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When Armando (Wagner Moura) finally resolves to seek a fake passport and one-way ticket out of Brazil for himself and his young son, he asks his father-in-law to suggest a spot where he could meet a fixer. The old man recommends a room inside his place of work: a cinema. This choice (a movie theatre standing as the only safe refuge from death) is both hopelessly romantic and in keeping with the infectious cinephilia of Kleber Mendonça Filho, director of The Secret Agent, an unsettling and rousing thriller into which Armando staggers as a tragic hero. Anyone familiar with the Brazilian’s filmography will recognize these tributes as a recurring motif, but even neophytes will appreciate the affection he reserves for the movies––those who make them and the places that house them. A critic-turned-filmmaker, Mendonça Filho is the rare cineaste who can make his love palpable and contagious. When...

Joe Don Baker, beloved character actor who populated classic films from “Walking Tall” to “Cape Fear” with his unique spin on the brawny Texan persona, is dead at 89, his family announced. He is survived by a circle of friends and extended relations in his hometown of Groesbeck, Texas.

Standing six-foot, two inches and built like a brick wall, he was a natural athlete, playing basketball and football in high school, and attending North Texas State College on an athletic scholarship. Graduating in 1958, and after spending two years in the army, he moved to New York City to study at the Actors Studio, landing his debut in Manhattan theater in “Marathon ’33” in 1963. Small parts in Westerns on TV followed: “The Big Valley,” “Bonanza,” “Gunsmoke,” and, notably, the pilot episode of “Lancer,” where he played the villain — a Tarantino-ized version of which was played by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton in...

Deliverance is seen as the benchmark for backwoods, fish out of water thrillers but it’s not alone. While it’s certainly true that the John Boorman 1972 thriller had more success with its 46 million dollar return on a 2-million-dollar budget and 3 Oscar nominations including Best Picture, it may have been bested 9 years later. Southern Comfort has just as good of a pedigree in front of and behind the camera and continues to gain a better and better reputation 44 years later. The horrors found within this movie permeate the entire run time and include one of the most intense and nerve wracking final 20 minutes ever put to the screen that will sit with you long after the credits. Don’t mess with the locals as we revisit Southern Comfort.

Let’s start with director/writer/producer Walter Hill. Hill is a legend in Hollywood on both the big and small screens.

The action cinema of John Wick, Havoc and John Woo’s The Killer has constantly evolved as it’s travelled between filmmakers and eras.

Now on Netflix, writer-director Gareth Evans’ Havoc is an ultra-violent stew of influences. It’s set in a benighted US city, but was shot in Wales; its bullet-strewn action is directly inspired by Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo.

Then again, action cinema has always been a particularly international genre, taking in disparate bits of American westerns, low-key French thrillers and more besides. When John Woo directed A Better Tomorrow, released in 1986, its contemporary gangland setting and ferocious shoot-outs changed the look and feel of action cinema forever. Widely credited with inventing what was later dubbed the ‘heroic bloodshed’ genre, it made a star out of its lead, Chow Yun-fat.

Woo continued to hone his signature style – slow-motion photography, close-quarters action, and his characters’ habit of holding...

Steven Spielberg is a man who needs no introduction. With his career spanning six decades, his films' impact on the industry and in modern popular culture cannot be overstated. From the biggest blockbusters such as "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park" to the smaller character-driven films such as "The Color Purple" and most recently, "The Fabelmans," fewer filmmakers have accomplished his level of influence in so many genres of cinema. With 23 Oscar nominations and 3 wins, and a filmography that has grossed $10.7 billion at the global box office making him the highest-grossing film director of all-time, there is almost nothing he cannot accomplish.

In his decorated career, Steven Spielberg has also had his share of unrealized projects. One of those projects includes an adaptation of the sci-fi novel "Robopocalypse," which was to be written by "Cabin in the Woods" co-writer/director Drew Goddard and had Chris Hemsworth and Anne Hathaway attached to star.

At the outset of the 1960s, the United States felt poised for its greatest decade yet or armageddon. The Soviet Union's launch of the Earth satellite Sputnik in 1957 had placed many Americans on edge. How had the Russkies beaten the most prosperous country on the planet into space, and what were our leaders doing to counteract this disaster? This led to one of the most contentious and closest Presidential elections in U.S. history, which found Democrat John F. Kennedy narrowly prevailing over Republican Richard M. Nixon. Many were hopeful that the country was in the right, aspirational hands; almost just as many were convinced we'd consigned the country to certain doom.

In times like these, people used to go to their local movie theater to escape the fresh hell of the outside world. They'd line for any entertainment that promised some kind of catharsis. Romances, comedies, romantic comedies, horror flicks,...

