Chip Kaufmann’s Pick:

Chato’s Land (1972)

The recent death of Ralph Waite brought back memories of The Waltons but his long stint on that show has obscured his versatility as a character actor which was put to good use in such early 1970s movies as The Stone Killer where he played a dumber than dirt cop and Chato’s Land where he was a member of an incredibly sleazy, religious obsessed family.

In this 1972 revisionist Western, Charles Bronson plays a half-breed Apache who is hunted by a vigilante posse for gunning down a white man in self-defense. The posse is led by former Confederate officer Jack Palance. Along for the ride are such veteran character actors as Richard Basehart, James Whitmore, and Simon Oakland.

Ralph Waite plays the older son of a racist, misogynistic clan headed up by Oakland. He is thoroughly despicable but is mild compared to his younger brother played by Richard Jordan who meets a shocking (often censored), but well deserved end. Waite gets what’s coming to him as do all the other members of the posse but his is especially creative. You don’t mess around with Charles Bronson.

Chato’s Land is about as far from the traditional Western as you can possibly get. The hero is Native American and has one line of dialogue. The white characters are colorful but most are morally corrupt and all are clueless when it comes to tracking their “prey” who leads them further and further into the desert. Parallels to what was going on in Viet Nam were not lost on the audience in 1972.

Although extremely well made, Chato’s Land can be a very hard film to watch so why recommend it? Because it stimulates thought while never losing sight of the fact that it’s an action film with a high tension factor. Who will get it next and how? It also allows us to see a different side of Ralph Waite then we’re used to seeing and that is both disturbing and a tribute to his acting talent.

Michelle Keenan’s Pick:

Doubt (2008)

This month’s pick simply had to be a Philip Seymour Hoffman film, but which? The man made 50 films in 20 years! Essentially I could recommend a different Hoffman film each month for the next two years and they’d all be worthwhile. Ultimately I settled on Doubt because it is a deeply disturbing, yet satisfying film, and it’s one of Hoffman’s finest performances.

Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck), Doubt was originally a stage play (also by Shanley) that came out at the height of the sexual abuse scandals that rocked the Catholic Church. If you are like me, you may have been reluctant to see the film when it first came out because of its subject matter. I can assure you that this performance-driven power house is well worth any squirm factor.

The story is set in 1964 in the Bronx at St. Nicholas Catholic High School. When Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) arrives at the school, full of progressive (Vatican II) ideas, he immediately clashes with Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep), the stern faced school principle who rules with an iron fist.

Personally I thought her habit was none-too-coincidentally reminiscent of the Wicked Witch of the West. Soon the school’s first black student arrives on the scene (Joseph Foster II). When the naïve Sister James (Amy Adams) mentions to Sister Aloysius that Fr. Flynn has been spending a lot of time with the boy, Aloysius summons her flying monkeys and sets out to destroy Fr. Flynn. Armed with moral certainty and not a shred of evidence, she launches a campaign to reveal him as a child molester.

What Sister Aloysius sets in motion, steamrolls into something bigger than any of them could ever have imagined, and changes their lives forever. Interestingly, we have sympathy for the two opposing characters.

Doubt is the consummate actor’s vehicle. Hoffman, Streep, Adams, Foster, and Viola Davis as the boy’s mother, all deliver tremendous performances. Doubt asks a lot of questions and leaves you with even more. The title says it all.