New and Upcoming Western Movies and TV Shows

There's a lot of optimism (wishful thinking?) in Just Westerns':

"...preview of 40 new upcoming Western films and TV shows heading are way in 2026 and beyond, including Young Guns 3, Lonesome Dove remake, Blood Meridian, A Fistful Of Dollars remake, Horizon: Chapter 2, The Dark Tower TV Show, Butch & Sundance, Flint, The Magnificent Seven TV Show, Wind River 2 and many more, as well as new Westerns starring Tim Blake Nelson, Kevin Costner, Scott Eastwood, Kiefer Sutherland, Wes Studi, Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Pine."

For my personal tastes there are a few too many "neo-Westerns" here (although I love Yellowstone... and there's an abundance of Yellowstone-adjacent projects on this list) and, maybe, not enough classic, period Westerns.

PULP PICTURE OF THE MONTH: The Legend Of Tarzan (2016)

To cut a long story short, The Legend Of Tarzan wasn't just the best action movie of the year it was released, but also found a place as one of my all-time favourites.

Director David Yates' period piece is as near perfect a Tarzan tale as I could have hoped for, drawing on Edgar Rice Burroughs' source material (as well as the popular pulp era movies) to serve up a true edge-of-the-seat, straight-forward, non-stop, roller coaster of an old school, ripping yarns adventure.

Simply put, they don't make films like this any more... more's the pity.

It's Africa in the late 19th Century and Belgium emissary Leon Rom (Spectre's Christoph Waltz) is the sole survivor of a diamond-hunting raid on the mythical city of Opar. Captured by Chief Mbonga (Guardians Of The Galaxy's Djimon Hounsou), Rom is offered a deal for access to the city's diamond supply: he must bring the chief's arch-enemy to him. This being Tarzan!

Tarzan aka Lord John Clayton III (True Blood's Alexander Skarsgård) has returned to England and is living the life of a lord with his lovely wife, Jane (Suicide Squad's Margot Robbie).

He receives an invitation from King Leopold of Belgium to visit the Congo and is reluctantly persuaded by American George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson) to take up the offer, as George wants to follow up rumours of illegal slavery in the country.

Along with Jane, the two men head to Africa, and the pretence of John Clayton's invitation being a diplomatic issue is quickly torn asunder when Rom and his mercenaries attack the village where our heroes are staying, kidnapping Jane in the process.

The Legend Of Tarzan then becomes a race against time, not only to rescue Jane, but then to prevent Rom getting the diamonds to the coast to pay off a huge mercenary army that will soon be landing to enslave the country's entire native population to work for King Leopold.

As well as drawing on the traditional source material, both Burroughs' novels and the early films (there's a couple of Weissmuller yodels - but given a more bestial remix - as well as visual nods to my favourite Johnny Weissmuller outing as Tarzan: 1946's Tarzan And The Leopard Woman), The Legend Of Tarzan also draws heavily in tone and style from another of my all-time favourite pulp action films: Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

Waltz, while playing a variation of his usual deadpan arrogance, is essentially a different take on Paul Freeman's Belloq. The dinner scene between Rom and Jane is a clear homage - down to the knife-stealing - of the similar scene in Raiders, between Belloq and Marion.

The Raiders' tone is also reflected in the moments of levity that slip seamlessly between the darker, more violent, episodes (I'd cite the fight between Tarzan and a train carriage full of soldiers as a particularly strong example of the balance of action and humour).

The CGI effects are slick, dynamic, and beautiful, sucking you into the film rather than shattering any suspension of belief you may require for Tarzan's magnificent, superhuman, displays of strength, endurance, and agility, or his - and others- interactions with the fearsome wild life of Africa.

Kudos also to scriptwriters Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer for a screenplay that continually escalates to a monumental showdown, while cleverly weaving in Tarzan's origin story - in flashbacks - without reducing The Legend Of Tarzan to being simply yet another retelling of the 'birth' of Tarzan Of The Apes.