“Film records the profound suffering that war brings to mankind.” That is how the Beijing International Film Festival explained a focus it has unveiled on war and peace in a special “Film and Peace” program that it is featuring during its 15th edition starting on Friday.

It will showcase “12 masterpieces” depicting “the tragedy of war” on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II this year to “immerse ourselves in history,” organizers said. “Filmmakers at home and abroad use light and shadow to remember the cruelty and endless pain of war and use memory, emotion and shocking reality to preserve recollection and sound the alarm for today.”

Among the movies screening at the Chinese fest will be the winner of the first-ever Cannes Film Festival in 1946, The Last Chance, a 1945 movie directed by Austrian-Swiss filmmaker Leopold Lindtberg. Also featured are such classics as Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah,...

As Hollywood hurtled toward the 1970s, the American film industry was in the midst of a revolution. The old studio moguls, who'd been flailing throughout the '60s to slake Baby Boomer audiences' thirst for movies that spoke to their generation, were being replaced by younger executives who understood the future of their business hinged on being able to palpably connect with this massive cohort.

As envelope-shredding movies like "Easy Rider," "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Graduate" became runaway blockbusters, the era's biggest directors and stars spied an opportunity to obtain greater creative and financial control of their movies. Since even the young execs were scrambling to figure out why Boomers flocked to an adaptation of a publishing sensation like "Love Story," but avoided, say, the film of John Updike's bestseller "Rabbit, Run," striking deals with artists who seemed to have their finger on the pulse of this generation, or...

When it comes to the biggest big screen stars of the 1960s and 1970s, even a short list would have to include Steve McQueen. He's rarely mentioned in the same acting league as contemporaries like Paul Newman and Robert Redford, but his early death in 1980 at just 50 years old is arguably the biggest reason for that. Still, even without later performances that would have surely continued to flex his acting muscles, his existing filmography shows an immense and interesting talent bristling with both energy and calm.

It's McQueen's control between the relaxed and the electric, along with his genuine and visible appreciation for life, that led to the actor being dubbed "the King of Cool." The persona served him well in roles that saw him playing underdogs and disrupters, men who refuse to abide by the established order and instead forge their own path, and it's part of what...

Every principal cast member on the CBS western drama "Gunsmoke" had their part to play, and for the most part, they maintained their small screen occupations over the course of their tenures. If trouble ever came to the Long Branch Saloon, Amanda Blake's (unmarried) Miss Kitty was always thrust in the middle of it. Should an outsider present a threat to the folks of Dodge City, James Arness' Marshal Matt Dillon was often the purveyor of justice. But Milburn Stone's Galen Adams, otherwise referred to as Doc, was always front and center whenever someone fell ill or needed a bullet pulled out of them.

Where most of the "Gunsmoke" characters are proficient at taking lives, Doc is saddled with the greater responsibility of saving them. Stone was the only other actor in the "Gunsmoke" lineup, besides Arness, who was present throughout its staggering 20-season run. He brought a grandfatherly approach to the role,...

Alfred Hitchcock, the late “Master of Suspense,” and Jiří Menzel, the late Czech director who won the foreign-language film Oscar for 1966’s Closely Watched Trains, will get some screen love during the 15th edition of the Beijing International Film Festival.

The “Homage-Restoration” section of the fest will feature, among others, Hitchcock’s classic spy thriller North by Northwest, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason, and late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s Meetings With Anna, starring Aurore Clément and Jean-Pierre Cassel, in new 4K restorations.

Anna is about an emotionally unavailable filmmaker who is traveling through Western Europe to promote her new film, meeting with strangers, friends, former lovers, and family members. North by Northwest is known as a tale of mistaken identity, featuring a man pursued by agents of a mysterious organization.

The Beijing festival organizers also unveiled that this year’s “Homage” section will put a...

Late New Hollywood legend Robert Altman (Gosford Park, M*A*S*H), late master of violence Sam Peckinpah, and Dogme 95, the Danish avant-garde movement led by directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg (Another Round), will get the spotlight treatment at the 15th edition of the Beijing International Film Festival

“To commemorate the 130th anniversary of world cinema,” the Beijing fest has curated a retrospective program “to document the history of film and envision its future,” organizers said. “With a curated selection of cinematic classics, the festival blends nostalgia with new perspectives, drawing inspiration from the past to ignite future creativity.”

Among the offerings will be “Endless Waves: 30 Years of the Dogme 95.” The Dogme 95 Manifesto expressed a commitment to create movies focused on storytelling, acting, and theme rather than the elaborate use of special effects or technological tricks. One of its key goals was to empower directors as artists. The...

