Kevin Costner always lets his ego get away from him. Happened in the 90s/2000 as overblown tripe was the name of the game for him after a hugely successful stretch but charming turns in stuff like the Upside of Anger made people look at him differently. Then he got a big push for Man of Steel and Hatfield & McCoys before slumping a bit again. Then Yellowstone made him big again and now he's going to lose a huge part of his fortune for a vanity project. He just can't seem to let himself be successful.
It took a while, but eventually movie fans acknowledged that Waterworld is an entertaining movie, and the reason it became one of history's biggest flops is because its production was expensive as shit.
It's a business failure, not a creative failure.
It eventually turned a profit, but it was a box office dud when it was released, with an eye-watering budget, hence wags calling it *Fishtar* and *Kevin's Gate*(after *Ishtar* and *Heaven's Gate* two other notoriously expensive flops).
Roger Corman took a look at the script at some point and passed on it saying "Are you nuts? It would cost a million bucks to make this thing!"
Ironically I think Costner was the worst thing about it. There's a lot to love about the movie, but his character is boring as shit, yet he so clearly wanted to be seen as a badass Max Max type hero.
The scene where the little girl is talking to Dennis Hopper about how badass and cool he is, and she's like "death follows him wherever he goes but it fears him" or whatever the specifics were was laughable.
His character is also an unnecessarily bad person for the first 3/4 of the movie too. Then, randomly, he becomes the hero without any justification or arc.
Recently showed this to my partner for the first time and we both had a good time. It's not perfect, but as far as post apocalyptic movies go it's brilliant, lol
Dude, no it wasn’t! I read the book AND loved the movie. Both were done pretty well for the time and delivered for what they were in a time when post apocalyptic stuff wasn’t mainstream. In hindsight the postman is one of the great post apocalyptic movies out there
All true. Also I’d point out that Yellowstone was doing very well and he decided to take an early exit. This caused Yellowstone to have to tie up a number of story lines early. This time it looks like dances with wolves but without the wolves or any actual message apart from Kevin❤️Westerns
What are you talking about? Horizon is pretty heavy-handed in its message about westward expansion. Sam Worthington does a whole monologue about it and the movie ends with this weird montage of the conman printing flyers for the Horizon settlement and the flood of people heading west.
Yellowstone seems really dumb to me.
As someone who has visit Yellowstone a lot and spent whole summers there is not like the show at all.
The shower is basically straight people broke back mountain with some bullshit drama that is more far fetched than Texas ranger fighting ghost because the investigation involved a native American burial ground.
It’s a soap opera with a budget. I still love it but am not pretending it’s anything different.
I think the prequels it spawned are solid period TV though. (1883 & 1913)
you realize Yellowstone isn’t supposed to portray Yellowstone National Park, right…?
maybe massive landowners who are obscenely wealthy experience a different yellowstone than you?
and hell - it’s fiction and it’s a soap opera with great cinematography, i’d say it does that decently
He could easily be a Clint Eastwood if he followed the Eastwood playbook:
Make your movies really, really, really fucking cheap.
Eastwood gets to keep directing movie after movie because it’s usually three takes maximum for each shot, no reshoots, no do-overs, everything comes in on time and under budget.
The reason Clint Eastwood, Spike Lee, and Woody Allen keep making movies is because they make them *very affordably*.
that’s how you measure success? by how much profit he makes with a film? dude loves westerns, is passionate about them and had a vision for a film. he made it. it’s a success by those terms for sure
I just forgot about H&M’s, that thing was sneaky good.
I dislike Costner, but sometimes really enjoy his stuff, sometimes it draws me totally out too.
I’ll watch the first at least, who knows🤷♂️
I mean, regardless of how you feel about his work, I think he fancies himself an artist, and he’s putting a lot on the line to paint on his big ass canvass. Vanity? Sure, I guess. But we can’t start judging art by its financial success. Had he wanted to just be rich, he could have stopped acting in the early 90s. I think he’s motivated to express himself in this way and he’s putting his money on the line. I don’t have to love his work to respect that.
Kevin Costner has played the same role since Dances with Wolves: that of Kevin Costner.
Sure Deniro, Pacino, and others are in the same boat, but at least in their youth they had range.
I actually love DWW, but even in a part he wrote for himself, the dude has a hard time “acting”. He reads his diary entries like a shopping list, which is coincidentally also how he reads the lines where he interacts with everyone else.
I loved it. Just keep in mind this is a movie with no actual ending. It just abruptly stops ( think of a middle of a season tv episode) and a teaser trailer starts for part 2 .
Saturday night in LA IMAX will be like $26. Normal ticket in SoCal will be like $16 on weekend. And of course you can find matinee showings for like $8 if you wanna watch a movie Tuesday at 10am.