If you like old school adventure movies, particularly those that inspired, or were inspired by, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, then this is the film for you. It's exciting, inventive, and thrilling, modern-yet-retro, and a must see for Tarzan fans new and old.

Character Posters For The Unholy Trinity

Pierce Brosnan and Samuel L. Jackson? You Can Count Me In!

A tale of revenge, dark secrets, and buried treasures, the film is set against the turbulent backdrop of 1870s Montana.

It picks up in the moments before the execution of Isaac Broadway, as he gives his estranged son, Henry (Brandon Lessard), an impossible task: Murder the man who framed him for a crime he didn’t commit. 

Intent on fulfilling his promise, Henry travels to the remote town of Trinity, where an unexpected turn of events traps him in town and leaves him caught between Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan), the town’s upstanding new sheriff, and a mysterious figure named St Christopher (Samuel L. Jackson).

Unbreakable (2000)

Upfront, I have to lay my cards on the table and confess that I am not a big fan of the works of M. Night Shyamalan.

Sixth Sense was very good, but rather a one-trick pony signalling the writer/director's obsession with trying to be the new Hitchcock, rather than develop a unique style of his own. Signs was one of the most ridiculous films I'd ever seen and The Village wasn't much better (I never bothered with the Lady In The Water).

I think he puts too much emphasis on the "twist" rather than the story that leads to the twist. It's like he's saying "look how clever I am" and challenging his audience to second guess him, so you spend the entire film trying to guess the twist and not concentrating on the story.

Thankfully, Unbreakable isn't like that. I understand it was originally intended as the first part of a trilogy, but poor box office meant the studio put the kibosh on any sequels (perhaps people were just looking for a rehash of Sixth Sense!)

While still obviously Hitchcockian, Unbreakable does feature a kind of twist in the final scene but it is more akin to a standard plot revelation and therefore isn't all that the film is about.

Viewed in 2007 the film is almost a dry run, a pilot episode, for Heroes with its tale of an ordinary Joe (Bruce Willis as security guard David Dunn), who survives a train wreck and slowly - thanks to pestering from a strange art gallery owner and comic book obsessive Elijah Price (Samuel L Jackson) - begins to realise that he has "superpowers".

Certainly the best written of Shymalan's portfolio - the scene where David, having rescued some children from a murderer, silently reveals his "secret identity" to his son is incredible - yet the ending still seems slightly rushed, although on reflection it's growing on me.

The parallels between Dunn's developing realisation of his destiny and his troubled personal life are a particular gem - he can't find satisfaction in the latter until he accepts the former, however insane it sounds in a real world context.

The comic book nut, and budding storyteller, in me would like to see Shymalan and Willis revisit the story of David Dunn at some stage, let us know what happened in the "next issue", as it were.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

Sometime after the end of the American Civil War, a stagecoach is hurtling through snow-covered Wyoming, trying to keep ahead of a blizzard. On board are grizzled bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his valuable prisoner, the murderous Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

On their journey they encounter a couple of men, seeking rescue from the cold, fellow bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L Jackson), and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), the new sheriff of Red Rock - the coach's ultimate destination.

Unable to outpace the storm, the coach stops at Minnie's Haberdashery, an isolated waystation in the mountains, where they meet a number of other strangers (Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, and Demián Bichir) - but, suspiciously, not the station's owner or her partner.

Then the storm hits and they are stuck there until it passes.

The Hateful Eight is another Western masterpiece from Quentin Tarantino, who draws on a number of familiar techniques (chapters, non-sequential storytelling, historical liberties etc) to mesmerise his audience for two-and-three-quarter hours.

As might be expected from a Tarantino movie, as well as excessive harsh language (and a heap of racial slurs), the scenario eventually builds to a very bloody - and protracted - climax.

Because of the 19th Century setting, the absence of pop culture riffs in the dialogue means it isn't as riddled with quotable lines as some of his movies, yet it still resonates. However, The Hateful Eight relies primarily on atmosphere and tension to hold the audience's attention for such a long runtime.

