The 10 best Westerns on Netflix
Listen up, pardner. I hear tell there’s silver and gold in them Netflix hills. Silver screen gold. I heard from ol’ Lefty at Cattleman’s Ranch that there streamin’ platform has some of the best westerns around, and I ain’t talkin’ the budget hotel chain, no sir.
10. Back to The Future III
Mr. Robert Zemeckis’ Back to The Future III brings an unknown quantity to the West, that fancy dancy thing cityfolk call “science.” The only science I need to know was taught to me by Professor Samuel Colt, but that’s another matter. This movie is about a young gun named Marty McFly who goes back to the ’80s—the 1880s—in order to rescue his mad scientist friend marooned in the Old West. It’s one of them comedy films sure to give a bellyful of laughs to those of more whimsical temperament.
9. Strange Way of Life
It is a Strange Way of Life indeed in the West, and Pedro Almodóvar’s short film proves it true. This talkie centers around two middle-aged gunslingers who reunite after a long 25 years. While their draws might not be as fast and their aim might not be as true, the feelings in their hearts for one another remain unchanged. And no, it ain’t hate or vengeance, the affliction of most who live this way of life, it’s big-hearted love between two men who spent a lot time together in their youth, on hot days and cold and possibly cold and lonely nights too.
8. The Furnace
Roderick MacKay’s The Furnace is set in a different kind of West. The far west of down under. I don’t mean Texas. I mean Australia. Like most Westerns, it’s about an unlikely team-up: a young Afghan cameleer and an aging adventurer who’s on the run with stolen gold. The kid agrees to help the man out of the rock and hard place he’s stuck between, by helping him navigate through the hard place of the Aussie outback and the rock that the long arm of the law is ready to pitch at the pair.
7. The Power of the Dog
The Power of the Dog is about Phil Burbank, a rancher who is what we in the West like to call “a total dick.” After Burbank’s brother decides to bring home a new wife with a teenage son, ol’ Phil takes it upon himself to torment the pair for no good reason. Ol’ Phil’s gonna learn the hard way that there’s only so long you can push people around before they start to push back, and push back hard, possibly off a cliff.
6. 3:10 to Yuma
Russell Crowe and Christian Bale lead this adaptation of an Elmore Leonard short story. Bale plays Dan Evans, a poor rancher with a mountain of debt owed to some bad men. He takes a job to deliver a different bad man, Ben Wade (Crowe), to a prison-bound train, but Wade’s crew isn’t going to make things easy. If you like guns, trains, and powerhouse acting, this is a good ‘un.
5. Rango
Rango proves that you don’t need to be a human being to possess a gunslinger’s cajones. Gore Verbinski’s animated film is about a chameleon named Rango who accidentally becomes the sheriff of a small Western town of animals. As the new Sheriff, his duties include putting outlaws under the thumb at the end of the law’s long arm. That’s gonna be difficult, considering 1. there are some powerful outlaws he has to fight and 2. being a reptile, he don’t got any thumbs
4. The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight is about a group of ne’er-do-wells suffering from just about the worst case of cabin fever my eyes have ever beheld. Set in post-Civil War Wyoming, the film revolves around eight bandits who take shelter from a raging blizzard in a lodge. Stuck with each other, words are exchanged, then bullets. It’s a Tarantino movie, after all. While it’s been called one of the man’s lesser films, the cast-off works of a master are still better than most.
3. The Quick and the Dead
Turns out ol’ Sam Raimi is good for more than just a horror flick! The Quick and The Dead is about a small town throwing a competition to decide who’s the rootin’-est, tootin’est gun shooter in the land. Men come from far and wide to test their skills, but the competitors are shocked to see that a sharpshootin’ woman has come to compete. As the film goes on, it’s revealed that she wants more than to prove she’s the second coming of Annie Oakley. She also wants revenge, and she’s gonna shoot the heart out of anyone who stands in her way.
2. Bone Tomahawk
S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk is a rare genre mashup: a horror Western. The film starts out Western enough, as a small town sheriff catches wind that a strange tribe of people living in the mountains have captured a group of civilians. The sheriff assembles a posse to find the survivors and bring them home, but discovers that their captors are something less than human. Turns out among their many differences, these fellas have a preference for a different sort of meat: the human kind.
1. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is what them fancy film critics would call “an anthology.” It’s six different stories of the Old West wrapped up into one movie. The stories come in all styles, from a funny ol’ tale of a famous gunslinger who finds out the hard way that there’s always someone better than you, to a harrowing story about an aging gold prospector set upon by bandits trying to take his hard-earned findings. The thread that weaves it all together? The absurd vicissitudes of life. Things happen, they don’t make no sense, and people try to deal with them as best as they can.
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