A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: The Tonto Woman

Date Viewed: 2/18/08

Details:

Charlotte Asprey

Francesco Quinn

Director: Daniel Barber

Producer: Matthew Brown

Score: +

The Review: Drama; western. A woman abducted by the Mojave Indians (Asprey) for eleven years is now living in isolation, for reasons that become clear as the plot unwinds. She is discovered by an intriguing cattle rustler (Quinn), and sparks fly. But the whole story starts in a church confessional.

From a now out-of-print story by Elmore Leonard, who also supplied the story behind the recently re-released 3:10 to Yuma. He was an excellent writer of Westerns long before he became an equally revered author of crime mysteries.

UK. This is one of this year's (2008) five Oscar-nominated short live action films, along with Tanghi Argentini, Om Natten, Il Supplente, Le Mozart des Pickpockets, all available to the general public via digital video release into selected theatres (for the third year) from Magnolia. The general quality, interest and curiosity of this year's entries seem not quite up to the levels of previous years. As with the animated shorts, each has its own signature twist (in the O'Henry sense of a short story), but there's nothing quite like The Last Farm (from 2006), which even though I didn't rate highly, is indeed highly memorable.

(22-Feb-08)

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