Popular reviews

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  Review by nathaxnne [hiatus: blast injury] ★ 1.5K

  i retired from letterboxd over bone tomahawk. i had given bone tomahawk 4.5 stars because it seemed like a knowing and meditative work on the intersection of the Italian Cannibal Cycle and The Western which it totally is. i didn't understand at the time that Bone Tomahawk was the first Trump Horror. Later when I read an interview with Zahler and an article about the production company he works with it is clear they are explicitly authoring MAGA-sploitation which is something i find interesting but ultimately cannot countenance. i no longer stand by my review but i don't want to delete it. i keep trying to write ANOTHER Bone Tomahawk review which i still might do or watch the Vince…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 25

  89/100

  Showing this amazing film to people and eagerly awaiting and soaking up their reaction to THAT scene might be my current favorite past-time.

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  Review by Sean Baker 21

  This was in my queue forever. Overall, I found it to be a fun, pulpy romp.
  Really happy that Zahler is fighting the fight and making original modern genre cinema. Some of the most disturbing onscreen violence I've seen in quite some time.

  I think speeding up the pace would greatly help. But I also have to respect that this is clearly what Zahler wants... Brawl is 132 mins and Dragged Across Concrete is 159 mins. He likes his films on the long side.

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  Review by Todd Gaines ★★★★ 78

  The Doctor has been kidnapped. Her husband, the injured Cowboy, is beyond grief. The Cowboy's best friend, the Gentleman, volunteers to go and bring her back. Who's leading the rescue? Well, that would be the Sheriff and the Deputy. Who kidnapped the Doctor? Let's say the kidnappers like to dress in white chalk, make funny sounding noises, shoot folks with bow and arrows, and eat dinner like they're Hannibal Lecter. Sounds yummy, right? From the opening shot, Bone Tomahawk, grabs you by the throat tight, and cuts your jugular. It's a western, with some elements of the supernatural, set in the 1890's. Led by an all star cast featuring the ageless Kurt Russell, the charming Richard Jenkins, the surprisingly awesome…

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  Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★★★★ 3

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  “say goodbye to my wife, i’ll say hello to yours.”

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  Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★★★★ 4

  bone tomahawk isn’t forgiving. its brutal, dirty, cold, but at the same time it begs you to hope for these characters, even when everything seems lost. it gives you a sliver of light in the most godless moments and then breaks your heart, and then gives you light again. it’s everything it planned to be and never isn’t perfect.

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★½ 12

  casting and flat lensing of the opening scene prompted me to expect something much more in the style of a Sy-Fy Channel original, so i was pleasantly surprised by the simple, leathery pleasures of this revenge western. it adds up to approximately nothing, and never seems to make the most of its accomplishments (the business of dealing with the bad guys is more than a little shrugged off), but 4 men — the right 4 men — shuffling through the frontier in search of god know's what... works for me. if Tarantino had taken a crack at this and decided try his hand at a Searchers of his very own... things could've gotten interesting.

  you could say that my thoughts on the movie are split right down the middle.

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★½ 10

  This has got to be one of the most impressive debut films in recent years.

  It's easy to dismiss this film as a horror western drenched in all the tropes that go along with that. Had this been a film that's sole intention would be to shock or to relish in its cowboy roots (or boots) then it would be a fine film. Not special, just good.

  But this is so much more than that.

  Let's start with the ridiculously brilliant dialogue. Zahler proves he's not only a great director but a gifted scribe as well. The authenticity of the idiomatic choices he makes are spot on, imbuing his film with a sense of realism that accompanies the already absurd…

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★½ 8

  67/100

  Was initially alarmed by the 132-minute running time, but this is a film that revels in courtliness and digressions, in no hurry to arrive at its unexpectedly grisly destination. (To be fair, the very first shot is gruesome as hell, but it's easy to forget that 90 minutes later.) Zahler does reasonably well by the genre visually, given his budget, but flavorful Old West dialogue ("You been squirtin' lemon juice in my eye since I came in here"—this in response to Kurt Russell's priceless delivery of the line "You're pretty angry for a guy named Buddy") and amusing riffs on stock characters are the main attraction here—even Matthew Fox, playing a ruthlessly self-interested dandy, is a lot of fun,…

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  Review by sydney ★★½ 6

  in a year someone will say "did you see bone tomahawk, you know, the western about the cannibals?" and i'll be like "what? cannibals? ohhhh...you mean the movie where richard jenkins thinks the flea circus is real and i cried about it? yeah, that was pretty good"

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  Review by nathaxnne [hiatus: blast injury] ★★★★½ 16

  With 'Bone Tomahawk', S. Craig Zahler answers the question: 'How do you update the Italian Cannibal Cycle of Films for a contemporary audience?' by explicitly doing the opposite of that, acknowledging their ultimate debt to a previous cycle of films about the clash of imperial expansion and indigenous peoples, the 'Cowboy & Indian' film, and sensibly making a self-aware period piece out of this hybrid/not-hybrid genre apparatus set in (probably) the early 20th Century Western United States. This is not the only Kurt Russell Western in which he fights time-sensitive cannibal terror to free hostages (that would be 'Escape From ____'), but it is certainly the most awesome one made in the 21st Century. The way-excellent cast, including a truly incredible…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 5

  89/100

  Shrieks, moans, wails, and spurts of blood; all woven within an Artificial evocation of a savage world. A Western finally goes full on-Digital Michael Mann, and Bone Tomahawk, instead of reaching for a product of grand ambition, scales down into a work of formal beauty and foggy spaces. It's a film pattered with details, sounds, and silences after startling bursts of violence, but moment to moment, it's elegantly contemplative. Bells are only a warning for the gunshots that soon follow, and instead of lingering on a wounded horse, Zahler frames every character in a state of stoic respect. Mannequins in the Old West, soaking in their situation and trying not to lose each other in the mist.

  It's undeniably…