Favorite Westerns

[KINGOFOOTBALL]

310 and Tombstone for sure. Django if it qualifies is a certainty.

I cant name any of the old ones but I grew up watching them all so its kind of a blur. But Eastwood and John Wayne movies were always on my TV when my dad was on the tube.

My personal favorite is Young Guns and I really like YG2. Theyre alot like Rocky 4 where they arent anything to be taken oscar serious but are fun as hell to watch. Emilio Estevez as Billy the Kid is friggin hysterical and awesome. Those movies have so many great one liners.

Blazing Saddles is a western classic only if Spaceballs counts as Scifi. Its a spoof IMO so its a comedy but damn is it good.

 

[Houston]

No Country For Old Men is overrated.....O Brother Where Art Thou was great.

:dead:

 

[Villain]

Japan's G.O.A.T director made two great samurai movies called Yojimbo and Sanjuro. Yojimbo's score on Rotten Tomatoes is 97/97, and Sanjuro's is 100/95 for what it's worth....

I just happened to see those two first. When I went to watch A Fistfull of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More I learned that they were remakes of Yojimbo/Sanjuro and decided to skip them. Same thing goes for some other big westerns of the 60's.

Pretty cool how the two genres made their way through time though. Westerns pretty much started from scratch and were here since the beginning of film. Just as the western was starting to wane, the Japs used them as inspiration for their samurai films. Then the Italians saw those and used them as inspiration for their new Westerns. Soon after, the Americans caught on which caused a revival back home where it all started.
Every action film since owes itself to the movies made during this exchange.

Without it, a guy like Tarrantino for instance wouldn't even have a career.
:jonesy:

Many-a thanka, Houstan-san.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

3:10 To Yuma is a modern great and so is Django. No Country For Old Men is overrated and an above average movie. This holds true for every Coen Brothers movie I've seen except O Brother Where Art Thou which was great.

Modern masterpiece.

 

[mgoblue2290]

No. Above average movie people felt they had to love.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

I lack taste, decency, and good form.

 

[Houston]

Just like Spielberg was saying about The Searchers...No Country is a good movie in the basic thriller sense. But because there's so much complexity under the surface that you're bound to miss at first, it holds up during later viewings. One of those rare films that you can really dive into. Similar to Barton Fink if we're sticking with the Coens.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

Do we place Brokeback Mountain in the "Western" genre?

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

If you want a sleeper post-2000s Western flick, check out Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut...The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Very good.

 

[Palooza]

The western is a genre I have rarely jumped into outside of the modern ones mentioned like 3:10 to Yuma and No Country. I should watch more westerns.

 

[dell71]

Japan's G.O.A.T director made two great samurai movies called Yojimbo and Sanjuro. Yojimbo's score on Rotten Tomatoes is 97/97, and Sanjuro's is 100/95 for what it's worth....

I just happened to see those two first. When I went to watch A Fistfull of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More I learned that they were remakes of Yojimbo/Sanjuro and decided to skip them. Same thing goes for some other big westerns of the 60's.

Pretty cool how the two genres made their way through time though. Westerns pretty much started from scratch and were here since the beginning of film. Just as the western was starting to wane, the Japs used them as inspiration for their samurai films. Then the Italians saw those and used them as inspiration for their new Westerns. Soon after, the Americans caught on which caused a revival back home where it all started.
Every action film since owes itself to the movies made during this exchange.

Without it, a guy like Tarrantino for instance wouldn't even have a career.
:jonesy:

Great post. Only thing is you missed the most important Samurai flick of them all - "Seven Samurai" which was remade as "The Magnificent Seven."

Do we place Brokeback Mountain in the "Western" genre?

You wanna call "Brokeback" a western because it has cowboys? Okay fine, I'll grant you that. You wanna say it's great? I won't stand for that shit. I wouldn't even call it good. I know the gay cowboy thing was the gimmick everyone went nuts over (pun partially intended), but the fact is two far better LGBT movies came out that very same year: "Mysterious Skin" & "TransAmerica." "Brokeback" was often like watching paint dry. [/rant]

Anyhoo, lots of good ones have been brought up in this thread. Some I really like that I don't think have been mentioned:

Once Upon a Time in the West
High Noon
Unforgiven
Posse
The Quick and the Dead (the Gene Hackman/Sharon Stone one) It's not great, but it's a guilty pleasure of mine.

 

[jeffx]

For me, it's Unforgiven, one of my favorite films of all time.

 

[Pitty]

There's a reason Westerns were non existent from 1980-1992.

 

[Palooza]

wicky wicky wild wild west jim west, desperado.