The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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Lighthouse
Joined: Sun May 29, 2011 11:12 am

Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje

#926 Post by Lighthouse » Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:11 pm

Oww, fuck, forgot to vote. I thought it was the end of March. It would have changed the list a lot with these few voters.

Nonetheless, my top 20:

The Wild Bunch

Once Upon a Time in the West
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
Little Big Man
The Mercenary
Hombre
Yellow Sky
The Great Silence
High Noon

Major Dundee
The Shooting
Cemetery Without Crosses
My Name is Nobody
El Puro
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
3:10 to Yuma
One Eyed Jacks
My Darling Clementine
Ulzana's Raid

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Drucker
Your Future our Drucker
Joined: Wed May 18, 2011 9:37 am

Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#927 Post by Drucker » Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:59 am

A few recent Warner Archive blu-rays I watched that I wanted to comment on.

The Law and Jake Wade by Sturges seriously delivered. There's a thread somewhere on this forum which comments on Widmark's superb sarcasm and it definitely delivers. The film is very economical in its storytelling and delivers plenty of surprises. Taylor, the protagonist, has several superb escape attempts foiled by Widmark. A great film that gets right to the point and the Warner Blu-ray is one of the best I've seen of a color-western (easily looks as good, as say, Man From Laramie.) Despite all of this, it doesn't seem like the film gets a lot of love on this Western list.

More perplexing to me is the affection apparently shown for Ballad of Cable Hogue which I found to be a very frustrating film. The film starts promisingly, with Hogue trying to survive in the desert without water or supplies, sabotaged by fellow men. Once he survives and sets up shop, however, the movie takes a bad turn into parody territory, with godawful attempts at humor. The folksy charm of Hogue quickly wears off and the film seems to needlessly meander. Is Hogue actually trying to start a business? If not, what exactly is he doing in this "ballad" style movie? The movie spends time showing us Hogue isn't too bright, but then seems to contradict himself as he realizes the Reverend can't be trusted and Hildy is bound to leave.

The last quarter of the movie gets good again. He gets to have a real showdown with his initial rivals, and the film does a perfect job of ending on this "ballad" style note. Hogue finally becomes the folksy hero he should have always been, and the psychedelic tone of history passing him by in the last few scenes does an amazing job of showing how Peckinpah could do more than bloody revenge films. But it's too litlte too late for this ridiculously uneven film.

Anybody here a big admirer of the film? Would love to read a good defense of it.

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ando
Bringing Out El Duende
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Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje

#928 Post by ando » Sat Jun 29, 2019 2:46 am

domino harvey wrote:
Tue Aug 11, 2015 6:44 pm
Gettysburg (Ronald F Maxwell 1993) I dutifully watched all four and a half hours of this in one sitting, and despite critic and advertising claims to the contrary, I'd estimate maybe twenty minutes of that is devoted to actual battle scenes. The rest is filled with name actors in stage beards taking turns belting out "insightful" monologues that are so toothless and safe that the only impression one takes away from the time is that everyone was a perfect little would-be hero. Four and a half hours with a bunch of scruffy Mary Sues is a lot to take, and I kept hoping any of these real life characters would exhibit a personality trait beyond excessive angelic resolve. No such luck. Claims on the film's accuracy are a joke. What this movie really does is make all the Civil War fetishists dreams come true by presenting a sanitized vision of war that reinforces every noble idea fans of the era already hold. Points awarded to the producers for knowing their audience, but this is pretty weak for the rest of us.
Well, that's discouraging (though unsurprising). Looks like it falls into the Glory of The Civil War category. Too bad. Nothing glorious about that tragedy.

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FrauBlucher
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Location: Greenwich Village

Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#929 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:25 am

Last night I watched Stagecoach. I can't think of another Western that has all of the Western mythologies in it like Stagecoach. I'm sure there are.

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L.A.
Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 7:33 am
Location: Helsinki, Finland

Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#930 Post by L.A. » Tue Sep 08, 2020 5:44 pm

The Grey Fox (1982)
Thousand Pieces of Gold (1991)

What about these two, any good?

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#931 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Nov 26, 2020 5:33 pm

Cold Mountain: It's astonishing that this wasn't nominated for Best Picture, considering its strokes are right on the pulse of the Romantic Epic- an extensive character drama with a tonal flow stressing tragedy and possibility in equal measures. Within the structure of a dramatic war film, we get a classically puritanical romance juxtaposed with the recognized cruelty of revisionist western milieus. The contrast of this conservative love poem with the perverse, and at times surreal encounters, makes the magnetism to the traditional love arc feel all the more earned.
SpoilerShow
The drunken pitstop into a hailstorm of sexual deviance in the middle of the film is a wholly disturbing -rather than erotic- setpiece, contrasting the subjective experience of Law and our surrogate formalist aims with liberal pandemonium of id. I especially loved the choice to intersplice multiple camera angles in a turbulent back-and forth, from a close intimate identification with Law in his inebriated confusion to an aloof bird's eye ceiling view as Melora Walters attempts to forcibly seduce him, which gave me a dizzying, distanced effect reflecting Law's own sexual aversion in this scene.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#932 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Dec 15, 2020 12:38 am

The Grey Fox

I feel compelled to make a plug for this widely unseen film that's just popped up this year with a new restoration from KL, and will hopefully accrue a cult following soon. This is a humble revisionist western and distinctive biopic, that finds authentic grace in existential ambitions and the lovely power of choice, regardless of externally-defined morality. Richard Farnsworth is dynamic in an honest performance that elicits genuine empathy for a man who equates liberation via train-robbing with his own spiritual essence, and the gorgeous scenery patterned over his quietly enthusiastic self-actualization renders attention to ambiguous relativist philosophies insignificant: Instead, this is a character study that celebrates the will to takes one's life back from years lost, gently fighting time by living each moment on the edge like it was the last, and basking at small gifts in corporeal details within human interaction and inanimate environmental beauty. The care to show all this in poised juxtaposition between human presence and mother nature is mystical, and it's a unique subversion of the revisionist western in just how toned-down, meditative, and humanistic the vibe strikes without any restless stirs to be anything else. Above all else, this a perfect vehicle for Farnsworth, whose personality sells the film as original and true. In another actor's hands it would probably be either dull, conventional, or both, but Farnsworth's recognizable internalized humanity mirrors a part of all of our souls, and watching him move through the world with exhaustion, contentment, tragic sentimentality, and playfulness is a sincere brand of habitable optimism we can all buy into just a little. The diverse methods of narrative delivery, wavering from autumn-glazed transcendentalism to early silent-film-era graphics and shaky inter-titles a la The Great Train Robbery is a creative decision in step with the all-encompassing paradoxical tranquil and vibrant energies of our protagonist; and in an admirable effort to completely smash the bland trappings of the biopic, the film ends with an election to sell an inspired myth, which the filmmakers understand perfectly embodies the man's ethos to reach across the restrictive boundaries of society into the possibilities beyond the frames of normative existence. A worthy blind-buy from Kino Lorber.

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FrauBlucher
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Location: Greenwich Village

Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#933 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Jan 01, 2022 1:05 pm

Going back over the list I was surprised to see The Furies didn't make the top 100. I wonder if that would change given the release of the bluray.

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