Favorite Western Movies

[Spanky]

True Grit--Not a John Wayne fan, but he deserved the Oscar he got for this one



The Unforgiven--Clint Eastwood's in case of confusion with the other Unforgiven. Came in second in recent rating of best 100 westerns. 
Should have been #1.

Hi Spanky,

I absolutely agree about Unforgiven. Superb film making.

True Grit - I also like the new version. Usually I'm critical of remakes. Why remake a great film? Generally I think it would be better to take a bad film that had an interesting concept, and remake that - but do it better. Anyway, I make an exception for this because the new one approaches the story differently, which is fair enough because it adds something.

For a classic Western, I suggest John Ford's The Searchers. If you watch that you'll see how many films have been influenced by it, including Star Wars (which I think is essentially a Western in space).

Of the neo-Westerns, I think The Quick and the Dead (1995) is a good example of a film that plays with the genre. Sharon Stone is cast into a role you would normally associate with Eastwood's "Man With No Name" and it very consciously adopts the style of spaghetti westerns.

Hi Barq, all agreed.  Actually, "The Searchers" got number one in the "100 Favorite Western" roundup that came out about three years ago.

Spank

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True Grit--Not a John Wayne fan, but he deserved the Oscar he got for this one



The Unforgiven--Clint Eastwood's in case of confusion with the other Unforgiven. Came in second in recent rating of best 100 westerns. 
Should have been #1.

Hi Spanky,

I absolutely agree about Unforgiven. Superb film making.

True Grit - I also like the new version. Usually I'm critical of remakes. Why remake a great film? Generally I think it would be better to take a bad film that had an interesting concept, and remake that - but do it better. Anyway, I make an exception for this because the new one approaches the story differently, which is fair enough because it adds something.

For a classic Western, I suggest John Ford's The Searchers. If you watch that you'll see how many films have been influenced by it, including Star Wars (which I think is essentially a Western in space).

Of the neo-Westerns, I think The Quick and the Dead (1995) is a good example of a film that plays with the genre. Sharon Stone is cast into a role you would normally associate with Eastwood's "Man With No Name" and it very consciously adopts the style of spaghetti westerns.

Hi Barq, all agreed.  Actually, "The Searchers" got number one in the "100 Favorite Western" roundup that came out about three years ago.

Spank

Oh, on last Unforgiven note.  Gene Hackman, the story goes, on first reading the script and being offered the part of "Little Bob", refused it, thinking the character was such a bastard he didn't want to be associated with him, even fictionally.  Which, of course, made him the perfect Little Bob, ha.