Popular reviews

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  Review by sydney ★★★★★ 3

  The twisty and often shocking plot could have so easily turned into a frantic melodrama, and I'm overjoyed that it didn't. Everything plays out so smoothly, with such wonderful transitions from past to present. Unfolds like a classic epic, spanning generations of love and pain and giving insight into so many perspectives of Texas life and history. The kind of film that makes me frustrated that I'm not a better and more experienced writer, more able to put my thoughts into the right words. Powerful, powerful stuff.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★ 3

  75

  "This stretch of road runs between nowhere and not much else."

  Lone Star reckons with small-town secrets and the buried skeletons of the past, but it never devotes itself to being a whodunnit in its entirety, either. John Sayles lingers on the mystery only in the sense of how it reverberates across his epic canvas, how we've failed to fully comprehend the evil of America's sins, what's hidden under the dirt beneath our feet. By the end, you feel as if you haven't just explored the characters, but the space and setting. A historical examination that renders its neo-western structure as a key component of its ambition. If I could single out any performance in this, it's Chris Cooper, who is so quietly unassuming and powerfully at the center of a narrative that continues to add layer after layer while still providing a focused sense of storytelling.

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★★ 2

  The screenplay for this is a marvel of engineering, with almost every single line baldly advancing the story's narrative and emotional beats or blatantly foregrounding its political themes while leaving so many pauses and gaps as to never come across as didactic. The performances enhance those dead spaces, as each actor leaves crucial things unsaid even when laying things out on the line, and little push-ins or insert shots of facial expressions subtly registering implications say just as much as the most scathing monologues.

  There's so much going on here, but boiled down to its essence, this is a film about how the only way to feel proud of the story of America and its states is to consciously and…

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★ 2

  My parents used to tell me about this movie all the time when I was younger, but I never got around to seeing it until today. I can understand now why they were such big fans, and the deeper I delve into Sayles' filmography the more it's really starting to impress me how diverse of a writer/director he is, from campy creature features to gorgeously shot Texico-style neo-noirs.

  What predominantly sticks out to me about Lone Star is Sayles' scarce but perfect utilization of flashback sequences and how they're seamlessly woven into the narrative through skillful and smooth transitions. I feel like this film may have been the inspiration for other contemporary Texico-style films, such as Tommy Lee Jones' The…

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  Review by Lowe McKee 16

  Lone Star reminded me of the commonly quoted William Faulkner line: “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” 

  This is a whodunnit that isn’t necessarily all that concerned with whodunnit. Rather, it’s much more interested in the various people who make up this community in Rio County, Texas. Mexican folk, black folk, anglos. It’s interested in their shared, complicated, violent history. How the history we’ve been taught is always a blend of fact and fiction, decided by a few for the vast majority of us to accept as indisputable truth. 

  I’ve only been trying to get across the complexity of our situation down here. Cultures coming together in both negative and positive ways. 

  That scene in the classroom,…

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  Review by Ziglet_mir ★★★★★ 5

  Revisit to Lone Star #3

  Visible barriers have problems of their own, but it's the invisible ones that will torment you... grey lines, blurred lines, or the standards of society that form a social fabric where certain evils are destroyed by other evils. But are these evils the whole picture or just a fraction of the beast, and of a beast that is good? That mosaic on the wall is a picture of someone great, yet the pieces over in the corner are rotting. The problems come along when our knowledge of the past is tossed aside, because we should learn from mistakes. Yet there is also something freeing in letting that past go, letting it go for someone--perhaps yourself--and…

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  Review by Allison M. 🌱 @ SXSW ‘23 ★★★★ 4

  "You'll get official notification when I make my decision."

  Despite having seen this film before, I decided to check it out again, because The Aero Theatre in Santa Monica was showing this as a double feature with Limbo (a film I'd never seen) and director John Sayles would also be there for a Q&A with actress Frances McDormand.

  It follows a storyline that weaves in and out between decades. A murder was supposed to have taken place in the late fifties (according to John Sayles--picking up on cues in the movie, there was a reference to selling the bar where the murder occurred in 1967). Then assumedly, it's set in present day (mid-1990s).

  Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) not only…

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  Review by Ziglet_mir ★★★★★ 10

  4th viewing

  This film is a goddamn masterwork.

  A contender for best edited film ever. The flashbacks meld with present day, a tool used to physically show how interwoven our past is. There are four separate subplots tied together that destroy implicated prejudice and stir the fascination with myth. Sayles takes the familial, the communal, and the sexual and gracefully forces them to look at history, until one realizes when you go digging for something you best be prepared for whatever discovery you come across, as the truth holds no grudges and you may not find what you are looking for. So know your history and know you are also a person with a clean slate. You accept the past and look forward.
  
  Forget the Alamo.

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★½ 8

  Lone Star is a neo-western with a hell of a script. It is a multi-stranded ensemble piece, centred on a mystery but filled with so much more. It's a film about three sheriffs, spread across time. Lone Star is a film of legacy, and how people are built up as purely good or bad in our memories and legends, but not in reality. It's a film about discovering your own history and the secrets that hold towns together. Decades of decisions and events have all led to now, and that either makes life chaotic or alternatively orderly since there's always an explanation for everything. How we interpret the world today depends so much on our past, whether dark or light.…

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★½

  Told in a manner which is equally beautiful and delightfully intricate, this John Sayles written, directed and edited tale set in a small town in South Texas is governed by revealing its secrets and storyline gradually. It features an impressive cast, which includes Ron Canada, Kris Kristofferson and Chris Cooper, and it accounts developments after unearthing of a skeleton turns out to be a previous notorious sheriff in the region. 

  The ensuing murder investigation leads the current sheriff into discovering long-buried secrets in the border town, and as the film proceeds forwards, it sketches connections between its characters; simultaneously, it accumulates an enormous arrangement of ideas and explorations regarding social behaviours as well as encompassing racial and economic concerns. 

  The…

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  Review by JBird ★★★★ 3

  Chris Cooper's life will get thrown,
  Thought his dad was really known.
  But no one asked,
  What's in the past,
  So he searches for answers a-Lone.

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  Review by oscine ★★★★½ 3

  as a texan, i'm surprised i'd never heard of this movie. now living out of state, i'm glad i have. this film gives a realistic and sensitive portrayal of a small town community that's pretty rare for a film. refreshingly, this movie doesn't fixate on the young or a single, flawless hero. its spotlight falls on multiple generations, races, and classes. nothing is done for shock value, yet, what do you know, it's a compelling watch. it's what i miss in movies: a story well told.

  don't be fooled by the skull on the poster! no nightmares await here. if you like a slow-paced, thoughtful drama, you're in luck.