Between 1939 and 1964, John Wayne was the face of the Hollywood Western. There were major stars who thrived within the genre at the same time, but they were too artistically ambitious to keep making the same kinds of movies over and over again. Wayne didn't mind playing outright bastards (see "Red River" or "The Searchers"), but he never would've played a disturbingly obsessed protagonist like Scottie Ferguson in "Vertigo," nor would he have allowed himself to be putty in the hands of Barbara Stanwyck in "The Lady Eve" or "Ball of Fire" (though she did make quick work of a pre-stardom Duke in "Baby Face"). When Wayne wanted to stretch, he made a war movie. And on the off-chance he did step outside of his comfort zone, he paid for it (possibly in more ways than one with "The Conqueror").

Basically, for two decades and change, when people thought of Westerns,...

Among the most exciting forms of entertainment in cinema, action movies can enthrall fans with some high-octane spectacle that is elevated through excellent storytelling, fun characters and efficient production design. Despite making waves with enjoyable narratives that delight audiences, there are also some action movies that not only induce a stressful feeling but also cause viewers to rethink the intensity with which action can be portrayed on screen.

Produced with an emphasis on mature themes and violent set-pieces, the more mentally taxing action movies often purposefully invite moviegoers to expand their minds and toe the line of what can be achieved in the action genre; where the best of these impassioned films have retained a legacy that continually finds people preparing for a wild ride.

The Wild Bunch Changed the Western Genre A Pioneer Delivers His Best Work Ever

Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 epic action revisionist Western feature The Wild Bunch...

This week on the Film Stories Podcast Network: Bong’s back, Comic Relief returns, Severance ends and more. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

Reel Talk

A big return for Bong Joon-Ho in Mickey 17, his delayed Robert Pattinson-starring science-fiction film, discussed here by Sam Stokes and guest Ian Buckley…

Britcom Goes to the Movies

Every two years, Britain launches Comic Relief in the West’s vain effort to help the African poor, and though that never changes, we do get some blinding sketches out of it. Rob Heath and Guy Walker return for a special episode to look at some of the best…

Illumination Above All

Get your mittens on as Severance reaches 2×10 ‘Cold Harbor’, the crazy climax to this thrilling second season, which innies Ian Buckley and Sarah Applegate are here to break down…

Modern Horror

One of the strangest and hardest to describe horrors in recent years,...

Anyone who knows Western cinema knows the history of the popular cinema genre and its evolution over the last hundred or so years. What's most fascinating about the genre is how it has affected audiences and audience appeal throughout the different eras of cinema. It seems there are multiple watershed films that either flip the script on the entire genre, pushing it in a different direction, or stand on their own as staples of the genre at any given time. From the classical era that influenced all Westerns to the stylized Italian "Spaghetti Westerns" and the contemporary revisionist Westerns, the genre has a plethora of important films to experience. Although they are not made as often in modern cinema, Westerns remain an important cultural cornerstone of cinematic storytelling.

Occasionally, a Western will come along that cements its place among the best in the genre, because the film knows exactly how...

Quick LinksRichard Harris Is Fondly Remembered For His Time as DumbledoreMajor Dundee Is an Underrated GemRichard Harris Cemented His Leading Man Potential

Typecasting is a very real fear for many actors. When taking on a role, performers are extremely conscious of how they will be viewed for the rest of their careers. In some cases, a single role will result in plenty more offers of similar material, without much room for growth. In other situations, a performance can help cement their legacy, while opening doors they may never have expected. This is especially true of big blockbuster filmmaking and genre pieces. Those that starred in Harry Potter very much have this same difficult tightrope to walk. On one hand, stars like Daniel Radcliffe have attempted to build a new foundation, with unique choices like a Weird Al biopic contributing to an impressive career.

Others, such as Alan Rickman, had a...

What's so great about Westerns? Well, for starters, the genre's approach toward morality might seem clear-cut at a glance, but the best Westerns languish in morally grey landscapes and constantly redefine codes of honor. Violence is often at the heart of these stories because, without this component, we would be painting a sanitized and inauthentic picture of a society on the cusp of change. This violence can manifest in different forms and reflect bitter truths about human history, or it can simply highlight universal human traumas from a specific point of view. Moreover, lawless spaces demand lawless men who are in tune with the West and its ethos, and sometimes, these men undergo a transformation. The rich history of Westerns extends beyond the moving image, with writers like Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx having reshaped the definitions of how Westerns can reveal the worst impulses in humanity.

Deciding which Westerns...

