The MoFo Top 100 Westerns: Countdown

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Bob Ford was #3 on my list.

I loved the choice of slow story telling combined with the documentary style of voice over narration. It's an effective way of telling the tale of the assassination, as it felt very personal. I liked the way the point of view was from Robert Ford and not Jesse James. This kept Jesse James as an enigma, and that's how the film presented him as, a man of mystery.

The look of the film is pure artistry, the colors are de-saturated to give a vintage look and feel to the film. Backing that up is slow camera movement with long scene takes and smooth scene transitions that often focus on scenery to allow the viewer time to digest what they've just seen, before going into the next scene.

One of the most amazing things about this movie was the use of blurred (out of focus) panels on the sides of some of the shots...like in the photo I used above. I've been noticing this trend on still photography in the last couple of years, but never had seen this done in a movie before. This film might be the genesis for that movement...The blurred edges aren't just ascetics, they work to focus attention on the subject in the center of the frame, while ignoring the information on the edges that have been blurred. I think that's so cool!

OMG! The spoken dialogue between the characters was perfect vernacular for the 1880s. Not many movies get this common man's language & style of speaking correctly. Notice there's no F bombs and when they talk sex talk, they use phrases and terms that would be common in the 1880's, but not today. The scriptwriter deserves an Oscar!

Generally I'm not a huge fan of Brad Pitt but he was perfect here as the quiet, yet sometimes animated, dark and enigmatic man of violence...who's also a caring family man. Pitt extruded this hidden dangerous streak that scarred the hell out of his men. I believed he was dangerous so it worked.

Cassey Affleck was amazing in this. The movie is told from his perspective and damn he deserved an Oscar too. I thought he was great in Manchester by the Sea but I liked his performance here even better. He's so good at letting the audience inside his head, that I felt like I was in his shoes. He's so natural and real on screen. The rest of the cast was exceptional and kudos goes to the director for keeping all the performances in balance with the subtle style of the film.

The Assassination of Jesse James is one of the most perfect films I've seen.

The Ox-Bow Incident was my #2, such an impactful movie, all done very economically time wise and yet so rich in honest emotions. I rated it a

I haven't seen The Ox-Bow Incident . It kind of looks interesting but I'm afraid it'll be another Abandon Ship for me (sorry, CR). The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was #19 on my ballot. I've only seen it once and it's quite a while ago so I haven't got much to say. All I know is that I remember liking it (rated it 7 in IMDb) and that it was beautiful. It may have deserved even higher place on my vote but without rewatch I didn't dare to put it any higher.

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I've watched Ass a couple of times and think it's a generally solid film - even had it on my shortlist. The Ox-Bow Incident is also pretty good, though I didn't consider voting for it - might've helped if the one time I've watched it wasn't in the middle of an international flight, but even then I could recognise the quality on display.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Ah the Oxbow Incident, that is one peach of a movie. Still too low for my liking! Should have made it to the top 10 at least.

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My Favorite Films

It was #3 for me i think! It is one Western which has some lessons in it rather the usual shoot-em-ups!

In youth I had seen this film quite a number of times, specifically for Steve McQueen and as I got into my late twenties/early thirties I discovered the inspiration in Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and my views lessened considerably.
IF I had a chance for a rewatch of this I strongly wonder if it would have made my list, though considering how many favorites had to slip through the cracks, it would, most likely, be one of those heart breaks amongst the tumbleweeds.


Stagecoach is very much a Saturday Matinee Delight coming in at #23 for me.
From the diversity of the denizens of the stagecoach with some exceptional actors such as John Carradine, Donald Meek, Thomas Mitchell and especially Andy Devine, bringing such a wide array of personas and the conflicts as the tensions grow; to the exciting chase on the high plains by Apaches and the last minute arrival of The Cavalry, kept me enthralled throughout.
This is my third John Wayne film to make the Countdown as well as my second John Ford film.


Unlike my 3:10 To Yuma dilemma I was able to make an informed decision, enjoying both versions as well as the prospective actors in their parts, mostly. I do find the "grit" of Mattie (Hailee Steinfeld) just a tad more than Kim Darby's more vulnerable presentation in the original. Still love Darby, do not get me wrong. She was ideal with John Wayne.

In the end I do find more enjoyment via entertainment in the remake of True Grit just a little more and so, collecting its spot on my countdown at #17.


Blazing Saddles portrays a brutality and the most gruesome violence that would make Peckinpah blush and make Leone hide his face in horror, in THE MOST gritty, visceral, savage representation of the most dangerous nooks and crannies of an unforgiving West.
Chock full of: rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, sh#t-kickers and Methodists!
Oh the HUMANITY of it all!!!!