13.95 where I'm at. No luxury place, though, walking to your seat is like walking through a glue trap you put down for insects and small rodents. You're lucky if you don't fall on your face when your first foot gets stuck if you aren't ready for it.
The one downside is that it’s the *only* kind of theater we have in the region. I haven’t seen IMAX in years because the nearest screen is too many hours away. I definitely appreciate what we do have even more now though!
Not in all areas. In Texas I've only spent $20 on a movie ticket exactly once in my life.
It was two days ago lol. Regal 4DX theater room where it's like a shitty rollercoaster. My neck and back hurts so much afterwards.
Normally tickets are $9 with them being even cheaper on certain days of the week at $6.
In with you on this. Can’t stop thinking about the movie and think with its other parts has a great chance of going down as something of a Western masterpiece when seen as a whole.
Left plenty of other comments with more detailed views but just wanted to back you up - anyone who enjoys westerns has an excellent likelihood of coming out very satisfied
Also, the score is one of the great scores of the last decade.
I gotta disagree with this article. Saw the movie yesterday. The horsemanship is outstanding. The horses and animals rightly are much more than scenery, they affect the outcomes of scenes as they should. This alone makes it better than the vast majority of westerns.
Add to that a multifaceted story of rising conflicts, richly produced, in a game of thrones or lord of the rings fashion, and you have yourself a very engaging first film. It's an incredibly ambitious project and I for one am excited. This writer expected a tight and neat little storyline in this? Strange.
As for the Native criticisms...seems like Costner took care to curate the individual tribe cultures and bring us into their ways of life. It's a very nuanced depiction. The attack our writer has such a problem with does indeed tear the tribe apart and illustrates how rare and fool-hearty it was.
I really don't get these critics. It's a little slicker and sexier than I like in some spots. I could do without some of the more stylish characters. And some are just straight villains and fools for sure.
But this writer misses a whole lot of great here, in my opinion.
You have stated it perfectly. I left that theater absolutely moved, and ready for the next chapter. I was expecting something clunky, due to the critics, but as it progressed, I kept loving it and wondering what the hell the critics were talking about.
Thank you hoss. I hate to immediately run to a "this person never been on a horse" place, but if the animal work doesn't even register then tbh she is not equipped to be writing about the genre. Weak ass article from a woman who ain't never been thrown
I'm seeing it later this week, but the ego factor is one part of the appeal.
It feels like a throwback to when Von Stroheim went and make GREED eight hours long, only this is getting play in theaters!
Are my expectations high? Not really? Am I going to get a lot of movie? That I will.
It's good tho. It's paced more like a TV show epic than a movie where your spending 20-40 minutes with a set of characters before moving onto a different scene in a different place. It's not at all incoherent, it just doesn't tie anything together because like an epic TV show it's setting stuff up and introducing various characters, it's not a standalone movie, it's the first of four (the second is finished and coming out in August) so basically we're getting an epic TV series on the big screen! Love it!
I don’t think that was it. Taylor didn’t have a script yet because he’s riding his popularity wave and working a bunch of other projects. Kevin also wants to do other projects and Yellow Stone being delayed was affecting Kevin’s schedule. It’s easy for Kevin to be the bad guy because he’s the famous actor but I think it’s more pole the craters of Game of Thrones and how they were stretched too thin and ruined the last season because they wanted to work on Star Wars.
They were filming season 5 and literally ran out of scripts, they wanted Kevin to sit around on hold till they were ready and he said no because he was already scheduled to film his own stuff, Sheridan is the asshole here
I don't know if it's so much Costner, as Sheridan has problems with others on the show too. I.e. Sheridan had a physical altercation with Cole Hauser (Rip on Yellowstone) before the show, and then years later sued Hauser while the two have been working together. Talk about making work life uncomfortable for everyone...
https://nypost.com/2023/12/06/entertainment/yellowstones-cole-hauser-taylor-sheridan-had-fight-pre-lawsuit/
https://www.today.com/popculture/news/yellowstone-taylor-sheridan-sues-cole-hauser-coffee-brand-rcna128500
My MiL and I really enjoyed it. We liked the story lines, we liked that it wasn’t dumbed down. Some harsh realities were exposed but overall a great picture
Confused about what? Genuinely curious - I can understand about being confused on where the story ended because I’m not sure the marketing did a great job of explaining this is a two parter, or even of telling the audience the end montage was from the second film (although that looked incredible). But if confusion about story that surprises me, I thought the way the editing was handled for time jumps and different stands was superb, loved not having big titles coming up explaining everything and just letting the frame tell the story.
There was one or two points where it took me 5 or so seconds in a scene to place where it was in the overall picture but never longer than that.