The revered but divisive American director, who died in 1984, would have turned 100 this week. We rate his greatest movies, from Straw Dogs to The Wild Bunch

After making his name as a director of westerns, Sam Peckinpah was given his first shot at making a major studio film – an epic about a tyrannical cavalry officer (Charlton Heston) leading an expedition into Mexico. The production set a template for later Peckinpah films – heavy drinking, personality clashes, battles with the suits, and a final cut not matching the director’s vision. Major Dundee was a victim of its chaotic ambition and it’s easy to see why it flopped on release: even in the 2005 restored version, it is hopelessly unfocused, taking in Dundee’s Moby-Dick-like mission to track down an Apache chief, the dynamics of the US civil war, encounters with the French army and an unconvincing romantic interlude. But it’s interestingly flawed,...

Quick LinksWhat is Southern Comfort About?Southern Comfort Is Directed by One of the All-Time GreatsHow Does Southern Comfort Relate to Clint Eastwood?

Clint Eastwood is one of the greatest movie directors of all time. This past year, he released what might be his final film, Juror No.2, and it didn't disappoint. Throughout his career, Eastwood has cemented himself as a filmmaker of habit. He gets into a rhythm and follows trends. For years, Eastwood was dedicated to the Western genre, releasing Unforgiven, Pale Rider, High Plains Drifter, and more. Soon after, he found himself in the business of dismantling bureaucracy with Changeling, Sully, and Richard Jewell. Somewhere in between these two trends, though, Eastwood found himself fascinated with war. The war genre is wide, varied, and controversial, ranging from grandiose battle films to propagandized nonsense to unflinchingly realistic depictions of violence, all the way to haunting portrayals of post-war blues.

In 1969 the master of the American western, Sam Peckinpah, directed a stellar cast in The Wild Bunch, a controversial film that breathed new life into the genre and broke ground in the realistic portrayal of screen violence. Receiving two Academy Award nominations, this bitter, brutal story of magnificent losers in a dying West remains one of the screen’s all-time classics. An explosive adventure drama about the last of the legendary lawless breed who lived to kill – and killed to live. The cast included William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien. Warren Oates and Ben Johnson.

Now comes a bunch of a different kind. the Thunderbolts* – an unconventional team of antiheroes – Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, Ghost, Taskmaster and John Walker. The cast features Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and also includes newcomers to the MCU – Lewis Pullman...

The great state of Georgia has been home to an impressive number of film productions, including a number of Marvel Studios movies, but only a very small percentage of those are actually set in Georgia. Instead, the Atlanta streets frequently play the role of New York or Washington D.C., and its wild spaces can be used to represent just about anywhere. 

But what about those movies that actually take place in the beautiful, complicated Peach State? Films as diverse and wonderful as "Magic Mike Xxl" and "Days of Thunder" all have great stretches set in Georgia, but some films go even further and really represent a little slice of the state with most of their runtime. Whether it's Clint Eastwood's genteel Savannah true crime murder mystery "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," having an aca-awesome time with college acapella performers in Atlanta in "Pitch Perfect," or...

Violence and the Western genre often go hand-in-hand, but not every horse opera is an excessive mess of blood, guts, and gore. In general, John Wayne pictures are pretty lax when it comes to violence. Even though gunshots reign supreme in most of the Duke's Westerns, they rarely feel as bloody or violent as the films of Sam Peckinpah, Clint Eastwood, or Quentin Tarantino. But in Wayne's later years, the Western star was a bit more willing to get downright gruesome, particularly in his 1971 offering, Big Jake. While not on the same level as some of the aforementioned director's films, this Western outing — where the Duke plays Jacob "Big Jake" McCandles — surprised even critics with its unforgiving displays of violence.

For viewers who enjoyed Clint Eastwood’s 1985 western Pale Rider, one underrated ‘60s movie starring Glenn Ford is well worth a watch. Pale Rider is unique among Clint Eastwood’s many Western movies as the 1985 revenge story sees the director and star toy with supernatural elements more explicitly than ever before. When a family is driven out of their hometown by a mining magnate’s hired goons, a mysterious drifter appears to assist them in standing up to the money-hungry developers. Eastwood himself admitted that his title character was a ghost, lending the Western movie a rare air of paranormal flair.

Related Pale Rider Cast & Character Guide

Pale Rider is a 1985 western starring and directed by Clint Eastwood. Here's a cast and character breakdown for the cult favorite.

After High Plains Drifter played with the concept of making Eastwood’s character an outright ghost, Pale Rider took things further and...

