I love Westerns. Anyone else here love Westerns? Let's talk about Westerns.

While I admire old school stuff like The Searchers, High Noon, etc. and the Clint Eastwood classics, I tend to prefer the more atypical, weird ones that fuck around with the tropes of the genre and give us a new perspective on the Ole Frontier rather than the same old heroic showdown shit. A few of my favorites along those lines:

Greaser's Palace. An absurd, bizarre, surrealist Biblical tale set in the old West. The director is either satirizing the shit out of Christianity, is completely insane, or both. Jesus as a chiropractor/entertainer in a zoot suit, a transexual nun, a necrophile farmer, the Holy Ghost as a guy covered in a white sheet with holes cut out for the eyes, and a bunch of ridiculous gore. Def smoke up for this one. Also notable for proposing that Jesus had sex with Mary Magdalene 30 years before that shitty novel. "Exactly six miles north of Skagg Mountain in the Valley of Pain, there lives an evil devil-monster. His name is Bingo Gas Station Motel Cheeseburger With A Side Of Aircraft Noise And You'll Be Gary Indiana. And he loves to hurt people."

Unforgiven. Fucking badass. I think a lot of people here will have seen this. Not nearly as weird as the others here, but certainly a different approach to the Western -- delves a lot into the overblown mythologizing you often see in Westerns and in Old West history. I don't even want to say much about this for those who haven't seen it, the film can speak for itself. The ultimate revenge story, and the most compelling performance I've ever seen from Clint Eastwood.

Dead Man. Some reviewer called this an "existentialist post-Western". As pretentious as that sounds (really, c'mon), I honestly can't think of a better term for it. This is a strange and amazing film -- funny, absurd, sad, violent, and reflective. Plot: banker comes out to the frontier seeking work, gets himself into deep shit, is mistaken for the poet William Blake by an educated Indian, becomes a killer of white men. Johnny Depp's best role, stunning B&W cinematography, Neil Young kills a guitar on the soundtrack. The perfect introductory movie for people who think they hate Westerns -- the setting is really just a vehicle for Jarmusch's meditations on the process of dying, racism, Native American culture, the dark side of the westward expansion, and a series of bizarre characters, including Iggy Pop as a cross-dressing outlaw. Also, fucking finally, a black cowboy (yeah, they existed).

El Topo. This one evades capsule summarization. If you've ever heard of Alejandro Jodorowsky (Holy Mountain), you know how fucked this will be. Youtube trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQaBq1gX_9E

Anymore worth checking out along these lines -- weird shit set in the Old West? Or just regular old Westerns, Spaghetti Westerns, whatever, I haven't really seen that many yet. Also, more films with black cowboys.

As soon as I saw the title of the thread, I was going to mention Dead Man, but you beat me to it.

In terms of genre-bending Westerns, I think that The Proposition and The Wild Bunch are both pretty kick-ass. See them both if you haven't already.

The man with no name trilogy: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Fistfull of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More.

Plus: The Searchers, The Wild Bunch, Hombre, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Anyone that remotely likes westerns needs to watch Deadwood. It's better than any movie on the subject.

I love Tombstone. Its a good more resent western. Besides that, I haven't watched too many westerns.

Young Guns is my fave of all time (maybe tied with tGtBatU), but it's another showdown one. Awesomly awesome tho.

A couple good recent westerns: Open Range and Sephrim Falls

the only western i actually sat down to watch was For a few dollars more and My Name is Nobody

both of which were quite good

+ 3:10 to Yuma and Tombstone



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I don't see what the fuss about 3:10 was about. Horrendous Hollywood ending, pretty bland camera work. Decent acting though.

The Dollars Trilogy is obviously outstanding, and Unforgiven. High Plains Drifter is another good Eastwood western. Very dark.

I just bought "Once Upon a Time in the West." Have high hopes for it.

I thought the cinematography and acting was great, for the most part. It generally captured the bleak and desolate feel of the setting and plot. I don't know if i'd say the ending was horrendous, but it wasn't very good.
All in all it was a good Spaghetti Western and definitely worthy of being mentioned and watched.