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Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson star in the classic Western "Once Upon a Time in the West" on Amazon Prime Video. Sergio Leone's epic film features Fonda as the villain facing off against Bronson in an iconic showdown. Considered one of the best Westerns ever made, the film's complex story and characters have left a lasting impact.

One of the best Westerns of all time is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, and the all-time great features Henry Fonda fighting Charles Bronson. Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson were two of the biggest actors of their times, with them appearing in some of the most popular and critically acclaimed films ever made. However, this specific Western is so popular because it featured both of the actors on screen together, with the movie in which they fight now streaming for fans to watch on Amazon Prime Video.

Henry Fonda is an...

Review by Roger Carpenter

During the first half of the 60’s Mario Bava created several genuine horror classics that remain high-water marks in the genre over a half century later. Films such as Black Sunday (1960), Black Sabbath (1963), The Whip and the Body (1963), and Blood and Black Lace (1964) either pushed the boundaries of horror or helped to establish cinematic tropes still used in modern horror. Always saddled with shoestring budgets and bad deals, Bava nevertheless remained optimistic in the face of his cinematic struggles. A case in point is the troubled production of Kill, Baby…Kill! which ran out of money midway through the shoot. The cast and crew were so loyal to Bava they worked for free to finish the film—a film, by the way, which only had a 30-page script with no dialogue when filming commenced. Bava had the actors make up their own lines, preferring to resolve...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: In honor of the bone-crunching “Atomic Blonde,” what is the greatest movie fight scene?

Read More‘Atomic Blonde’: How They Turned One Amazing Action Scene Into a Seven-Minute Long Take Erin Oliver Whitney (@cinemabite), ScreenCrush

I’ve got a soft spot for wuxia so the “best fight scene” immediately evokes Zhang Yimou in my mind. I could list every fight in “Hero,” sequences so spellbindingly beautiful and graceful you forget you’re watching violence. The bamboo forest battle from “House of Flying Daggers” is another all-timer, a mesmerizing fight that almost entirely takes place in the air. And the bone-crunching, table-smashing...

Review by Roger Carpenter

The spaghetti western subgenre is littered with series-headlining characters like Sabata, Sartana, and Ringo. But for sheer popularity as well as film volume, no one beats Django.

Director Sergio Corbucci introduced Django to an international audience in 1966. Starring Franco Nero as the titular character, the film was so immensely popular across the globe that it spawned at least 60 unofficial sequels with titles like Django the Bastard, Viva! Django, Django Kill…If You Live Shoot!, Django Kills Softly, and literally dozens of others. There was even a comedy western entitled Nude Django. The name continues to live on with Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012), which not only sports the original “Django” theme song but also a small part for Django himself, Franco Nero, as a bettor during a Mandingo fight.

The Italians are famous for jumping onto any cinematic bandwagon,...

By John Lemay

My Name is Nobody is many things: a 1973 spoof of the “young and old gunslingers” sub-genre that began with For a Few Dollars More; Henry Fonda’s last Western (and Sergio Leone’s to an extent); and even a eulogy on the dying of the Spaghetti Western itself. Spearheaded by Sergio Leone himself, Nobody was directed by Tonino Valerii (Day of Anger) and teams Once Upon a Time in the West’s Henry Fonda with They Call Me Trinity’s Terence Hill. As a combo of Leone’s straight westerns and Hill’s “Beans Westerns” (a slang term for comedic Spaghettis) it amounts to quite the crossover film and could’ve easily been called “Once Upon A Time in the West They Called Me Trinity.” While it is never as funny as Hill’s two Trinity films or as epic as Leone’s “horse operas” it is...

Iconic film composer Ennio Morricone has crafted a brooding, brutal opening song for the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, "L'Ultima Diligenza di Red Rock."