In 1986, a virtually unknown film with a tight budget became a blockbuster and broke box office records in Hong Kong and Asia. The film, “A Better Tomorrow” also made its star Chow Yun Fat an overnight success and launched him into the big league of the Asian film industry. Furthermore it also gave co-star, a Shaw Brothers veteran, Ti Lung‘s career a much welcoming boost.

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After the huge success of its predecessor, a sequel with the same cast returning soon hit the big screens. The filmmakers had to bring Chow back due to his popularity. The problem was, they killed off Mark, the character he played in the previous film, so he returns as Ken, Mark’s long lost twin brother. John Woo was also back as director but it was a troubled shoot since producer Tsui Hark was...

In 2014, Creep creators Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice unleashed a bizarre new villain on the horror world: Josef, an overstepping extrovert who makes well-meaning strangers afraid of hurting his feelings, when they should be afraid for their lives. This strategy may sound familiar to fans of films like Straw Dogs, Speak No Evil, and Funny Games, in which the protagonists are too civilized to stand up for themselves, but The Creep Tapes levels up with a clever critique of modern masculinity.

In Speak No Evil, a predatory rural couple uses shameless displays of sexuality and machismo to intimidate and manipulate uptight tourists — a story derived from Sam Peckinpah's controversial thriller Straw Dogs. In Funny Games, an upper-class family is disarmed by the killers' antisocial antics. The Creep franchise's antihero also uses his prey's social training against them. Uniquely, though, he leverages the cultural stigma around emotional openness between men in order to get way,...

Andrew Stevens pays loving but not hagiographic tribute to his late mother, famed actress Stella Stevens, in his documentary recently showcased at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. The film convincingly makes the case that its subject, best known for her performances in such pictures as The Poseidon Adventure and The Nutty Professor, is severely underrated, both as an actress and social activist. Stella Stevens: The Last Starlet aims to rectify that perception and, thanks to numerous clips of her work and effusive commentary by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Vivica A. Fox, it succeeds beautifully.

The filmmaker (who appears frequently) admits that his relationship with his mother was rocky, to say the least, in the early years. Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Stevens got married at age 16 and had Andrew, her first and only child, six months later. The marriage soon dissolved, and when she moved to Hollywood to pursue an acting career,...

Editor's Note: The following contains the topic of rape and sexual assaultFew directors were as closely associated with violence as Sam Peckinpah. Films like The Wild Bunch, The Getaway, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia were defined by their pessimistic worldview and obsession with carnage. But no other Peckinpah movie caused as much of a stir as Straw Dogs, a revenge flick with depictions of rape and vigilante violence that bordered on endorsement. Whether you think it's fascist propaganda or a liberal cautionary tale, it's a fascinating study of masculinity and male insecurity, and how that often manifests itself into misogyny.

Tomorrow may never die, but for the cast and crew of Bond #18, it was like every day would never end. Hit with constant script rewrites, testy stars, filming locations pulled at the last second, and a seemingly impossible release target, Tomorrow Never Dies felt like it was panning out to be the sophomore slump that neither Pierce Brosnan nor the 007 franchise needed. And yet, it actually turned into a pretty damn good movie…decades after its release, that is. Appreciated and more relevant now than ever, Tomorrow Never Dies may not have lived up to standards in 1997, but is today considered a key entry in the Brosnan era. So what went on behind the scenes, and how exactly did it get there? Let’s shake it up as we find out: What Happened to This Movie?!

Tomorrow Never Dies was greenlit before the previous Bond installment, 1995’s GoldenEye, even hit theaters.

Stars: Kris Kristofferson, Ernest Borgnine, Ali McGraw, Burt Young, Franklyn Ajaye, Brian Davies, Seymour Cassel, Cassie Yates | Written by Bill Norton | Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Directed by Sam Peckinpah, Convoy is a film that rides on the wave of the trucker and Cb radio craze of the 1970s. Based on the popular country song of the same name by C.W. McCall, the movie attempts to blend action, comedy, and social commentary into one wild, sprawling road adventure. However, its execution leaves much to be desired, and it often feels like it’s unsure of what kind of film it wants to be.

The story revolves around Martin “Rubber Duck” Penwald (played by Kris Kristofferson), a stoic and charismatic trucker who finds himself on the run from an overzealous sheriff named “Dirty” Lyle Wallace (Ernest Borgnine). Along the way, Rubber Duck inadvertently inspires a convoy of fellow truckers to follow him,...

