Screenwriting

Buchanan Rides Alone

Buchanan Rides Alone (1958) is a tightly wound Western starring Randolph Scott as a lone drifter caught in a corrupt border town run by the Agry family. Directed by Budd Boetticher and Harry Joe Brown, written by Charles Lang, and shot by Lucien Ballard, it uses sparse dialogue, confined spaces, and deliberate pacing to explore jurisdiction, consent, and quiet resistance. At 78 minutes, it prioritises behavioural precision over plot escalation, anchoring its themes in posture, framing, and silence.

Comanche Station

A retired Texas Ranger tracks a Comanche raiding party to rescue a woman abducted years earlier. Joined by two morally divergent men, he crosses hostile terrain toward an uncertain settlement — all in 74 taut, unadorned minutes. Directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott, it is the penultimate film of the Ranown cycle: lean, taciturn, and resolutely uninterested in explaining itself.

Epidemic

Lars von Trier’s 1987 metafictional horror Epidemic follows two screenwriters drafting a script about a plague while a real outbreak begins to mirror their fiction. Shot on 16mm, structured across five days, and starring von Trier and Niels Vørsel as themselves, it treats narrative as a vector and authorship as contagion — the second instalment of the Europa trilogy.

Godzilla vs. Megalon

A 1973 Toho kaiju film, Godzilla vs. Megalon introduces Jet Jaguar amid a thin plot involving undersea aliens, recycled effects footage, and a famously clumsy Godzilla suit. Made quickly to replace a cancelled project, it leans into juvenile adventure tone and mechanical spectacle over thematic depth. Its enduring appeal lies less in quality than in transparency — every constraint, every shortcut, every act of faith in rubber and wire is on display.

Le Doulos

Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1962 crime film Le Doulos follows Maurice Faugel and Silien through a web of murder, deception, and mistaken identity. Adapted from Pierre Lesou’s novel, it uses stark cinematography, elliptical editing, and functional dialogue to construct a closed system of cause and effect — where truth is assigned, not revealed, and loyalty is procedural, not emotional.

Love Letter

Kinuyo Tanaka’s 1953 directorial debut — adapted by Keisuke Kinoshita from Fumio Niwa’s novel — follows a returning veteran navigating family expectation, unspoken grief, and tentative reconnection in postwar Tokyo. Shot by Hiroshi Suzuki and scored by Ichirō Saitō, it trades plot for psychological texture, building meaning through restraint, repetition, and the weight of unsaid things.

One-Eyed Jacks

Marlon Brando’s 1961 Western One-Eyed Jacks follows Rio, a bandit seeking revenge on his former mentor Dad Longworth, now sheriff of Monterey. Shot in VistaVision across California and Mexico, it foregrounds psychological tension over action, with Brando starring and directing. Though critically mixed on release and commercially disappointing, its reputation has deepened over decades for its atmospheric realism, complex male relationships, and formal restraint. Restored in 4K in 2016, it remains Brando’s only film behind the camera.

Ride Lonesome

Ride Lonesome (1959), directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott, is the fourth of the Ranown Westerns — a tightly constructed, Eastmancolor CinemaScope film shot on location in Lone Pine. Bounty hunter Ben Brigade captures a wanted man, then becomes entangled with outlaws and a widow at a besieged swing station, all while drawing closer to a confrontation with the killer of his wife. With a lean script by Burt Kennedy and disciplined craft from cinematographer Charles Lawton Jr. and editor Jerome Thoms, it sustains tension through restraint, silence, and unblinking moral arithmetic.

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