I was confused about why the fuck we should care about Kevin Costner’s character at all (he’s literally just some guy who walked into a mining town and got suckered by a prostitute), why anyone is still chasing that baby after the outlaw matriarch said she didn’t want it back at her house, why anyone decided it would be a good idea to cast Sienna Miller. And many, many other questions that were brought up during the first part’s three hour run time but not really acknowledged.
That's really the sticker for me too. I enjoyed the film, but I felt like alot of character building was just sort of assumed. Maybe some back story to follow on the second movie.
I would hope so - I feel like if you can’t get audience investment in your characters in the first three hours that doesn’t bode well for the rest of the film. Also, how is a hooker the most boring character in this whole thing?
That’s fair enough - did you feel by the end that you had a good finger on all the characters and their different storylines and how they might end up coming together?
The movie’s fine. A bit unfocused and it looks a little clean, but I’m going to see the second. People just love a bandwagon shitpile and there’s no easier target than a guy putting himself in big tentpole movies
Quicker 3 hours I’ve experienced in a cinema and that surprised even me. I’ve sat through and loved slow Westerns but this wasn’t one of them. Me and the audience next to me were massively surprised when it ended - absolutely flew by.
As I’ve caveated a few times, I think this only applies to audiences who know they already like Westerns. There isn’t a chance in hell of this converting people to the western genre, it’s about as traditional as they come.
I thought this article was gonna be about Horizon. Instead I was treated to a baffling, incoherent mess about Costner: his career, his politics and his ego. I guess the movie that’s three hours long only deserved three paragraphs.
Since I learned about Horizon being not only 3 hours long, but the first in a 4-chapter series, I developed an irrational disdain toward Costner. All the info about it screamed "vanity project" to me, and box office flops are so predictable at this point. That it didn't make a lot of money opening weekend doesn't surprise me. Negative reviews about it don't surprise me. I also reminded myself that his Dances With Wolves beat Goodfellas for Best Picture, a real crime. On top of that, DWW is a total slog and does not hold up at all compared with Goodfellas.
So yeah, I don't think I can watch the guy anymore unless it's Perfect World or someone hosts a watch party.
I don’t get the ‘vanity project’ criticism. He doesn’t even appear in this film until an hour in and instead let’s 80% of the film and scenes breath and play out without his involvement at all.
And as director he’s had the balls to put $40 million on the line to make an enormous passion film in a genre he knows backwards and has had both critical and commercial success in previously. If he wants to tell an expansive story over 4 films, and he wants to take on an enormous amount of his own risk doing so because Hollywood studios have no interest in making those type of films why is that a bad thing?
Everyone who invested in this movie understands Westerns don’t do big box office, either domestically not internationally, especially not in recent times. He isn’t half assing anything here - he had a story he needed to get out of his system and he taken a massive ambitious, somewhat audacious gamble to get the vision made.
I think the film has flaws but overall, by the end I ended up loving it and I’m pretty stoked someone is taking these kind of swings to get movies made that otherwise wouldn’t be.
And don’t get me started on the ‘should be for TV’ criticism. For anyone that knows westerns and has seen this film you can tell easily this is a movie made for cinema.
Kevin Costner is a pretty good director. He has a good eye for details and an appreciation for locations that translate well to the screen.
He's a pretty good actor, too. He has range and can keep up with his co stars even if he seldom outshines them.
Anytime these two conjoin and he tries to do both at once, there's no one to tell him to stop being Kevin Costner. I want to like his movies more, but his self direction is *just* on the side of ego instead of art.
You think? I actually hear they are making a blood meridian movie and have seen some casting roles for judge ect but whether that story can be told on the big screen or not will remain to be seen.
I haven’t watched horizon yet and have barely seen previews but it doesn’t strike me as the direction Costner would want to go in. Blood meridian is a whole other level of complex characters, racism, gore ect.
I’ll probably check it out this weekend. I actually am intrigued with a long 4 part movie series but what I question is how invested will people be between the parts. Seems like a 4-5 year plan and I doubt many will be that interested in a western drama timepiece where technically the main overall storyline (westward expansion) has been done before many times over
I kind of like the idea of Blood Meridian being considered “unfilmable”. I can’t imagine any director getting CM’s vision onscreen. The beautiful writing is what makes it. It also has such a lack of dialogue. What do you think?
I personally don’t think it would make for a very good movie. Sure there would be some scenes that may stick with a person for years and or some beautiful scenery. Just because it is considered a masterpiece among books doesn’t mean it will make for good cinema.
I have had this discussion before with others who have read the book Blood Meridian. Let’s be honest the book is not an “easy read”. If you have read it and know about it I don’t think there was anyone ever who finished the book and put it down and said “wow they should make a movie about that”.
