Westerns With Dad

I’ll just say it outright: After a two year battle with pancreatic cancer, my father has passed away. I don’t know what words can do it justice, but here’s quite a few anyway. I’ve recorded a final episode, the bulk of which is a conversation with my immediate family about my father’s legacy, and a … Continue reading Thank You All, this is our Farewell Episode

On this episode, we’ll be discussing the new limited series on Netflix, Scott Frank’s Godless! The small mining town of LaBelle becomes the battleground for a conflict between two outlaws, one good, one very bad, and the population, mostly widows, find themselves in a war for their way of life. Real western stuff! Despite appearances … Continue reading GODLESS!

Finally, an episode we’ve been looking towards since the start, one of the most beloved American Westerns and a film listed on the AFI’s list of Hundred Best Films: 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, featuring the classic pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the titular roles. An affable, seriocomic romp through … Continue reading BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID!

Merry Christmas, everyone! On this special holiday episode of Westerns With Dad, we’re discussing the little-seen 1997 Canadian TV production, Ebenezer! Starring noted Western stars Jack Palance and Ricky Schroeder, it’s an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ oft-adapted classic, A Christmas Carol, reset in the Old West. Utterly inessential, clearly not intended for posterity, and fairly … Continue reading EBENEZER!

On this belated episode, we are talking about both versions of the Charlie Portis novel True Grit! The original, from 1969, is famously the film that won John Wayne his Oscar, and the 2010 remake from the Coen Brothers! Both are great, as it turns out, and surprisingly similar in a number of ways (largely … Continue reading TRUE GRIT 1969 & 2010!!

Jim Jarmusch’s utterly bizarre 1995 ‘Acid Western’ Dead Man is the subject of this episode, featuring Johnny Depp at his height as a tenderfoot traveling into the Frontier and also, potentially, the reincarnation of the poet William Blake. Shot in B&W and featuring a unique Neil Young soundtrack, Dead Man defies easy description and is … Continue reading DEAD MAN!

Coming from director Delmar Daves, 1956’s Jubal tells a story of sexual obsession on the open plains, highly reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Othello. Starring Glenn Ford as stoic loner Jubal Troop, it has come to more prominence lately, possibly owing to a fine Criterion restoration,  and features a cast of beloved character actors sinking their teeth … Continue reading JUBAL!

To finish out our October tradition of Spooky Westerns, we wanted to talk about Near Dark, the cult classic vampire western from academy award winning director Kathryn Bigelow, but due to a lack of streaming options, we were unable to easily find it and instead watched a forgotten anthology Horror film no one remembers or … Continue reading GRIM PRAIRIE TALES!

Once again, October means that we’re talking about Horror and Horror-Adjacent movies on Westerns With Dad, and this time, it’s Clint Eastwood’s 1973 allegory about Divine Justice, High Plains Drifter! Taking the form of a more traditional yarn – a town, threatened by villains, hires a gunslinger to defend them – this film slowly reveals … Continue reading HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER!

Arthur Penn’s rambling, whimsical approach to the Western, Little Big Man follows the long life of Dustin Hoffman’s Jack Crabb, a white man raised amongst the Cheyenne Indians, and observes the wave of Manifest Destiny rise, crest and recede in the American frontier! One of the early examples of the Revisionist Western, this film takes … Continue reading LITTLE BIG MAN!