An excellent film. Did you like it, Novecento?
Yes, and the director is clearly a SW fan, even down to the music.
Koch Media will release another Western on DVD and Blu-ray next week: Justice (2017), directed by Richard Gabai, who has given the world InSight, Motocross Kids, Virgin High, Kickboxing Academy, and Assault of the Party Nerds 2: The Heavy Petting Detective. It’s probably a good idea to keep expectations for Justice rather low.
Trailer looks okay, but that doesn’t mean much. Anyway, seems there’s a lot of action in it. Looking at what the director did so far, that what’s to be expected, a rather cheap action-packed movie. We’ll see (or not)
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Yup, we’ll see, I preordered the Blu-ray last week. Your short review of Gabai’s InSight eight years ago wasn’t exactly euphoric either. However, a recent, very pleasant surprise for me was Michael Matthews’s Five Fingers for Marseilles. Have you seen that one?
And another
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“It’s a rare example of a contemporary Western getting almost everything wrong. […] Skip it” (Blu-ray.com). Truly awful.
So I finally saw Brimstone last night… boy what a harrowing experience… I think it would have made a more accessible picture with linear storytelling, but still quite a beautifully shot film. And since it is really a Eurowestern (I didn"t know), I added it to the dastabase
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I saw it once over a year ago on TV. I felt it was too depressive, even if I usually like moody non comedy westerns. Nice though with a scene shot at Las Salinillas/Tabernas.
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Watched it about 5 or 6 weeks ago … wanted to like it more, but it goes on and on and sort of chokes on it’s own momentum.
Too long and too over the top to maintain my interest … though I did finish it.
Not really a western either … more a historical horror drama, which is set around the wild west period, but doesn’t give any western buzz, even with the few brief Almeria scenes.
so it’s missing some buzz to fit the definition? come on 
Technically it does fit the definition … but only just.
My humble opinion, of course. 
but why? It has all the ingredients: takes place in the semi-lawless west, has gunslingers, stagecoaches, saloons, duels, horses, rifles, etc… what buzz is it missing?
I think Brimstone is excellent. One of my ten favourite non-spag westerns? Maybe. Close to my top ten, anyway. Not quite the “Sunday afternoon, nodding off after a big lunch” viewing fare that most westerns are, though. Grim stuff.
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I think that is just background detail … it’s not at the forefront of what the film is really about.
It’s a story that could take place in a variety of locations or eras … it just doesn’t seem like a western at it’s core. Much like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer … mid 1800s America, but not a western as such.
But actually many famous westerns “could take place in a variety of locations or eras”. And hey, our sub-genre starting FoD is a pretty good example for that …
Maybe it just sits in that grey area between what definitely does and what definitely does not constitute a western. Personally, I think Brimstone qualifies. @aldo doesn’t and I can readily see where he’s coming from on that. He mentions Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer which I’d agree wouldn’t really qualify as westerns although, conversely, I’d understand other people thinking that they did. For me, Twain’s Finn/Sawyer tales feel like they’re set just a bit too early to qualify (they’re set in the 1830s/40s) but, paradoxically, I think The Revenant (Iñárritu, 2015) fits just fine despite being set 15 years or so before Huck Finn. And, again, I could understand why folk might not agree that The Revenant fits at all. For my money, The Proposition (Hillcoat, 2005) is one of the finest westerns I’ve ever seen, and yet for many that would categorically not qualify as a western whatsoever, and they’d have a valid point for obvious reasons.
All a big blur, see.
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Valid points, gentlemen - and for the ‘record’, I don’t actually mind if this qualifies or not … it’s just my take on it.
Hypothetically, if I were asked to describe the type of film this is to someone who knew nothing about it, then ‘Western’ would not be the first word that sprung to mind.
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A witchy-western? Could go either way of course but it looks plenty interesting to me. 