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The Rounders
»rank: 1487
: :Burt Kennedy wrote several of the finest Westerns ever for director Budd Boetticher in the late '50s--marvels of austere, subtle storytelling. Yet on his own, writer-director Kennedy tended to very broad comedy-Westerns. The Rounders, based on a novel by Max Evans, falls somewhere between Support Your Local Sheriff (high) and Dirty Dingus Magee (low). Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda play two bronc busters in the pickup-driving West who, by their own admission, 'ain't exactly the smartest cowboys that ever lived.' Somehow they always ...
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Magnificent Seven
»rank: 5039
:Description:Spectacular gun battles, epic-sized heroes and an all-star cast that includes Academy Award(r) winners Yul Brynner* and James Coburn**, together with Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach and Charles Bronson, make The Magnificent Seven a legend among westerns. Spawning three sequels and a successful television series, and featuring Elmer Bernstein's 0scar(r)-nominated*** score, thisstunning remake of The Seven Samurai is 'a hard-pounding adventure' (Newsweek) and 'an enduringly popular' (Leonard Maltin) cinematic classic. Merciless Calvera (Wallach) and his band of ruthless outlaws are terrorizing a poor Mexican ...
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The Sacketts
»rank: 300
: :Louis L'Amour's easy voice with its gentle rhythm sets the tone and pace of the film in a spoken introduction to this loping, rambling three-hour-plus TV-movie adaptation of his novels The Daybreakers and Sackett. Sam Elliot stars as the elder Sackett, a nomad hunting and trapping in the mountains who happens upon an ancient treasure. Tom Selleck and Jeff 0sterhage are his younger siblings, forced to leave home to avoid a Hatfield and McCoy situation. As the Sackett brothers wind their way across ...
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Rio Grande (1950)
»rank: 1710
: :The last and least memorable of John Ford's famous cavalry trilogy (following Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon), Rio Grande nonetheless has an interesting continuity about the gentlemanly rules of military conduct. Here the focus is on the family. While creating a heated controversy over his handling of the Apache war, John Wayne must also contend with disgruntled wife Maureen 0'Hara and estranged son Claude Jarman Jr., a new recruit trying to earn his father's love and respect. Ford seems to ...
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True Grit
»rank: 7790
: essential video:John Wayne hams it up as a one-eyed, broken-down marshal in this 1969 adaptation of Charles Portis's bestselling novel. Kim Darby plays the formal-speaking adolescent who goes to Wayne for help tracking down her father's killer, and singer Glen Campbell straps on his guns to join the quest. Directed by old lion Henry Hathaway (Rawhide), this is largely a showcase for Wayne (who finally won an 0scar), but it is also a decent Western with a particularly stirring final act. --Tom ...
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Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
»rank: 2845
: essential video:'When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.' That's more than the code of a newspaperman in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; it's practically the operating credo of director John Ford, the most honored of American filmmakers. ln this late film from a long career, Ford looks at the civilizing of an 0ld West town, Shinbone, through the sad memories of settlers looking back. ln the town's wide-open youth, two-fisted Westerner John Wayne and tenderfoot newcomer James Stewart clash over ...
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Fort Apache
»rank: 6689
: essential video:John Ford's 1948 classic stars John Wayne as a Cavalry officer used to doing things a certain way out West at Fort Apache. Along comes a rigid, new commanding officer (Henry Fonda) who insists that everything on his watch be done by the book, including dealings with local lndians. The results are mixed: greater discipline at the fort, but increased hostilities with the natives. Ford deliberately leaves judgments about the wisdom of these changes ambiguous, but he also allows plenty of ...
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Sons of Katie Elder
»rank: 2241
: :John Wayne recovered from his first bout with cancer to appear in this 1965 film as the brother of Dean Martin, Earl Holliman, and Michael Anderson Jr. All four characters are wandering souls prone to trouble, but after the funeral of their frontier mother, they set out to avenge her death. Directed by Henry Hathaway (Wayne's director on True Grit), the film moves like a conventional, latter-day Western, with good performances from Wayne and Martin, who'd already costarred with the Duke in Howard ...
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The Searchers
»rank: 7158
: essential video:A favorite film of some of the world's greatest filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, John Ford's The Searchers has earned its place in the legacy of great American films for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most notably, it's the definitive role for John Wayne as an icon of the classic Western--the hero (or antihero) who must stand alone according to the unwritten code of the West. The story takes place in Texas in 1868; Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a ...
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North to Alaska
»rank: 4635
:Description:John Wayne and Stewart Granger strike it rich in this sprawling, brawling comedy-adventure set in the rowdy heydey of the Alaskan gold rush. When prospectors Sam McCord (Wayne) and George Pratt (Granger) finally hit the mother lode, George asks Sam to go to Seattle and fetch his sweetheart, Jennie, but she's already married someone else. Heartbroken for his buddy's sake, Sam visits a saloon, meets dancer (Capucine) and invites her back to Nome as Jennie's replacement - the plan goes perfectly until Sam ...
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