Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks / 1959)
The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges / 1960)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford / 1962)
How the West Was Won (Henry Hathaway - John Ford - George Marshall / 1962)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill / 1969)
Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner / 1990)
Quite a haul this last payday!
To sum up, but briefly:
Rio Bravo - A rather unusual but very classy late '50s Western from Howard Hawks, starring John Wayne as a town sheriff, Dean Martin as his alcoholic deputy, Walter Brennan as the older, crusty but lovable
other deputy, and Ricky Nelson as the gun-slinging, guitar-playing new recruit. Rounding off the cast is Angie Dickinson as a feisty, independent gambler who becomes the Wayne character's love interest. What makes this movie so unusual is its unhurried pacing and rather laid-back emphasis on character-building. It's like we're as much hanging out with the characters as much as following their adventure. It's certainly not lacking in slam-bang action, however. The final shootout is an absolute doozy.
The Magnificent Seven - Really, what's there left to be said about this one? In many ways, a defining watershed film in the Western genre, the gateway to the '60s and almost a prototype for the Italian "spaghetti" Western (especially with regard to its status as a remake of an Akira Kurosawa samurai film). Yul Brynner leads a cast of up-and-comers including Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Charles Bronson as a group of specialist gunfighters hired out to defend a Mexican village from the bandit Calvera - played by Eli Wallach - and his army.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - Late masterpiece from John Ford, tragic and elegiac but still a lot of fun. James Stewart plays the tenderfoot lawyer from the East who heads out West and finds himself in over his head, John Wayne plays the tough rancher who reluctantly takes him under his wing, and a positively volcanic Lee Marvin as the whip-wielding, intemperate title character, one of the scariest of all Western villains! Vera Miles portrays the woman both Wayne and Stewart are in love with, and be on the lookout for Woody Strode, Strother Martin, Lee Van Cleef, Edmond O'Brien and John Carradine in supporting roles.
How the West Was Won - A rather impressive epic spectacular, one of only
two narrative feature films made in the three-strip Cinerama format (the other being
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, also from 1962). It's the tale of three generations of a family of settlers who travel Westward to make a life for themselves. Carroll Baker and Debbie Reynolds portray two sisters whose destinies take them in different directions, James Stewart and Gregory Peck portray the mountain man and professional gambler who become their husbands, George Peppard plays the son of Baker and Stewart who follows in his father's footsteps to fight with the Union Cavalry in the Civil War, work for the railroad and eventually become a U.S. marshal. Along the way we also meet Karl Malden and Agnes Moorehead as the girls' parents, Walter Brennan as the leader of a group of nasty river pirates, John Wayne as General Sherman, Richard Widmark as an ornery, double-dealing railroad boss and Eli Wallach as the leader of a gang of train-robbing outlaws. (Notice how Wallach always seems to excel in that kind of role?) The film is subdivided into five chapters (
The Rivers,
The Plains,
The Civil War,
The Railroad and
The Outlaws), the 1st, 2nd and 5th of which were directed by Henry Hathaway, the 4th by George Marshall, and the middle section dealing with the Civil War is directed by the great John Ford himself. The movie
is very impressive, but feels rather stagey, basically the consequence of the rather ungainly Cinerama cameras, which could not really be moved effectively enough to follow the actors around in dialogue scenes. However, the process really comes rather spectacularly into its own with the action sequences, which include a ride down wild river rapids, an Indian attack and chase sequence, a buffalo stampede, and a gunfight aboard a moving train. I got the special 2-disc edition that contains not only the basic widescreen version of the film, but also a version in the Smilebox format which replicates the curvature of the Cinerama theatrical presentation!
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - What's truly fascinating about this particular film is how
unique it remains to this day, despite its obvious influence upon many later movies - Westerns
and buddy comedies. Part of that is the uniquely wry and witty sensibility that director George Roy Hill brings to the film, but also Paul Newman and Robert Redford's chemistry in their roles as the titular outlaws. Conrad Hall's cinematography is also distinctive. (On the other hand, I consider the Burt Bacharach score kind of...
iffy, to put it kindly.) I don't think there's any other movie - Western or otherwise - that's
quite like this one. (BTW, if you want to hear a really cool cover version of
Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, check out the Manic Street Preachers' version. That band seems to have a minor fixation on this film, which actually gets namechecked in their 1996 B-side
Sepia.)
Dances With Wolves - I actually saw this one during its first theatrical run, what feels like
ages ago, back when I was still in high school! I remember liking it well enough at the time, and felt like it pretty much deserved all the awards and accolades it and its star/director Kevin Costner received. The steelbook Blu-ray edition from Shout! Factory features both the 3-hour+ theatrical version, as well as the almost 4-hour Extended Cut. Upon unwrapping it, I immediately popped in the Extended Cut, which I
hadn't seen. I found it engaging enough, and I still enjoyed the story of Lt. John Dunbar and his adventures with the Sioux tribe. Still, the extended version perhaps feels a bit
slow. Perhaps later on, I'll reacquaint myself with the original theatrical cut. This movie perhaps falls on the side of Hollywood respectability - some might say too much so - but its success certainly helped keep the Western alive and current during an otherwise dry spell for the genre, and paved the way for much that would follow, in particular
Unforgiven in 1992 and
Tombstone in 1993.
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. amazing movie i really loved it 
) population rise and global warming coupled with pollution have brought society to it's knees. Only the very rich can afford to live comfortably. But anyway, an intrepid detective (the suitably bewigged Charlton Heston) is sent to investigate the mysterious death of a Soylent Corporation executive. They make the "food" that most of the populous consume. This is not bad for it's time, a good premise and flows along nicely, I think Heston was really miscast though.
