HEAVEN’S GATE
1980, Park Circus, 219 min, USA, Dir: Michael Cimino

After his Academy Award-winning triumph with THE DEER HUNTER, Director Michael Cimino broadened and deepened his epic vision of America even further with this elegiac Western. Kris Kristofferson is a sheriff caught in the middle of mounting tensions between affluent landowners and newly arrived homesteaders in 1890s Wyoming; complicating matters is a burgeoning love triangle among Kristofferson, his paramour Ella (Isabelle Huppert) and hired gun Christopher Walken. In Cimino's hands the personal, political, and historical intersect to powerful effect, with a majesty more apparent than ever in this stunning new restoration personally supervised by the director.


THERE WILL BE BLOOD
2007, Paramount, 158 min, USA, Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson

Heralded by several critics as the best film of the first decade of the 21st century, Anderson’s eight-time Oscar-nominated oil epic is a true cinematic masterpiece. Depicting mineral prospector Daniel Plainview (a brilliant Daniel Day-Lewis) and the brutal, bloody founding of his American oil empire, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is a soaring historical drama that both employs and ingeniously transcends the conventions of epic cinema - shocking and thrilling viewers at every turn. An enthralling exploration of greed, capitalism and violence, this opus thrives as a visually mesmerizing study of an ironfisted oil baron and the developing American frontier he reigns over.


THE APPALOOSA
1966, Universal, 98 min, USA, Dir: Sidney J. Furie

Marlon Brando stars as Matt Fletcher, a Mexican-American buffalo hunter at odds with ominous local bandit general Chuy Medina (John Saxon). It’s the last straw for Matt when Chuy steals his appaloosa horse, and he sets out for revenge - even if it means singlehandedly taking on all of Chuy’s ruthless gang in the process. Saxon received a Golden Globe nomination for his supporting turn.


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