The Great Westerns
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James Stewart and Walter Brennan in The Far Country
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Horse Operas
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
I've always loved Westerns. It's such a troubled genre, always so
dangerously old-fashioned and just about ready to vanish from existence.
But of course, that mirrors the wild west itself, and the genre's
appeal; it, too, was always ready to vanish as boring old civilization
encroached.
I guess I also love the genre because I grew up in a small town that
had been the location of many Western films, ranging from High
Noon to Pale Rider and Back to the Future Part III. So
now this is a list of the best, and my favorites, that I have seen and
reviewed over the years. If there is no link to a review, that means I
simply haven't reviewed it yet, but hope to get to it someday.
For this list, I decided to leave off hybrids of the genre, such as
the sci-fi/Western (the aforementioned Back to the Future Part
III, Cowboys vs. Aliens, etc.), animated Westerns
(Rango, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West), or anything
that strayed too close to the war genre (Major Dundee) or modern
times (Bad Day at Black Rock, Junior Bonner, No Country
for Old Men, Hell or High Water, etc.).
If you're interested in the great American genre, I hope you get some
use out of this list. Please keep checking back, as I will hopefully
update from time to time.
Dark Command (1940)
The Return of Frank James (1940)
Western Union (1941)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
Duel in the Sun (1946)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
Pursued (1947)
Ramrod (1947)
Fort Apache (1948)
Red River (1948)
3 Godfathers (1948)
I Shot Jesse James (1949)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
Broken Arrow (1950)
Devil's Doorway (1950)
The Furies (1950)
The Gunfighter (1950)
Rio Grande (1950)
Wagon Master (1950)
Winchester '73 (1950)
Bend of the River (1952)
The Big Sky (1952)
The Duel at Silver Creek (1952)
High Noon (1952)
Rancho Notorious (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
Hondo (1953)
The Naked Spur (1953)
Shane (1953)
The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953)
Woman They Almost Lynched (1953)
Apache (1954)
Cattle Queen of Montana (1954)
The Far Country (1954)
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Passion (1954)
River of No Return (1954)
Silver Lode (1954)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Man from Laramie (1955)
The Naked Dawn (1955)
Run for Cover (1955)
Tennessee's Partner (1955)
Wichita (1955)
The Searchers (1956)
Seven Men from Now (1956)
Decision at Sundown (1957)
Forty Guns (1957)
The Halliday Brand (1957)
The Tall T (1957)
3:10 to Yuma (1957)
Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)
Man of the West (1958)
Day of the Outlaw (1959)
The Hangman (1959)
Westbound (1959)
Ride Lonesome (1959)
Rio Bravo (1959)
Comanche Station (1960)
Flaming Star (1960)
The Comancheros (1961)
One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Ride the High Country (1962)
Cheyenne Autumn (1964)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
For a Few Dollars More (1965)
Major Dundee (1965)
Ride in the Whirlwind (1965)
Django (1966)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
The Shooting (1966)
Navajo Joe (1966)
El Dorado (1967)
Will Penny (1967)
The Mercenary (1968)
The Great Silence (1968)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1969)
True Grit (1969)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Companeros (1970)
Rio Lobo (1970)
Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)
The Hired Hand (1971)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Bad Company (1972)
The Grand Duel (1972)
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972)
Joe Kidd (1972)
Ulzana's Raid (1972)
High Plains Drifter (1973)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)
Keoma (1976)
The Missouri Breaks (1976)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
The Shootist (1976)
The Long Riders (1980)
Pale Rider (1985)
Silverado (1985)
Young Guns (1988)
Dances With Wolves (1990)
Young Guns II (1990)
Unforgiven (1992)
The Ballad of Little Jo (1993)
Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)
Posse (1993)
Tombstone (1993)
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Wild Bill (1995)
Dead Man (1996)
Lone Star (1996)
Open Range (2003)
The Proposition (2005)
Bandidas (2006)
Broken Trail (2006)
Seraphim Falls (2006)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Appaloosa (2008)
True Grit (2010)
Meek's Cutoff (2011)
The Homesman (2014)
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
The Hateful Eight (2015)
The Salvation (2015)
Slow West (2015)
Forsaken (2016)
In a Valley of Violence (2016)
The Magnificent Seven (2016)
The Ballad of Lefty Brown (2017)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Damsel (2018)
Painted Woman (2018)
The Sisters Brothers (2018)
Woman Walks Ahead (2018)
The Kid (2019)
The Harder They Fall (2021)
Old Henry (2021)
The Power of the Dog (2021)
Dead for a Dollar (2022)
Strange Way of Life (2023)
Surrounded (2023)
