The MoFo Top 100 Westerns: Countdown

I found the movie so I will watch it sometime soon. One question is it really slow cinema? Or is that just the title.

Only way to find out is to watch it. It's a little shy of 90 minutes so it's not a big time investment or anything.

ETA: I thought the pacing was fine.

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Well based on your voting list and the films that I suppose are like it...



My voting list:
1 The Ox-Bow Incident
2 Rio Bravo
3 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
4 The Cowboys
5 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
6 The Great Silence
7 The Shooting
8 The Salvation

My voting list

1 Meek's Cutoff (2010)
2 Red River (1948)
3 Dirty Little Billy (1972)
4 McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
5 The Grey Fox (1982)
6 The Scalphunters (1968)
7 The Big Gundown (1966)
8 Bone Tomahawk (2015)

I'd say you likely hate it

I guess it depends on how you define Western and (by extension) an "anti-Western", but it seemed like a pretty straightforward example of a Western to me.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

None of these first six made my personal list, but Slow West is definitely my favorite of this early sampling and I am glad it made the Top 100 even without my vote.

I agree with Mark that it is easily among the top Westerns of the past decade (not a very deep pool, but still). Besides Fassbender, who is just about always great, it features one of my favorite working actors in Ben Mendelsohn. Plot-wise there is absolutely nothing new about it, but it is very well made and a good rendering of a familiar genre yarn. Especially in the theater the cinematography, by Robbie Ryan, was worth the price of admission alone. I think it is his best work yet. He was Oscar nominated a couple years back for Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite and has also shot for Andrea Arnold and Noah Baumbach.

Darn good flick.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

My guess is that I will have seen about 80 of the top 100, but that's now 4 of 6 that I haven't seen. That's ok it means I'll have stuff to watch later.

I have somehow seen Slow West twice, despite not thinking it's anything special. Fassbender always watchable though.

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Letterboxd

#JusticeForHamilton

A C21st western and a John Wayne film? I'm sure it'll surprise no one that I've seen neither.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Slow West is the first movie from the countdown I have seen, and it was on my list at #14. There are a few clunks to the story but it's well shot and well acted and I liked it.

for some oddball reason, the title of this one didn't click, but I have seen this a couple of times in my youth. Good film with the Altman style of storytelling.

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What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio

Have not seen either of these two, though I may have seen North To Alaska as a pup and DEFINITELY know the song.
I may have to rectify that since both so rather worthwhile and Holden's video made my chuckle a few times for NtoA.


Movies Watched 1 out of 6 (16.67%)

I am a huge Bob Altman fan, but I can never find my way into this movie. It's not an outright disaster, of which he was about to have many, but it ended a rather remarkable streak that began with MASH and went through Nashville where he could almost do no wrong. Adding a huge movie star like Newman into the Altman universe in a piece that was demythologizing the legend of the West and America itself in the year of the U.S. Bicentennial had so much potential. But it never quite comes together, especially the final section where the satire is supposed to be the sharpest but neither the script nor Altman found a way to bring it to life cinematically. The cast is populated by some who were already Altman regulars in Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Bert Remsen, and Shelley Duvall but adding in the new blood of Joel Grey, Harvey Keitel, Will Sampson, and Kevin McCarthy as well as Burt Lancaster.

If you're thinking 'how can a movie have THAT cast and I have never even heard of it?', well, that should give you an idea of what a misfire it is. Like most all of Altman movies it is worth seeing, and there are some nice Altmanesque moments throughout. But as brilliant and perfect as McCabe & Mrs. Miller was at adding realism to the movie Western, here the layers upon layers of artifice presented in Buffalo Bill don't even allow for much of an intellectual deconstruction of the genre, much less come off in a compelling or witty narrative.

Paul Newman is the one who had optioned the property (a play called Indians) and was originally trying to make it with George Roy Hill. Altman and producer Dino De Laurentiis did have a falling out around this time and I believe Dino recut some of the film. Altman was also prepping on adapting E.L. Doctorow's sprawling Ragtime for De Laurentiis, but Dino so hated the way Buffalo Bill turned out that he fired him from that project and brought on Miloš Forman instead. Doctorow actually has a small on-screen role in Buffalo Bill and was horrified when Altman was removed from Ragtime. I rather like Forman's Ragtime, but I do wonder what it might have turned into through Altman's sensibilities?

Anyway, as interesting a curious misfire as it may be I wouldn't put Buffalo Bill and the Indians anywhere near my personal top 200 Westerns, but I did smile when I saw it there as your one-pointer, Cobpyth.

As mentioned by many I really love the layout you have done here.

Geronimo came in at spot number 15 on my list. I saw this movie for the first time when I was in Ft Lenoardwood, Mo. I was pulling desk detail (Army) and had brought a few VHS tapes to watch during the late shift. I remember this because the CO on shift came in and started watching it with me and had some pretty foul comments to make about Native Americans. I decided to turn it off so I did not have to hear his mouth anymore. He put in some other movie left in the common room and I started reading a book. I finally saw the movie a few weeks later and really enjoyed it. It definitely does not go deep enough into the life of Geronimo and his plight, but it does touch the surface. Damon does a decent job as Lt. Britton and Wes Studi hass what I think is one of his best performances. He was really good in Last of the Mohicans as well.



He is an inspiration. Here is a video that gives a little light on the man.




Here in Pensacola we have quite a bit to do with Geronimo's captivity. This is an article that explains much of the local history and how it pertains to him. It is an informative read for those interested.

https://thepulsepensacola.com/2015/1...-in-pensacola/


I definitely recommend the film and even though it skews too much on viewpoints it does delve deeper than many other movies.

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

The movie is watchable, but after 80 minutes of tension and anticipation, the ending they chose is crappola. I don't think you'd like it.

Without giving away the ending is a no-ending type? Or a big bang ending? Or something else?

The legendary filmmaker John Huston jumps onto the countdown with the sixteenth and seventeenth features of his career, just about smack dab in the middle of his filmography, and those back-to-back productions wind up nestling back-to-back on the list of MoFo Top 100 Westerns. The Unforgiven, which bares absolutely no relation to the similarly titled Clint Eastwood Oscar winner Unforgiven (minus the article) thirty-two years later, is a drama on the Texas frontier involving family secrets and a nearby Native American tribe with Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Lillian Gish, and Audie Murphy. Huston’s next production shifted gears and tone though also qualifies as a Western. The Misfits is a modern day drama set in the Nevada desert surrounding a couple of bronco-busting cowboys played by Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift and the beautiful divorcee (Marilyn Monroe) who enters their orbit. It was the last finished film for both screen icons Gable and Monroe, and Clift would only appear in three more pictures before his death (including starring as Sigmund Freud in Huston’s very next project). Written by Arthur Miller, his five-year marriage to Marilyn hit its breaking point during production. For all of its storied behind-the-scenes Hollywood history, the melancholy black and white film endures, including on this countdown.

Both pictures finished with 39 points a piece and were on three ballots but the highest placed vote for The Misfits was a third place nod while The Unforgiven’s was a ninth putting the 1961 release at #93 and the 1960 flick at #94.

That’s the wrong Unforgiven and I haven’t seen Misfits.

As for John Huston, he’s not a director that has blown me away yet. However, I haven’t really watched much of his work. But so far he hasn’t done much for me.

I watched The Unforgiven for the 60's countdown and liked it. I watched The Misfits for this countdown and liked it even more. I thought it had a haunting quality. Voted for neither.