It's been almost nine years since I last saw this, so not only had I forgotten all the magnificent twists and reveals in this epic, dark, character-driven drama, but I had no problem being carried along by Tarantino's mastery of pacing.

With the long middle act of the film, and much of the final act, taking place in a single - albeit large - room, The Hateful Eight can feel like a play at times, which, again, isn't necessarily a bad thing and highlights Tarantino's willingness to experiment with film-making styles.

Both this, and the sweeping scenery the coach travels through in the opening act of the film, make majestic use of widescreen. I hate to think how crushed, or cut, this beautiful-looking work of art would appear in full-screen or on an old-style TV set.

In a number of ways, The Hateful Eight took me back to Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, hitting many similar beats.

The plot is similarly straight-forward, while the story is complicated by the many strong characters and their individual, and often hidden, goals.

Every character the audience is introduced to along the way is, in some way, a bad person and one of the film's themes is the value of reputation (generally regarded as a key element of the old west, or, at least, Westerns).

Ruth knows the financial worth of his prisoner, and fears others might be out to steal her from him for the cash reward or to simply set her free. His paranoia is infectious and we quickly become suspicious of everyone, doubting what they saying, looking for double-meanings, or clues to who wants what.

And Tarantino is in no hurry to get to the big reveal, ratcheting up the tension as tightly - and slowly - as he can. This isn't a film for someone looking for a quick fix. The Hateful Eight requires investment.

Django Unchained (2012)

 

While it may not be replete with quotable dialogue and obvious pop culture references, Quentin Tarantino's bloody revenge Western Django Unchained is his best work since the glory days of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

Two years before the American Civil War, dentist-turned-bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) frees enslaved Django (Jamie Foxx) to help him identify a trio of outlaws he is after.

However, the German soon discovers that Django has a knack for bounty hunting and the two team-up.

Django isn't just interested in the money though, he wants to track down - and free - his wife Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington), a fellow slave.

The bounty hunting duo track her to an infamous plantation run by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), who has a penchant for "mandingo fighting" - brutal, to-the-death, bare-knuckle contests between slaves.

Arriving at the plantation, and posing as a pair of businessmen interested in buying a fighter, the duo arouse the suspicion of Candie's house-slave Stephen (Samuel L Jackson), who senses a connection between Broomhilda and Django.

Reinventing the Spaghetti Western genre for a modern audience, Django Unchained's daunting two hour 50 minute running time shouldn't discourage anyone from watching - it's thoroughly engrossing and while packed to the gills with vile and obnoxious characters, be assured they get their comeuppance. For all its modernity, this is still a classic Western after all.

And there are a lot of foul characters in this movie, as it is depicting a disgraceful time when racial prejudice and slavery was common place and people were treated as property to be disposed of as their owners saw fit.

But this state of affairs is never glorified - it is there to be reviled and, in one laugh-out-loud scene, ridiculed (the lynch mob with their ill-fitting masks is a classic and would not have felt out of place in Blazing Saddles).

Being a Tarantino film - and a Western - there are, of course, gun fights, which become increasingly bloody as the number of participants increase and the Grand Guignol factor is ramped up. While the violence is shocking in parts, much is so over-the-top as to be cartoon-like.

Such a great film, it's almost churlish to highlight its one low-point, but it's a frequent flaw in Tarantino's movies: his cameo.

In the final act of Django Unchained, Tarantino pops up looking like an uncomfortable 21st Century dude in fancy dress - rather than a 19th Century cowboy - with an accent that travels all around the world before you realise he's supposed to be Australian.

Thankfully, his time on screen doesn't last long, but eventually someone needs to sit him down and tell him that while he's a brilliant writer and director, he really can't cut it as an actor.

Seriously, one day, his ego is going to demand he take a more central role in one of his films and he could sink it single-handedly.