Send us Fan Mail Episode 116 – The 3rd Person Narration/Paul Schneider/Nick Cave Standoff: The Assassination of Jesse Jame by the Coward Robert Ford v. Train Dreams. All aboard episode 116 of the Triple F—chugging along the tracks laid by legendary filmmaker Terrence Malick, we’re discussing two noteworthy films that closely follow his style in recounting tales of the American experience star ting with 2007’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, directed by Andrew Dominik and starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard, Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, Mary-Louise Parker, Alison Elliott, Zooey Deschanel, Ted Levine, Michael Parks, James Carville, with Hugh Ross as narrator—up against Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, recently watched and retroactively crowned king of the 2025 film mountain, starring Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, William H. Macy, John Diehl, Kerry Condon, Paul Schneider again, Clifton Collins Jr., and Will Patton as narrator, a film that echoes Dominik’s approach through its third-person narration, recurring Paul Schneider presence, and a Nick Cave–inflected musical sensibility. Covering me with their scatterguns this week are my usual duo of bushwackers, my kid sis and snooty bookworm Roseanne Caputi and slit-eyed outlaw with enough oat and barley in his voice to give Will Patton and Hugh Ross a run for their money, the one and only Gordon Alex Robertson. Before we start shoveling coal into the engines, the synopses: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Outlaw Jesse James, increasingly paranoid and unpredictable, surrounds himself with a dwindling gang that no longer knows whether he’s losing his grip, giving up, or testing their loyalty. Among them is Robert Ford, a devoted admirer whose presence only adds to the tension as trust breaks down within the group. In Train Dreams Robert Grainger, a railroad laborer in the early 20th-century American West, struggles to build a life as isolation and personal loss reshape his world. Are these films of comparable quality or does one tower over the other? Find out! Watch the video version on youtube: https://youtu.be/GRWF3tU67TU