10. Dances With Wolves (1990)
Some people have issues with Dances With Wolves, but I love it. It’s yet another lazy iteration of the Brown = Good & Natural / White = Evil & Destructive narrative, and it employs the semi-racist “White Messiah” storyline, but it’s an entertaining look into a clash of civilizations that defined the tumultuous time. I liked it much better than the futuristic sequel where they painted the natives blue and put tentacles in their ponytails.

9. How The West Was Won (1962)
How The West Was Won is to the western genre what The Longest Day is to the WWII (specifically D-Day) genre – an epic summary of a greater story. The cinematography and live action sequences are so impressive that you could watch the movie with no sound and still come away satisfied. It’s basically a series of short stories that follows a few families from the land rush to manifest destiny and the taming of the wild west.

8. Tombstone (1993)
Maybe it’s just that this film came out when I was in high school and going through my macho phase, but I love Tombstone. The bravado is over the top, but no more than the actual mythology that still surrounds the Earp brothers and the shootout at the OK Corral. This might be the best performance ever by Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, and Kurt Russell pulled his own as the iconic lawman Wyatt Earp.

7. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
This might be the most well-made film on the list. You have Robert Redford and Paul Newman playing lovable outlaws. Their adventures make the west look like a playground until the heat gets too hot and they have to escape to South America. The ending is a lesson for anyone who thinks you can escape your nature.

6. Lonesome Dove (1989)
This made-for-TV drama is one of the best ways to nurse a hangover. I spent many a Sunday on the couch in college watching almost eight hours of Lonesome Dove. The cast is stellar, the story is compelling, and the characters are endearing. Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall are outstanding as the former Texas rangers who decide to open the first ranch in Montana.

5. Open Range (2003)
This film cleverly combines two of the arch-narratives in American westerns – the wandering good Samaritan (best exhibited in Shane) and the legendary cattle wars (Lincoln County/Billy The Kid). In Open Range, the wanderers get drawn into conflict by a cattle baron who is waging a war against free rangers. It ends how you expect it to, but good character performances all around make the film stand out.

4. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
You can’t go wrong when you put John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart in a western together. This film focuses on the critical period when the west was transitioning from law by the gun to law by the books. John Wayne represents the cynical old guard and Jimmy Stewart represents the optimistic new guard. Together, they stand up to an outlaw who has no place in the new west.

3. The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976)
In most westerns, the protagonist has a shady past but has changed his ways. In The Outlaw Josie Wales, the protagonist is memorable because he doesn’t evolve. Much like Eastwood’s role in Unforgiven, the main character is more or less apathetic to human life. He’s a hero only because the situation calls for someone to get their hands dirty, and he happens to save the day by doing what comes natural. It’s odd for a bad guy to be so endearing to an audience, but it has an authenticity that sets it apart from so many other singing cowboy yarns.

2. High Noon (1952)
This is one of the most tense movies ever made. It takes place in real time (around 90 minutes until the showdown), so we feel the seconds ticking down and we empathize with the protagonist as his chances look more and more grim. This incredible story of courage in the face of overwhelming odds was co-opted by the Czechs during the “Prague Spring” uprising in 1968. The protesters printed posters of the film as imagery that cast themselves as heroes standing alone against their evil Soviet oppressors while the rest of the world cowered in shame.

1. Shane (1953)
Like I’ve said before, Shane is the apex western. The plot is so simple and so effective that any movie following this basic outline will find success. Pale Rider employs almost the exact same story structure and is still considered a classic because of it. See if this sounds familiar – a robberbaron uses his wealth and power to force families off their hard-earned land. Then out of the blue, a stranger with a shady past shows up and inspires the underdogs to stand up to the villain and his henchmen. A fight breaks out, the protagonist does his duty with no thought of reward, and then rides off alone in questionable health.

Honorable Mention

The Searchers (1956)
John Wayne’s life is interrupted when his niece is kidnapped by Comanches. He spends years searching for her and his hatred for Indians grows the whole time. When he finally finds her and it’s obvious she’s adopted Comanche ways, his hatred clouds his conscience.

The Jack Bull (1999)
A surprisingly good western about a horse trader (well-played by John Cusack) who is wronged by a much more politically-connected rancher. When he uses the legal system to seek justice, he’s blocked at every turn. He finally takes matters into his own hands and draws attention to the injustice in the territory.

Deadwood, Season 1 (2004)
While not a film, this HBO series about the boomtown in Deadwood, South Dakota offers a raw and uncensored glimpse into everyday life in the wild west. It features Wild Bill Hickok as a character, so you know how the season has to end. It doesn’t disappoint.

Young Guns (1988)
Once again, I’m completely biased here. This movie came out when I was in 5th grade and it made me want a six-shooter more than anything else in the world. I was eventually given a BB gun. But not a real BB gun. I got a weak little plastic gun that shot those crappy, yellow, rubber pellets. It was embarrassing. I found solace by watching Young Guns over and over again on VHS and pretending I was one of the foolhardy Regulators.

