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Top 10 Westerns Of All Time


A24

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I desperately tried to get that movie but all i saw was a standard 50's John Wayne oater with an awful score that was beautifully shot/framed (at least). There are remarkable Ford pictures nobody ever speaks of (he did a lot of non-westerns for Fox, too, comedies, historical dramas, and so on) which is the real shame here.

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15 minutes ago, publicist said:

I desperately tried to get that movie but all i saw was a standard 50's John Wayne oater 

 

 I can't stand John Wayne. Never understood the appeal. 

 

At least I'm glad Cinefix differentiates between the Revisionist Western (or Anti-Western) and the Italian Spaghetti Western. I'm afraid my personal top 10 Western list would consists of nothing else but the former.

 

 

 

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I certainly remember the Anthony Mann/James Stewart westerns form my childhood (not to mention euro Karl May 'westerns') and love weird genre crossings (mexican revolutionary things like 'Il Mercenario' or 'Giu la Testa', or Peckinpah's 'Cable Hogue') in addition to canon stuff so my list would grow fairly large regardless of being not a fan of the genre. The addition of 'Star Wars' seems crappy stunt casting, though.

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13 minutes ago, publicist said:

not to mention euro Karl May 'westerns'

Winnetou Cinematic Universe is better than everything

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1 hour ago, publicist said:

(not to mention euro Karl May 'westerns')

 

I believe they were especially popular in Germany. 

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10 hours ago, Omen II said:

Shane has one of the best movie villains in Jack Palance, as well as a great Victor Young score and beautiful cinematography.  The child actor (Brandon de Wilde) died young in a road traffic accident.

 

 

My favourite Clint Eastwood western is The Outlaw Josey Wales.  I reckon so.

You like my hair? I had it done Clint Eastwood style. You see Outlaw Yosey Wales? Heh, heh, what a flick! 

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6 hours ago, The Original said:

That VistaVision process is sublime.

 

And yet - as a process of shooting live-action - it went out almost as soon as it came in.

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10 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

And yet - as a process of shooting live-action - it went out almost as soon as it came in.

 

Funny that, since the sideways process is the same as a regular 35mm still camera anyway.

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Yeah, its not that much detailed than slow, Super-35mm/anamorphic photography, so people stopped bothering with it.

 

Also, in the days prior to digital projection, you couldn't project VistaVision, so you had to print it unto 35mm, a process during which it would lose much of its luster.

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I feel like Koray hasn't seen enough US westerns to make any such sweeping determination. I like a small handful of the spaghetti ones, but really the US originals have an incomparable quality ratio advantage right across the board.

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11 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

I have nothing against Ford, but the Italian western is vastly superior to the American western. 

This. 

 

I've only just started to delve into Westerns of all kinds this past year, but for me Spaghetti Westerns rule and are most definitely headlined by Sergio Leone's unmistakable craft. Yeah, they may not be as pretty to look at as the classic American Westerns (although Once Upon a Time in the West nails it with the ride through Monument Valley [even though John Ford did it first] accompanied by Morricone's main theme), but that doesn't mean they aren't well shot. In fact, Leone's cinematography is probably my greatest attraction to these films, with trademarking quick zooms, ridiculously awesome close-ups, and wide panning shots that often capture a climactic showdown. What's not to like? 

 

Interestingly, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly opens with a wide landscape-capturing shot interrupted by a close-up of a weathered and sunburnt old man (see below). It's masterful cinema in my opinion. 

 

image.jpegimage.jpeg

 

Plus, Leone's ability to draw out a finale into 6+ minutes of suspenseful waiting is an unrivaled gift. And Morricone's respective scores are  eternally memorable, and rightfully so.

 

Of course, the plot can get a tad messy. Once Upon a Time in the West, considered Leone's masterpiece by some, was hardly as attractive as the Dollars Trilogy. It got caught up in unclear allegiances, confusing land rights, revenge stories that are remain indistinct for an extended period of time, and all that fun stuff. I'd wager tha the Dollars Trilogy is definitely the height of Leone's career, and collectively trumps Once Upon a Time in the West, as well as many other Westerns, both Italian and American.

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3 hours ago, The Illustrious Jerry said:

This. 

 

I've only just started to delve into Westerns of all kinds this past year, but for me Spaghetti Westerns rule and are most definitely headlined by Sergio Leone's unmistakable craft. Yeah, they may not be as pretty to look at as the classic American Westerns (although Once Upon a Time in the West nails it with the ride through Monument Valley [even though John Ford did it first] accompanied by Morricone's main theme), but that doesn't mean they aren't well shot. In fact, Leone's cinematography is probably my greatest attraction to these films, with trademarking quick zooms, ridiculously awesome close-ups, and wide panning shots that often capture a climactic showdown. What's not to like? 

 

Interestingly, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly opens with a wide landscape-capturing shot interrupted by a close-up of a weathered and sunburnt old man (see below). It's masterful cinema in my opinion. 

 

image.jpegimage.jpeg

 

Plus, Leone's ability to draw out a finale into 6+ minutes of suspenseful waiting is an unrivaled gift. And Morricone's respective scores are  eternally memorable, and rightfully so.

 

Of course, the plot can get a tad messy. Once Upon a Time in the West, considered Leone's masterpiece by some, was hardly as attractive as the Dollars Trilogy. It got caught up in unclear allegiances, confusing land rights, revenge stories that are remain indistinct for an extended period of time, and all that fun stuff. I'd wager tha the Dollars Trilogy is definitely the height of Leone's career, and collectively trumps Once Upon a Time in the West, as well as many other Westerns, both Italian and American.

 

To me this just sounds like a longer way of saying, "I recently watched a bunch of westerns and I loved the Sergio Leone ones, so based on that I now consider spaghetti westerns the greatest thing about an entire genre."

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2 hours ago, Fabulin said:

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance... no amount of riding through the desert doing camera tricks can substitute a script like this.

I love a good script but it’s the lack of dialogue that makes Leone’s films superior. The story is told through the camera. 

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5 hours ago, The Illustrious Jerry said:

Of course, the plot can get a tad messy. Once Upon a Time in the West, considered Leone's masterpiece by some, was hardly as attractive as the Dollars Trilogy.

 

You can find little bits that don’t work in those films, too. The Italian-cut of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (marketed as the “extended cut”) definitely runs a bit too long, and it’s true of the unabridged cuts of quite a few of Leone’s films.

 

I’m dreading the upcoming four-and-a-half hour cut of Once Upon a Time in America: there’s little to suggest that Leone ever meant for the film to run so long.

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Criminy! I don't know if it's a strange sort of nationalism or just downright stubbornness, but why the massive disregard and disapproval of spaghetti westerns and their fans? I'm surprised, and yet I'm not. 

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