Your Top Six “Western Films”?

Movies
101

Man, that’s a thought. Bitter old man, seeking to atone for past failures? Saving a kid as redemption for the family he failed? Logan certainly could fit as a Western lead.

Setting? Post apocalyptic southwest and Montana.

Stewart and Jackman are definitely living the life of a frontier family, their house rough and cobbled together.

Vigilante outlaws and raiders able to exist in a land where the law has turned a blind eye, or where the brigands have the right connections to the law to be allowed a free hand.

The mutants are the distrusted other, and definitely check the box of a society rife with tensions over that.

Man, it fits in more ways than I’d even considered. You could basically swap Rooster Cogburn and Logan, and they would be able to fill each other’s role. Other than the amount of swearing and weapon of choice.

102

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103

Sounds like a Western to me, purely based on your description. I didn’t do the X-Men films, thought I am Superhero/Comic Book-Conversant.

104

There is a lot of material in the western series front. They would not be serviced well alongside movie comparison. The Mini Series are… well they fit both.

105

He’s just trolling me (well, half trolling me. :)). But I actually think its sad; Deadwood is so head and shoulders above most television western fare in caliber of, well, everything, that is almost a shame it can’t be discussed alongside these films…but the formats are so different…

106

It’s getting a movie so maybe redo the list after that! I did watch Deadwood years after it ran. It’s was hard to remember how awful the bad to good guys were in the end.

107

It’s no accident that the characters watch Shane in the hotel room.

108

All right maybe I’m not 100% serious, but I do feel like there’s more meaning to a functional or content-based breakdown for what a western is than there might be over its length or whether it’s shown episodically.

What I mean is, a movie like No Country for Old Men is thematically dissimilar to more traditional westerns. It kind of fits in its own kind of apocalyptic category that for lack of a better word I’ll just call Cormac MacCarthy stories.

But Deadwood exists specifically to show us a time and a place in transition, when territories became states and lawless areas were dragged kicking and screaming into civilization, and that’s about as western as it gets.

Anyway, not my thread, I’m not trying to convince anybody. Just telling you where my head’s at.

109

You know when @CraigM, describing a film I hadn’t seen (Logan) mentioned the child and no father/Logan fulfilling a father role, I immediately thought, “Shane”. Well, I guess I am gonna watch Logan? Is this a good move?

110

It is 1000% a Western. And one of my faves! It just isn’t a “Western Film”. Sorry! A Comet ain’t a Star! If you start saying TV and Film are one in the same, I’ll tap out and tag @ChristienMurawski in on you! It won’t be pretty!

111

Having read most of this thread I have the advantage of seeing others picks, but here are my favorites, with the first one being my all-time favorite western.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Wild Bunch
The Searchers
Blazing Saddles
Cat Ballou

112

There’s absolutely no way to narrow down my all time favorite movie genre to just 6, so I’m gonna do top six (or so) by decade:

1930’s
Destry Rides Again
Drums Along the Mohawk
The Big Trail
Dodge City
Three Godfathers

Drums is probably a non-qualifier, since it takes place during the US Revolution, but since it involves lots of conflict between settlers and Iroquois, it feels pretty “westerny”. Big Trail is notable for being a widescreen, sound picture, shot on location, when all three of those categories were very rare/in their infancy. It was also John Wayne’s first starring role, and he looks freakishly young (he was around 23 when it was made). It contains several striking scenes, though it was a box office dud - mostly due to movie theater screens not being able to accommodate the film. Wayne spent the rest of the decade languishing in B-movies until his big breakthrough in Stagecoach

1940’s:
Fort Apache
The Ox-Bow Incident
Red River
The Westerner
My Darling Clementine
Yellow Sky

Ox-Bow is probably one of the bleakest westerns made during the era, and despite not performing well at the box office, allowed the genre to escape it’s usual sentimentality and actiony trappings, and move on to more mature themes, paving the way for guys like Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher to flourish.

1950’s:
The Naked Spur
The Gunfighter
Fort Massacre
The Searchers
Bend of the River
High Noon
Seven Men From Now
Bravados
Day of the Outlaw

Gonna cheat here, since the 50’s were a ridiculously strong decade for westerns. Had enough trouble getting this down to 12, let alone 6. Naked Spur is one of my all time faves - a tight, economic character piece set in the mountains with Mann’s typical attention to beautiful scenery.

1960’s:
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Ride the High Country
Once Upon a Time in the West
Lonely are the Brave
The Wild Bunch
For a Few Dollars More
Ride in the Whirlwind

Another decade too tough to pare down.

1970’s:
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Shootist
Monte Walsh
High Plains Drifter
Blazing Saddles
Lawman

1980’s:
The Long Riders

Yep, that’s it. Just an unbelievably bad decade for the genre. Pale Rider and Heaven’s Gate are the only others I would even call above-average.

1990’s:
Unforgiven
Tombstone
Dead Man
Geronimo: An American Legend
Last of the Mohicans

2000’s:
The Assassination of Jesse James…
Open Range
Shanghai Noon
Appaloosa
3:10 to Yuma

2010’s:
Hateful Eight
True Grit

113

And @TranquilityBase completely cops out and in a shotgun blast of titles, launches 150+ Westerns in the thread. ;)

114

And Pale and Heaven’s are just average, at best.

But I’d add:

It warms my heart that you left out Silverado.

115

You guys are nuts. Silverado is better than Tombstone.

116

“If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”

“Gary Busey seems like a pretty down to earth guy.”

“The chemtrail jets are kept in a secret base in Idaho”

Yeah, “Silverado is better than Tombstone” fits right in there.

117

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118

I mean I like Silverado and agree with the man of the Guns.

119

The only reason we’re still talking about Tombstone, the n-teenth retelling of The OK Corral, is because they got the casting fucking nailed. They get that wrong and you’ve got another Young Guns. Old Guns. Whatever.

120

That was about Billy the Kid. Are you OK?