Three Amigos (1986)
Who says a western has to be serious? This is one of the funniest films ever made. It’s Chevy Chase, Steve Martin and Martin Short at their comedic best. If you can’t recite every word of this film by heart, then you obviously hate America. Traitor.

Overrated Films

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
This film is visual Valium. Honestly, I know all about the making of the film and I think it’s an interesting endeavor, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that the story is just plain flat.

True Grit (1969)
What do people see in this movie? John Wayne is good as usual, but not great. The girl is okay, but what’s the story here? Why do I, the viewer, care what happens to the characters? Maybe people just love eye patches and cowboys named “Rooster” with a questionable moral pedigree.

The Wild Bunch (1969)
Once again, it’s an okay movie, but I’ve never had the desire to see it a second time. Maybe the people who love it and True Grit saw it during impressionable times of their lives, kind of like me with Tombstone and Young Guns. I was equally unimpressed with The Magnificent Seven.

Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (1973)
James Coburn is pretty good as Pat and Kris Kristofferson is okay as Billy. The only really redeeming aspect of this movie is Bob Dylan’s music. This film introduced Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door to the world. To be fair, some of the film was destroyed during the editing phase and was never reproduced, so the final version is not the finished product, so to speak.

Winchester ’73 (1950)
This film starts off alright but then it rambles through a few interconnected scenes. The stand against the Indians is exciting, but the oversall story is inconsistent at best. You’ve failed to connect with your audience if they care more about what happens to the rifle than what happens to the main characters.

As you can see, this isn’t an exhaustive list. I should also add that I’ve never seen Red River or The Gunfighter, although I’ve wanted to ever since I first heard Bob Dylan’s Brownsville Girl. Nor have I seen a slew of the really old cowboy flicks. But I’ve seen enough westerns to know what I like. And even if there are some movies that you think belong on this list that were omitted, you have to admit that you won’t go wrong watching any of these fine films.

If this list gets some younger people out there to see a movie that’s not larded up with excess background music and special effects, then I’ll feel like my work has been done.

UPDATE 3/2/11: I watched The Gunfighter last week. Gregory Peck was great as usual, but the film’s only okay. I guess knowing how it ends kind of ruined the redemption story arc they were trying to build. I still think the best Western/Wilderness film (if you can call it that) that Peck carried was The Yearling. The Big Country is pretty good too.

UPDATE 3/16/11: I just watched Red River. It was very good. John Wayne is at his best when he plays a good guy with a bad streak. The tension mounts as he slowly becomes more tyrannical and aggressive, kind of like Humphrey Bogart’s performance in The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. The stampede scene is incredible. It’s like a tsunami of cattle. I don’t know how they filmed it without anyone getting killed. It stands in stark contrast to the CGI stampede scene in the recent faux-epic, Australia. You know it’s fake and it removes the ‘wow factor’ from the scene and the impact it’s supposed to have on the developing characters and the overall story.

I should add that Australia had its own Wild West and there are several very good films that depict the era:

5. Quigley Down Under (1990)
4. Ned Kelly (2003)
3. The Proposition (2005)
2. The Thorn Birds (1983)
1. The Man From Snowy River (1982)

Last week, the wife and I watched Shutter Island. I’d heard good things about it, so I was pretty excited to finally get it after being waitlisted for months on Netflix. <spoiler>When the main characters are being driven through the prison-like gate and onto the hospital grounds in the opening scene, I looked at the wife and said, “so, do you think he’s the crazy one and this is all in his mind?”</spoiler> With 30 minutes left to go in the film, the wife looked at me, said “this sucks,” and went to bed. She was right. The “big reveal” at the end of these movies isn’t as revelatory as it once was.

This storyline has run its course. In movies like Shutter Island, Total Recall, The Matrix, The Neverending Story, et al, the ending reveals that everything that’s happened up until now has been a fantasy/diversion/journey of self discovery. The initial meeting/partnership with the co-star was no accident, the shared experiences were destined, and their journey was explicitly designed to get the star or co-star to “open up/grow up.” So many films rely on this arc that I’m amazed anyone is surprised by the climax anymore. Sure, there are variations on this basic plot structure, but it’s too easy to see it coming.

More often than not, these movies go in a certain direction that’s entertaining and then they veer onto another course that confuses the viewer. I’m sure many viewers simply accept the plot turn as an unpredictable twist, but people like me want need to make the twists and turns fit logically as well as aesthetically. It’s like we’ve been slowly hypnotized by the storyline and suddenly someone snaps their fingers, waking us from the carefully crafted dreamworld. This is intellectually lazy and it’s avoidable. In most cases, the writers/directors are just copying an outline from another successful movie and the twist-ending fails to translate to their project. In the worst cases, writers/directors have insulted the intelligence of their audience by employing Deus ex Machina.

