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The Rounders
»rank: 4472
: :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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Texas Across the River
»rank: 6946
: :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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Skin Game
»rank: 8054
: :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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The Cheyenne Social Club
»rank: 11281
: :This 1970 film teams director Gene Kelly with two veteran Hollywood actors in a light romp about two over-the-hill cowboys who inherit a bordello. Henry Fonda and James Stewart dusted off their spurs to team up in this appealing if formulaic western comedy. The two Hollywood legends play aging cowpokes who seem to do nothing but get on each other's nerves as they travel aimlessly through the West. They finally hang their hats at a new home--Stewart's newly acquired bordello, presided over by ...
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True Grit
»rank: 1768
: 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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Rio Bravo
»rank: 5684
: essential video:When it comes down to naming the best Western of all time, the list usually narrows to three completely different pictures: John Ford's The Searchers, Howard Hawks's Red River, and Hawks's Rio Bravo. About the only thing they all have in common is that they all star John Wayne. But while The Searchers is an epic quest for revenge and Red River is a sweeping cattle-drive drama ('Take 'em to Missouri! Yeeee-hah!'), Rio Bravo is on a much more modest scale. ...
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Support Your Local Sheriff
»rank: 3058
: :While hardly the first Western spoof to ride out of Hollywood, Support Your Local Sheriff is easily one of the best. James Garner plays the confident, cool-headed cowboy who strolls into a wild gold rush town on the way to Australia and takes the job as sheriff. Like a parody of My Darling Clementine by way of Rio Bravo, he arrests the hotheaded but hopelessly confused son (Bruce Dern) of a ruthless ranching magnate (Walter Brennan). Stuck with a half-built jail (where he ...
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Pocket Money
»rank: 7741
: :While hardly the first Western spoof to ride out of Hollywood, Support Your Local Sheriff is easily one of the best. James Garner plays the confident, cool-headed cowboy who strolls into a wild gold rush town on the way to Australia and takes the job as sheriff. Like a parody of My Darling Clementine by way of Rio Bravo, he arrests the hotheaded but hopelessly confused son (Bruce Dern) of a ruthless ranching magnate (Walter Brennan). Stuck with a half-built jail (where he ...
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Support Your Local Gunfighter
»rank: 3883
: :James Garner returns for this pseudosequel to Support Your Local Sheriff, this time as a gigolo con man mistaken for a legendary killer. Escaping matrimonial entanglements, he lands in the town of Purgatory in the midst of a raging war between gold miners racing for the mother lode. ln a play right out of Maverick, he quickly casts drifter Jack Elam into the gunfighter role and names himself the man's agent, selling his services to the highest bidder and pocketing a sizable commission. ...
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Three Amigos
»rank: 11425
: :Three Western stars (Martin Short, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase) from Hollywood silent films go to Mexico for what they assume will be a publicity appearance, and find they've actually been summoned to fight a local bandit. John Landis directed this 1986 comedy with self-conscious artifice, and it's hard to get into his self-congratulatory joke. Even the three main stars, brilliant comics all, can't sustain anything funny in it. --Tom Keogh
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