No Way Out is about the only Kevin Costener movie i can handle. Dances With Wolves was great on first view, during that time, but subsequent dozen views not so much. Actually a pretty lame movie, with lots of great white hero saves indigenous people like avatar. Live in MT but hadn't seen Yellowstone till recently.. not impressed especially with kev being the kingpin. Lol, not even close to real Montana.
And whats with the ad i have seen a dozen times.. where kev is playing tough guy again.. goes up and punches old fat drunk guy and you can hear something like: 'thats a bad man'.. of course , of course more modern hip slang in an era where it wasnt quite what was happening.
You ever heard of the 90s? or hbo in 90s?, or being bored in the 90s? Or no internet in 90s? Or watching movies with girlfriends/family/friends? Or THIRTY YEAR PERIOD?
Only 3 more of them coming out
Can’t wait! Part one is so good.
Agreed.
Kevin Costner always lets his ego get away from him. Happened in the 90s/2000 as overblown tripe was the name of the game for him after a hugely successful stretch but charming turns in stuff like the Upside of Anger made people look at him differently. Then he got a big push for Man of Steel and Hatfield & McCoys before slumping a bit again. Then Yellowstone made him big again and now he's going to lose a huge part of his fortune for a vanity project. He just can't seem to let himself be successful.
Waterworld and the postman are what I remember.
Waterworld is better than most people say it is. Fite me.
It took a while, but eventually movie fans acknowledged that Waterworld is an entertaining movie, and the reason it became one of history's biggest flops is because its production was expensive as shit. It's a business failure, not a creative failure.
Didn’t it cost like a million a minute to make in 90s money
It eventually turned a profit, but it was a box office dud when it was released, with an eye-watering budget, hence wags calling it *Fishtar* and *Kevin's Gate*(after *Ishtar* and *Heaven's Gate* two other notoriously expensive flops). Roger Corman took a look at the script at some point and passed on it saying "Are you nuts? It would cost a million bucks to make this thing!"
Ironically I think Costner was the worst thing about it. There's a lot to love about the movie, but his character is boring as shit, yet he so clearly wanted to be seen as a badass Max Max type hero. The scene where the little girl is talking to Dennis Hopper about how badass and cool he is, and she's like "death follows him wherever he goes but it fears him" or whatever the specifics were was laughable.
Speaking of, Dennis Hopper was so good in it that he nearly made up for Costner.
Everyone knows the best character is the old guy in the oil pit who blows up.
Oh Thank God
His character is also an unnecessarily bad person for the first 3/4 of the movie too. Then, randomly, he becomes the hero without any justification or arc.
I thought the scene, where Dennis Hopper was getting a new eyeball 👀 that had been painted was a real howler of a scene.
“Is this your Big vision?”
Same with postman
Recently showed this to my partner for the first time and we both had a good time. It's not perfect, but as far as post apocalyptic movies go it's brilliant, lol
No. I will fite wit choo doh.
I will die on this hill - if they just redid the silly CGI scenes this movie would be remembered differently.
What hill? Ur in water world now
DRYLAND IS NOT A MYTH
Waste of money, probably, but I agree - it was not a terrible movie.
Both Waterworld and Postman are decent movies, despite Costner.
Of course cause it’s a shot for shot remake of road warrior, on ~~ice~~ water.
Inspired sure but shot for shot is a wild assertion.
I enjoyed Waterworld and didn’t hate The Postman so I will fight at your side.
Waterworld isn't bad, but it's not nearly 200 million dollars good either.
So is the Postman
It would honestly have to be
Postman was great, too. Both are dumb as dirt, but they were something to watch.
Waterworld was ambitious. And ultimately it was and is Awesomely Shitty.
Waterworld is great. It’s like a Western but instead of rolling plains, it’s rolling waves.
It’s mad max with wave runners. It’s certainly not a cinematic masterpiece, but I’ve watched it more than once on TV.
It’s mad max on water, only you don’t care about the characters.
No it isn’t.
Postman and Waterworld are good movies.
It's the epitome of dumb fun and I love it.
Dances with wolves.
That was a GREAT movie, one of my all time favs.
Hell yeah that movie was legit.
Nothing but a poorly contrived ripoff of Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman.
Which was a ",ripoff" of what? A novel, short story, another film, etc? Sooo..pretty much every movie?
and iiiiiiiiiiiiiii will always love youuuuuuuuuu #bodyguard
I only remember the song
Dances with Wolves is easily his best work
You too young to remember Dances with Wolves?
I actually don’t hate postman it’s an alright movie
water world was the shit
The Postman was the nail in the coffin for hes 90s work. Waterwold is fun in hindsight but a finical crisis. The postman was just awful.
Dude, no it wasn’t! I read the book AND loved the movie. Both were done pretty well for the time and delivered for what they were in a time when post apocalyptic stuff wasn’t mainstream. In hindsight the postman is one of the great post apocalyptic movies out there
I still need to watch the movie, but The Postman is one of my favorite books. Until the end, anyway; it seemed so random and out of place.
