Sweetwater

This weird western from director Logan Miller stars January Jones (Mad Men) as Sarah Ramírez, an ex-prostitute trying to make a ‘normal’ life dirt farming with her husband in the New Mexican territories circa 1800s. Her plans are derailed when a horny evangelical preacher called Prophet Josiah (Jason Isaacs) murders her husband as part of his plan to make Sarah his next wife. While all this is going on, there is also a crazed lawman named Sheriff Jackson (Ed Harris) who is tracking down the preacher in connection with the brutal murder of two tenderfoots who were crossing the territory by way of a shortcut through the holy man’s land. With the possibility of some unnecessarily strange behavior from the sheriff, who likes to dance by himself in the moonlight, the characters that Miller creates are quirky and compelling. The actors all do a good job making them feel real, too,  particularly Isaacs who shows no shame in chewing the scenery to make the Prophet Josiah an unforgettable bad guy.