My favorites include:
Rio Bravo. Hawks' antidote to the absurdity of "High Noon." It's one of the greatest Westerns ever made, and set the pattern for a thousand action films to come. The whole opening segment is done with virtually no dialog and is a remarkable piece of filmmaking. Wayne is paired off with Walter Brennan as the sidekick Stumpy and Dean Martin as a washed up drunk of a deputy. Brennan was an academy award winning actor, and brings a depth to the sidekick role. Martin was no stranger to the bottle, and does a surprisingly good job in the film. The shootouts are fantastic. Hawks himself remade it twice. "El Dorado" is the best of these, and in some ways an improvement on the original.
Stagecoach, of course.
Red River and
The SearchersI count "
Treasure of the Sierra Madre" as a Western, and it also happens to be one of the top ten greatest films of all time.
I really liked "
Silverado." It's an homage to the golden age westerns and it works very well.
For grittier westerns I Walter Hill's "
The Long Riders." It brought a historical realism and grit to the genre many years before "Unforgiven."
For TV westerns, "
Lonesome Dove" is the best.
"
Tombstone" was fun, but I wish it had more Sam Elliot.
And speaking of Elliot, I really really loved "
Conagher," the retro TNT B-Western that gave Elliot the time to settle into his role. Pick it up on DVD if you see it.
guess my favorite would be early, early John Wayne westerns shot long before he became a big star. He appeared in a blue hundred B grade westerns.
A lot of these have been coming out on DVD lately. "
Tall in the Saddle" is one of my favorites. It was made in '44, when Wayne was already well on his way to becoming an A-List superstar. But the plot and style are a throwback to the serial Westerns of the 1930's. It pairs Wayne with Gabby Hayes in several memorable scenes.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037343/I've never cared much for Shane, High Noon, Dances with Wolves, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Little Big Man, or any of the other "squishy" or touchy-feely westerns.
I like the Italian westerns as fun popcorn films, but don't care much for "Once Upon A Time in the West" because it tries to look serious and just ends up looking silly.
I hated "The Quick and the Dead," the one with Sharon Stone in it. Hackman looked very happy to finally get put out of his misery. A western with that Dicaprio punk? Come on.