I have seen The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford a few times and while it is quite the slow burner it is a visually beautifully crafted Western.

At #15 on my list:
Movies Watched 58 out of 82 (70.73%)

John Wayne Films: Three
Clint Eastwood Films: One

MY LIST
1. Will Make it
2. Open Range (#2)
3. SHOULD Make it
4. Will Make it
5. Will Make it
6. Ride The High Country (#63)
7. The Proposition (#46)
8. SHOULD Make it
9. Won't Make it
10. The Cowboys (#50)
11. The Grey Fox (#66)
12. The Great Silence (#34)
13. The Gunfighter (#40)
14. 3:10 To Yuma '07 (#29)
15. Oxbow Incident (#19)
16. Will Make it
17. True Grit '10 (#22)
18. Will Make it
19. The Quick & The Dead (#42)
20. High Plains Drifter (#31)
21. Might Not Make it
22. The Big Country (#27)
23. Stagecoach (#23)
24. Red River (#56)
25. Won't Make it

Rectification List (for my own old decrepit noodle)
1. Warlock (#94)
2. Naked Spur (#86)
3. The Great Train Robbery (#60)
4. Winchester '73 (#53)
5. 3:10 To Yuma ['57] (#48)
6. Jeremiah Johnson (#37)

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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was on my list for a while, but it eventually got cut from my final list. It was a little bit too slow, but never boring. I'm not much of a Brad Pitt fan, but I thought he was excellent in this movie. This may be the best of my new movie watches for this countdown that didn't make my list.

I expected The Ox-Bow Incident to place in the top ten on the countdown, but I'm glad to see that it at least made it this high. It's a powerful movie that sticks with you for years after watching it. It was #22 on my list.


My list so far:
1) Oklahoma! (1955)
6) Support Your Local Sheriff (1969)
7) The Frisco Kid (1979)
8) The Gunfighter (1950)
9) Maverick (1994)
12) North to Alaska (1960)
13) The Bravados (1958)
16) City Slickers (1991)
17) The Hanging Tree (1959)
19) Winchester '73 (1950)
20) The Quick and The Dead (1995)
22) The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)
23) El Dorado (1967)
25) Incredible Rocky Mountain Race (TV Movie - 1977)

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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

The second of Sergio Leone’s so-called Dollars Trilogy, For a Few Dollars More has Eastwood seemingly playing the same nameless, poncho-clad gunslinger as in A Fistful of Dollars yet Gian Maria Volonté returns as a completely different antagonist, an infamous bank robber known as El Indio. His gang, which includes Klaus Kinski, breaks him out of prison and they immediately return to their ruthless, brazen, and efficient ways, targeting a bank in El Paso rumored to be fat with riches. Eastwood’s bounty hunter makes an alliance with another, Colonel Mortimer played by Lee Van Cleef. Their plan involves infiltrating the gang and there may be a deeper connection of revenge between El Indio and Mortimer. More complex than A Fistful of Dollars yet less epic than The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More got a lucky twenty-one votes including a tenth, three ninth, three eighth, a seventh, a sixth, a fourth, a third, and two second place votes.

Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller is one of the most critically beloved of Revisionist Westerns, stripping the genre of virtually every ounce of artifice to portray a cold, muddy, cruel frontier that feels authentic. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie star as the title characters, a gambler with aims of being an entrepreneur and a no nonsense madame of a whorehouse who become business partners in the growing mountain town of Presbyterian Church. McCabe’s interests become big enough that agents from a mining company offer to buy him out. It is a fair and maybe even generous offer, but McCabe, full of himself and not wanting to back down in front of the rest of the town, turns the offer down thinking he will raise their price by playing business hardball. Instead they send three gunmen to eliminate him. With an eclectic cast, Leon Ericksen’s production design, Vilmos Zsigmond’s revolutionary cinematography, Leonard Cohen’s music, and Altman’s gifts for ensemble and seemingly improvised, naturalistic, overlapping dialogue McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a singular experience that wound up on twenty-two ballots with fourteen top ten placements: two seconds, a third, two fourth, three fifth, two sixth, two seventh, an eighth, and a tenth all adding up to an impressive 360 points.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is another of my all-time favorites, Western or otherwise, and one of the several masterpieces made by Robert Altman. It was fourth on my ballot. “I’ve got poetry in me,” laments John McCabe, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a melancholy, beautiful, tragic poem. The Leonard Cohen songs, taken from the first side of his 1967 debut album, are so achingly perfect it seems almost impossible that they weren’t composed specifically for the film. ”It's true that all the men you knew were dealers who said they were through with dealing every time you gave them shelter. I know that kind of man, it's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender…”. I am just some Joseph looking for a manger and I find it every time I visit Presbyterian Church.

