3:10 to Yuma

[Josh]

I love movies like this: A genre film that works within the conventions of an established tradition, but subverts those conventions enough to bring a twist to the familiar mythology. This is a Western-- and a remake of a 1957 Western, at that-- and so it has all the tropes and trappings on might expect, but there's a moral and philosophical complexity that has more in common with recent "revisionist" pics like The Proposition or The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Just as it quietly asks us to reconsider what we know and le about Westerns, it might also ask us to reconsider what they tell us about ourselves, our neighbor, and our country. Oh, and it's also exciting, unpredictable, and as tough and sturdy as any Western in recent memory.

[starhawk]

 I thought I liked the movie a lot, but I really disliked the ending, and it only made some of the problems I had with the rest of the movie seem worse.  It's cool to see the western still alive and able, but I think what it does for the genre is more commendable than the quality of the movie itself.

I stopped watching The Proposition halfway through...it was just too violent for me.  I was bugged by the obviousness of its moral and pretentious style anyway.  So maybe this particular ressurgence of western films just isn't my thing at all.