I was very excited to see the American Reunion movie. I saw American Pie just after college and remembered it was quite funny.
Jim, Michelle, Oz, Heather, Stifler reunite for their high school...
Some of my favorites yet to be mentioned:
El Dorado
Winchester 73
Ride the High Country
Four of the Apocalypse
My Darling Clementine
Forty Guns
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
3:10 to Yuma
Pursued
The Tall T
Johnny Guitar
The Lusty Men
The Naked Spur
Rancho Notorious
Posse (the only take I know of on black cowpokes)
The Shootist
Wild, Wild West (kidding)
Rooster Cogburn
Big Jake
True Grit
The Sons of Katie Elder
Angel and the Badma
Oh heck anything with the Duke really.
Personally I've never liked the film. I'm more of a Rio Bravo kind of guy (Hawks said on numerous occassions that RB was his response to High Noon's pussy of a sherrif. Oh yeah, it's metaphorical).
Personally I've never liked the film. I'm more of a Rio Bravo kind of guy (Hawks said on numerous occassions that RB was his response to High Noon's pussy of a sherrif. Oh yeah, it's metaphorical).
Interesting.
I have always wanted to write up an old fashioned western and use High Noon as the basis for it. Yes it would be slightly more stylized to appeal to a more current audience but ultimately it would be a homage to the movie that made me want to write a western.
And I have always been a fan of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I always use it as an analogy for the little things often beget the big rewards.
"Westward the Women". Great movie. You won't find it at any video store, but once in a blue moon they put it on that square thingy with the antenna on top.
Been revisiting (and exploring) John Wayne's western ouevre lately. Resurrected this thread in hopes that people may use it to pimp a flick, instead of simply merely listing faves. Recommend a great Western! And convince us to check it out.
I'll start. SERAPHIM FALLS. 2 great leads in Brosnan and Neeson. The beautiful desolation and unforgiving frontier of the landscapes shown here is so standard of the genre, but crucial to the story. Man VS Man. Man VS Self. Man VS Nature. It's all here. It even dabbles into the existential.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON. Arguably more of a "mountain man" film than a western, but all the core genre themes are present. Great performance by Redford. You feel the hardships alongside the main character. And like THE EDGE, I must be crazy for wanting to go camping after watching this flick. But I do.
Jimmy Stewart as a sheriff who brings law to a town using his wits instead of a gun. This flick makes a great double feature with Rio Bravo &, like that film, is loaded with well drawn & fun character work.
Can't go wrong with the Anthony Mann/James Stewart westerns. Stewart came back from WWII a changed man, and Mann and Hitchcock helped him parlay that into some of his darkest and best performances.
I'll take the opportunity to pimp Appaloosa, a good strong old-school oater based on the first of several satisfying Robert B. Parker novels. Not quite great, but content to be a good story well told.
Just caught up with Django last summer and enjoyed the hell out of it. Should be your first stop in the realm of spaghetti westerns after you've seen all the Leones.
Sprawling epic. It's got everything. Settlers, river pirates, gold rush, Indian attacks, buffaloes, Civil War, railroad robberies, etc. Centers mostly on Debbie Reynolds' and George Peppard's characters, but expect to see...
JOHN WAYNE as Gen Sherman
GREGORY PECK as a riverboat gambler
KARL MALDEN, HARRY MORGAN, HENRY FONDA, LEE COBB, and ROBERT PRESTON!
ELI WALLACH as a villain!
SPENCER TRACY narration!
JIMMY STEWART as a mountain man (WTF) hitting WALTER BRENNAN with a chair!
Amazing use of widescreen and a great snapshot of a family through the generations, during US' wilder days.
Directors: John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall
Sprawling epic. It's got everything. Settlers, river pirates, gold rush, Indian attacks, buffaloes, Civil War, railroad robberies, etc. Centers mostly on Debbie Reynolds' and George Peppard's characters, but expect to see...
JOHN WAYNE as Gen Sherman
GREGORY PECK as a riverboat gambler
KARL MALDEN, HARRY MORGAN, HENRY FONDA, LEE COBB, and ROBERT PRESTON!
ELI WALLACH as a villain!
SPENCER TRACY narration!
JIMMY STEWART as a mountain man (WTF) hitting WALTER BRENNAN with a chair!
Amazing use of widescreen and a great snapshot of a family through the generations, during US' wilder days.
Directors: John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall
The bluray of this mind-blowing. That 1080p/Cinerama definition is so great that the film sometimes looks like a 3D diorama.
