Lone Star

The screenplay for this is a marvel of engineering, with almost every single line baldly advancing the story's narrative and emotional beats or blatantly foregrounding its political themes while leaving so many pauses and gaps as to never come across as didactic. The…

Jake Cole

The twisty and often shocking plot could have so easily turned into a frantic melodrama, and I'm overjoyed that it didn't. Everything plays out so smoothly, with such wonderful transitions from past to present. Unfolds like a classic epic, spanning generations of love and…

sydney

Back in the early 70s, a reporter from a national magazine asked the governor of our Lone Star state, “Governor, what’s your ideal of what a real Texan oughta be?” Governor said, “Son, that’s easy. Just go down to Rio County and get a look at Sheriff Buddy Deeds.” Texas,…

Matt!

75 "This stretch of road runs between nowhere and not much else." Lone Star reckons with small-town secrets and the buried skeletons of the past, but it never devotes itself to being a whodunnit in its entirety, either. John Sayles lingers on the mystery only in the…

SilentDawn

the way John Sayles utilizes time here is god tier, eschewing hard transitions for something much more elegant, often allowing the present to more into the past — the rare film that not only understands the deep, complicated, nature of generational trauma but is able to…

Justin LaLiberty

As Paul Thomas Anderson wrote in *Magnolia* “We might be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.” *Lone Star* echoes this sentiment. The film explores the mythology of the American West through the story of a legendary Texas sheriff, a local hero who…

Christof88

Generational curses discreetly whispered in an incantation through time’s poppling waves like loose tumbleweeds blowing about in sabulous, bone-parched desert winds. No town is bigger than a small one, wherein the sins of the father and mistakes of the mother commingle,…

Jerry

My parents used to tell me about this movie all the time when I was younger, but I never got around to seeing it until today. I can understand now why they were such big fans, and the deeper I delve into Sayles' filmography the more it's really starting to impress me how…

Eli Hayes

This film is a damn masterwork. A contender for best edited film ever. The flashbacks meld with present day, a tool used to physically show how interwoven our past is. There are four separate subplots tied together that destroy implicated prejudice and stir the fascination…

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