All true. Also I’d point out that Yellowstone was doing very well and he decided to take an early exit. This caused Yellowstone to have to tie up a number of story lines early. This time it looks like dances with wolves but without the wolves or any actual message apart from Kevin❤️Westerns
What are you talking about? Horizon is pretty heavy-handed in its message about westward expansion. Sam Worthington does a whole monologue about it and the movie ends with this weird montage of the conman printing flyers for the Horizon settlement and the flood of people heading west.
Yellowstone seems really dumb to me. As someone who has visit Yellowstone a lot and spent whole summers there is not like the show at all. The shower is basically straight people broke back mountain with some bullshit drama that is more far fetched than Texas ranger fighting ghost because the investigation involved a native American burial ground.
It’s a soap opera with a budget. I still love it but am not pretending it’s anything different. I think the prequels it spawned are solid period TV though. (1883 & 1913)
you realize Yellowstone isn’t supposed to portray Yellowstone National Park, right…? maybe massive landowners who are obscenely wealthy experience a different yellowstone than you? and hell - it’s fiction and it’s a soap opera with great cinematography, i’d say it does that decently
Yea I never bothered with Yellowstone. All I know was it was fairly popular unless I am thinking of a different show
I never got past the first scene. That was too brutal for me.
Yeah it’s not about the park…..
Yellowstone is the name of the ranch, it’s not the area that the show is supposed to take place in.
Kevin Costner thinks he’s Clint Eastwood. They don’t love you like that.
He could easily be a Clint Eastwood if he followed the Eastwood playbook: Make your movies really, really, really fucking cheap. Eastwood gets to keep directing movie after movie because it’s usually three takes maximum for each shot, no reshoots, no do-overs, everything comes in on time and under budget. The reason Clint Eastwood, Spike Lee, and Woody Allen keep making movies is because they make them *very affordably*.
There is something beneath the image he presents. He tries to sound folksy, but O think he has an ego on him.
that’s how you measure success? by how much profit he makes with a film? dude loves westerns, is passionate about them and had a vision for a film. he made it. it’s a success by those terms for sure
It's Wyatt Earp all over again, but towards the end of his career. Costner is delusional and will never admit that he isn't a great storyteller.
Kurt Russell is the only acceptable Wyatt.
Hugh O’Brian
Have you seen Horizon?
He fucked cal Ripken’s wife!
I just forgot about H&M’s, that thing was sneaky good. I dislike Costner, but sometimes really enjoy his stuff, sometimes it draws me totally out too. I’ll watch the first at least, who knows🤷♂️
I mean, regardless of how you feel about his work, I think he fancies himself an artist, and he’s putting a lot on the line to paint on his big ass canvass. Vanity? Sure, I guess. But we can’t start judging art by its financial success. Had he wanted to just be rich, he could have stopped acting in the early 90s. I think he’s motivated to express himself in this way and he’s putting his money on the line. I don’t have to love his work to respect that.
The only thing I know him from is Man of Steel. I actually get him confused with Sam Neill.
Kevin Costner has played the same role since Dances with Wolves: that of Kevin Costner. Sure Deniro, Pacino, and others are in the same boat, but at least in their youth they had range.
It’s all he can do. Kevin Costner filling the space of “insert character”
He has amazing range. He can play Kevin Costner trying to act like a baseball player or Kevin Costner trying to act like a Cowboy
The best one was when Robin Hood played him in his own movie!!
He even attempted an English accent for a few scenes!
I liked him as a schizo serial killer. 🤷🏾♀️
Clark Kent: “Should I not save people?” Costner: “I don’t know. Maybe?… Anyways, I’ve got a post-death story about horses.”
*Squints. Squints harder.* That's range!
I actually love DWW, but even in a part he wrote for himself, the dude has a hard time “acting”. He reads his diary entries like a shopping list, which is coincidentally also how he reads the lines where he interacts with everyone else.
Since Fandango. I really love that movie though.
I loved it. I was totally locked in from start to finish lol. I totally can understand why most people wouldn’t like it though.
Going to see it tomorrow. I love Open Range, how was Horizon (no spoilers)?
I loved it. Just keep in mind this is a movie with no actual ending. It just abruptly stops ( think of a middle of a season tv episode) and a teaser trailer starts for part 2 .
Think of Dune part 1
"If you enjoyed this for $20 It's only 20 more dollars to see how it ends."
I think there’s four parts based on that article; $80 to see it through with that logic
Jesus christ is this how much movie tickets cost in America?
Saturday night in LA IMAX will be like $26. Normal ticket in SoCal will be like $16 on weekend. And of course you can find matinee showings for like $8 if you wanna watch a movie Tuesday at 10am.
