Montana Made Movie Series: Thursdays in July

• The Missouri Breaks: July 8th at 6:30PM
• Little Big Man: July 15th at 6:30PM
• Heaven's Gate: July 22nd at 6:30PM
• A River Runs Through It: July 29th at 6:30PM

ADMISSION IS FREE!

Brought to you by the Montana Film Commission

Four Western movies. All shot in Montana and are important examples of the durability of the movies of the American West. Spanning from the seventies to the two-thousand teens, they weave in some contemporary references but remain rooted to the era when the West was wild and human nature starkly revealed. All coming to Whitehall’s Star Theater this summer. Sponsored with support from The Montana Film Commission. Admission free, donations very welcome.

Pre-show: At 6:30pm there will be a mingle time with some refreshments available. Each week at 6:45pm we have invited a “Brain Tickler” who will offer some thoughts for context, invite observations from the audience, and we think will heighten the experience that the audience is about to share.

We are pleased that our Guiding Curator is Brian D’Ambrosio. A prolific writer living in Helena, Brian wrote Shot in Montana: A History of Big Sky Cinema reflects his rich background in the stories and film history of Montana. Questions you can finally have answered: Lucille Ball was born in Butte?

The Missouri Breaks  1975  - Thursday July 8th at 6:30pm

Jack Nicolson, Marlon Brando

STORY LINE: Tom Logan is a horse thief. Rancher David Braxton has horses, and a daughter, worth stealing. But Braxton has just hired Lee Clayton, an infamous "regulator", to hunt down the horse thieves; one at a time.

WATCH FOR: Good lines

David Braxton: The first time I saw this country, it had buffalo grass and bluejoint up to the stirrups. By the second year, we had eight thousand Texas half-bred cattle and over three thousand five hundred volumes of English literature in my library.   Pete Marker: Hell, we just cut out the unbranded stock and divided up even among outfits. There was no arguin' over mavericks like today.   Sandy: You got it good today.   David Braxton: Two percent annual loss then, now it's seven from rustling alone, not to mention winterkill, calving ...

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mx0elR30b0

Little Big Man  1970  Thursday July 15th at 6:30pm

Sustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Chief Dan George

STORY LINE: When a curious oral historian (William Hickey) turns up to hear the life story of 121-year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman), he can scarcely believe his ears. Crabb tells of having been rescued and raised by the Cheyenne, of working as a snake-oil salesman, as a gunslinger, and as a mule skinner under Gen. Custer (Richard Mulligan). As if those weren't astonishing enough, he also claims to be the only white survivor of the infamous Battle of the Little Bighorn.

WATCH FOR: Ebert: It is the very folksiness of Penn's film that makes it, finally, such a perceptive and important statement about Indians, the West, and the American dream. There's no stridency, no preaching, no deep-voiced narrators making sure we got the point of the last massacre. The yarn is the most flexible of story forms. Its teller can pause to repeat a point; he can hurry ahead ten years; he can forget an entire epoch in remembering the legend of a single man. He doesn't capture the history of a time, but its flavor. "Little Big Man" gives us the flavor of the Cheyenne nation before white men brought uncivilization to the West. Its hero, played by Dustin Hoffman, is no hero at all but merely a survivor.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NiMmpf31QY

Heaven’s Gate  1980  Thursday July 22th at 6:30pm

Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, Christopher Walken

STORY LINE: Harvard graduate James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) is the sheriff of prosperous Jackson County, Wyo., when a battle erupts between the area's poverty-stricken immigrants and its wealthy cattle farmers. The politically connected ranch owners fight the immigrants with the help of Nathan Champion (Christopher Walken), a mercenary competing with Averill for the love of local madam Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert). A dramatization of the real-life Johnson County War in 1890 Wyoming, in which a Sheriff born into wealth, attempts to protect immigrant farmers...

WATCH FOR: Dismissed for a time, but now seen in a new light. Comments from Rotten Tomatos: An epic but brutal Western, A bold and engrossing saga which first stirred controversy and scandal, but many now praise it’s uncompromising and far reaching vision. Enormous, but also gorgeous in its enormity, Emotionally stings like few other westerns . Also from RT: An inert disaster that has gotten worse. Come see for yourself.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmTI3xYO6mQ

A River Runs Through It   1992    Thursday July 29th at 6:30pm

Craig Sheffer, Brad Pitt, Tom Skerritt

STORY LINE: The true story about two boys growing up in rural Montana while rebelling against their stern minister father. Eldest brother Norman eventually leaves home and becomes a disciplined, grounded professor, while younger brother Paul becomes a rebellious journalist and descends into gambling and liquor. Their mornings are spent in school and religious study, while their afternoons are devoted to fly fishing for trout in the Blackfoot River.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/OsIolBViUmc