I'm probably going to be Danza-slapped for this, but I have never understood the love for Tombstone. It's clear that the director died and was replaced during the shoot. The act ranges from pretty good to extremely broad. The ending is a mess. I always felt that Wyatt Earp, while also flawed, was the better of the two films. Would someone care to make a sincere attempt to explain the love for Tombstone if I make a sincere attempt to listen and understand?
I'm probably going to be Danza-slapped for this, but I have never understood the love for Tombstone. It's clear that the director died and was replaced during the shoot. The act ranges from pretty good to extremely broad. The ending is a mess. I always felt that Wyatt Earp, while also flawed, was the better of the two films. Would someone care to make a sincere attempt to explain the love for Tombstone if I make a sincere attempt to listen and understand?
Fella, you're putting too much emphasis on the vanilla & not enough on the chocolate chips. Tombstone is a broad menagerie of MAN-MOMENTS: "Are you gonna stand there & bleed?", the tin cup showdown, "I'm your huckleberry", etc. Everything in between is fluff that doesn't quite work but those character moments are SO flawlessly bad-ass & so numerous that it overshadows the film's quaint flaws shoots the whole show into the icon-osphere of great westerns.
Fella, you're putting too much emphasis on the vanilla & not enough on the chocolate chips. Tombstone is a broad menagerie of MAN-MOMENTS: "Are you gonna stand there & bleed?", the tin cup showdown, "I'm your huckleberry", etc. Everything in between is fluff that doesn't quite work but those character moments are SO flawlessly bad-ass & so numerous that it overshadows the film's quaint flaws shoots the whole show into the icon-osphere of great westerns.
I have similar love for other films, but I guess those moments in Tombstone didn't stick with me at all. The only one I remember is the huckleberry line and, "Well, bye." (largely due to Fark.com).
I think Art nails it; TOMBSTONE overflows with great man moments and archetypical, testosterone-fueled confrontations and exchanges, executed flawlessly by an amazing cast. There's not a lot of connective tissue, and the love story is fairly weak (but I like it, despite its flaws) but Russell and Kilmer alone manage to make Earp and Holliday both human and mythic.
And I'd contend it's simply a lot more fun to watch than Kasdan's dour EARP.
TOMBSTONE for me (like THE UNTOUCHABLES) is rousing as hell. By the time the good guys gather up and ride off to punish some villains most righteously, I'm right there rooting for them. Plus, the 2 lead performance are truly ICONIC. It's one of my first loved Westerns. I agree whole-heartedly with Art and MM.
Tombstone is fun whenever Val Kilmer's on screen, and has 2 strong villains in Biehn and Boothe. Everything else, from the script to the pace to the action sequences, if pretty awful. Sorry, even the 50% of Russel's performance that isn't just moustache. I can understand liking it the way I like, say, Point Break, but a great western it is not.
The best western since Unforgiven is The Assassination of Jesse James, hands down. Although it is one due more to setting than content. And although it's not particularly beloved, I really enjoyed The Proposition. Australian-set remain westerns are a largely untapped resource, imo.
I thought ASSASSINATION was really amazing, but I have a hard time thinking of it as a western. It felt more like a character study that just happened to be set in the Old West than a classic Western. That's my take, though, and I'm not asking anyone else to line up behind it.
I think my favorite modern "serious" western - say post-1970 - is probably 2007's 3:10 TO YUMA.
Tombstone is fun whenever Val Kilmer's on screen, and has 2 strong villains in Biehn and Boothe. Everything else, from the script to the pace to the action sequences, if pretty awful. Sorry, even the 50% of Russel's performance that isn't just moustache. I can understand liking it the way I like, say, Point Break, but a great western it is not.
The best western since Unforgiven is The Assassination of Jesse James, hands down. Although it is one due more to setting than content. And although it's not particularly beloved, I really enjoyed The Proposition. Australian-set remain westerns are a largely untapped resource, imo.
I agree with all of this. Thanks.
I have the two Nero Django films, which I really enjoy, but I'm sort of afraid to see what Tarantino will do with it. Which is silly, since I had similar trepidations about Basterds and I ended up enjoying that quite a bit.
I think my favorite modern "serious" western - say post-1970 - is probably 2007's 3:10 TO YUMA.
Really? I'm not much of an aficionado (and not that it's terrible or anything), but in addition to the two I mentioned, there's Unforgiven, The Long Riders, Appaloosa, Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Open Range to contend with, off the top of my head.
What, no other fans of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
Fuck no, they should've burned the masters of that piece of shit before it ever reached theaters.
Nah, I'm kiding, I love it. In fact I love everything I've ever seen with Paul Newman in it.