The Hateful Eight score marks Morricone's first for a Western movie in four decades, but "L'Ultima Diligenza" shows he hasn't lost his knack for blending serpentine strings, blistering brass and the occasional monastic chant. The Italian composer previously provided the legendary scores for classic Westerns like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West and My Name is Nobody.

Quentin Tarantino revealed that composer Ennio Morricone would provide the score for the director's upcoming Western The Hateful Eight during that film's Comic-Con panel in San Diego. With The Hateful Eight, Morricone is returning to the Spaghetti Western genre for the first time in four decades. The Italian composer previously provided the legendary scores for classic Westerns like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West and My Name is Nobody.

For over a dozen years now – and for five (going on six) consecutive...

We return with another edition of the Indie Spotlight, highlighting recent independent horror news sent our way. Today’s feature includes details on The Book, which brings together some of the biggest names in Italian horror, a trailer for Dead of the Nite, new releases from Cavity Colors, and much more:

First Details on The Book: “The Book sees the ultimate collaborative Italian horror film unfold before your very eyes. A one off project of unprecedented scale, The Book brings together, for the very first time, the writers, directors, actors, composers and artists behind the finest Italian genre cinema of the past sixty years. This includes the creative forces behind the Giallo movement, Spaghetti Westerns, Eurocrime and more. Each director will be given the opportunity to showcase their own personal vision of Rome, spread across a dozen episodes. Each segment in this feature film will contain a unique blend of macabre thriller,...

If you're a fan of Italian horror films and your list of favorite filmmakers includes names like Ruggero Deodato and Lamberto Bava, then boy, are you in for a treat. Read on for all the details about an exciting upcoming horror anthology called The Book, which will only get funded with Your help!

From the Press Release

The Book sees the ultimate collaborative Italian horror film unfold before your very eyes.

A one-off project of unprecedented scale, The Book brings together, for the very first time, the writers, directors, actors, composers, and artists behind the finest Italian genre cinema of the past sixty years. This includes the creative forces behind the Giallo movement, Spaghetti Westerns, Eurocrime, and more. Each director will be given the opportunity to showcase his own personal vision of Rome, spread across a dozen episodes. Each segment in this feature film will contain a unique blend of macabre thriller,...

November 5th new Blu-ray releases include White House Down, Grown Ups 2, Parkland, Lovelace, Passion, Girl Most Likely and Syrup. Fans can also return to Middle Earth with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition) and rediscover the romance with Twilight Forever: The Complete Saga. TV on Blu-ray titles include Mad Men: Season Six, Doctor Who: Series 1-7 (Limited Edition Blu-ray Giftset), Magic City: The Complete Second Season, Under the Dome, Weeds: Complete Collection and Farscape: Complete Series. Catalog Blu-ray titles include The Right Stuff, The Best Years of Our Lives, Bishop's Wife, Giant, Christmas Story: 30th Anniversary, Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, Scrooged: 25th Anniversary, My Name is Nobody (40th Anniversary), Elf: 10th Anniversary, Three Faces...

Italian director whose 1966 film A Bullet for the General, set in revolutionary Mexico, began a wave of 'tortilla westerns'

Damiano Damiani, who has died aged 90, was a director of Italian popular films and television. He was best known for La Piovra (The Octopus, 1984), an internationally successful TV series about the mafia, and made several mafia-themed films and TV movies, but his range was much wider.

Born in Pordenone, north-east Italy, he began his career in the 1940s, working in the art department and directing documentaries. As popular Italian cinema boomed in the 1960s, he began to make personal pictures, westerns, comedies, political thrillers and horror films. If you have only seen Amityville II: The Possession (1982), his one American movie, you have seen Damiani at his least inspired. In that film, the camera followed potential victims around a haunted house in a style made tedious four years earlier by John Carpenter's Halloween.

Keeping up with his career plan of paying homage to every film genre going, Quentin Tarantino has moved onto the spaghetti western with Django Unchained (2012). It’s not a remake of the pasta classic Django (1966), or indeed a spaghetti western, but it has clearly taken its inspiration from those violent Italian productions that swamped the late sixties.

