"Butcher's Crossing": A group of buffalo hunters traverse the Colorado frontier in this drama adapted from John Williams' 1960 novel of the same name.

"As a novel, the coming-of-age story was arguably the first Western to subvert the genre’s morally certain, decades-old formulas," writes John Wenzel of The Denver Post. "Williams preceded giants of the revisionist and anti-Western such as Cormac McCarthy ('No Country for Old Men') and Larry McMurtry ('Lonesome Dove'), although his influence is only lately appreciated by critics and readers.

"Williams, who also wrote 1965’s literary masterpiece 'Stoner,' invests in the emotional lives of his characters as 'Butcher’s Crossing' depicts a thrilling, stomach-churning buffalo hunt. Harvard dropout — and naive Ralph Waldo Emerson devotee — William Andrews trades Boston for the Kansas frontier in an effort to expand his horizons. There he joins buffalo hunter Miller (just one name), whose epic, money-making quest involves finding and skinning a legendary herd of Colorado buffalo to secure his biggest payout yet.

"Like the book, the film — which stars Fred Hechinger (“The White Lotus”) as Andrews, and a fearsome Cage as Miller — is set in the early 1870s when Colorado was still a territory riven by murderous land grabs and precious-metal rushes."

ALSO NEW ON DVD DEC. 26

"Hitmen": A CEO offers a $1 million bounty after his grandson in killed, drawing the interest of the globe's most prestigious assassins.

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