The Last Western You Watched? ver.2.0

Just badly made. Didnt find it boring.

yep

I actually do: Pale rider and some of his crime dramas. But he is still better than Dwight. :wink:

I know, hard stuff, almost didn’t make it myself.

I gave South of Heaven West of Hell a 6/10, so it was entertaining and had some quality to offer. I also wondered about the often very negative reviews.

My God … we’re actually in agreement for once! LOL :grinning:

Yes, but only for once. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again until next year …

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I should probably rewatch it. I watched it long time ago and since then I’ve been through a lot of SW garbage and now I’m broken man, any shit can impress me, hell, I even gave 3/5 rating to a Fidani spagh lately. :sob: What have become of me?

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The last full Western I watched was Buon Funerale Amigos!..Paga Sartana (Have a Good Funeral My Friend…Sartana Will Pay, which I really enjoyed, and I was just starting Una Nuvola di Polvere…un Grido di Morte…Arriva Sartana (A Cloud of Dust, a Cry of Death, Here’s Sartana/Light the Fuse…Sartana is Coming), but writing projects (for my blog, here, the GCDb, etc) are the priority for the moment. I’ve enjoyed all the Sartana films so far, and can’t wait to watch the 5th one.

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South Of Heaven, West Of Hell (2000)
Watched this urgently. To know.
We are not even 10 minutes into it and Dwight’s pants are torn off of him by a ravenous woman. And not the last time.
Well, what can I say. The story itself isn’t that bad, but Yoakam’s execution is a bit weird. Cringey, I’d say. First half is at least quite normal, because you can’t fuck up that much directing people talking, or staring at something, while the same fucking tune is repeated over and over. Let’s say soundtrack is a bit of a letdown and can pretty much might get on your nerves after a while. The second half, with more action and showdowns, is quite hilarious and it just shows director’s incompetence. I mean, the final showdown. You just laugh through it with constant “wtf”.
The whole movie has that vibe of pretentious arty crap epic movie with nostalgia evoking soundtrack, probably quite big budget, plenty of famous actors involved and dull and unfocused direction. As said before Vaughn is a miscast, but I’m not sure about Yokam either. I know that not every western hero must be cool looking dude, but I somehow didn’t buy it. Maybe he should grow a beard for a role. 4/10.

I watched it once and the only thing I remember is a guy walking around in a skirt.

Yep. Anyway, I bet the movie had to look quite promising on paper, ambitious, at least thats my theory why so many big stars are in it.

First time watching these…

Those Dirty Dogs
Taste for Killing
Sonny and Jed
Dead Men Ride
Killer Kid
Blazing Saddles
El Topo
Cut Throats Nine

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3:10 to Yuma (1957) 9/10
Forty Guns (1957) 8/10
Best of the Badmen (1951) 7/10

Yellow Sky
Breakheart Pass
Silverado

Hadn’t watched Silverado in years. Surprisingly, I think I appreciate it more now.

Yellow Sky is one of my favorites.

I sawthis one was at netflix. I used to like Silverado but I am halfway a rewatch and can’t get through the movie anymore. So for me it is the other way around :roll_eyes:

Watched it once, long ago (in 2000 or shortly after, I suppose) and didn’t like it at all, but i don’t remember for what reason. Don’t remember anything about the whole thing other than I didn’t like it

Not very memorable, but some scenes are quite good.

7 Women (1966, John Ford)

Set in 1935 on Chinese-Mongol border, is this a western? Well it certainly has some typical western (and John Ford) themes: frontier civilization vs wilderness, small community under siege, higher authority vs individual feelings and desires, etc.

On the surface, Ford was getting increasingly liberal in the twilight of his career. After offering his apologies to Native Americans in Cheyenne Autumn, in his last movie he puts down religiousness, conservative morals and men (mostly men on horses for that matter).

But there was one theme that was the most intriguing to me. Scene in which Ms. Andrews (Margaret Leighton) gets completely weak in the knees while watching young Emma (Sue Lyon, best known as Lolita) dressing up is, apart from Montgomery Clift and John Ireland comparing pistols in Red River, the most explicit homosexual moment in the classic western that I have seen. In case anybody was left with any doubt, later on we have an exchange between Dr. Cartwright (Anne Bancroft) and Ms. Andrews in which Doc suggests to later that she should have settled down with some man, to which Andrews replies that she has devoted her life to her work (and God). But she confesses with a distant look: “Yes, something was missing, God was not enough”. So, repressed sexuality hidden behind religion, well known story, and at this point we are still not sure were Ford is heading with this and with character of Ms. Andrews. But later on, when gang of savage men imprison these women, we get sudden shift in tone in Ms. Andrews’s character. She gets completely irrational and hysterical because of the woman giving birth in that room. She can’t stand her and her child, as well as Dr. Cartwright’s open sexuality. This shift in tone felt awkward to me, and by the end of the movie Andrews is essentially turned into villain.

Dr. Cartwright wears trousers and short hair, rides a horse, smokes and does a man’s job better than any man, but she is still the “real” woman. Her heterosexuality is explicitly established in the very first scene she arrives (“But, she’s a woman!” they yell, to which she replies “Unless a lot of man have been kidding me!”) and later she conquers men with her strongest, biblical weapon, her sex of course.

Quantrill’s Raiders, 1958… gets a 5-out-of-10, but the gaffes are harmlessly amusing and the acting is quite good. -With Leo Gordon and Steve Cochran. I’ve never unearthed the reason why 50’s Hollywood seemed to have a fascination with Quantrill. Randolph Scott did at least 2 Quantrill films (one on each side). And most of the Jesse James films feature interactions with Quantrill’s gang.

Yet the South’s greatest raider was The Gray Ghost, but I’ve never seen a movie depicting him. Only the short-lived TV series.

Quantrill’s Raiders is hampered by a small budget, otherwise the plot would translate-into a sprawling epic, with more of a solid action-impact. Instead of 90-to-100 raiders, we get 14. Instead of 140 Indians and wild horses, we get 12 and 24. Plus the plot would probably contain most of its flaws, like conclusions on who’s a secret-agent based on assumptions on who’s a secret-agent, etc.

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Watched Fort Apache last night…have seen it a few times but not in a while. What took me this time for some reason was Shirley Temple. She got hosed on the movie career as an adult. She has a screen presence and unlike many child stars was quite the looker as well as she got older. I guess people at the time couldnt get over child Shirley.

IMHO, Shirley Temple’s role was quite juvenile in that movie too, more 12-year than 22-year old, only thing missing was a lollipop.

The Hateful Eight (Tarantino, 2015) - 3.5/5
Forty Guns (Fuller,1957) - 3.5/5