John Cox

Blogs · @wyome

Tagged western · everything

www.slashfilm.com

5 Forgotten '70s Western Movies That Still Hold Up Today

A roundup of five overlooked 1970s Westerns worth revisiting: Charlton Heston facing a vengeful outlaw in "The Last Hard Men," Robert Aldrich's bleak Vietnam-allegory "Ulzana's Raid," Charles Bronson's train-set whodunit "Breakheart Pass," Franco Nero's spaghetti-Western revenge tale "Keoma," and Lee Van Cleef's underseen "The Grand Duel." The piece argues that the genre's '70s output grew more cynical and violent than classic Hollywood oaters, deliberately puncturing frontier myths rather than romanticizing them, and that these particular titles got lost in the shadow of New Hollywood landmarks like "Jaws" and "The Godfather" despite still holding up. Worth keeping as a quick watchlist of underrated genre gems with a shared skeptical streak toward the "Old West as noble adventure" narrative.

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www.cbr.com

6 Classic Movies Everyone Forgot Are Actually Perfect

This piece identifies six classic films that have faded from modern audiences' collective memory despite their quality: The Iron Giant, From Russia With Love, Frantic, Capricorn One, Sorcerer, and Once Upon a Time in the West. For each film, the article briefly describes the plot and explains the specific circumstances—box office failure, overshadowing by contemporaries, or shifting genre popularity—that caused it to be overlooked or forgotten. The underlying argument is that contemporary moviegoers should seek out these forgotten masterpieces as a corrective to nostalgia for older cinema and as alternatives to endlessly debating the same canonical favorites.

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collider.com

10 Movies From 1966 That Are Now Considered Classics

This is a Collider ranking of the ten best films from 1966, a year the piece frames as a hinge point between fading Old Hollywood and the more experimental, globally adventurous cinema that followed. It runs through titles like Django, Tokyo Drifter, Cul-de-Sac, Fahrenheit 451, The Battle of Algiers, Andrei Rublev, Blow-Up, A Man for All Seasons, and Persona, before crowning The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as the year's most influential film. Worth keeping as a quick reference list of underrated and canonical 1966 releases with brief context on why each still matters.

Permalink westernfilm1960sclassics

movieweb.com

The Best Revenge Westerns of All Time, Ranked

A MovieWeb ranked list counting down ten essential revenge westerns, arguing that vengeance-driven plots showcase the genre's best qualities—complex antiheroes, moral ambiguity, and violent reckonings. It moves from Netflix's The Harder They Fall and Tarantino's Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight through Eastwood classics like Unforgiven and The Outlaw Josey Wales, topping the list with Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Worth keeping mainly as a quick watchlist/reference for standout entries in the revenge-western subgenre across decades and styles.

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collider.com

Jimmy Stewart Gave Us His Most Menacing Performance in This Western

This piece examines how "Winchester '73" marked a turning point for James Stewart, trading his wholesome pre-war persona for a morally ambiguous, violence-capable gunslinger under Anthony Mann's harsher directorial style. It traces the plot's gimmick of following a coveted rifle through various owners' hands as a device for Mann to interrogate frontier brutality, culminating in the revelation that Stewart's Lin and villain Dutch are estranged brothers, which turns a standard revenge plot into something closer to fratricidal tragedy. The write-up frames the film as the hinge between Stewart's earlier idealism and his subsequent darker collaborations with Hitchcock, making the case for why this particular western is a career-defining anomaly worth revisiting.

Permalink westernfilmclassicshollywood