No. At least where I live, tickets are less than $9 for a luxury theater with seats that recline and have heating options.
13.95 where I'm at. No luxury place, though, walking to your seat is like walking through a glue trap you put down for insects and small rodents. You're lucky if you don't fall on your face when your first foot gets stuck if you aren't ready for it.
Wow that’s cheap. It’s $17 for Dolby matinee, here. $21 at least for IMAX, and $12 or so for vanilla theater no fancy seats or anything.
The one downside is that it’s the *only* kind of theater we have in the region. I haven’t seen IMAX in years because the nearest screen is too many hours away. I definitely appreciate what we do have even more now though!
Not in all areas. In Texas I've only spent $20 on a movie ticket exactly once in my life. It was two days ago lol. Regal 4DX theater room where it's like a shitty rollercoaster. My neck and back hurts so much afterwards. Normally tickets are $9 with them being even cheaper on certain days of the week at $6.
Major american city here, tickets are $16-20 depending on the theater
Open Range is amazing. Horizon is a 6.5/10 right now, but maybe will be better when the full story presents itself.
Open Range is Unforgiven tier for me.
Agree, such a great movie with some of the best gun fight scenes
In with you on this. Can’t stop thinking about the movie and think with its other parts has a great chance of going down as something of a Western masterpiece when seen as a whole. Left plenty of other comments with more detailed views but just wanted to back you up - anyone who enjoys westerns has an excellent likelihood of coming out very satisfied Also, the score is one of the great scores of the last decade.
I did to. Every time I read one of these bad reviews I wonder if we saw the same movie.
Kevin Costner is already the greatest actor of all time for Draft Day. *God damn it, I love this job.*
Name me a single actor that would have the balls to trade three number 1 draft picks to draft Vontae Mack No. 1 overall over Bo-fucking-Callahan?
Vontae Mack. No matter what.
I gotta disagree with this article. Saw the movie yesterday. The horsemanship is outstanding. The horses and animals rightly are much more than scenery, they affect the outcomes of scenes as they should. This alone makes it better than the vast majority of westerns. Add to that a multifaceted story of rising conflicts, richly produced, in a game of thrones or lord of the rings fashion, and you have yourself a very engaging first film. It's an incredibly ambitious project and I for one am excited. This writer expected a tight and neat little storyline in this? Strange. As for the Native criticisms...seems like Costner took care to curate the individual tribe cultures and bring us into their ways of life. It's a very nuanced depiction. The attack our writer has such a problem with does indeed tear the tribe apart and illustrates how rare and fool-hearty it was. I really don't get these critics. It's a little slicker and sexier than I like in some spots. I could do without some of the more stylish characters. And some are just straight villains and fools for sure. But this writer misses a whole lot of great here, in my opinion.
You have stated it perfectly. I left that theater absolutely moved, and ready for the next chapter. I was expecting something clunky, due to the critics, but as it progressed, I kept loving it and wondering what the hell the critics were talking about.
I would have sat through another three hours.
Thank you hoss. I hate to immediately run to a "this person never been on a horse" place, but if the animal work doesn't even register then tbh she is not equipped to be writing about the genre. Weak ass article from a woman who ain't never been thrown
Well said - one of a few people who have helped articulate what I’ve felt. I think the score is getting criminally overlooked too - outstanding work.
Yes great call! I think I'm gonna go see it again.
I enjoyed it
I'm seeing it later this week, but the ego factor is one part of the appeal. It feels like a throwback to when Von Stroheim went and make GREED eight hours long, only this is getting play in theaters! Are my expectations high? Not really? Am I going to get a lot of movie? That I will.
I enjoyed it
I really enjoyed Field of Dreams, Silverado and The Body Guard.
It's good tho. It's paced more like a TV show epic than a movie where your spending 20-40 minutes with a set of characters before moving onto a different scene in a different place. It's not at all incoherent, it just doesn't tie anything together because like an epic TV show it's setting stuff up and introducing various characters, it's not a standalone movie, it's the first of four (the second is finished and coming out in August) so basically we're getting an epic TV series on the big screen! Love it!
Shame he couldn’t just finish Yellowstone and had to have a dick measuring contest with Taylor Sheridan instead
I don’t think that was it. Taylor didn’t have a script yet because he’s riding his popularity wave and working a bunch of other projects. Kevin also wants to do other projects and Yellow Stone being delayed was affecting Kevin’s schedule. It’s easy for Kevin to be the bad guy because he’s the famous actor but I think it’s more pole the craters of Game of Thrones and how they were stretched too thin and ruined the last season because they wanted to work on Star Wars.
They were filming season 5 and literally ran out of scripts, they wanted Kevin to sit around on hold till they were ready and he said no because he was already scheduled to film his own stuff, Sheridan is the asshole here
Wasnt it mainly about negotiations with paramount; he felt owed 12mil?
