Paul Gross in Gunless
Gunless (2010)
A tonal puzzle. It starts off like a western spoof in the spirit of the great James Garner film Support Your Local Sheriff, but takes itself increasingly seriously, complete with mournful tunes from Blue Rodeo. Writer-director William Phillips ensures the look of a classic western, and Paul Gross (as the Montana Kid, a U.S. gunslinger) and Sienna Guillory (as the woman who takes a shine to him) have good chemistry. While the Kid struggles to make sense of the peaceful Canadian town he has landed in, bounty hunters are on his trail.
Black Orpheus (1959)
Trolley-car conductor Orfeu meets the lovely Euridice just before Rio de Janeiro's Carnival, but both have unresolved romantic entanglements. Loosely incorporating the Greek myth of Orpheus in the Underworld, French director Marcel Camus's Portuguese-language film won the Oscar for best foreign-language film and popularized the bossa nova internationally. The colour looks super in this new transfer for the Criterion label. A bonus interview with Camus is too short, but there's a long look at the movie's influence in Brazil and elsewhere.