You can't bring up the western genre without commenting on how it dropped so sharply in prolificness after a Golden Age of Hollywood heydey. It's almost as much a trope now as Mexican standoffs or badasses so badass you'll never view their actor in the same way again, even if it's not totally apt. Of course, it may not be as prolific at the box office as superheroes (a genre everyone's expecting to follow a similar rise and fall), but there's not exactly being a shortage of solid wild west movies - next year's Oscar race looks to be dominated by highly classy versions from beloved auteurs (The Revenant and The Hateful Eight). Slow West isn't just the best of the recent offerings (both Iñárritu and Tarantino's films count as 2016 releases), but also one that embraces this whole shift; although in many parts looking at friendship, on a grander scale John MacLean's debut feature is about the end of the era, with Michael Fassbender's murderous bounty hunter finding his very existence suspect as the rules of the land change. The ultimate conclusion is, in a similar turn to It Follows, that love is the key - Fassbender's anti-hero is the only outlaw to make it out of the film alive, and that's only because he actually chooses to take a step into a civilised, modern society, giving up on his old ways for romance. Read the full review here.
