It would be oblivious to deny that Watkins in part shares her visions of sweltering badlands with writers like Joan Didion or Denis Johnson.
The Unbelievers isn’t as galvanizing as it would like to be.
The film doesn’t temper enough of Cormac McCarthy’s excesses, but Ridley Scott and his ensemble find enough meat in the scenario to make for diverting, bloody pleasure.
In keeping with its subject, the movie has a rough-hewn quality.
Blame it on the idiot box.
The older 3:10 to Yuma harkens back to a time when westerns were westerns, with their own assumed moral systems and thematic boilerplate.
Milo Burke’s America isn’t in the throes of environmental or theocratic chaos, just a long, slow slide into mediocrity.
For the most part, I found myself almost mechanically checking off the major scenes as they happened.
If the film starts off as a test of Halsey’s will to live, it certainly doesn’t end up that way.
The Coens’ narrations often hint at, but rarely confirm, the existence of deliberate, supernatural forces.