Jason Statham's first action role was in Ghosts of Mars, which was itself a stealth remake of a John Wayne Western. Released in 2001, Ghosts of Mars marked the final John Carpenter movie for a decade, with the legendary filmmaker taking a long break after feeling burnt out with the industry. The film itself is a fusion of sci-fi, action and horror, with a dash of Western thrown into the pot. Ghosts of Mars was also one of a run of films set on Mars during this period, including Val Kilmer's Red Planet and Mission to Mars.

The movie feels like a mixtape of Carpenter's previous work; Ghosts of Mars takes the cop shop setting of Assault on Precinct 13, the paranoia of The Thing with a main character who feels very much like Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken. There was even a debunked rumor Ghosts of Mars was almost the third Escape From.

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The year was 1963, and Clint Eastwood was tired of playing a Western hero. As Rowdy Yates on CBS' "Rawhide," he was stuck in a flavorless rut of white-hat derring-do, herding cattle and being an altogether swell guy while contending with stock genre villains. There was a future in this, yes, but it would require Eastwood to play the same note over and over until he became a lasso-wielding self-parody.

So, when he wrapped his fifth season of "Rawhide," he accepted an offer to make a big screen Western with a promising Italian director in Spain. That film was "A Fistful of Dollars," and all it did was launch the "Spaghetti Western" trend, which, along with the revisionist American works of Sam Peckinpah, extended the popularity of the genre for a solid decade.

"A Fistful of Dollars" was not, on the surface,...

The late great country music legend Kris Kristofferson also boasted an impressive movie career filled with iconic roles. Although Kristofferson had already made it big with hits like Me and Bobby McGee, his major acting debut in 1972 signaled an important new dimension to his acclaimed career, and he continued acting consistently until shortly before his retirement in 2021. While Kristofferson sadly died in September 2024, aged 88, he left behind an impressive body of work in country music and on the big screen.

From his extraordinary acting debut in the cult classic Cisco Pike to his final role as country musician Blaze Foleys father in Ethan Hawkes insightful biopic Blaze, Kristofferson proved himself a talented actor capable of imbuing his roles with his real emotive power. With iconic portrayals in Westerns like Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and the dramatic rollercoaster that was A Star Is Born, Kristofferson possessed a unique cinematic charm and undeniable onscreen charisma.

Kris Kristofferson, the soulful country music superstar who wrote “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” performed with the supergroup The Highwaymen and made audiences swoon in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and A Star Is Born, has died. He was 88.

Kristofferson died Saturday at home in Maui, Hawaii, his family announced. “We’re all so blessed for our time with him,” they said in a statement. “Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”

A native of South Texas, Kristofferson starred in football and rugby and won a Golden Gloves boxing tournament while attending Pomona College in California; earned a Rhodes Scholarship to study literature abroad; and piloted helicopters in the U.S. Army.

He threw away a career in the military and moved to Nashville, where he worked as...

Let’s say that, in January of 1972, you had never heard a note of Kris Kristofferson’s music. You didn’t know the former helicopter pilot and Rhodes scholar had written “Me and Bobby McGee,” which Janis Joplin had turned into her signature song. Or “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” which he gave to Johnny Cash after allegedly landing a whirlybird in the Man in Black’s backyard. (Print the legend.) Or “Once More With Feeling,” “For the Good Times,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” or a number of...

Kris Kristofferson has sadly passed away at the age of 88, leaving behind an incredible legacy as a singer, songwriter, actor, Rhodes Scholar, football player, boxer, firefighter, and Army Ranger helicopter pilot.

According to reports, Kristofferson died peacefully in his home in Maui, Hawaii on Saturday, September 28.

“We’re all so blessed for our time with him,” members of his family said in a statement. “Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”

Kristofferson was already well on his way to becoming a Country Music superstar when he made his acting debut in Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971), before going on to appear in the likes of Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), Michael Cimino's Heaven’s Gate (1980), John Sayles’ Lone Star (1996), Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), and the first...

Kris Kristofferson, the legendary “outlaw” country singer-songwriter and actor, died this weekend at 88. Kristofferson won four Grammys throughout his career, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. He was a member of The Highwaymen, a platinum-selling country music supergroup that also featured Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, and many of his songs were covered by other artists to great success including Cash (“Sunday Morning Coming Down”), Janis Joplin (“Me and Bobby McGee”), Al Green (“For The Good Times”), and Gladys Knight (“Help Me Make it Through the Night”) just to scratch the surface.

In the early 1970s, as his recording career began taking off, he began appearing in films. His first credit was in Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie” and then he starred in Sam Peckinpah’s “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” with James Coburn and Bob Dylan. In 1974 he co-starred opposite Ellen Burstyn (who won an...