I think Schwartz really summed up Tombstone well, but I like Sam Elliot, Bill Paxton and Kurt Russell so much I even enjoy those flatter spots. I have a huge place in my heart for the Young Guns films, but that could be because I haven't seen them since the mid 90s and have never watched them with anything approaching a critical eye.
My favourite western is Seven Samurai. Cred please.
Really? I'm not much of an aficionado (and not that it's terrible or anything), but in addition to the two I mentioned, there's Unforgiven, The Long Riders, Appaloosa, Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Open Range to contend with, off the top of my head.
Really. It's the one I enjoy rewatching the most. UNFORGIVEN's almost in a class by itself, and it's not something I get a hankering to throw in much, if ever. APPALOOSA....well, at the risk of getting dogpiled, it struck me as competent but not great. OPEN RANGE I'll just confess to having forgotten, but I do love it. 3:10 still edges it out, but it's a close call.
And to earn even greater derision, I haven't ever seen the following westerns:
Searchers
Alfredo Garcia
Long Riders
Wild Bunch
Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid
ETA: All but Alfredo Garcia are available at my local library. I'll try to get on that shit, pronto.
And to earn even greater derision, I haven't ever seen the following westerns:
Searchers
Alfredo Garcia
Long Riders
Wild Bunch
Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid
Stop whatever it is you are doing and go watch ALL of those right now. With The Searchers and the Wild Bunch at the very top of your list. Unless you've seen those two(and the Good the Bad, and The Ugly) I almost feel you shouldn't even be allowed to talk about westerns. Those movies are pretty much the best things ever.
Really. It's the one I enjoy rewatching the most. UNFORGIVEN's almost in a class by itself, and it's not something I get a hankering to throw in much, if ever. APPALOOSA....well, at the risk of getting dogpiled, it struck me as competent but not great. OPEN RANGE I'll just confess to having forgotten, but I do love it. 3:10 still edges it out, but it's a close call.
And to earn even greater derision, I haven't ever seen the following westerns:
Searchers
Alfredo Garcia
Long Riders
Wild Bunch
Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid
ETA: All but Alfredo Garcia are available at my local library. I'll try to get on that shit, pronto.
Those are all, save maybe The Long Riders, absolute essentials. It seems that it's become fashionable to downgrade Butch and Sundance a bit lately, but it's still one of the best written, funnest, and plain watchable movies you'll ever see.
As for Appaloosa, it's not a masterpiece, but I put it ahead of the largely forgettable 3:10 easily. A large part of that is that I'd watch Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen sit around and eat paste for 150 minutes, and admittedly Zellweger is not very good, but still. It has one of my favorite moments from of the decade too, where the stand-off abruptly erupts into about 2 and half seconds worth of gunfire, everybody is hit and drops, and as they're hauling themselves up, the guys have the following exchange:
As for Appaloosa, it's not a masterpiece, but I put it ahead of the largely forgettable 3:10 easily.
I've never seen Appaloosa, but James Mangold couldn't direct his way out of a hatbox. The man defines cinematic mediocrity and continually fails to utilize the fantastic talent he somehow seems to attract with each new film.
1. RED RIVER (1948) d. Howard Hawks -overshadowed by Hawks later Westerns, this may very well be his best; a brilliant turn from the Duke
2. THE LAST SUNSET (1961) d. Robert Aldrich -tense psychological Western, with a final showdown influencing Leone in the staging
3. MAN OF THE WEST (1958) d. Anthony Mann - Top shelf Coop, with a climatic gun battle that rivals OPEN RANGE
4. THE BIG COUNTRY (1958)) d. William Wyler - Peck is at his noble best, Chuck Heston is at his most dickish and a fistfight between the two that inspires THEY LIVE
5. LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL (1959) d. John Sturges - tense and unrelenting psychological Western; Sturges best foray into the genre
7. THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID (1972) d. Philip Kaufman - Duvall's scuzzy, crazy Jesse James is the antithesis of Brad Pitt, and probably the most unique potrayal of the legend
I don't get the hate for YUMA, but I guess it's very YMMV. I thought APPALOOSA was very much case of the parts being greater than the sum. I found it very "meh," and only the very ending helped lift it.
2. THE LAST SUNSET (1961) d. Robert Aldrich -tense psychological Western, with a final showdown influencing Leone in the staging
eYESSIRREEE! I've loved this flick for eons. Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson both did excellent work.
ETA: Please add The Man From Snowy River to the "Aussie-set western" list. I always liked that one, even though it's more a coming of age story. Sigrid Thornton was fetching as hell. And the setpiece horse roundup off the side of a cliff was freakin awesome to see.
