Cowboy Movies

Also known as "Westerns". A Genre that has its very high points and its very low points:

High points:

• "The Great Train Robbery" (1903) - http://www.wildwestweb.net/great.html
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (and many other JohnWayne? Movies)
• Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967, by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood)
• The Outlaw Josey Wales
• The Magnificent Seven (Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Horst Bucholtz, with Eli Wallach as a great bad guy)
• The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah directed - see the Director's cut!)
• Bad Day At Black Rock
• The Big Country
• Once upon a time in the West
• Winchester 73 (Classic James Stewart)
• The Grey Fox
• Ride the High Country (by Sam Peckinpah)
• High Noon
• Rancho Deluxe
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (by John Huston)
• The Naked Spur (and many others directed by Anthony Mann)
• The Searchers
• Shane
• Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
• Red River
• (please add some here)

Low points:

• Silverado, 1985
  • Some say the last great western! http://www.99lives.com/movies/silverad.htm
    • Unforgiven was far better, and came after Silverado.
• "The Quick and the Dead" staring Gene Hackman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Sharon Stone http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Movies_and_Film/Titles/Westerns/Quick_and_the_Dead__The/
• Bad Girls (Drew Barrymore et al)
• "Wild Wild West" (...actually, I thought it was kinda' fun.)
• Young Guns and it's equally-lame sequel, imaginitively titled Young Guns II. No good Western has ever had Bon Jovi on the soundtrack.

Satires:

• Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles ( I found this deeply unsatisfying )
• Rustlers' Rhapsody. Kinda Blazing Saddles-lite.
• Support Your Local Sheriff (Excellent Parody)

Who says the Western is dead? Good westerns since 1990.

• Unforgiven. Clint Eastwood took home a fistful of Oscars for this one.
• Dances With Wolves. Kevin Costner's take on the genre wasn't as good as it's original press clippings; nor is it as bad as the inevitible backlash would indicate. Probably didn't deserve it's Oscar, though.
• Tombstone. Flopped in theatres, this Kurt Russel/Val Kilmer take on the OK Corral legend is a hoot. The Brando-esque Kilmer, like his mentor, is--when he wants to be--one of the best actors around. In this film he was a riot as "Doc" Holliday.

Maybe they should call 'em Easterns... Westerns that rip off Kurosawa:

• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. See Bojimbo
  • Actually, it was Yojimbo --> A Fistful of Dollars
  • On the same the, Ran was a remake of King Lear.
• The Magnificent Seven. See The Seven Samurai.
• Star Wars, etc. See The Hidden Fortress. (OK, Star Wars isn't technically a Western... but y'all know what I mean...)

Westerns with notable influence outside the genre:

• The Wild Bunch. Anyone who is a fan of Quentin Tarantino, John Woo, or any similar director needs to watch this. Despite the bloodstained efforts of these aforementioned proteges, Samuel Peckinpah's opus remains one of the most violent films ever made. And unlike the tongue-in-cheek Tarantino or the over-the-top Woo, there is nothing clownish or cartoonish about the blood spilt in this movie.

In a class of its own:

• The Last Samurai .

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