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This seems to be interesting, though certain scenes remind me of open range.

 
Posts: 6633 | Location: Virginia | Registered: December 23, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Made from a
different mold
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If it turns out as good as Open Range, I'll take it! The potential is there. Hopefully the trailer isn't the best part.


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Posts: 2824 | Location: Lake Anna, VA | Registered: May 07, 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Henry McCarty. Too cool.


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Posts: 630 | Location: Kentucky | Registered: September 20, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
quarter MOA visionary
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Heck ya ... looks good. Cool
 
Posts: 22843 | Location: Houston, TX | Registered: June 11, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by mutedblade:
If it turns out as good as Open Range, I'll take it! The potential is there. Hopefully the trailer isn't the best part.


This is why I posted it. I think Tim Blake Nelson will do a fine job.

https://variety.com/2021/film/...e-nelson-1235057676/
quote:
‘Old Henry’ Review: Tim Blake Nelson in His Ultimate Noble-Hick Performance
After years of playing hayseeds, he goes deeper in a Western that's like a minimalist "Unforgiven."


By Owen Gleiberman

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Old Henry Movie Review
Courtesy of Venice Film Festival
Tim Blake Nelson is a highly skilled and versatile actor (not to mention a terrific director), but for years now there has been one character he owns: the yokel, the snaggletoothed redneck runt, the leering hillbilly bumpkin who never met a big vocabulary word he didn’t like to chew on like tobacco. He has done variations on this role in films from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” to “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” and the thing about it is that each time Nelson goes Full Hick, you don’t feel like he’s acting; you feel like he just is. In truth, he’s acting up a storm, never more so than in “Old Henry,” in which he gives what I can only call the “Citizen Kane” of Tim Blake Nelson hayseed varmint performances.

Here’s what elevates this one. Most of the backwoods turns on Nelson’s resume have been unabashedly comic. He knows these characters are funny, and he’s not shy about playing to the peanut gallery. But Henry McCarty, the scowling and taciturn farmer Nelson plays in “Old Henry,” isn’t someone we’re laughing at. He’s got a sneaky gravitas. He’s also not someone to mess with.

When we first see him, we’re cued to underestimate him, because he looks so mangy. Nelson sports a long mustache that slopes into his stubbled cheeks, greasy hair that hangs flat, with a dirty white shirt under his suspenders and, at times, a hat that threatens to swallow his head. He appears not to have bathed in about three weeks. Yet the closer you look, the more you notice, under the foliage, his pale face and eyes of woe, which narrow down to slits of anger. “Old Henry” is set in Oklahoma territory in 1906 (Nelson, in fact, is from Oklahoma), and Henry is a widower who lives with his teenage son, Wyatt (Gavin Lewis), in a shabby comfortable gray farmhouse that sits at the bottom of a sloping field. It’s just the two of them, which Wyatt isn’t happy about. He thinks they’re stranded in the middle of nowhere (which they kind of are), and that his pa is a dutiful dullard (which, at a glance, he seems to be). But Wyatt is underestimating Henry too.

The film opens with a burst of violence: a man is running away from three killers, and before long they shoot him down — and then Ketchum, the leader, having squeezed all the information he can out of him, strangles him with a rope, mostly for the fun of it. Stephen Dorff, who is such a good actor, plays Ketchum as a stone sociopath with a broad condescending grin. (He, too, likes to chew on big vocabulary words.)

“Old Henry,” written and directed by Potsy Ponciroli, is a slow-burn Western that sets up Henry against this crooked, remorseless trio. It’s all triggered when young Wyatt happens upon a riderless horse with blood on its saddle. Henry, going out to investigate, discovers a satchel full of cash and a man who’s been shot in the chest, Curry (Scott Haze), who he brings back to the farmhouse. The villains want to kill this fellow too. But Henry, though he looks at the cash and first says “Nope,” has an instinct to protect him. As he sets about doing that, we start to notice something about him. He’s not scared.

We also notice just how many things Henry knows how to do. He knows how to render a slaughtered hog, how to cover his own tracks, how to subdue a prisoner with half a dozen punches, how to staunch a bullet wound with witch hazel, how to hide himself in a field of wheat, and how to put his son in his place by speaking to him in drawling commands like “Why don’t you cool his fever instead of vaporizing on every thought that comes into your head?” Before long, the outlaws arrive, standing in front of the farmhouse, and Henry comes out to be porch to meet them. Holding a big pistol down at his side, Nelson, with a stern gaze, looks almost cool, like some bantam version of a ’70s outlaw rocker. But does he know what he’s up against?

It would be unfair to give away more of “Old Henry,” which is a rock-solid, off-the-beaten-path Western, one that’s been built as a kind of pedestal for Nelson’s performance. There are twists involving who all these violent men really are. Yet we know in our bones where the movie is going, and it’s a steady enjoyable ride, a touch prosaic at times, one that turns into a kind of minimalist chamber-room version of “Unforgiven,” with a surprisingly touching upshot. What we don’t know, and what the movie starts to drop clues about, is Henry himself. He’s every inch the noble gruff customer we see, but he’s also not quite what he seems. And the way Nelson plays it, with a charismatic gnarled conviction that deepens as the movie goes on, the revelation of who he is comes off as an eye-widening surprise, a joke, and a sly testament to how the landscape of the West might really have operated. “Old Henry” is about violence and redemption, fathers and sons, and the mythology that lives in all our hearts. Mostly, though, it’s about Tim Blake Nelson finding a new power in his backwoods passion.
 
