Popular reviews

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★½ 4

  If the original STAR WARS trilogy was one movie and a spaghetti western.

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  Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★½ 8

  Day of Anger is a very solid Spaghetti western directed by Tonino Valerii, who is probably best known for being the AD on Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. Here, Lee Van Cleef takes a timid young man (Giuliano Gemma) under his wing and transforms him into an accomplished gunslinger. Van Cleef isn't exactly a good guy however, so it's quite possible the two men will have to face off against each other eventually.

  The story moves along slowly, but the conclusion is pretty spectacular. The relationship dynamic between the two leads is great and it's actually the movie's main selling point.

  Riz Ortolani's score is a highlight.

  I watched the English dub of the Italian theatrical cut.

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 4

  Van Cleef is the baddest man who ever crossed a movie screen.

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★★½ 19

  Before you accuse one director of stealing from another, you might as well start pointing fingers at filmmakers for cribbing from myths. 

  If you’ve heard of Tonino Valerii’s “Day of Anger,” it probably came in the same breath as “Star Wars.” 

  Lee Van Cleef’s wily old gunslinger Talby is Yoda, Han Solo and Obi Wan wrapped up in one. Giuliano Gemma is Luke Skywalker, but bearing the far more unfortunate name of ‘Scott Mary.’ “Anger” is - more or less - the original “Star Wars” trilogy wrapped up in a tidy (earthbound) package under two-hours long. 

  And while it’s doubtless that George Lucas was taking notes during “Anger,” (right down to a saloon scene that nearly matches “New Hope’s” to…

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  Review by Sean Baker 6

  Arrow Video Blu-ray

  Letterboxd users Sebbern and Cameron Macgowan recommend this after I posted that I watched Death Rides a Horse.

  I think I like Death Rides a Horse more.

  Nice extras on the disc.

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  Review by chase ★★★

  *Italian Version*

  Besides the golden goose Lee Van Cleef dropping golden eggs left and right (wry smiles, kicking ass, dodging bullets, smoking a pipe), I found myself pretty bored with it overall. The Arrow Blu Ray makes it all look like a million bucks in stolen gold coins, but there's just not enough going on here to justify its run time, and it does not help that our main lead never really gets a chance to do much besides be a bumbling doofus with a horribly dubbed southern accent, even by the end when they go from student to master.

  But still, who can deny the beauty of a movie that's mostly just long pans of gorgeous landscapes, a really…

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★★

  "your last lesson, scotty: when you start killing you can't stop it."

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★★ 14

  "This country is developing, and Clifton along with it. Now, maybe more than ever before, you need a judge as your friend."

  Peak Van Cleef spaghetti. Like, I'm not going to lie to you and say it's better than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—Giuliano Gemma is delightful too, but he's no Eastwood as a co-star, and Riz Ortolani does a solid Ennio Morricone impression, but he can't quite measure up to the legend (RIP)—but it certainly has more raw, unadulterated Cleef Minutes.

  The town of Clifton is a Nice Place where Nice People live. A gunshot is a rare thing to be heard. Scott (Gemma) is the town janitor; he cleans up the place, pouring the residents' piss…

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  Review by Dennis Duffy ★★★★ 4

  Lee Van Cleef has the coolest face in the history of movies.

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  Review by Geoffrey Broomer ★★★★ 10

  Following the conclusion of the Dollars Trilogy, Lee Van Cleef continued his spaghetti western run, with a number of pictures that are heavily influenced by his leading man turn in For A Few dollars More. These films cast him as an older gunslinger who acts as mentor to a number of leading men that hope to be the next Clint Eastwood, for a series of passive aggressive buddy pictures. Day of Anger sees Giuliano Gemma as out Eastwood hopeful.

  An early directing effort by frequent Leone collaborator, Tonino Valerii, Day of Anger is the best of these Van Cleef apprenticeships. Our plot sees Gemma as a bastard, mistreated by most of the small town he survives in as a frontier…

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  Review by Ian West ★★★★½

  Revisited the Arrow blu, spectacular spaghetti. A personal favorite.

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  Review by laird ★★★★ 1

  Spaghetti Westerns often traffic in shades of grey, but this one in particular makes it extremely difficult to parse any of the characters into camps of "good" or "bad." If anything it serves as a condemnation of everyone involved (and perhaps by proxy, America). The town of Clifford treats Giuliano Gemma's character like garbage, because his job is to collect the garbage. A clear race allegory surfaces when he attempts to have a drink in the local saloon and court a prominent judge's daughter. He's not allowed to drink at the saloon, and he's told by the judge he's not to even make eye contact with his daughter. Yes, class issues are all kinds of ugly in the town of…