basic story. The pace is, - regardless of what others may write, - stable and continually moves ahead in an old-fashioned western/horror-kind of steady rhythm, - with gruesomely violent and sexually charged scenes coming one after the next, each serving a clear purpose for the story.
Ryan Gosling (Drive (2011)) is awesomely cool here once again as a very silent protagonist, - this time not as a winner type, however, - and British actress Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient (1996)), boldly gone along on this film which is nothing like what she usually does, is a superb matriarchal villain, whose deviousness and possible wrongdoings onto her sons in the past haunt her behavior - and theirs. Thai actor Vithaya Pansringarm (The Hangover Part II (2011)) also does wonders as the mystical, local cop, who exerts a Dirty Harry (1971)/Death Wish (1974) type official vigilante justice, which feels fresh and unlike any before seen vengeance mission, both due to his performance and the execution, but also due to its implicit feeling of its being a mysterious, righteous justice from the East upon the traveling, incoming wretches of the West.
The title, like the rest of the film, is not designed to be a crowd-pleaser. Religious people will most likely dislike its implications, and surely we can all agree that it's not the nicest of thoughts that only God forgives. I think it is to be considered in terms of genre and as a hint as to the logic of the stern Thai avenger we meet in the film. Though Only God Forgives is an art film and a genre enjoyment, (SPOILER the gruesome eye-spearing shot is as taken right out of a Lucio Fulci horror film of the 1980s), its title is probably decided to resonance such films as Gianfranco Parolini's Lee Van Cleef-starring spaghetti western, God's Gun (1976). It also incarnates the villainous mother's crude perception of life.
DP Larry Smith (The Guard (2011)), composer Cliff Martinez (Contagion (2011)), costume designer Wasitchaya 'Nampeung' Mochanakul and art director's Witoon 'Boom' Suanyai and Russell Barnes (Howl (2010)) also deserve the highest compliments for an aesthetically amazing, pompously decadent and neon-drenched dream of a film, meticulously carved out, which looks and sounds amazing.

SPOILER Besides everything else, I love the film's strange, beautiful and darkly funny karaoke-sequences and the ending. Only God Forgives is a truly rare film that should be watched, and can be watched many times, each time registering something new.

It may also be Gosling's last starring vehicle in a good while, as he has said that he wants to retire from acting and is now directing his first, mysteriously sounding, How to Catch a Monster (2014), about a secret underwater town. (Ed. note: That film ended up being retitled Lost River (2014), a major flop which critics also axed, and Gosling is now back in front of the camera where he belongs.)

Refn is slated to do a 200 mil. $ remake of the 1976 sci-fi-classic, Logan's Run. Whether this will ever actually happen, and whether a good movie will come out of it, I have my anxieties and doubts. (Ed. note: This was scrapped, and Refn is instead focusing on a horror movie for 2016, titled The Neon Demon.) Together with Only God Forgives, his best film remains, in my opinion, Pusher II (2004), very worth seeing for anyone just slightly hooked by his films.

Related posts:

Nicolas Winding Refn: The Neon Demon (2016) or, Jesse Goes to Hollywood 

2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]

Top 10: Best Danish movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess 

Top 10: Best car chases in movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Drive (2011) - Refn's muscle-flexing, über-cool audience favorite
Bronson (2008) or, Violent Man

2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Top 10: Best drug-themed movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

With Blood on My Hands: Pusher II/Pusher II (2004) - Refn's magnetic snapshot of Copenhagen's criminal underground

1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 
Bleeder (1999) - The mysterious second film by Nicolas Winding Refn 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 4.8 mil. $
Box office: 10.6 mil. $
= Flop (returned 2.2 times the cost)
[Only God Forgives premiered 22 May (Cannes Film Festival, in competition) and runs 90 minutes. Shooting took place in Bangkok. Thailand. The film opened #26 to a 313k $ first weekend in 78 theaters in North America, its peak there although it widened to 81 cinemas, grossing 779k $ (7.3 % of the total gross). North America was its 3rd biggest market. The biggest and 2nd biggest were France with France with 3.6 mil. $ (40 %) and the UK with 1.8 mil. $ (17%). The film won 3/7 nominations at the Robert awards (Denmark's Oscar), among other honors. Refn returned with a Hennessey X.O. commercial in 2016 and theatrically with The Neon Demon (2016). Gosling returned in The Big Short (2015); Thomas in Before the Winter Chill/Avant l'Hiver (2013); and Pansringarm in short film Gutted (2013) and theatrically in Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013). Only God Forgives is rotten at 40 % and a 5.3/10 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Only God Forgives?