We already knew that Laura Dern was no stranger to playing protective mothers. This past spring, she dazzled alongside Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon as Big Little Lies' high-powered executive, Renata Klein — a familiarly overstretched working parent desperate to catch her daughter Amabella's mysterious bully. Now, she's giving that archetype even greater visibility, teaming up with Refinery29's Shatterbox Anthology director Courtney Hoffman for The Good Time Girls — a blood-soaked Western that subverts all our old expectations of this dude-centric genre.
The Good Time Girls doesn't just turn the camera on the Western's often-overlooked female characters — it replaces the pistol-touting storylines glamorised by John Wayne or Clint Eastwood with narratives told and motivated by the women at its centre. The result is a deeply layered portrait of revenge that feels like a feminist Shakespearean tragedy, fuelled with one mother's burning desire for justice at its core. Set in a forlorn desert brothel, Hoffman's tale focuses on Clementine, played by Dern, and her tenacious thirst for vengeance against the Rufus Black Gang — a roving band of outlaws that murdered her daughter. Joined by Arrested Development and Search Party favourite Alia Shawkat and breakout Hollywood up-and-comer, Annalise Basso, Clementine's hatched a masterfully devious plot to get even, rifle-in-hand. And trust us, that bathtub scene doesn't leave us with any questions about exactly who's running Hoffman's Old West.
Check out The Good Time Girls above. We promise you've never seen a film about women quite like this one.