FilmJerk Favorites

A group of unique directors and the essential works that you've got to see.

||| Sergio Leone |||
Sergio Leone

Leone’s career is remarkable in its unrelenting attention to both American culture and the American genre film, exploring the mythic America he created with each successive film examining the established characters in greater depth.

Only his second feature (a remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo), Leone's landmark "spaghetti western" caused a revolution and features Clint Eastwood in his breakthrough role as "The Man With No Name". This classic brutal drama of feuding families wasn’t the first spaghetti Western, but it was far and away the most successful up to that time.

Plot is of minimal interest, but character is everything to Leone, who places immense meaning in the slightest flick of an eyelid, extensively using the extreme close-up on the eyes to reveal any feeling, as demonstrated by Clint, who squints his way through this slam-bang sequel to A Fistful of Dollars as a wandering gunslinger that must combine forces with his nemesis to track down a wanted killer.

The final chapter in the groundbreaking trilogy follows Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach as they form an uneasy alliance to find a stash of hidden gold. Leone focuses on his central theme as they find themselves facing greed, treachery, and murder, showing that the desire for wealth and power turns men into ruthless creatures who violate land and family and believe that a man’s death is less important than how he faces it.

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Jack Black IS Nacho Libre

By EdwardHavens

July 7th, 2005

Back in April, news broke about an untitled collaboration between Jack Black, his friend and "School of Rock" writer Mike White and "Napoleon Dynamite" director Jared Hess, which would find Black portraying a Mexican priest who secretly moonlights as a masked wrestler in order to save an orphanage from closure. Our source says that the film has evolved in the past two months, as the film, now titled "Nacho Libre" prepares for a September shooting date deep in the heart of Mexico.


Oaxaca, Mexico is the place where Black will play Nacho, a young man who was raised in a Mexican monastery and now works there as the cook, and takes it upon himself to rescue the holy place from financial ruin by joining a local Lucha libre tournament and becoming one of the Luchadors. Naturally, Nacho isn't acting out of purely altruistic measures, as he wishes to help Sister Encarnacion, a beautiful Mexican nun who has recently arrived at the monastery, as well as the gaggle of young orphans who live there.

A co-production between Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Films and Black and White Productions (get it, Jack Black and Mike White, har har har!), the film will most likely be released by Paramount in the fall of 2006.