I have a strange yen to watch a Western or two. But only good ones.
Given that the Dopers are a fourtain of wisdom, second only to Cecil Adams, could you provide me with some titles?
And if the Celestial Master Himself is reading this, what Western Movies does Cecil like?
The Wild Bunch
The “Man with No Name” trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good the Bad and the Ugly.
Unforgiven
Granted none of these are typical westerns, but they’re some of my favorites.
I’m happy to be the first to recommend The Magnificient Seven.
Silverado
The Quick and the Dead
And their spiritual successor: Pale Rider.
…but less happy to be the second to make a spelling mistake. :smack:
I’ll recommend the “Outlaw Josey Wales”, “Hang 'Em High”, and “Paint Your Wagon” for my favorite Eastwood flicks not already mentioned.
Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West”. It has my absolute favorite opening sequence.
And also “There Was A Crooked Man…” with Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas. One of favorite endings. (They should have made many more movies together.)
Two Mules for Sister Sara, another great Eastwood flick w Shirley Maclaine!
I second the Magnificent Seven!
A bit of a novely, in that (real life Keach brothers) played the Frank & Jesse James; the Carradine boys played the Youngers & the Quaid brothers played the Millers, but I really liked “The Long Riders”. I usually don’t like westerns, and this one was unconventional enough to keep me watching. Ry Cooder’s sountrack was a nice touch as well.
First choice: any of the already mentioned Eastwood movies.
Silverado
El Dorado
Rio Bravo
Tombstone
Shane
High Noon
The Searchers
Tom Horn
Nevada Smith
I’m not a big John Wayne fan, but one of his movies was called The Cowboys, where he was forced by necessity to hire some boys (ages 9 to 15) for a cattle drive. It was quite good.
Although it’s definitely just on the fringe of being in the same genre as the run-of-the-mill Western, if you’re up for some amazing writing, staging, acting and tampering with Western history, you’d profit greatly from renting as many seasons of HBO’s Deadwood as you can. (This assumes you don’t have HBO.)
Red River
The Searchers
Stagecoach
Wild Bunch
Ride the High Country
McClintock!
Cat Ballou
Rustlers’ Rhapsody
My favorite western is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Great song, too.
I finally saw Once Upon a Time in the West a few months ago, and can highly recommend it. It’s got an incredible cast under the direction of Sergio Leone. If you’ve not seen it, you’ll likely not view Henry Fonda the same after doing so.
Shoot – didn’t see Agnostic Pagan’s earlier recommendation. Sorry, pardners.
Hmm. A lot of the titles above, while great movies, are of the subgenre called the “anti-Western.” That is, they’re kind of postmodern reactions, after the fact, to the long tradition of the Hollywood Western. You’ll get more out of them if you watch some earlier ones first, to familiarize yourself with the themes they’re addressing.
You can’t go wrong with John Ford, going chronologically if possible. *Stagecoach, *1939, is an absolute essential, and was a big influence on Orson Welles when he made Citizen Kane. The next great Western he made was My Darling Clementine, 1946, his take on the Wyatt Earp legend starring the great Henry Fonda. One of my favorite straightforward (as opposed to anti-) Westerns. Make sure you watch the Howard Hawks masterpiece, Red River. His Rio Bravo is arguably a greater film, but it’s a response to High Noon, which Hawks hated, so it’s something of an anti-Western too.
Report back.
I agree wholeheartedly–it’s one of only 3 Westerns in my lifetime top 20 list–but Leone made it as a kind of tribute to John Ford–almost everything about *OUaTitW *refers back to one or another aspect of the Ford tradition–so I personally recommend leaving this movie till later in your Western career; you’ll get much more out of it.
Although not as good as movies like Unforgiven and Tombstone, I thought Open Range with Costner and Duvall was pretty good for getting a western fix.
If you want a Western themed comedy, then I’d suggest:
Support Your Local Sheriff
Maverick (the Mel Gibson movie, or the older TV show)
And Blazing Saddles?