Tuesday Tally

Western Edition

So we finally watched High Noon the other night. We liked it very much as a movie and as a work of art.

So here's a list of our favorite westerns:

The Searchers: Absolutely the greatest Western ever made. John Wayne plays Ethan, a former Confederate cavalrymen filled with darkness and rage, trying to find the Comanches who kidnapped his niece. How he didn't win an Oscar for this we'll never know. So Ethan hates Indians. Lemme tell you something, in this movie he pretty much hates everybody, including Marty, his nephew who insists on coming along the five your search. Along the way we meet shopkeepers, Yankee cavalrymen, white women rescued from Indians, Mexican horse traders.John Ford's greatest film. Just lovely to look at and perfectly paced. Word Bond is a gem as the captain of the local Rangers and Methodist preacher. We've read the novel too, and the movie is more or less true to the author's original vision.

Tombstone: Probably the best of the post Segio Leone westerns. A great cast with Powers Boothe and Michael Biehn as bad guys. Billy Zane is an English actor enjoying the whole scene. You get Sam Elliot playing Sam Elliot, and of course Val Kilmer in his greatest role, 'Wyatt I am rolling'. Kurt Russell holds the entire film together, literally as he took over directing duties. We'll talk more about this wonderful film in another post.

Rio Bravo: Take three men, put them in the sheriff's office with a high value prisoner, whose land baron brother is using his paid goons to lay siege to the town. Howard Hawks hated High Noon and decided to rewrite the story where the sheriff has to turn away people trying to help. That sheriff is of course John Wayne. He walks around the film with a long gun, and we wonder if this isn't a slight knock on Gary Cooper's character in High Noon, who looks at a rifle but puts it away. Here the sheriff is assisted by his drunken deputy played by Dean Martin, a man who climbed into a bottle after his heart was broke. There's also Walter Brennan doing Walter Brennan type things. Angie Dickinson...well what can we say? Ricky Nelson is fun as a cocky young gun.

*We made our self watch The Good the Bad and the Ugly twice now, and we just don't get it. Hard to look at and slooowwww.