My Video Series on Top Ten Westerns

Jean Renoir said, "the marvelous thing about Westerns is that they're all the same movie. This gives a director unlimited freedom" which helps explain what's great about Westerns and genre movies in general: Watching the same basic template over and over and seeing different directors or film studios have their own take on it. It's also refreshing to see an action film that you can easily believe has zero CGI enhancement to it. The 1957 film "3:10 to Yuma" and its 2007 remake are shot almost the same way.

For a writing assignment (10 greatest Western gunfights of all time), I had to watch old Westerns and ended up remembering what was so great about the genre. I was bummed out when the article proved too time-intensive to be worth it (watching five movies back-to-back will do that for you) and ended up not panning out, but I really enjoyed many of these old films and thought I'd make a pair of YouTube videos about it (the quarantine boredom cure).   

I still have no technical abilities to make a video but I've figured out how to broadcast trailer clips and I started employing a tripod in the second video. Fund me through patreon to get me making better quality videos.

My picks are: 

 10 Unforgiven (1992), dir. Clint Eastwood, starring Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris, Morgan Freeman, Saul Rubineck, Frances Fisher 

9 3:10 to Yuma (2007), dir. James Mangold, starring Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Ben Foster, Gretchen Mol, Logan Lerman, Peter Fonda 

8 My Darling Clementine (1946) dir. John Ford, starring Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, John Ireland, Ward Bond, Cathy Downs 

7 McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971) dir. Robert Altman, starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Aubejonois, Shelley Duvall, Burt Remsen, Keith Carradine, William DeVane 

6 Cat Ballou (1965) dir. Elliot Silverstein starring Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin, Dwayne Hickman, Michael Cabin, Tom Nardini 

The next video:
5 The Magnificent Seven (1970) dir. John Sturges starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, Eli Wallach 

4 Wild Bunch (1969) dir. Sam Peckinpah starring William Holden, Warren Oates, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson, Edmund O'Brien, Robert Ryan, Jaime Sanchez 

3 Stagecoach (1939) dir. John Ford, starring John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell, Tim Holt, Donald Meek 

2 The Searchers (1956) dir. John Ford, starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Natalie Wood, Ward Bond, Vera Miles 

1 High Noon (1952) dir. Fred Zinnemann, starring Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado, Thomas Mitchell, Otto Kruger, Ian MacDonald

I'm also considering doing another video where I talk about some runners-up which include:
Rio Bravo (1959)-Don't remember it well and it's been advertised as a hang out movie but that describes many a Western so I don't buy it as a defining reason why this film is great.

The Shootist (1976)-A wonderful film that pushes the genre forward by asking the question: What would happen if a gunslinger surprised himself by living long enough to die of old age? The platonic relationship with a Christian woman (Lauren Bacall) and her son (Ron Howard) is a nice counterbalance to a genre that. I had a morality problem with J.B. Books's reasoning for setting up the final gunfight: He claimed to never have killed anyone who never deserved it, but he knew Cobb for thirty seconds and never even met Pulford so how did he know that they were worth luring to their deaths in an entirely unnecessary shoot-out. But, still, it was quite a shoot-out!

Gunfight at the OK Coral (1976)-My Darling Clementine deserves more credit because John Ford carved out a story out of disparate historical events whereas John Sturges made something in the mold established by Ford. Among the notable changes, there are some positives such as the fleshing out of the Earps, the grater historical accuracy, the more dynamic development of Doc Holiday, Dennis Hopper as Billy Clanton, and a gunfight that lasted longer.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)-A Western in the outlaw tradition that has won its fair share of accolades. The chemistry between Redford and Newman was heavily praised when the film came out and the film's whimsical celebration of the two outlaws came at a time when cinema was in need of counter-cultural heroes. I love that the film features two guys who are similarly dense that neither of them think very far ahead. The film's also notable in that it takes place across multiple continents. One question is how successful would the film have been if it didn't have its stars?
Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)-The Coen brothers latest (though not only) Western is a comic-tragic look at multiple chapters of the evolution of the genre. It might have been truly cinematic if it tied all its disparate chapters into one story.

Seven Classics I've Recently Watched For the First Time

Credit: Blu-Ray.com

The Verdict (1982):
Overview: The Verdict is one of the most praised courtroom dramas of all time. It sits at #4 on AFI's list of courtroom dramas and was nominated for best picture. Before I watched it, a friend also told me that this was a comeback of sorts for Paul Newman.
Did it Live up to the Hype? Yes. It transcends the typical courtroom drama because it's a very good character piece. Its also an epic showdown of good verse evil or, more specifically, the corporate industrial complex. It is also hard to argue that Paul Newman isn't the bomb here though it's a bit odd that he's cast opposite a much younger woman (Charlotte Rampling). I know Newman was a sex symbol but was septugernarian Newman a sex symbol? It's also worth noting that there's not as many court scenes here as your average film of this genre. There are only three court sessions and much of the action is Paul Newman and associate Mickey (Jack Warden) dealing with the aftermath of an impulsive bad decision, along with parallel scenes showing James Mason working his skeevey tactics

