Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Matt Greene For a film made in the 1930s, based in the 1880s, the class and political polarization still rings entirely true. Mostly a road-trip dramedy, it's filled with a top-rate collection of colorful characters, and it's such a pleasure getting to know them over 90 minutes. Once the classic and inventively shot western-action kicks in at the end, it adds excitement and volatility to the already stellar drama and humor.

JLRVancouver Not a lot more need be said about John Ford's classic Western. The setting in Monument Valley is unforgettable, the folk music score is perfect, the script and the ensemble cast is top-notch, and first shot of the Duke, standing in the sand holding a saddle, and spin-cocking his Winchester, is one of the greatest introductions to a character, and ultimately to a legend, in the genre. While best known for its climatic chase and rescue scene, the film is full of brilliant moments such as John Carradine's gambler covering a women's body in the burned out village or Thomas Mitchell's doctor facing down the killer over the shotgun, not ending the final showdown, just making it more even. Even Andy Devine's mild comic relief or Thomas Mitchell's drunk scenes work, unusual as those are the sorts of scenes that rarely pass the test of time. The stunt work by legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt is extraordinary, although some of the techniques used to make horses fall would never be allowed in modern productions. Overall an outstanding film from the Hollywood's legendary year: 1939.

grantss The American West, late-1800s. A stagecoach sets off across the untamed wilderness carrying a mixed assortment of characters: an infamous outlaw, a drunk doctor, a prostitute, a whiskey salesman, the wife of an Army officer, a gambler, a bank manager, the local Marshall and the driver. Animosities and petty differences, and unexpected friendships, surface. Their fortunes take a turn for the worse when they learn that an Apache raiding party, lead by Geronimo, is in their vicinity. A masterpiece that is the most important Western ever made. Great plot, well directed by the legendary John Ford. Not just a conventional cowboys-vs-Indians / gunfight sort of Western (though there a large element of that) but a character drama too. There is great character depth and development on display and this is used well in developing the story.Some great themes running through the movie too, especially one of anti-prejudice.Good performances all round. John Wayne is great as the Ringo Kid and shows a softer side that wasn't always apparent in his later films. Thomas Mitchell deservedly won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as Doctor Boone.More than just a brilliant movie, a movie that created the blueprint for Westerns, and pretty much defined the genre. It also made John Wayne a star. He had acted in plenty of movies before this without much impact but Stagecoach is what truly launched his career as we know it.John Ford had already won a directing Oscar before directing Stagecoach, so this movie wasn't as career-enhancing to him as it was to John Wayne. However, it did set him up as the foremost director of Westerns. Moreover, it was to be the first of many collaborations with John Wayne, a series of collaborations that would see them make movies like The Searchers, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, They Were Expendable, Fort Apache and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.A brilliant and historic movie.

tomgillespie2002 Before John Ford's majestic Stagecoach was released in 1939, the western genre was festering in B-movie hell. While we can all now agree that the genre can encompass just about every sort of human experience and underlying theme imaginable, in the 1930s it had become a joke; simplistic and goofy tales of good guys in white versus bad guys in black that were little more than an excuse to deliver an action scene or two. Although he had made a staggering amount of pictures by the time he directed Stagecoach, John Ford left it relatively late in his career to become the lauded auteur he would be remembered as being when he adapted Ernest Haycox's short story The Stage to Lordsburg.Stagecoach is special indeed. Not only did it revitalise a flailing genre, but it seems to give birth to another - something more classical, thoughtful and mythical. This is, in part, down to the casting of John Wayne as The Ringo Kid, an actor who became so synonymous with the role that he spent his entire career both embracing and running away from it. Already a veteran of around eighty movies made for 'Poverty Row', the still-young Duke was only cast after Ford stubbornly insisted on it, while the studio wanted Gary Cooper. Ford knew he would be a star, and the director certainly gives him an introduction worthy of a screen giant. As we first meet the Kid, cocking his rifle as a tracking shot brings us close to his face, it's inconceivable just how Ford was the only one to recognise his screen presence.Yet Wayne is only one of a magnificent ensemble of characters flung together in the claustrophobic stagecoach as it heads closer towards towards hostile Indian territory. Everyone on board seems to wrestle with their own vice or prejudice, including effeminate whiskey salesman Peacock (Donald Meek), brooding Southern gambler Hatfield (John Carradine), and shifty banker Gatewood (Berton Churchill). The two largest roles go to Claire Trevor as kind-hearted prostitute Dallas and Thomas Mitchell as the alcoholic Doc Boone, the latter winning an Academy Award for his efforts as the blow-hard whose realisation of his own flaws become his redemption. The two are set on their journey after being thrown out of town by the 'Ladies' Law and Order League' - a group of busybodies who begrudge any sort of moral taint on their town - as Doc cries social prejudice.The idea of social prejudice being rampant in a country guilty of its own recent atrocities is a key theme running throughout, and Stagecoach is a surprisingly liberal movie, despite the depiction of the screaming Apaches, who play the enemy here. We spend a lot of time with the characters before we get to climactic action sequence, but the skill in which they are drawn and played, along with the fascination of watching these shunned personas unite against a common goal, means it never feels like Ford is making us wait. The Apache attack is a high-speed work of technical brilliance, featuring stunt work so nail-biting that you won't even stop to ponder why they don't just shoot the horses. It's so memorable that you'll forgive the redundant second climax featuring the Ringo Kid's unfinished business with the Plummer gang, and the sentiment that comes with it. Arguably the finest American western ever made,