The Homesman

Come for the San Antonio connection, stay for the searing portrayal of frontier life’s steep toll on women. (And also the free beer.) The final installment of the Briscoe’s “Women of the West” film series features South Texas’ resident grumpy cat Tommy Lee Jones, who stars in and directs this 2014 drama. Jones plays a rapscallion claim jumper indebted to Hilary Swank’s righteous spinster on a mission, Mary Bee Cuddy. Together they must escort three women driven mad by the patriarchy and a nonexistent social safety net (the more things change…) across Nebraska territory in 1850 and into Meryl Streep’s compassionate preacher’s wife embrace. While the plot is literally maudlin at times, each performance is a god-danged gem, and the cinematography is truly wondrous.