Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is a helluva film with one of the most powerfully mesmerizing central performances ever committed to celluloid. Daniel Day-Lewis smolders and roars as Daniel Plainview, a silver prospector who ruthlessly turns himself into an oil man in early 20th Century California, in conflict with his own demons as well as the Sunday family led by fire and brimstone preacher Eli (Paul Dano). It’s eligibility as a Western was debated HERE with enough MoFos agreeing it should be in the mix. And here it is, in grand fashion as the fourteenth highest rated film of the countdown. The singular experience that is There Will Be Blood was on twenty ballots including a ninth, an eighth, a seventh, two fourth, one third, five second, and four first place votes!
Clint Eastwood’s second Western as a director himself is The Outlaw Josey Wales. Clint’s Wales is a quiet farmer in Missouri doing his best to tend to his wife and child near the end of the Civil War and stay out of the fighting. Some Kansas hellraisers led by a Union Captain “Redlegs” Terrill (Deliverance’s Bill McKinney) burn his home and murder his family. Wales survives, picks up a gun, and joins a band of Confederates in his search for Redlegs. Spoiler alert: the North wins the War. Fletcher (John Vernon) convinces the rebels to surrender. But they are double crossed, massacred by Redlegs, further fueling Josey’s vengeance. A wanted man pursued into the frontier, Wales eventually teams with an old Cherokee (Chief Dan George), a Navajo (Geraldine Keams) he frees from captivity, and a family of settlers with Grandma Sarah (Paula Trueman) the matriarch and pretty Laura Lee (Sondra Locke) in tow. Together they have to deal with Indians and bandits and a series of bounty hunters looking to cash in on Wales, as well as Captain Terrill and his men. The Outlaw Josey Wales was on twenty-eight ballots including a first, second, third, two fourth, two sixth, two eighth, a ninth, and four tenth placers adding up to it being the first film on the countdown to pass 400 points.
The Sons of Katie Elder, North to Alaska, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Shootist, Red River, The Cowboys, El Dorado, True Grit, Stagecoach,
Two Mules for Sister Sara, Pale Rider, High Plains Drifter, For a Few Dollars More, A Fistful of Dollars and The Outlaw Josey Wales
Two Mules for Sister Sara, Pale Rider, High Plains Drifter, For a Few Dollars More, A Fistful of Dollars and The Outlaw Josey Wales
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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
"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
Last edited by Holden Pike; 06-28-20 at 04:12 AM.