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El Dorado (1967)
El Dorado (1967)
1967 | Action, Drama, Western
Wayne and Mitchum in a great western
A wandering gun for hire comes to the aid of his old friend, now a drunk local sheriff, when some bad men come into town and try and swindle a local family from their ranch's water. Along the way, he picks up a young knife-wielding sidekick to aid him in his quest.

One of the better Wayne westerns I have watched recently. Good action scenes, great acting and an interesting coherent story make this very memorable.

Great to see Wayne alongside Mitchum as well as a very young James Caan and Ed Asner.

Highly recommended.

  
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Dean (6925 KP) rated True Grit (2010) in Movies

Feb 16, 2018  
True Grit (2010)
True Grit (2010)
2010 | Action, Drama, Western
Good Western
A very good and enjoyable film, nevertheless it didn't quite hit the heights I thought it would after all the hype. I haven't seen the '69 John Wayne version but imagine this is a lot "grittier". It's a good story, the acting especially from Bridges as the old scruffy US Marshall and the young girl is superb to watch with a witty script to boot. It just felt a little short and lacking a bit more action to be the epic master piece it has been heralded as. A very good film indeed but not up there in the westerns dept with Unforgiven, The Outlaw Josey Wales.
  
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
2007 | Action, Drama, Western
Not having seen the original I wasnt sure what to expect here and only seeing this within the last few weeks has persuaded me to take another look at westerns.
Although a little muddled in places which could be deliberate as the good guy is considered to be bad and the bad guy played by Russel Crowe shows the briefest elements of good considering he kills incriminately at the opening of the movie.
The plot is also quite improbable at times however this is smoothed over by great moments of tension and action.
It's a good movie but not a great one, but entertaining enough for me to revisit the genre.
  
The Magnificent Seven (2016)
The Magnificent Seven (2016)
2016 | Action, Drama, Western
6
7.4 (33 Ratings)
Movie Rating
2016 remake of an 1960 Western (which I haven't seen), with that original often held up as one of the best Westerns out there and with it itself a remake (of sorts) of an earlier Seven Samurai's film (also haven't seen).

As such, I can't say how closely this compares to either of those two earlier films.

this one, however, has the always reliable Denzel Washington leading a disparate group of cowboys and Indians that includes man-of-the-(then)-moment Chris Pratt alongside a pre-Daredevil (TV version, that is) Vincent D'Onofrio against Ethan Hawke's ruthless gold miner, who is terrorising a small village.
  
Stagecoach (1966)
Stagecoach (1966)
1966 | Action, Classics, Western
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"One of the very few westerns, my favorite classical genre, in the Criterion Collection. How to make an almost huis clos in the immensity of Monument Valley? Only Ford had that secret. The apparition of the great John Wayne in the Ford family, as the Ringo Kid, in a beautiful tracking shot, made him a star. Later, Wayne said about Ford: “This made me a star, and I’ll be grateful to him forever. But I don’t think he ever really had any kind of respect for me as an actor until I made Red River for Howard Hawks, ten years later. Even then, I was never quite sure.”"

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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
2018 | Comedy, Drama, Western
A couple of good stories (0 more)
Mix bag of stories, most with little meaning (0 more)
Not Wanted
Well I like Westerns, Anthology films and some of Coen brothers films are great. So surely this was going to be a sure hit. Much like one of the stories you're hoping for gold but left with barely a glimmer.
6 stories of which a couple were good, a few just average and a dud. The biggest disappointment was that there appeared to be little point to stories, individually or collectively. Halfway through and it was becoming boring and just hoping the next story would be a big improvement. Only to fail. A real shame.
  
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Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated The Sisters Brothers (2018) in Movies

Jan 7, 2019 (Updated Jan 7, 2019)  
The Sisters Brothers (2018)
The Sisters Brothers (2018)
2018 | Drama, Western
Cast all give brilliant performances (1 more)
Quirky filming techniques
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
I was dying to see this movie as soon as I saw the first trailer for it, but even though it dropped in the states months ago, it's not coming to UK cinemas until April 2019! However, if you mess around with the location settings on your on-demand website of choice, it is possible to legally watch this movie in Britain without having to wait another 4 months for it to release.

We seem to be at a point cinematically where traditional westerns that follow a gunslinger duelling his way across the west have all been done to death. Instead, it seems like modern westerns have to take a different, more unorthodox approach to the stories that they decide to tell. Take The Hateful Eight for example, as much as I loved that film, it was closer to the Clue movie than it was any of Sergio Leonne's Spaghetti Westerns. Or there is the very recent Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, which I personally enjoyed, but even within that movie, the tone and feel varied wildly throughout and none of it was what I would call a traditional western.

The Sisters Brothers follows this trajectory of oddity. It follows the titular brothers (played by John C. Reilly and Joaquin Pheonix,) who are essentially hitmen working for a Commodore (played by Rutger Hauer,) who have been sent to kill a chemist/gold prospector (played by Riz Ahmed,) with the help of a scout also working for the commodore, (played by Jake Gyllenhall.)

This movie is strange. It was directed by Jacques Audiard and there is a strange tone to the whole thing which feels distinctly French. There are an abundance of odd yet aesthetically pleasing shots that contribute to the film's odd tone and there are some comedic elements thrown in also. The whole thing is a mixing pot of different elements, yet it all strangely works.

Overall, I enjoyed The Sisters Brothers even if it was unconventional and not exactly the movie that I had expected going in and the performances all around are sublime.