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.