Ass flocked

A Million Ways to Die in the West

Crit

In January, when I signed up for MoviePass (yes, I know: I still haven't provided my promised review of the product; it's coming, it's coming!), I vowed that I wouldn't go to a bunch of films just because the card made it effectively free, and I haven't. (After all, there's no such thing as a free movie: once I've walked to and from the theater and blogged it, it has cost me > 3 hours of my life, which is a lot dearer than the $8 for a bargain matinee.)

But sometimes, you just have to. Sometimes, despite Rotten Tomatoes numbers in the 30s, you have to play a hunch, even if in your heart you expect it to be pretty awful. And so today I took my MoviePass and my low expectations downtown, and . . . laughed my ass off. And not only that: from the opening credits backed by John Ford's Monument Valley, to the explicit debunking of the genre's romanticism, to the fond embrace of same, this is as smart a sendup of the Western as I've ever seen.

Now once, I'd have said both of those things about Blazing Saddles, which I have of late found literally unwatchable, so maybe this won't hold up. But hey, for now I will readily proclaim this well worth the money I didn't spend (and wouldn't have spent) to see it.

Trailers

• As Above, So Below--Young people in metaphysical peril (yawn), but the setting--the catacombs below Paris--somehow makes it seem potentially smarter.
• A Walk among the Tombstones--This looks as it may be a cut above the programmers Liam Neeson has been paying the rent with lately.