- Jul 20
12
10 Westerns I Like
In response to a challenge from Jim Coudal:
1. Once Upon a Time in the West
2. Blazing Saddles
3. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
4. High Plains Drifter
5. Seven Samurai (because, c’mon, it’s a western…)
6. The Wild Bunch
7. The Searchers
8. Westworld
9. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
10. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Edit: I just remembered a few more messed up ones: El Topo and Greaser’s Palace…
July 22nd, 2011 at 4:20 am
rado says:
noticed this blog initiative – it’s a great, a very pure, cinematic genre.
didn’t anyone mention “Open Range” (2003)?
regards
July 25th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Steve Witten says:
If you’re gonna include ‘Seven Samurai’ then you must include ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’! Also, ‘For A Few Dollars More’ is much better than ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (as good as that one is). You leave off ‘Unforgiven’ and ‘Pale Rider’ — probably the two best non-Sergio-Leone-directed Westerns Clint Eastwood ever made! How can you leave off ‘My Darling Clementine’? It’s John Ford’s ‘film noir’ Western! Finally, I’d like to make a pitch for ‘Silverado’ — Lawrence Kasdan’s fabulously entertaining Western with great characters and a rollicking good-time story.
‘Nuff said…
Steve Witten
Portland, OR
July 25th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Alex says:
Hmm. I really don’t get all this love for Butch Cassidy. It wasn’t terrible, but I wouldn’t have any trouble coming up with 10 westerns that were better.
July 25th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
Obeythefist says:
But, Unforgiven!
July 25th, 2011 at 8:29 pm
Partridge Creek says:
I got to #2 and then stopped reading.
July 25th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Paul says:
Seconds on “Open Range”. A great western. A great movie, period. One of my favorites. I think Costner and Duvall are perfect in this. It’s thrilling, brutal, sweet, funny and intense. Anyone who hasn’t seen it, do yourself a favor and rent it. I caught it on AMC several years ago and loved it, and turned around two days later and rented the DVD so I could see the uncut, commercial-free version.
July 25th, 2011 at 11:15 pm
BD says:
How about “Shane,” perhaps the quintessential western of all time?
July 26th, 2011 at 3:26 am
skylark says:
Shane
Soldier Blue
High Noon
Once Upon a Time in the West
The Big Country
High Plains Drifter
Rio Bravo
Unforgiven
The Searchers
My Darling Clementine
and
Red River
Yojimbo (because, c’mon, it’s a western…)
The 47 Ronin (the Kenji Mizoguchi version -241 mins epic)
The Proposition (set in Australia)
Fort Apache
Rashômon
What about …
Play Time (1967 Jacques Tati)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_Time
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953 Jacques Tati)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Vacances_de_Monsieur_Hulot
La lune dans le caniveau (aka, Moon in the gutter by Jean-Jacques Beineix)
Diva (Jean-Jacques Beineix)
… I think I might be losing the focus now.
July 26th, 2011 at 5:40 am
fausto says:
I haven’t yet seen a list containing The Outlaw Josey Wales…
July 26th, 2011 at 6:15 am
skylark says:
Duh! … I just realised that “Play Time” by Jacques Tati fits in pretty well with “Urbanized” how the sad, vapid characteristics of contemporaneous urbanity can foil the discrete spirt – past, pro tem and prospective. Much Lewis Mumford’s spiritual discomfort, I imagine.
-
They civilize what’s pretty
By puttin’ up a city
Where nothin’ that’s
Pretty can grow….
They civilize left
They civilize right
Till nothing is left
Till nothing is right.
~Alan Jay Lerner, “The First Thing You Know,” Paint Your Wagon, 1969.
July 27th, 2011 at 10:17 am
greck says:
Ahh you must not forget the ultimate “messed up” Western: Jim Jarmusch’s _Dead Man_.
August 11th, 2011 at 8:28 am
UNCLE CRABBY says:
BD and SKYLARK:
I second you both on the shouts for SHANE, and RED RIVER?
SHANE = has one of the best fight scenes of any movie of any genre.
RED RIVER opening = “Among the annals of the great state of Texas may be found the story of the first drive on the famous Chisholm Trail. A story of one of the great cattle herds of the world, of a man and a boy – - Thomas Dunson and Matthew Garth, the story of the Red River D.”