The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Overview: John Sturges' second greatest film next to "The Great Escape" and the film that introduced him to Steve McQueen. Its one of the great professional Westerns with a star-studded cast and one of the best instrumental theme songs ever written.
Is it worth the hype? Yes. The cast might seem bloated but there's enough space to develop all their stories. The Mexican town feels as boxed in and fake as one of the alien planet sets on Star Trek but its a film rich in color and it feels in place for its time period. Its also a film with action scenes that are of higher caliber than many Westerns that came before it (though its not as impressive as Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpagh would later take the genre)

Being John Malkovich (1999)
Overview: The film was a bizarre mobius strip of a premise that somehow was woven together into an entertaining comedy but it also hit people by surprise since writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze were such unknowns (though Jonze had made a name for himself in commercials). It was as extraordinary debut for both talents.
Did it love up to the hype? Yeah, yeah and ye, which is to say I watched it two and a half times. The three central characters are wonderfully formed comic creations (Cameron Diaz has never been less sexy and Catherine Keener has never been more sexy, which is to say quite a bit of character work), the film's world building is so strong that its mythology (I.e. how did Merkin guide Malkovich's parents? what happens to the kid? etc) can be debated for pages and pages, and it packs a lot of humor and sentiment into one of the most avant-garde comedy premises ever seen in a mainstream ilm.

Credit: UWMBored.com

The Princess Bride (1987)
(Note: I did see when I was 11, still a very very long time ago)
Overview: The film is a classic because it is an archetypical fairy tale that was likely THE fairy tale for an entire generation of kids who grew up in the '80s. It likely wasn't just the kids who grew up remembering the film but the parents too as it is layered with an air of wit and irony that many people of all ages can appreciate. On top of that, many of its lines and scenes are iconic parts of movie history at this point.
Did it live up to the hype? I was quite pleased. Because I wasn't dying to check out 1984-1985 when SNL came out on Netflix (only to be later pulled) and I have never seen Soap, this is the only time I ever found Billy Crystal funny in an original way (most of his stuff seems to repeat the same shtick), but the cast is well-placed with every role. The mix of dry irony and humor became much more apparent. Westley wasn't so much a star-struck lover or a passionate warrior as he was a pragmatic and logical guy who seemed genuinely surprised by his fate (becoming the deadliest pirate on the high seas) which made him pretty amusing with a role that's hard to do much with. The swashbuckling scene, which the actors apparently rehearsed for several months--and used a fencing instructor who personally worked with Errol Flynn-- is pretty disappointing when you know all that.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Overview: One of the best-made films of the 1970s and one that best encapsulated the counter-culture spirit retold the tale of a headline-generating bank robbery with the robbers as the most sympathetic parts of the stories, it's a high-water mark of Al Pacino and Sidney Lumet's careers.
Did it live up to the hype: Definitely a good movie but the level of hype for this one is pretty high. For me, it felt like it was trying too hard to Citizen Kane the character by peeling back layers of his past (first the female wife, then the male spouse, then the mother) through various encounters but didn't give them enough time, and like Prince in the City, too many cops and FBI men were cast on the outside. It was a sensational acting performance, however, and there was a very strong sense of tension. It also was an interesting inverse in terms of audience loyalties (although I do believe more bank heist movies lead us to empahize with the robbers over the cops)

East of Eden (1955)
Overview: Elia Kazan's epic film attempts a biblical allegory with depression-era California. How much more ambitious can you get than that? It was made a year after Kazan's landmark film "On the Waterfront" and is possibly the best film of the year it was released (1955 was a somewhat weak year) so it represents quite a hot streak. It was also one of only three films James Dean made before dying at the age of 24 causing him to be a legend since all three films have survived the test of time (all three made AFI's top 100 movies list in 1997).
Did it live up to the hype? It was a little different than I expected but it also lives up to the hype. The film is rich with the kind of symbolism that English lit student can revel in and debate. It also has a wonderful sense of towns and the dichotomy between blue collar agricultural work and urban vice is not only thematically interesting but historically accurate of the settlement of American West where many a state line has been drawn to warden off more salt-of-the-earth laborers from the mining communities and bordellos). The characters lean towards archetypical/allegorical over realism but I'd be hard-pressed to dismiss anything here as melodramatic,


The Shining (1980)
Overview: Stanley Kubrick has had a cult loving every one of his films since I first started logging into the internet in the late 90s and all of his films were on the top 250 on IMDB. The Shining is a landmark horror film and the first use of steadycam work. It's also considered one of the most famous adaptations of legendary author Steven King.
Did it live up to the hype? I saw Ready Player One earlier this year so i saw some scenes of it, and there are all sorts of references to it everywhere (like this mock video of Lorde's Royals)
so I had a lot to work with.

I thought the idea of setting a horror film in a hotel was a great idea because hotels are such creepy places are already and the film plays off that idea pretty well. The film overdoes the musical score to the point of distraction. If you're not hooked, the film's slow moments can pile on as well. For me, it wasn't until second viewing that I really felt entranced enough by the deep well of symbolism. And who isn't a sucker for highly ambiguous endings?