I don't know if it's so much Costner, as Sheridan has problems with others on the show too. I.e. Sheridan had a physical altercation with Cole Hauser (Rip on Yellowstone) before the show, and then years later sued Hauser while the two have been working together. Talk about making work life uncomfortable for everyone... https://nypost.com/2023/12/06/entertainment/yellowstones-cole-hauser-taylor-sheridan-had-fight-pre-lawsuit/ https://www.today.com/popculture/news/yellowstone-taylor-sheridan-sues-cole-hauser-coffee-brand-rcna128500
Yeah Sheridan has always seemed like an egotistical dick to me. I’m sure Costner has some ego as well.
I actually thought Yellowstone was on its last season, cause they split it into two parts
Yeah, I think they did that BS last season split thing too, but I don't honestly care about it anymore. I'm sure I'll watch it, but maybe not.
My MiL and I really enjoyed it. We liked the story lines, we liked that it wasn’t dumbed down. Some harsh realities were exposed but overall a great picture
This "journalist" is a hack.
Tin Cup was his best movie.
I saw it with my parents and husband, and we were all very confused as well.
Confused about what? Genuinely curious - I can understand about being confused on where the story ended because I’m not sure the marketing did a great job of explaining this is a two parter, or even of telling the audience the end montage was from the second film (although that looked incredible). But if confusion about story that surprises me, I thought the way the editing was handled for time jumps and different stands was superb, loved not having big titles coming up explaining everything and just letting the frame tell the story. There was one or two points where it took me 5 or so seconds in a scene to place where it was in the overall picture but never longer than that.
I was confused about why the fuck we should care about Kevin Costner’s character at all (he’s literally just some guy who walked into a mining town and got suckered by a prostitute), why anyone is still chasing that baby after the outlaw matriarch said she didn’t want it back at her house, why anyone decided it would be a good idea to cast Sienna Miller. And many, many other questions that were brought up during the first part’s three hour run time but not really acknowledged.
That's really the sticker for me too. I enjoyed the film, but I felt like alot of character building was just sort of assumed. Maybe some back story to follow on the second movie.
I would hope so - I feel like if you can’t get audience investment in your characters in the first three hours that doesn’t bode well for the rest of the film. Also, how is a hooker the most boring character in this whole thing?
To me, it just felt… disjointed. Maybe there were just too many storylines for me to keep up with. But I’ll have to see the scenery was spectacular.
That’s fair enough - did you feel by the end that you had a good finger on all the characters and their different storylines and how they might end up coming together?
Not so much, but my brain can only handle “n=2” at a time. N= 3+ and I’m lost, ha ha.
Didn’t this movie get a 10 minute standing ovation at canes?
That should have been an indication of how bad it’d be.
It isn’t bad.
The movie’s fine. A bit unfocused and it looks a little clean, but I’m going to see the second. People just love a bandwagon shitpile and there’s no easier target than a guy putting himself in big tentpole movies
it’s 3 hrs. I feel too old to sit through a 3 hr movie without a nap and probably 2 bathroom breaks. lol and it’s part 1 silly
Quicker 3 hours I’ve experienced in a cinema and that surprised even me. I’ve sat through and loved slow Westerns but this wasn’t one of them. Me and the audience next to me were massively surprised when it ended - absolutely flew by. As I’ve caveated a few times, I think this only applies to audiences who know they already like Westerns. There isn’t a chance in hell of this converting people to the western genre, it’s about as traditional as they come.
thanks for the input. i’m glad you liked it and i’ll check it out when it streams.
Just watched Molly’s Game with Jessica Chastain. Surprised to see Costner in a bit part as her father. Must have been part of his down trend.
That’s a great flick and he was excellent in it
Yep, he has something called gravitas - which really helped with that role.
I can’t wait to watch it this week.
I wish I could watch it again for the first time.
When all you really want to be is a cowboy but you’re stuck as an actor and director.
“Nice, MCU Part 26! Ugh, this movie is 4 parts?”
I actually really liked it, it was like if Game of Thrones was a western and I hate westerns
Please make him stop making himself the star.
“a constantly bombastic soundtrack, as though someone ran John Ford and Sergio Leone through ChatGPT” This is **savage** 🖤
I watched hours and hours of Dances With Wolves, and never saw him dance with any wolves. He's not to be taken seriously
I watched hours and hours of Dances With Wolves, and never saw him dance with any wolves. He's not to be taken seriously
I thought this article was gonna be about Horizon. Instead I was treated to a baffling, incoherent mess about Costner: his career, his politics and his ego. I guess the movie that’s three hours long only deserved three paragraphs.
Kevins Gate 2: Electric Boogaloo
I was thinking something like Sagebrushworld.
