10 Great Westerns … Sadly, a nearly dead genre

The Old West … wild and dangerous, dirty men with guns riding horseback, women wearing full-length dresses in the middle of summer in the near-desert, booze more plentiful than water and the chance of being shot down at any given moment for as little as looking at someone funny. Why on Earth would any of us NOT want to live in those days. Air conditioning, television, refrigerators … who needs ’em? A chance to live vicariously through these characters in a time and place we not dare venture ourselves … that’s one reason we’ve loved the films of the western genre. Oh yeah, and the gun fights are cool. Here’s my personal Top 10 List of Westerns: (in no particular order)

The Searchers (1956) — directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne and Natalie Wood.

Magnificent Seven (1960) — directed by John Sturges, starring Yule Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn.

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (1966) — directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, score by Ennio Morricone.

The Professionals (1966) — directed by Richard Brooks, starring Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan and Jack Palance.

The Wild Bunch (1969) — directed by Sam Peckinpah, starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and L.Q. Jones.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) — directed by Sam Peckinpah, starring Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn and Bob Dylan, soundtrack by Bob Dylan.

The Shootist (1976) — directed by Don Siegel, starring John Wayne, James Stewart, Lauren Becall and Opie … I mean, Ron Howard.

Unforgiven (1992) — directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman.

Tombstone (1993) — directed by George Cosmatos, starring Kurt Russell, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Val Kilmer, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Jason Priestley, Thomas Haden Church and Charleton Heston.

The Proposition (2005) — directed by John Hillcoat, starring Guy Pearce, Richard Wilson and Ray Winstone.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) — directed by Andrew Dominik, starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell and Sam Shepard.