What I Saw: 2011

In Brief

My Own Private Idaho is a revelation, a film that takes risks, is unafraid of failure, stars mainstream actors, yet retains its integrity and soul. My faith in American Cinema after 1980, which was at zero, is in need of reevaluation… Budd Boetticher is an important discovery; he provides the missing link between Anthony Mann and Peckinpah/Leone. His Ranown westerns portray a rural, hardheaded, taciturn, moralist type that I’ve known in life but rarely in films… The so-called mumblecore of