Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
DrewInWisconsin ·
December 10, 2011 at 5:36pm
My fellow Ricocheteers:
I would like your recommendations for good Westerns. It's never been a genre that I've been interested in, and so my education regarding Westerns is sorely lacking. As we settle in for the Winter I imagine that an inordinate amount of time will be spent in front of the television.
I recently watched The Searchers, and enjoyed it far more than I expected. But before I go wasting my time on sub-par Westerns . . . I thought I would ask the assembled Ricotarians for their suggestions.
- Comment (120)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (5)
Comments:
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
Open Range
The Shootist
Rooster Cogburn
High Plains Drifter
Blazing Saddles (What can I say? I'm a tad eclectic.)
Mar '11
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
Winchester '73 with Jimmy Stewart.
Love. It.
Mar '11
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
Anything from the Duke or Eastwood is good.
Jun '10
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
Hang 'em high.
My favorite of the newer westerns: Tombstone (Take that, Instugator)
Wyatt Earp was good
Loved the new "True Grit" -it's better than the John Wayne one but mostly because of Glen Campbell.
Open Range and Broken Trail are standalone gems.
Best western series on TV of all times Lonesome Dove (no contest). It's also in my top 10 movies of all times -- yes, even thought it's a series.
May '10
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
I can't stand Clint Eastwood.
High Noon is fabulous.
And I loved The Magnificent Seven.
Jun '11
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
My Darling Clementine is the best movie about the Earps vs Clantons: directed by John Ford with Vitor Mature as Doc Holiday, & Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp. My favorite western.
Mad Max & Road Warrior as wildcard neo-westerns ;)
Apr '11
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
How about a musical western? Paint Your Wagon, featuring a singing Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin, and a winsome Jean Seberg, is a hoot.
Apr '11
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
Lame. Double post.
Edited on December 10, 2011 at 2:52amOct '10
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
Try anything with Randolf Scott and Jimmy Stewart for classic Westerns.
Favorites here are, Nevada Smith, Tom Horn, Jeremiah Johnson, The Professionals and The Wild Bunch.
Edited on December 10, 2011 at 3:08amDec '11
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
The Outlaw Josie Wales
Dec '11
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
The Unforgiven, Ride With the Devil.
I'd add Lonesome Dove, but Ricky Schroder was so awful it brings the thing down.
Aug '11
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
Thanks for the suggestions! Feel free to add more. In spite of the presence of Val Kilmer, I may just end up watching Tombstone again. I seem to remember that it felt far too modern. Sort of like that horrible Robin Hood movie with Kevin Costner.
Jun '10
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
Val Kilmer was the perfect Doc Holiday:
Enough to put a chill down your spine. He was positively riveting.
Kurt Russell was superb, too.
Jun '10
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
C.U. Douglas: Thanks for mentioning one of the best and most original westerns:
"Once Upon a Time in The West" -- with Henry Fonda as one of the most interesting and forbidding figures in the movies ever. What an evil bad guy -- and played by the least likely actor for that time. And did it ever work!
Aug '10
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
If you want to have an interesting evening then start out with Ride With The Devil then watch The Outlaw Josey Wales then watch, or better yet, read True Grit. They all deal with, in some way, the conflict in Missouri and Kansas during the War of Northern Agression and its aftermath. Doc with Stacy Keach & Faye dunaway would provide a good prelude to Tombstone followed with The Sons of Katie Elder. Katie Elder being Doc Holliday's wife/mistress.
Aug '10
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
And for pure fun: Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis. And I'd say No Country For Old Men is a fine contemporary western.
May '10
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
I can't believe no one has mentioned The 3 Amigos. Then again, I really enjoyed Cowboys vs. Aliens..
Jan '11
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
I love westerns, and I like most of the ones listed above.
But let me pop off about why I like them. What made the old west fascinating was, as Henry Fonda said in How The West Was Won, was that it was free from the blessings of civilization. The frontier didn't have political correctness, or corporate group-think. Of course, if Liberty Valance happened by, you had better be prepared to fight and if necessary, kill.
Dramas, therefore, could create life or death conflicts, and the characters had to settle it themselves. No Judge Judy arbitrations, or negotiated settlements. No lawyers! If it was wrong, you had to fight. Westerns could explore what was worth fighting for, and how to fight for it. The western is an arena where justice was personal.
Now I'd quickly agree that in the real world, we shouldn't solve our problems with guns, pilgrim ... but when justice ceases to be a personal virtue and becomes a product that lawyers sell (and advertise on TV) ... then justice has lost something important.
When justice isn't a personal virtue anymore, then stop the merry-go-round, I want to get off.
Jun '10
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
Let me echo the comment about anything by John Ford...my favorites The Searchers, My Darling Clementine (the cinematography is magnificent and Fonda's and Victor Mature's performances are riveting), Fort Apache, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, 3 Godfathers...etc. etc.
Though not traditional westerns...more modern settings... I don't if anyone mentioned Kirk Douglas in Lonely Are The Brave, a poignant film about the cowboy as a dying breed. In the same vein, The Misfits by John Huston with probably Clark Gable's best performance and an amazing ensemble cast Clift, Monroe, Wallach, Ritter.
Then there's Red River, of course. Eastwood's The Unforgiven, Destry Rides Again with Jimmy Stewart; Tombstone with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer - amazing performance by Kilmer and the smarmiest set of bad guys; The Magnificent Seven, music, great ensemble cast, Steve McQueen upstaging Yul Brenner, all based on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Might be a stretch but I'd consider Treasure of the Sierra Madre to be somewhat of a western, probably the best performances by its three principal actors Walter Huston, Bogart and Tim Holt...and The Oxbow Incident, Dana Andrews performance is so moving.
Edited on December 10, 2011 at 5:52amJun '10
Re: Your Movie Recommendations Please: Westerns
KC Mulville
...
Dramas, therefore, could create life or death conflicts, and the characters had to settle it themselves. No Judge Judy arbitrations, or negotiated settlements. No lawyers! If it was wrong, you had to fight. Westerns could explore what was worth fighting for, and how to fight for it. The western is an arena where justice was personal.
Now I'd quickly agree that in the real world, we shouldn't solve our problems with guns, pilgrim ... but when justice ceases to be a personal virtue and becomes a product that lawyers sell (and advertise on TV) ... then justice has lost something important.
When justice isn't a personal virtue anymore, then stop the merry-go-round, I want to get off. · Dec 9 at 8:07pm
Which makes it all the more interesting how the left is so wrapped up in their peace and justice flim flam, doesn't it? These are the people who have made things so much less peaceful and so much less just. Especially, in the inner cities the center of their 100% control. The inner cities, which seethe with rage and injustice, have been made that way by their plantation masters.