Hollywood may have dominated the field since the beginning of motion pictures but European westerns are not exactly new; the earliest known one was filmed in 1910. Sixties German cinema made good use of Kay May’s western heroes Shatterhand and Winnetou, and the British produced The Savage Guns (1961), Hannie Caulder (1971), A Town Called Bastard (1971), Catlow (1971), Chato’s Land (1972) and Eagle’s Wing (1979). When the genre showed signs of flagging in the mid-sixties, a clever Italian director named Sergio Leone took it upon himself to reinvent the western – spaghetti style!

What made the spaghettis...

December was Tarantino Month here at Sos, and since January is dedicated to westerns, I thought it would be best to whip up some articles spotlighting films that influenced Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Since I began my list back in December, I’ve noticed similar lists popping up online – all of which are somewhat suspect, since they recommend some terrible films. For my money, all of the movies listed below are essential viewing for fans of Django Unchained, and come highly recommended.

Note: This is the third of a three part article.

****

I Giorni dell’ira (Blood and Grit) (Day of Anger) (Gunlaw) (Days of Wrath)

Directed by Tonino Valerii

Written by Ernesto Gastaldi, Tonino Valerii, Renzo Genta

Italy, 1967

Day of Anger is a spaghetti western directed by Tonino Valerii, who began his career as Sergio Leone’s assistant and would later direct My Name Is Nobody (1973). Lee Van Cleef stars as Frank Talby,...

Born in the Big Apple in january of 1951, Sheldon Lettich moved with his family to the West Coast at a young age. After finishing High School, he joined the Marine Corps, serving his country for four years, one of them as a Radio Operator in Vietnam.

Partially based upon his experiences in Southeast Asia, he co-authored Tracers, a play seen in the Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and London stages, to great acclaim; It subsequently won the prestigious Drama Desk and L.A. Drama Critics Awards.

The writing of screenplays seemed like a natural progression and his writing eventually began attracting the attention of many Hollywood producers.

Since then, Lettich has become known as expert in testosterone-driven action extravaganzas, many of the films starring some of the silver screen´s best-loved slugfest protagonists: Sylvester Stallone (Sheldon shared screenwriting credit with Sly in the third cinematic episode of the Rambo series,...

Summer TV shows usually don’t get me very excited. Some of them are okay, some of them are great, and some of them just annoy me. If I’ve got nothing better to do, there are a few of those summer shows that I end up watching fairly regularly. That’s changed this year, mostly because of A&E and their addition Longmire.

I like westerns and have for a long time. I can remember watching Terence Hill movies when I was just a tiny little starry-eyed sprocket. I used to laugh at how lazy Trinity was and marvel at how adept he was at talking himself out of the trouble that he would get into. They Call Me Trinity was a perennial favorite around my house.

I’ve seen Clint Eastwood westerns and Charles Bronson westerns and, of course, Robert Redford westerns. All of the greats have graced...

A week long near-drought brings a condensed version Your Netflix Instant Weekend this week. There very few titles of note added, though there are still a few gems to be found. If you're looking for other options, don't forget you can always look at entries from previous weeks for other ideas of titles to add to your queue! This week we're going to travel South of the border for a thriller and some sci-fi from Mexico.

Read more on Your Netflix Instant Weekend: Bajo La Sal, Sleep Dealer, and more...

Other articles that you might like:

Your Netflix Instant Weekend: My Name Is Nobody, Cloud 9, and more Your Netflix Instant Weekend: BMX Bandits, The House Of Yes, and more Your Netflix Instant Weekend: Jar City, The Horseman, and more

Other articles that you might like: Your Netflix Instant Weekend: My Name Is Nobody, Cloud 9, and more Your Netflix Instant Weekend: BMX Bandits,...

