Your Top 3 westerns of all time?

The 2 best homages to the great Hollywood western that I can always watch are Maverick and Silverado.

 

I generally only like "transitional" Westerns, where the world of the cowboy is falling apart and things are changing.

My favorites are:

Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
Little Big Man
The Wild Bunch

I would also give some merit to Django:Unchained, which is almost a Western (or at least is a late 1860s film). And I'd put the original Magnificent Seven in there as well. And Blazing Saddles is on my "Top 10 Greatest Films Ever Made" list, though I guess that's more a comedy than a Western.

I also liked Silverado when it was first released, and I got to meet Lawrence Kasdan on a set about 15 years ago. I told him I generally didn't like Westerns, but I liked the fact that he managed to include (and improve on) every standard Western convention ever done, particularly with stunts, in that one film. He thought that was hilarious and agreed that it was his way of assembling "Western film's greatest hits" in one film.

 

I worked on Open Range for two solid months, and I can tell you the producers and director on that film bent over backwards to make it absolutely as accurate as they possibly could. There's a scene about 15 minutes before the end where you see a farmsteader nailing up some barbed wire, and the editor told me they checked to make sure that barbed wire actually existed in 1882 (when the film took place). It had just been introduced that year, so they went ahead and let it stay in the movie. The types of guns shown and their sounds was also extremely authentic and true to the period.

 

Forgot to include this one :

 

Yeah, someone like me, who knows antique firearms, who knows period dress, and hairstyles and fashion can really appreciate things like this, because believe me, I see it and love it. Hell, I even know a bit about construction and nails, tools and language from back in the day, going beyond the Civil War.

Open Range was very, very close as far as I could tell. Perhaps not as close with their language and hairstyles, as let's say The Assassination of Jesse James...but I mean, from there I'm just picking nits where none needs to be picked. If it can engulf you and make you feel like you're there, like Open Range, then it's done its job fantastically.

I really want to give a shout out to The Revenant. Not for depicting true events, as it was a lot of Hollywood, but the clothes, the manner of speaking, the weapons, the Indians, the homes and the settlements, the ox carts, the boats, were all done fantastically from a historical standpoint. That's a Western, right?

 

1. Open Range
2. How The West Was Won
3. Lonesome Dove

 

Top 3 in no particular order...

Good, Bad, Ugly
Unforgiven
Josey Wales

-->Honorable Mention: Django Unchained, High Plains Drifter

 

The Three Amigos

 

"Chip-chip-chip-chip-NANEEEE!"

 

1) The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
2) The Wild Bunch
3) Once Upon A Time in the West

 

Did you only work in post or were you on set also?
I think the movie was shot in Alberta, around Calgary, right? The scenery is beautiful!
I remember renting the DVD in 2004, knowing nothing about it because it never had a theatrical relase over here. But when I saw Costner's and Duvall's name and the western setting, I knew I was in for a treat.
Definitely a top ten western for me

 

No, only in post, but I worked for weeks with DP Jimmy Muro, who did brilliant work on the lighting of Open Range. That's one of those interesting films that seems natural to the eye, but there were actually 160 "invisible" visual effects going on, plus a ton of fairly complicated color correction. A lot of work went into making it look like a very old-fashioned Western. The studio pressured Costner at one point to cut about :30 seconds to get a PG-13 rating, but he refused to back down and kept all those shots in; the main bit was the one where Duvall shoots a bad guy through a wall with a shotgun, and the camera kind of lingers on the guy as he hits another wall and dies. The film was surprisingly successful.

 

Yes, I would very definitely call The Revenant a Western, and a pretty huge, epic film by any measure.

 

Is it released in the US on blu-ray yet? I have the Swedish version and it looks and sounds great. I don't know how the theatrical version looked like but the french version seems very off


swedish

french

 

a couple of classics not mentioned with Lee Van Cleef -
Death Rides a Horse & Sabata

For a Few Dollars More is my No.1 of all time

 

Nobody sneers better than Richard Widmark...

 

If it qualifies, I wasn't sure if it did, then it's my favorite western of all-time.

 

A few more gems: Pursued, A Man Alone, The Tin Star, Last of the Mohicans (the Mann version), True Grit (both versions, though I prefer the Bridges one), Bad Company, Support Your Local Sheriff, The Wagonmaster, Geronimo: An American Legend, Eagle's Wing, Jubal and some modern Westerns, Bad Day at Black Rock and Junior Bonner, Lone Star, JW Coop, Powwow Highway and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid
Unforgiven

(The Three Amigos)

 

Mine have already been mentioned.

1) Unforgiven
2) Once Upon A Time In The West
3) The Outlaw Josey Wales

Honorable mention: Blazing Saddles

A new one people should check out: Bone Tomahawk ..... it's not your typical western, but it has great dialog and is earning a bit of a cult following, from both western and horror fans.

 

I liked "Bone Tomahawk" a lot, too.

 

One Eyed Jacks
Lonesome Dove
Little Big Man

 

Richard Jenkins (the sidekick) has some of the best lines. It's worth watching for him alone.

 

I really liked the movie though it was kind of a cross genre type of thing. Some ridiculous parts to it, but the movie was solid. The end theme was glaringly awful.

/end

 

Westerns are a seriously overrated genre, but provide good entertainment
I'm glad The Grey Fox has been mentioned, aside from being an excellent film, the theme music by Paddy Moloney from The Chieftains long before it became selectively avant garde to make use of the unbridled, unrestrained melody tones of the uilleann pipes, ie if you discount Barry Lyndon.

I'd go for
3.10 to Yuma (is there really a need to mention 1957?)
Unforgiven
can't decide between the all time classics, either Shane or High Noon.

honorable mentions to Northern Lights which still resonates some 30 or so years since i've seen it
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=1&res=9402E6DB1039E732A25755C2A96F9C946890D6CF&partner=Rotten%2520Tomatoes