What’s your vote for the All-Time best Western movie? Any era as long as the setting is pre-1930 and somewhere in either the Western USA or counterparts in Australia.
If you just can’t quite pull it down to one, try for a top 5.
I could flip the top 2 and still be happy.
Little Big Man
Lonesome Dove
The Outlaw Josey Wales
In no particular order.
By no means are you a sheep as I see it. Eastwood’s work ranks very high for me, too. Unforgiven deserves all its acclaim, and I love the movie, too.
For my tastes, though, as a Western I prefer Josey Wales. Unforgiven almost stands above the genre.
Dammit! This ought to push Quigley out of my top 5. I just plain forgot it. TV I suppose.
I hesitated before posting it, as it was a TV mini-series and not a ‘movie’. But there are ‘made-for-TV movies’, so just being made for TV doesn’t disqualify it. And a mini-series is just a very long movie (as opposed to an actual series, which isn’t), and when I watch Lonesome Dove I watch it as a ‘movie’. So I posted it.
Incidentally, Quigley Down Under (Damn, that sounds like a porn title!) is being shown on Encore on the 29th at 20:10 PDT.
I don’t watch a lot of westerns, but The Wild Bunch is one of my favorite movies ever. It was the inspiration for John Woo, who in turn inspired every shoot-em-up for the last 15 years. The final gunfight has to be seen to be believed.
You done good. For that matter, the other Duvall mini-series have been special as well.
Just to provide some also-rans in this discussion, here are some I considered but rejected from the Top 5:
Silverado
High Noon
Big Country
True Grit
The Shootist
Broken Arrow (the one with Ansara as Cochise)
The Magnificent Seven
Once Upon A Time In The West
Jeremiah Johnson
Feel free to add others you had to leave behind.
(In preview I see about Quigley on Encore. Cool. I’ll DVR it for sure.)
Have you seen Nolte and Boothe in Extreme Prejudice? Time period rules it out, but it’s in the Wild Bunch mold. And there’s a more recent one where more ammo than Vietnam was expended!
I love Silverado. You may know from previous posts that I like firearms, and that I have several cap-and-ball Colts, and a Winchester model 1892 that was made in 1897. Silverado made me want a Henry rifle. Some day I’ll get one.
The Searchers
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Lonesome Dove
Silverado
Speaking of, have you seen Rancho Deluxe?
If I had to pick one: The Wild Bunch
Rounding out a top 5:
The Wind
The Man from Laramie
Rio Bravo
Dead Man
Unforgiven
High Noon
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
True Grit
I know, pretty conventional choices. Oh, well.
New one on me. Got a link? There seem to be several by that title and I haven’t see any of them.
I have seen it and really liked it, though I prefer The Wild Bunch.
Blazing Saddles.
Me, too. But the parallels are fun. Last Man Standing (Willis, Walken) seems kin to it, too. Another Yojimbo ripoff.