Western Movies???
Lucious_Fox
2,479 Posts
I watched Once Upon A Time In the West last night - DVD steez, and it continues to blow me away.What other Westerns are on this level?And before dudes start bringing up obscure shit is there a "canon" that can be agreed upon?Top 10 Shit - Very Good Shit - Regular Shit - Private Mind Garden Shit - Leftfield Weird Shit -
Comments
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Magnificent Seven
The Outlaw Josie Wales
Young Guns
if not get familiar with fistful of dollars and for a few dollars more
i watched the wild bunch and found it entertaining
i watched billy the kid vs garrett and found it boring
i recommend
KEOMA
SABATA
death rides a horse
I like the super-stylized Man With No Name ones for sure. Dudes getting sunburned after a forced desert walk is pretty much my favorite shit...
I re-watched Treasure of Sierra Madre recently. Kinda Western, more doublecrosser type thing, but man: that was good.
Not too familiar with the non-Western Westerns, like Ghost Dog as Western fairy tale or whatever, but would like to know more...
My personal ones: anything by "the Sergios", Red River (yeah, I know... it has John Wayne and all that he symbolized, but it's still a great film), Keoma, anything with Jack Palance, 3:10 To Yuma and Gatling Gun with John Ireland.
Speaking of Jarmusch, check out Dead Man with Johnny Depp as a sort of anti-hero. Some folks like to call it one of the first "acid westerns." Great movie, great soundtrack by Neil Young.
I have been slowly making my way through Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece of a western novel, Blood Meridian, with Neil's solos from that soundtrack bouncing around in the background of my mind. I'd like to see that made into a movie!
As a child of the 1980s, I almost feel like the western is a lost language to people from my generation. No matter how many of them I watch, it just isn't as profound as it is to people who grew up on the stuff.
But, like previously stated:
John Wayne in The Searchers
The Wild Bunch in The Wild Bunch
And the Sergio Leone Man With No Name Trilogy.
For the "modern-day" western:
More Peckinpah with Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
More McCarthy with No Country For Old Men
Leone's "Dollars" trilogy
Unforgiven
The Searchers
Pale Rider
The Hunting Party
Stagecoach
EDIT: If we're going to talk "modern westerns" too, then I'd say Lone Star is a good pick as well.
awesome flic and very slept on.
Cutthroats 9 - Probably the most violent Western ever made. Features a cast of characters so downright low, you're gonna root for all of 'em...to die.
All the Django films- Seriously deranged. In a similar Italo vein, search out The Great Silence.
Beg to differ that Dead Man was the first acid western. That title belongs to Alejandro Jodorowski's El Topo, which is a psychedelic acid trip /mystical nonsense/kung-fu film structured masterpiece.
Jim Jarmusch was also in Alex Cox's Straight To Hell, an underrated 1980's punk Western. Cox also made Walker, another Western about....William Walker.
Antonia Bird made the excellent horror/western hybrid Ravenous, which is obscure and underseen.
Technically, all Elmore Leonard novels are westerns, even the ones set in Detroit (ie: Killshot). That new FX series Justified you're seeing all the subway ads for is based on one of his characters.
Stray shots-
The Quick and The Dead- Raimi. Western. Nuff said.
The Wild Bunch
extra obscure:
Day of The Wolves - super inventive low budget 70's modern western.
How'd that shirt search go, by the way?
High Plains Drifter
A Fistful of Dollars
For a Few Dollars More
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Hang 'Em High
Pale Rider
Unforgiven
Once Upon a Time in the West
The Magnificent Seven
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Five Card Stud
The Wild Bunch
Winchester '73
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
Worthy of mention:
The Culpepper Cattle Company
The Proposition
I enjoyed Bruce Willis in Last Man Standing
Here are some of the best:
I'm sure you already know this, but I just want to point out to everyone else who might be fooled and disappointed with some like I was...there was THE first one and then several dozen unofficial offshoots afterwards - all of which range from creative to tripped-out to juvenile, Three Stooges slapstick - with a revolving cast of actors EXCEPT Franco Nero. The documentary The Spaghetti West does a great job of explaining this.
Any Sam Peckinpah western. Obviously The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid are certified "canon" material, but Ride The High Country/Guns In The Afternoon is massively underrated and right up there with his acknowledged classics. Ballad Of Cable Hogue, Major Dundee and even Junior Bonner are all great too.
Believe the hype about The Searchers.
My Darling Clementine is worth it for Victor Mature alone, but is still a pretty bleak and gloomy movie considering when it was made.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is almost as good as Once Upon A Time In The West.
A private mind garden choice of mine would be The Hired Hand, which could be described as a Western art movie if you wanted to be really reductionist about it. It's very low-key and subtle, with a few glorious performances at the heart of it and a great soundtrack which I understand goes for dolla. Robert Benton's Bad Company is another PMG fave.
My favourite modern Western is John Hillcoat's The Proposition. Purists might argue it can't be a Western because it's set in Australia, but I call bullshit on that - if somebody like Don Siegel or Robert Aldrich had made that exact same movie in 1969, it wouldn't even be up for debate.
VERY TRUE! In Germany almost every Spaghetti Western video release had "Django" in the title! "Django Kill, If you live shoot!" is very good though.
Here is a good site to get you started......
http://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Introduction
anyone see tears of the black tiger? another favorite
Second, personally, I've always liked the more popcorn "meta" Westerns. "Silverado" would be the most obvious example - it's like a greatest hits comp of motifs and cliches but I still find the whole concoction enjoyable. I've also enjoyed one of the lesser heralded Henry Fonda Westerns, "My Name Is Nobody." I never saw the two sequels though.
And cosign on "Once Upon a Time in the West." Opening train depot scene = GOAT.