The MoFo Top 100 Westerns: Countdown

I'm going through reading some of these older posts I didn't originally read in looking at, revising, tweaking just a bit as I go, and finalizing my top 100 films of all time list and The Big Country is on it with about a dozen or so other westerns, as it's my go-to genre. I love the film so much and have since I first saw it on TV when I was a sophomore in high school. As far as the The Big Country's reputation and place among westerns goes, you're right that it isn't as well recognized among film buffs as say High Noon, The Searchers, or even Shane of the great 1950's westerns. Not nearly as recognized among either those just getting into classic cinema or those who have been critics and aficionados for years.

You're right too in that the supporting cast is what really sells the film, and while I agree they archetypes - to a point, what sets them a part is that they each have their own character arch, small little backstories, and either grow or regress throughout the film. Also William Wyler, for some reason, outside of his heyday never really became a big name director the likes of Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, or even a Howard Hawks has despite making both huge and intimate pictures. He's just not one of those directors that film aficionados like to go down his filmography and thoroughly watch his films and debate over what his masterpiece is and study his style and quirks the way we do with other directors of that period (40's and 50's). In addition to The Big Country, which is my favorite Wilder film, I also love The Westerner (despite not being a big Cary Cooper fan), The Children's Hour, Detective Story, Roman Holiday, and the very VERY underseen and under appreciated The Heiress.

I just truly don't understand for a director with at least a dozen good to great films under his belt, how his name didn't survive over the decades in the film nerd crowd the way the previously named directors have.

__________________
"A candy colored clown!"
Member since Fall 2002
Top 100 Films, clicky below

http://www.movieforums.com/community...ad.php?t=26201

16 The Big Trail 1930
15 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 1949
14 True Grit 2010
13 West World 1973
12 City Slickers 1991
11 A Fistful of Dollars 1964
10 One Eyed Jacks 1961
9 3:10 to Yuma 1957
8 Django Unchained 2012
7 There Will be Blood 2007
6 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969
5 Once Upon a Time in the West 1968
4 My Darling Clementine 1946
3 For a Few Dollars More 1965
2 Rio Bravo 1959
1 McCabe and Mrs Miller 1971

Love all three of those and they're toward the top of my list as well. I also prefer For a Few Dollars More over The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

How the hell did the Hateful 8 rate so highly?

I saw it and it was alright. Very well made. Movies that only have terrible people as characters don't really appeal to me, and there's Tarantino's usual misogyny (in his later movies at least), but I still think it's a worthwhile movie.

But #11?! That's about 60-70 places too high.

Because it's a great movie. My only real complaint about its placement is that it ranked higher than Django Unchained (if only just) which is IMO the better Tarantino Western. I had both in the top ten of my ballot.

Of course, I would've liked to see some of the movies I ranked higher than them have better placement, but c'est la vie.

__________________

__________________
"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

I'm with him of course on the first three, but Open Range isn't even the best Kevin Costner western. Really cool he cites The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, as that's a film that plays like an elegy, not just for Wayne's character who is dead at the start of the film as the funeral prompt's the frame narrative, but also for the western - specifically the Ford brand of classic Hollywood western on the eve of the great revisionist era.

I just did not nor will ever get Open Range. I saw it in the theater when it came out and it's just plodding and doesn't either do anything new for the genre, nor does it encapsulate what makes the genre great. The gun play in the final shootout sequence just has some horrible stuff, and while people being shot with a shotgun and flying back 10 feet might have been acceptable in 1950, in 2003, it just doesn't play well.

Was kind of hoping he'd throw in a western comedy like The Westerner (1940), Rancho Notorious, or Support Your Local Sheriff!

Oh well.

Because The Hateful Eight is Tarantino's best film by miles and it's an amazing chamber play and take a premise like Stagecoach or "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" in watching drama unfold when huge personalities and people with enough baggage to fill an oil tanker are all confined into one tiny area without escape.

Also Jennifer Jason Leigh should have won best actress for that balls to the wall, take it to level 11 performance.

Although I don't agree that the Movie rates so highly, I agree on Leigh's performance. Best part of the film.

I think it works so well, but it's a very mature Tarantino writing solid dialogue and character types without the feeling of his earlier works where he was mugging too much for the cool factor or posturing in that 90's dialogue style. For instance, obviously going on a hit and then being as cool as a cucumber and eating the food at the scene and then giving a speech and then "say what again-ing" over and over might all seem cool and such if it's 1994 and Pulp Fiction is all the rage, but it's ultimately silly and it's like Tuco said in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, "If you have to shoot, shoot don't talk."

His scenes in The Hateful Eight are a million times more cynical without the silly 13-year old boy posturing of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Yes, I love me some early Tarantino, but it wasn't really until I saw Death Proof and Inglorious Basterds that I really thought of him as a great filmmaker and at the top of the list of contemporary storytellers through film.

When I saw The Hateful Eight, that's when I actually started to be OK with apply the word genius to Tarantino.