Poll: Top-10/20/50 list of your favorite Westerns (1 Viewer)

[Keith Cobby]

Here's my Top 10:

Shane
Hud
Jeremiah Johnson
The Searchers
The Man from Laramie
My Darling Clementine
High Noon
The Gunfighter
Dances with Wolves
The Naked Spur

Restricting it to 10 makes it a list of favourites, interesting that your list has no overlap with mine.

 

[Bartman]

The list order is based on repeat plays:

The Searchers
The Horse Soldiers
Major Dundee
The Missing
The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada
Lonely Are The Brave
Seraphim Falls
Fort Apache
Will Penny
Hud
Dance With Wolves
Open Range
True Grit (both)
The Lonesome Dove
Broken Trail
The Alamo (orig)
Treasure Of The Sierra Madre
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
High Plains Drifter
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Beguiled (orig)
Unforgiven
Once Upon A Time In The West
The Last Of The Mohicans
Drums Along The Mohawk
Northwest Passage
The Revenant
The Black Robe
Dodge City
Hombre
The Cowboys
The Undefeated
Rio Grande
The Hunting Party
Jeremiah Johnson
Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here
3:10 From Yuma (orig)
The Ox-Bow Incident
Junior Bonner
The Lusty Men
Nevada Smith
Ride The High Country
Geronimo: An American Legend
The Homesman
Appaloosa

I really like to see a restored Northwest Passage on Blu-ray. My laserdisc looked faded. I have never seen the DVD.

 

[AshJW]

@Prof. Ratigan

True Grit

Which one?

 

[Prof. Ratigan]

@Prof. Ratigan

Which one?

2010

 

[Alan Tully]

My favourites in year order (off the top of my head, I'm sure I've left a few out):

The Plainsman (1936)
Zoro's Fighting Legion (1939) serial
They Died With Their Boot On (1941)
Unconquered (1947)
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949)
The Big Sky (1952)
Bend Of The River (1952)
The Far Country (1954)
The Searchers (1956)
Ride Lonesome (1959)
The Alamo (1960)
Comanche Station (1960)
One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
The Comancheros (1961)
Ride The High Country (1962)
Rio Conchos (1964)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Professionals (1966)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Paint Your Wagon (1969)
Mackenna's Gold (1969)
There Was A Crooked Man... (1970)
Little Big Man (1970)
Big Jake (1971)
The Life & Times Of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
Pat Garrett & Bill The Kid (1973)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
The White Buffalo (1977)
The Last Of The Mohicans (1992)
Tombstone (1993)
The Lone Ranger (2013)
The Hateful Eight (2015)

 

[Tino]

The Lone Ranger (2013

Wow! Brave choice!

 

[Alan Tully]

Wow! Brave choice!

The Lone Ranger (2013)

Ha, well...I'm not much of a fan of Johnny Depp or the films of Gore Verbinski, & I just hate those overindulgent Pirates films, so I naturally thought I'd hate this one. I may have even posted somewhere what rubbish it is, which is really not on, seeing as I'd never seen it. Anyway, it was on TV & I thought I might as well record it, & them sometime after I tried to watch it, but it turned out that I only had the first 20 minutes & then the recording had crashed, but I was surprised (& horrified!) just how much I enjoyed those 20 minutes, so I bought the Blu-ray (just a couple of pounds s/h), saw the whole film & loved it, & I've seen it a few times since. The only thing I don't like is the silly train chase at the end, but that's just a tiny bit of a long film (& I love the fun fair framing device).

So...not everyone's idea of a great western, but it deserves to be on my list, as does Mackenna's Gold, another favourite of mine

 

[Detour (1945)]

Wow! Brave choice!

He's not aLone in his love for this film, THE LONE RANGER (2013) is vastly underrated and was generally pooh-poohed by Lone Ranger purists before it was even released.

So it never had a chance. Doesn't make it a bad film.

 

[Tino]

He's not aLone in his love for this film, THE LONE RANGER (2013) is vastly underrated and was generally pooh-poohed by Lone Ranger purists before it was even released.

So it never had a chance. Doesn't make it a bad film.

I’ve seen it. It’s a terrible film.

Good films always have a chance by the way. They always overcome all bad buzz.

 

[TravisR]

He's not aLone in his love for this film, THE LONE RANGER (2013) is vastly underrated and was generally pooh-poohed by Lone Ranger purists before it was even released.

So it never had a chance. Doesn't make it a bad film.

I think the last act of The Lone Ranger is absolutely fantastic. Once The William Tell Overture starts, the movie is an incredibly fun movie.

Good films always have a chance by the way. They overcome all bad buzz.

Time is the real deciding factor because plenty have failed and then been found a decade later and plenty of movies have made tons of money but are largely forgotten in less than 5 or 10 years. That's not say that The Lone Ranger will be seen as a classic one day (and Johnny Depp playing a Native American isn't going to help it and the way things are going, simply having Armie Hammer & Johnny Depp in it isn't exactly helping it either) but plenty of good movies don't initially overcome bad buzz.

 

[Tino]

but plenty of good movies don't initially overcome bad buzz.

Name some. I really can’t think of one Travis. I’m not talking solely about box office success either.

For example Titanic overcame bad buzz.
Avatar and World War Z are a few others.