Posts: 6633 | Location: Virginia | Registered: December 23, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Caribou gorn
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Looks a bit like a western "Nobody." With a protagonist who is anything but a nobody.



I'm gonna vote for the funniest frog with the loudest croak on the highest log.
 
Posts: 10465 | Location: Marietta, GA | Registered: February 10, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Peace through
superior firepower
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Open Range? This film promises to be better than that film.

A couple of things- first, the trailer for the film tells us too much. The film business is about getting asses in seats, or, these days, people in front of their laptops. With the trailer, they are, of course, selling the film to us. They don't care too much about spoilers. I wish they did. This is nothing new, As a matter of fact, theatrical trailers used to be longer and many times revealed even more than what we saw in the trailer for this film.

Secondly- I am pleased and very surprised to not see the usual, sickening PC pandering with which Hollywood has slaughtered the Western genre. The American Western has been a dying genre for decades, but this film appears to be an authentic effort to honor the Western; no noble Indians err Native Americans, no Harvard-educated former slaves who dress impeccably and speak like John Houseman, no incredibly strong women characters who behave as if they can see 150 years into the future and spout feminist horse shit. I see a bunch of mangy white guys fighting over a bundle of cash. No doubt, this is a crime, since it's not "diverse and inclusive" but that's just tough shit, ain't it?

Western films- good Western films, faithful to the genre, come along these days only every decade or so, if even that.

So, I won't watch or read any reviews of the film, including the one I see posted in this thread. I know enough already to decide I want to see this film, and that is as rare an event as an authentic Western is these days.


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Posts: 107226 | Registered: January 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Why don’t you fix your little
problem and light this candle
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"some shaky old farmer"
"He didn't hold that pistol like any farmer I've ever seen"

Yeah, I'm in.



This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it. -Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Joshua Painter Played by Senator Fred Thompson
 
Posts: 3569 | Location: Central Virginia | Registered: November 06, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Peace through
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Yeah, the film is written and directed by the same guy- someone I've never heard of, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
 
Posts: 107226 | Registered: January 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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This looks promising.
 
Posts: 3530 | Location: Alexandria, VA | Registered: March 07, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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my only point in my comparison to open range is this bit of diolouge. It reminds me of a scene in it.




I can't remember a time when I have watched a trailer more than once. This has to be my eighth or ninth time seeing this.
 
Posts: 6633 | Location: Virginia | Registered: December 23, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Peace through
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There was no intent to disparage Open Range, though I find Costner's direction to be cloying at times. As I stated and as is obvious, the Western genre has been dying for decades, and any decent Western film these days is like a long drink of cold water in the blazing noonday sun of a barren desert.

Films such as Costner's and the low-budget Appaloosa five years later are helping to keep the American Western film alive. I have high hopes for Old Henry as another heartbeat for the genre.
 
Posts: 107226 | Registered: January 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by parabellum:
There was no intent to disparage Open Range, though I find Costner's direction to be cloying at times. As I stated and as is obvious, the Western genre has been dying for decades, and any decent Western film these days is like a long drink of cold water in the blazing noonday sun of a barren desert.

Films such as Costner's and the low-budget Appaloosa five years later are helping to keep the American Western film alive. I have high hopes for Old Henry as another heartbeat for the genre.


I am typically not much of a deep thinker when it comes to movies. I either like them or not. Given the trash that has come out in the last, well shit, 20 years. Your insights typically give me a lot more to think about when watching. As such, they are greatly appriciated.
 
Posts: 6633 | Location: Virginia | Registered: December 23, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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It looks interesting to me, and the movie is being released on DVD or DVDR or whatever those things are in a few weeks.

Not gonna get me in a theater, but I'll buy it and watch it at home assuming y'all give it good reviews.

If not, then it'll be on cable before too long and it'll be free, sort of.

No, I haven't cut the cable. Momma likes having a bazillion channels with nothing at all to watch on 'em, and you know what they say-If Momma ain't happy....

Bob
 
Posts: 1558 | Location: TampaBay | Registered: May 22, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Saw it tonight. Did not see the trailer or read the movie description before watching.

Didn't care for it. For me it required too much disbelief in reality. The story was good, just a lot of "you've got to be kidding" when it came to actions and reactions.




 
Posts: 4976 | Location: Arkansas | Registered: September 04, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Run Silent
Run Deep

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I thought it as good…considering most of the crappy movies released these days.

Was it epic? No…

Did it keep my interest…yes.

7-8 out of 10.


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Posts: 6978 | Location: South East, Pa | Registered: July 04, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I streamed this tonight off Amazon and liked it enough. Plenty actually.
 
Posts: 3437 | Location: God Awful New York | Registered: July 01, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
bigger government
= smaller citizen
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Para, here's one of those scenarios where I hope you'll be willing to come back and give us your thoughts on the movie. Smile




“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”—H.L. Mencken
 
Posts: 9141 | Location: West Michigan | Registered: April 20, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Well it's on one of our bazillion channels, an On Demand one, for 7 bucks. We're gonna watch it in a little bit and see.

Bob
 
Posts: 1558 | Location: TampaBay | Registered: May 22, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I enjoyed it, as did a couple of the other guys I work with.

I thought that the choice for actors was also well done for this.

The story went along at a good pace, and the overall length of the movie seemed about right.

If you like Westerns, I don't think this one will disappoint you...Especially compared to all of the other garbage coming out these days.




Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong. Do everything in love.
- 1 Corinthians 16:13-14

 
Posts: 883 | Location: Southwest Michigan | Registered: March 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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