For someone who's considered one of the greatest filmmakers in history, Sergio Leone was not especially prolific. While he worked extensively as an assistant director (with credits including "Bicycle Thieves," "Quo Vadis" and "Ben Hur"), he was only credited on seven films across his thirty-year career (with uncredited direction work on three others -- "The Last Days Of Pompeii," "My Name Is Nobody" and "A Genius, Two Partners and A Dupe").

But given that those films include some of the greatest Westerns -- the Man With No Name trilogy, and "Once Upon A Time In The West" -- and a wonderful crime epic, "Once Upon A Time In America," it's hard not to mourn that we didn't get more films from the director, who passed away 23 years ago today, on April 30th, 1989. But it wasn't for a lack of trying, as there were a number of other projects that Leone considered,...

Despite a week light on new releases to Instant Netflix, there were still two absolute must-sees added. It's only by mere coincidence that both of them touch on the same controversial subject of the death penalty and both were made by master filmmakers (William Friedkin and Werner Herzog). This weekend be sure to check out a serial killer/courtroom drama that's both violent and thoughtful and a documentary about a brutal crime and the effects of capital punishment.

Read more on Your Netflix Instant Weekend: Rampage (1987), Into The Abyss, and more...

Other articles that you might like:

Your Netflix Instant Weekend: My Name Is Nobody, Cloud 9, and more Your Netflix Instant Weekend: The Long Goodbye, My Little Eye, and more Your Netflix Instant Weekend: Jar City, The Horseman, and more

Other articles that you might like: Your Netflix Instant Weekend: My Name Is Nobody, Cloud 9, and more Your...

After a whirlwind week at SXSW it's back to business as usual. There are some exciting new editions to Instant Netflix ready for you this weekend. Let's take a look at a Western that was meant to close the books on the genre and a German love story about a late-age affair.

Read more on Your Netflix Instant Weekend: My Name Is Nobody, Cloud 9, and more...

My Name is Nobody looms large among spaghetti western and Sergio Leone fans — and probably Henry Fonda’s too, since it was the last Western this legendary range rider appeared in. The legend of its creation is an amusing one, and a rare one among directors who are generally sensitive about the worlds they created. Leone, appalled at the spaghetti western industry that he had wrought, decided to gleefully destroy it with his protege, Tonio Valerii.

If the Italian western was going to become a joke led by actors dubbing themselves Flint Westwood, then by Tuco they were going to make it the biggest joke of all. And the film certainly is. It’s like Mel Brooks by way of Leone — every sacred scene of Leone’s films is mocked and beaten dead of its coolness.

The only thing missing is that they never shoot a blonde fellow in a serape,...

I have always been moved in some way or another by film music, but no one has created a bigger lump in the throat or watered my eyes more than Ennio Morricone.

He made film music transcend the film. He made me realize that film music could invoke emotions that went beyond just playing sad or tense or action themes. His music became the emotional anchor of the films he scored. This is music that didn’t have to make you think of the film it was used in, but gives your life its own score. I know that may be getting a little carried away, but that’s how I’ve always viewed it.

Being a (very) amateur composer myself, I always fall back on not just his work but the context of how it’s placed in movies. The few cues that were written before filming especially in...

Arrived in Venice, to be greeted by Terence Hill. Not in person, you understand, with brass band and Bud Spencer on trombone, but, turning on the TV in my hotel room, there was Terence, beaming blandly. . . . This seemed auspicious, not only because I’m here to cover the Spaghetti Western retrospective at this year’s Venice Film Festival, which includes two Terence Hill movies, but also because Terence is, apparently, as revealed by some remarkably tedious and unproductive research prior to this trip, Venice’s greatest gift to cinema. Indeed, it seems he is Venice’s only gift to cinema – or at any rate, the only one with any serious claim to international recognition. Which seems odd, somehow, given La Serenissima’s high profile in the film world due to the Festival, to say nothing of its appearance as a location in literally hundreds of movies, but there it is.