 

[Tino]

I think the last act of The Lone Ranger is absolutely fantastic. Once The William Tell Overture starts, the movie is an incredibly fun movie.

I do recall enjoying this part but it just wasn’t enough to erase the disaster that came before it.

 

[TravisR]

Name some. I really can’t think of one Travis. I’m not talking solely about box office success either.

For example Titanic overcame bad buzz.
Avatar and World War Z are a few others.

"Bad buzz" in the sense of early word of mouth about a movie? I couldn't tell you because, unless it was a massive movie like Heaven's Gate, the general public didn't care about that junk until the rise of the internet. I mean when a movie has its initial release, does poorly but the movie is eventually embraced. That means Blade Runner, The Thing, most of David Lynch's movies, etc.

 

[Tino]

"Bad buzz" in the sense of early word of mouth about a movie? I couldn't tell you because, unless it was a massive movie like Heaven's Gate, the general public didn't care about that junk until the rise of the internet. I mean when a movie has its initial release, does poorly but the movie is eventually embraced. That means Blade Runner, The Thing, most of David Lynch's movies, etc.

So you’re talking solely about performing poorly at the box office and then later being embraced.

I’m talking about films whose buzz about its quality was bad but turned out to be good films. And they all overcame their bad buzz.

 

[Alan Tully]

I think in the end you just like what you like. There's plenty of classic westerns that do nothing for me. Red River, the Wayne character is a bad tempered bore, & I just don't buy into the reconciliation at the end, & the pace of Rio Bravo is just a wee bit too leisurely for me (I'd give it another chance if a watchable Blu-ray was released). I put There Was A Crooked Man...on my list, but I haven't seen it for decades, I remember enjoying it all those years ago, I suppose I'm waiting for a WAC Blu-ray release. Number one for me is The Wild Bunch, is gets better every time I watch it.

 

[AshJW]

I’ve seen it. It’s a terrible film.

Good films always have a chance by the way. They always overcome all bad buzz.

I’ve seen it too, and I disagree. It’s nowhere near of my favourite Western movies, but I liked the film
It wasn’t great but I had enough fun with it. And sometimes that is enough for me.

 

[Tino]

Jeez you guys are making me want to revisit it. I own it digitally so I’ll give it a “digital spin” soon.

 

[TravisR]

Jeez you guys are making me want to revisit it. I own it digitally so I’ll give it a “digital spin” soon.

Worst case scenario, skip to the climax.

 

[AshJW]

Jeez you guys are making me want to revisit it. I own it digitally so I’ll give it a “digital spin” soon.

If you still don’t like it then it’s not mend to be.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

The Lone Ranger (2013)

Ha, well...I'm not much of a fan of Johnny Depp or the films of Gore Verbinski, & I just hate those overindulgent Pirates films, so I naturally thought I'd hate this one. I may have even posted somewhere what rubbish it is, which is really not on, seeing as I'd never seen it. Anyway, it was on TV & I thought I might as well record it, & them sometime after I tried to watch it, but it turned out that I only had the first 20 minutes & then the recording had crashed, but I was surprised (& horrified!) just how much I enjoyed those 20 minutes, so I bought the Blu-ray (just a couple of pounds s/h), saw the whole film & loved it, & I've seen it a few times since. The only thing I don't like is the silly train chase at the end, but that's just a tiny bit of a long film (& I love the fun fair framing device).

So...not everyone's idea of a great western, but it deserves to be on my list, as does Mackenna's Gold, another favourite of mine

While I would probably not list this picture among my favorite westerns and certainly not best westerns I did love it when I saw it. I think I expressed that here in a thread about the film.

I actually think the film falls into a specific category of pictures and is a "tribute" film. As what it does, and does quite well I think, is pay tribute to moviemaking primarily the western genre but also silent films and sort of the history of filmmaking. It's less a western than a love letter to making pictures.

Probably the film I would most compare it to was another picture that bombed but that I absolutely love, Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon. While Nickelodeon is obviously more overtly about making motion pictures The Lone Ranger is about it mostly through the lens of the western and post Quentin Tarantino whose pictures are all love letters to the movies.

I think to actually enjoy The Lone Ranger you would have to have seen a lot of westerns, some silent pictures, and generally love the western genre and movies about movies. I think if you go into it wanting a "Lone Ranger" picture the film immediately begins to screw with you and essentially does not let up. If they called the film Tonto probably more people would have liked it as the picture begins as his story and most of the focus is who Tonto is and how he ended up the way he is.

It sort of attempts to play as a Lone Ranger origin story meant to lead into several other films but as usual with things involving Armie Hammer, his character never becomes the most interesting thing in the film. In fact he is kind of part of the background.

So, I am of two minds about the film. I love it for what it is but totally understand people that wanted a Lone Ranger picture finding it awful. It is a bad Lone Ranger film but a great tribute to so many other westerns and of course in the train sequence Harold Lloyd style silent comedy. I think the film is a blast but I never expected in 2013 to see a film paying tribute to Little Big Man, Once Upon a Time in the West, John Ford, and Harold Lloyd all in one picture. Sure, it is stealing right and left from other pictures but this is how Tarantino creates his films as well...albeit while also coming up with massive monologues for his characters to spew.

I also love that it is a pretty damn weird piece of filmmaking for a Disney picture. So, not a great western but a fantastic and fun tribute film.