John Ford shot nine films in Monument Valley causing Peter Bogdanovich to remark, “It has become so identified with him, other directors are convinced that using it for a location would be plagiarism.” That didn’t stop Sergio Leone from doing his best work there and now it’s Lech Majewski’s turn. The name registered after all these years: The Mill and the Cross, Majewski’s majestic filmization of a painting (Pieter Bruegel’s The Procession to Calvary) come to life is my favorite film of 2011. Onirica never found its way to this part of the world making Valley of the Gods the director’s second film in almost a decade. A Howard Hughes-ish trillionaire (John Malkovich), with penthouse accommodations atop one of the Valley’s more prominent bluffs, agrees to meet with a biographer (Josh Hartnett). The sense stops there as Majewski’s visions of America tend to commingle without coalescing. After a while I had no idea what I was looking at, but I never lost interest in watching (2019) — Scott Marks
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