Movies in the Western genre

There was a time when the western was one of Hollywood's most popular genres. Whether it was Gary Cooper standing tall in High Noon, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas taking out the Clantons in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Wayne fighting the Apa...

By 1952, movie-goers knew exactly what to expect from a Western: a clean-cut, self-assured hero facing down a good-for-nothing villain in a climactic shoot-out, lots of action, gorgeous scenery, and not much in the way of thematic depth. This was...

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." That single quote, uttered by newspaperman Maxwell Scott (Carlton Young), encapsulates the primary theme of John Ford's last great Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Truth is only meanin...

Violence comes in many shapes, sizes, and forms. Twenty-six years ago, when Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch was first released, it caused a stir because of its gritty, uncompromising style. The deaths in this film are neither sterile nor heroic. W...

The credits for The Hateful Eight proudly proclaim this to be the “Eighth Film” from writer/director Quentin Tarantino. Since catching the movie world unawares with his powerhouse debut, Reservoir Dogs, some 23 years ago, he has worked on...

Despite arriving during the era when this kind of movie was beginning a slow but inexorable fall from public favor, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid remains one of the best crafted and most beloved of all the Westerns. In addition to launching R...

Clint Eastwood's reputation as a Hollywood icon was founded on two roles: The Man with No Name, who starred in three of Sergio Leone's "Spaghetti Westerns" (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and the Ugly), and "Dirty" H...

Hostiles is an occasionally shocking, sometimes disturbing, but ultimately hopeful perspective of how the deepest of racial divides can sometimes be bridged by the simplest of actions: taking the time to relate to the other person as a fellow ...

No one can accuse Martin Scorsese of not moving with the times. His latest production, Killers of the Flower Moon, follows in the footsteps of The Irishman in recognizing that the bulk audience will stream the film at home. So, although Scorsese h...

True Grit, one of the best films of 2010, is a reminder of why remakes are not always bad. The Coen Brothers' interpretation of the 1968 Charles Portis novel is superior in almost every way (except one) to the 1969 Henry Hathaway edition. And, whil...