Kris Kristofferson, an iconic musician and actor, died on June 22nd at his home in Maui, Hawaii at the age of 88. According to his family, Kristofferson passed away peacefully surrounded by loved ones. For over five decades, Kristofferson left an indelible mark on the worlds of country music and film.

Born in 1936 in Brownsville, Texas, Kristofferson pursued a varied career path. He earned a Rhodes Scholarship and studied literature at Oxford University. Later, he joined the U.S. Army and became a helicopter pilot. While in the military, Kristofferson began writing songs and decided to follow his dream of becoming a musician.

In the late 1960s, Kristofferson moved to Nashville to break into the music business. He slipped demo tapes under the door of Columbia Records and famously landed a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s property to play new songs. This bold introduction caught the attention of many in the industry.

Award-winning country singer and actor Kris Kristofferson, star of films such as Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid and A Star Is Born, has sadly died at the age of 88, it has been confirmed. The news was announced by Kristofferson's family on his official Instagram account last night, with a statement reading as follows: “It is with a heavy heart that we share the news our husband/father/grandfather, Kris Kristofferson, passed away peacefully on Saturday, September 28 at home. We’re all so blessed for our time with him. Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”

Born to Mary Ann and Lars Henry Kristofferson in Brownsville, Texas on 22 June, 1936, Kristoffer Kristofferson's pursuit of the creative arts began at a young age. Whilst his father's service in the U.S. Air Force seemed certain to push Kristofferson into a military career,...

Kris Kristofferson — the tough yet weary country music singer/songwriter behind “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” as well as the rugged leading man featured in romances like “A Star is Born” (1976) and westerns like “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” — has died at 88. He passed away in his home in Maui, Hawaii.

A statement released by his family reads, “We’re all so blessed for our time with him. Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”

A proud son of South Texas, Kristofferson was also a military brat who often hopped around before finally settling in San Mateo, California. He went on to attend Pomona College where he excelled in rugby, American football, and track and field. At one point, he was even featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Kris Kristofferson, the legendary country star turned superstar actor, has passed away at 88. No cause of death has yet been revealed, but Kristofferson retired from public life in 2021. While some of you reading this may know him best for playing Whistler in the Blade trilogy, his career goes much deeper than that, making him one of the most fascinating pop culture icons of his time.

Before he ever became an actor, Kristofferson was famous as a writer of country hits, including the immortal “Me and Bobby McGee,” later launching his own recording career, which included multiple Grammy wins and Gold records. But, even before that, he was quite accomplished, being a former Rhodes Scholar and captain in the U.S. Army. He famously turned down a teaching job (in English Lit) at West Point to focus on his musical career. He was seen as one of the leading figures in the Outlaw Country movement,...

Kris Kristofferson, who attained success as both a groundbreaking country music singer-songwriter and a Hollywood film and TV star, died Saturday at home in Maui, Hawaii. No cause of death was given, but he was described as passing away peacefully while surrounded by family. He was 88.

Said his family in a statement, “It is with a heavy heart that we share the news our husband/father/grandfather, Kris Kristofferson, passed away peacefully on Saturday, Sept. 28 at home. We’re all so blessed for our time with him. Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.” The statement was offered on behalf of Kristofferson’s wife, Lisa; his eight children, Tracy, Kris Jr., Casey, Jesse, Jody, John, Kelly and Blake; and his seven grandchildren.

Kyle Young, the CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum,...

After the dominant era for the Western genre from the 1940s until the early 60s, called the Golden Age of the Western, the genre followed the trend of the film industry at large in going through a fallow period before the counterculture of the 60s changed most art in the West. Young people became the primary driving force at the box office in the 60s and, desperate to capture the dollars of this newly dominant demographic, Hollywood studios took lessons from the looser, more youth-focused Spaghetti Westerns of Italy and put their money into revisionist Westerns that subverted the typical gunslinging hero trope. The term "anti-Western" or "revisionist Western" began being used to describe this new style of Westerns, and the weirder and more "trippy" and counterculture anti-Westerns then got the subgenre name "acid Western."

Directors like Sam Peckinpah brought the American Western into a new era in the 1960s...

Like any movie genre, the Western has its fair share of popular subgenres. Well-known Western subgenres include neo-Westerns, revisionist Westerns, and spaghetti Westerns. More obscure Western subgenres include acid Westerns, meat pie Westerns, and weird Westerns. Influential film critic Pauline Kael coined the term acid Western in 1971 in her review of Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo.

In the mid-1990s, Jonathan Rosenbaum expanded upon the definition of acid Westerns. He noted acid Westerns are a type of revisionist Western that reflected the counterculture ideologies of the 1960s and 1970s. Acid Westerns have a hallucinogenic quality that is often aided by surrealist imagery. Rosenbaum also stated that in traditional Westerns, a character's journey West resulted in freedom and prosperity. In Acid Westerns, Rosenbaum argued a character's journey is a march toward death. Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter, Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, and Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid...