That’s my seventeenth.

HOLDEN PIKE'S LIST
4. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (#17)
5. Little Big Man (#38)
6. The Ox-Bow Incident (#19)
7. The Ballad of Cable Hogue (#83)
9. Dead Man (#26)
10. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (#52)
12. The Great Silence (#34)
13. My Name is Nobody (#79)
14. The Grey Fox (#66)
16. Hombre (#88)
17. The Big Country (#27)
18. Pursued (#73)
19. Jeremiah Johnson (#37)
21. One-Eyed Jacks (#32)
23. The Professionals (#45)
24. The Revenant (#25)
25. Support Your Local Sheriff! (#89)

I haven't watched either.

I'm very happy that none from my list showed up in this pairing, though. I hope not to see any of them show for a few more days.

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Seen both and like both but neither made my list.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller was certainly in contention but didn't quite make it when push came to shove, For A Few Dollars More was very sadly one of two major brain farts I had when compiling my list (I did remember to tag For A Few Dollars Less as a Western though ) - would certainly have been quite high on my ballot, at least it's comforting to know that omission made absolutely no difference to its finishing position.

Seen: 49/84

Faildictions (yee-haw version 1.10):
16. There Will Be Blood
15. A Fistful Of Dollars

Now we’re talking!

For a Few Dollars More was my #11. A classic western.... what more is there to say

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For a Few Dollars More was my #9. Interesting to think about how Leone follows up A Fistful of Dollars (which I consider the inferior film but am predicting will show up soon enough) by inverting its plot - instead of one guy against two gangs, it's two guys against one gang (and each other, of course). Certainly helps that Van Cleef is more than ready to hold his own against Eastwood and they have some of the best rivalry chemistry you could ask for, which is definitely a major part of the appeal.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller was my #5. I almost want to call it an anti-Western because of how much it seems to be working to flip the script of many a traditional Western by exposing both the folly and cruelty of frontier capitalism through McCabe and his rivals respectively, to say nothing of more obvious signifiers like its snowbound setting, anachronistic use of Cohen songs, and refusal to valorise its rare acts of violence. I'd also consider it one of the better-looking films on this list, and that's saying something.

I definitely love For a Few Dollars More, but I had to leave room on my list for other films. Like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which I had all the way up at #3. Holden called it "a melancholy, beautiful, tragic poem," and that's exactly how I've always felt about it, with Leonard Cohen's somber soundtrack and the haunting ending. It immerses you in this world in such a complete way and I'm always happy to go there, to experience its melancholy, beautiful, tragic poetry.

My List:

3. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (#17)
5. High Plains Drifter (#31)
6. Little Big Man (#39)
7. Jeremiah Johnson (#37)
9. The Big Country (#27)
10. The Shootist (#58)
12. The Ox-Bow Incident (#19)
13. The Gunfighter (#40)
15. 3:10 to Yuma (1957)(#48)
18. The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (#76)
19. The Naked Spur (#86)
20. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (#67)
22. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (#33)
24. Support Your Local Sheriff! (#89)
25. Johnny Guitar (#30)

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I watched McCabe and Mrs. Miller for the 70's countdown and it didn't do anything for me. There are occasions that I feel like it's my fault that I don't like something so I watched it again about a year later. Sure enough I was blown away, and for similar reasons as others. It's one of the best looking and most haunting movies I've seen.

The no name trilogy, along with Shane, The Wild Bunch, and The Magnificent Seven were the first westerns I recall seeing as a kid, obviously because my father would watch them on TV. I have no idea how many times I've seen the different movies from the trilogy, and my favorite of the three has changed a few times. Right now that favorite is For a Few Dollars More.

3. Little Big Man (#39)
4. The Ox-Bow Incident (#19)
5. The Big Country (#27)
7. Shane (#43)
8. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (#17)
9. One-Eyed Jacks (#32)
10. My Darling Clementine (#44)
11. The Shootist (#57)
16. For a Few Dollars More (#18)
18. Day of the Outlaw (#77)
19. Red River (#56)
21. The Cowboys (#50)
23. Open Range (#36)
24. The Furies (#84)
25. Winchester 73 (#53)

My preference has shifted over the years. As a kid I loved GB&U the most, and by a lot, because it was so grand and Eli Wallach's Tuco is such a wonderful character. In my twenties I began to prefer A Fistful of Dollars because it is so lean and efficient. For a Few Dollars More was always my least favorite of the three. Until about ten years ago when I rewatched it for the umpteenth time - but all the way through for the first time in a while - and now For a Few Dollars More is my favorite. By far.