A lot of words to show off virtue signalling
Nine words to show you can’t use English properly.
Since I learned about Horizon being not only 3 hours long, but the first in a 4-chapter series, I developed an irrational disdain toward Costner. All the info about it screamed "vanity project" to me, and box office flops are so predictable at this point. That it didn't make a lot of money opening weekend doesn't surprise me. Negative reviews about it don't surprise me. I also reminded myself that his Dances With Wolves beat Goodfellas for Best Picture, a real crime. On top of that, DWW is a total slog and does not hold up at all compared with Goodfellas. So yeah, I don't think I can watch the guy anymore unless it's Perfect World or someone hosts a watch party.
I don’t get the ‘vanity project’ criticism. He doesn’t even appear in this film until an hour in and instead let’s 80% of the film and scenes breath and play out without his involvement at all. And as director he’s had the balls to put $40 million on the line to make an enormous passion film in a genre he knows backwards and has had both critical and commercial success in previously. If he wants to tell an expansive story over 4 films, and he wants to take on an enormous amount of his own risk doing so because Hollywood studios have no interest in making those type of films why is that a bad thing? Everyone who invested in this movie understands Westerns don’t do big box office, either domestically not internationally, especially not in recent times. He isn’t half assing anything here - he had a story he needed to get out of his system and he taken a massive ambitious, somewhat audacious gamble to get the vision made. I think the film has flaws but overall, by the end I ended up loving it and I’m pretty stoked someone is taking these kind of swings to get movies made that otherwise wouldn’t be. And don’t get me started on the ‘should be for TV’ criticism. For anyone that knows westerns and has seen this film you can tell easily this is a movie made for cinema.
He forgot he was reaponsible for Postman and Waterworld. Luckily we haven't.
Two of my faves!
This guy had one good movie it was called no way out
Looks like a Taylor Sheridan ripoff.
It cannot be worse than Yellowstone. #js
Kevin Costner is a pretty good director. He has a good eye for details and an appreciation for locations that translate well to the screen. He's a pretty good actor, too. He has range and can keep up with his co stars even if he seldom outshines them. Anytime these two conjoin and he tries to do both at once, there's no one to tell him to stop being Kevin Costner. I want to like his movies more, but his self direction is *just* on the side of ego instead of art.
His Actors Studio interview was cringe, as the young folk say.
Seems like Costner tried to make his own version of Blood Meridian and failed miserably
You think? I actually hear they are making a blood meridian movie and have seen some casting roles for judge ect but whether that story can be told on the big screen or not will remain to be seen. I haven’t watched horizon yet and have barely seen previews but it doesn’t strike me as the direction Costner would want to go in. Blood meridian is a whole other level of complex characters, racism, gore ect. I’ll probably check it out this weekend. I actually am intrigued with a long 4 part movie series but what I question is how invested will people be between the parts. Seems like a 4-5 year plan and I doubt many will be that interested in a western drama timepiece where technically the main overall storyline (westward expansion) has been done before many times over
I kind of like the idea of Blood Meridian being considered “unfilmable”. I can’t imagine any director getting CM’s vision onscreen. The beautiful writing is what makes it. It also has such a lack of dialogue. What do you think?
I personally don’t think it would make for a very good movie. Sure there would be some scenes that may stick with a person for years and or some beautiful scenery. Just because it is considered a masterpiece among books doesn’t mean it will make for good cinema. I have had this discussion before with others who have read the book Blood Meridian. Let’s be honest the book is not an “easy read”. If you have read it and know about it I don’t think there was anyone ever who finished the book and put it down and said “wow they should make a movie about that”.
No I was mostly joking. I don't think Costner is much of an actor. I never cared for Yellowstone.
Is that what this was supposed to be? I wasn't going to watch it anyway but damn.
I’m not sure Costner is aware of Blood Meridian. I was making a joke.
Don’t ever forget the disaster that was Waterworld.
How could we? Every time Costner breathes, people like you bring it up.
No Way Out is about the only Kevin Costener movie i can handle. Dances With Wolves was great on first view, during that time, but subsequent dozen views not so much. Actually a pretty lame movie, with lots of great white hero saves indigenous people like avatar. Live in MT but hadn't seen Yellowstone till recently.. not impressed especially with kev being the kingpin. Lol, not even close to real Montana. And whats with the ad i have seen a dozen times.. where kev is playing tough guy again.. goes up and punches old fat drunk guy and you can hear something like: 'thats a bad man'.. of course , of course more modern hip slang in an era where it wasnt quite what was happening.
You watched a 3 hour movie you think is “not so much” a dozen times?
You ever heard of the 90s? or hbo in 90s?, or being bored in the 90s? Or no internet in 90s? Or watching movies with girlfriends/family/friends? Or THIRTY YEAR PERIOD?