When two criminals—Kawanishi (Nishimura Kô) and Sabu (Murota Hideo)—first force their way into Misawa’s (Mikuni Rentarô) home, the middle-class salaryman bolts up from his bathtub, standing before his assailants nude and covered in bubbles. This darkly humorous moment lends a bit of levity to the first of many chaotic sequences in Fukasaku Kinji’s The Threat, but more importantly, it speaks to the near-comical, childlike vulnerability of the film’s kowtowing protagonist, who goes from finding an equally spineless underling at work who’s willing to marry his boss’s mistress to complying with every order given by his captors without resistance.

What follows is a remarkably tense and claustrophobic home invasion thriller, in which Misawa becomes the middleman between Kawanishi and a wealthy man, Sakata (Mitsuda Ken), whose infant he and the younger, more impulsive Sabu kidnapped before breaking into Misawa’s house. But coursing just...

The late 60s and early 70s in American film were a fascinating time. After a decade in the 50s when theater attendance was way down, studios were panicking trying to figure out what American audiences wanted. With the counterculture movement in full force throughout the 1960s, the majority of people going to see movies were young, educated and interested in the new ideas going around the world, and that included this new generation buying tickets to see the boundary-pushing films coming out of Europe and Asia. With nothing they were doing in the traditional Hollywood model finding much success, studios basically threw their hands up and decided to let a new crop of directors make films with little interference. Experimentation was encouraged in the name of finding a foothold with this new kind of theater-goer, and that's when names like Brian De Palma, Sam Peckinpah, David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola,...

With things constantly being swapped out or deleted from your favorite streaming service, a commitment to physical media should be stronger now than ever before. And thankfully both big studios and smaller boutique labels understand how important physical releases are.

We are running down the very best 4K Blu-ray and DVD releases from July and August 2024.

“Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” MGM

One of the most hotly anticipated home video releases of the year is here – and it was worth the wait. Sam Peckinpah’s highly contested western, about an older Pat Garrett (James Coburn) hired to track down and kill Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson), was taken away from the filmmaker in post-production and released in a truncated version that he and several of the cast and crew members outspokenly derided. This Criterion release acknowledges and engages with the various iterations of the movie, with 4K discs devoted...

Yesterday, we posted a poll asking readers what they thought was the best summer 2024 movie. By a landslide, the winner was Deadpool & Wolverine, but the runner-up was George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which was an infamously giant flop earlier this summer. In this case, the box office result didn’t do justice to the quality of the film itself – at least according to us here at JoBlo. But Furiosa wasn’t the only good movie that came out this summer that get enough love.

Here are five underrated summer 2024 movies:

Horizon: Chapter 1:

Kevin Costner’s ambitious, multi-part western saga landed with a bit of a thud when it opened earlier this summer, with the grosses so feeble that the planned August release of Horizon: Chapter 2 was scrapped. No one knows when the already-shot sequel will come out, but Costner will try and relaunch the series...

In the American indie explosion of the 1990s, few filmmakers had a more compelling story than Robert Rodriguez. The Texan communications major had spent his time in college crafting homemade shorts and parlayed his enthusiasm into a feature he funded by raising a paltry $9,000, most of it gained from signing up for pharmaceutical drug tests. Shooting in the northern Mexican town of Ciudad Acuña, Rodriguez managed to push El Mariachi past the finish line under budget, pocketing nearly two grand of his meager put-up cash. Initially aiming to release the neo-western action film directly to the Spanish-language VHS market, Rodriguez got up the chutzpah to submit it to major Hollywood studios, one of which, Columbia Pictures, bought the rights and secured festival and theatrical exhibition.

That story is so inspiring for wannabe filmmakers that the film’s quality may as well be a secondary concern, but El Mariachi’s most...

Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is vastly popular and controversial, but despite being a legendary director's most famous film, it was not his favorite of his movies. The Ballad of Cable Hogue was Sam Peckinpah's favorite, and while it has comedic elements, it is dark and was plagued by controversy. Sam Peckinpah is a complex figure whom some love and others despise, but one way or another, his films made a huge impact on the art form, and The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a special one in his filmography.

Sam Peckinpah, firebrand director of some of the most loved and the most hated Western films ever made, once famously said, "There is a great streak of violence in every human being. If it is not channeled and understood, it will break out in war or in madness." In the case of Peckinpah himself, it's no secret that that...