Hard to imagine that this is the first time I ever saw this John Sayles classic, but it’s, embarrassingly, true. A well-crafted tale about the Matewan coal wars in West Virginia. Chris Cooper is superb, Hazel Dickens sang most of the songs, and it does ring true. Sayles himself plays this very bizarre right-wing preacher. A marvelous movie. James Earl Jones is also wonderful. It still had Sayles’s 1970s naturalist style working for it. See it. Made c1985. See this one!