Movies Thread

[dukeman92]

All right. You can't talk about Westerns without even mentioning the best one of all time (in my opinion -- it's definitely celebrated widely): Once Upon A Time In The West. Leone is the best.

Tuco was played by Eli Wallach, so yeah he got his jersey in the rafters. Maybe not retired but honored.

Part of the great thing about Leone is that the Native Americans are just not there. His stories are tales of greed between white people. So while in one sense, it writes them out of history, it's really just writing them out of fables and that's much better than trying to depict them badly.

I was just trying to name some movies that might not make most lists... But Once Upon a Time in the West is a really good one. Young Charles Bronson!

 

[fourheels]

I've been going on a western binge for the last couple of weeks...my goal is to watch all the movies in Rotten Tomatoes "Top 100 Westerns of All-Time" list.

Some early observations:

Unforgiven is really one of the best movies ever made...Gene Hackman's character is so compelling, and he plays it so damn well. Treasure of the Sierra Madre is my leading candidate so far for all time best western. Red River is a dark horse for all-time best...it's such an awesome movie.

Tuco in "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" has to be one of the greatest characters in cinema history. Whoever the actor was who played him deserves to have his jersey hung in the rafters.

"The Searchers" is such a pile of crap it's hard to know where to start. Awful movie, and it's a self-indictment of western society itself that it keeps getting put on everybody's all-time lists. In related news, John Wayne is a complete dumbass. The man just oozes charisma, but boy is he an empty suit.

Clint Eastwood does his "lip up" thing all the time, and it gets super annoying. He looks like a fish that just ate a fishook.

There is so much anti-native American bias in these films it's mind boggling. What makes it so much worse is that the one movie that actually tries to humanize them, Dances With Wolves, is almost always characterized as "Good movie..but it misrepresents the people it's trying to celebrate." That's just such bullcrap. How should Costner have represented them, like all the other movies as target practices for ignorant alcoholics like John Wayne?

Sergio Leone is a really, really good storyteller.

Tuco was played by the great Eli Wallach. Tons of roles over the years including several other westerns (Magnificent Seven, How the West was Won, The Misfits....) and has a nice part in the the Holiday with Kate Winslet. He also did commercial voiceovers for Toyota trucks for years.

 

[dukeman92]

Eli Wallach

He also played Mr. Freeze in the classic Batman series.