The term [Deus ex Machina] is Latin for god out of the machine, and has its origins in Greek theater. It refers to situations in which a crane (machine) was used to lower actors or statues playing a god or gods (deus) onto the stage to set things right. It has since come to be used as a general term for any event in which a seemingly fatal plot twist is resolved by an event never foreshadowed or set up.

There are four primary forms a Deus Ex Machina can take:

1. Total Deus Ex Machina. A plot element that didn’t previously exist and has no logical explanation behind it. Let’s say the hero has been pummeled to an inch of his life and the villain has regained control of his gun. The hero then finds a magical remote control under a nearby couch that allows him to pause the scene, take the gun away, and shoot the villain.
2. Illogical placement and timing Deus Ex Machina. When something is established and explained in the work, but its use in that situation is jarring and impossible to believe. Building from the example above, let’s say that instead of a magical remote, the local militia bursts in and shoots the villain. Maybe it was established earlier that the militia protects the countryside, but for them to somehow divine that there is a fight going on at this isolated farm and to burst in just in time to save the day is a Deus Ex Machina.
3. Cut and paste Deus Ex Machina. When Chekhovs Gun is quick-drawn, but it’s done in a clumsy way that makes one realize that the author obviously just couldn’t write them out of the situation with what they have, so they went back to some earlier point and put in one or two throwaway lines to set up a victory down the road. From the example above, perhaps the hero randomly decided to put a tiny pistol in one of his pockets and just happened to forget that he had it until now.
4. Fridge Brilliance. When something seems to be a Deus Ex Machina, but really isn’t. The writers were just a bit too clever for their own good. To build from the above, let’s say that in some early scene the hero intentionally rigged his gun to blow up should it ever be fired and it both fits with his personality and seems like a logical thing he would do. It might seem like a cop-out at first, but one then remembers he’s a Technical Pacifist who Doesn’t Like Guns and never wants to fire one in his life in spite of his job. See also Chekhovs Gun.

The worst offender of Deus ex Machina I’ve ever seen was in The Forgotten. <spoiler>In that film, kids are being abducted and no one seems to notice because when the kids disappear, so do people’s memories of them. The only person who sees the truth is Julianne Moore’s character. She battles the authorities who she expects are behind the kidnappings and the subsequent cover-ups. It builds to tense conclusion when, out of the blue, the director plays the alien card. I turned off the movie. At no point had aliens come into play in the rising action. As far as we viewers were concerned, aliens did not exist in the world of The Forgotten. It was like God came down from the heavens and screamed, “because I said so.”</spoiler> It was infuriating.

Another example is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. <spoiler>Near the end of that film, everything has gone wrong for our young heroes when, out of the blue, Hermione reveals a time machine. Excuse me? Isn’t that just a little convenient? And isn’t it a dangerous precedent to set in the storyline? Every dangerous moment that takes place from here on out will have the audience asking, “why doesn’t she just stop time again?” And don’t even get started on the “why doesn’t she go back in time to when Voldemort is a baby” line of reasoning. To put it simply, the heroine pulled out the perfect tool that had gone unmentioned until the end of the film. The tool just so happened to unravel the plot that had been building for the past hour. It’s the literary/cinematic equivalent of yelling “do over!”</spoiler> This is prime example of Cut & Paste Deus ex Machina and the audience deserves better. (Actually, J.K. Rowling is guilty of building a very poor premise for her fantasy world. If people can conjure things out of thin air at no expense, then why are the Weasleys poor? Why are some brooms faster than others? I could go on, but you get the point.)

Not all suspense movies with twist endings use Deus ex Machina. For example, M. Night Shyamalan is very careful to always introduce his plot devices before the third act, so to speak. That doesn’t mean his stories don’t follow the usual plot structure mentioned above, just that he avoids the pitfalls of Deus ex Machina. <spoiler>For example, the glasses of water strewn around the living room at the end of Signs are the perfect weapon at the perfect time. But if you remember, Shyamalan introduced the daughter’s obsessive compulsion with drinking water earlier. He also suggested that the aliens avoided water and built on an underlying theme of predestination thoughout the film.</spoiler> It all made perfect sense in the end, and that’s why it worked.

I only see two or three movies per year in the theater. I just don’t think you get enough bang for your buck. Because of the wife, most of the movies we see on the big screen involve sparkling emo vampires and juvenile magicians. Tonight I’m going to see Inception. If it’s as bad a Shutter Island, I’m swearing off suspense films for the foreseeable future.

UPDATE: I was pleasantly surprised by Inception. The cast worked well together (Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s physical performance was very good) and the plot was well developed. The director was good at establishing rules, limits and historical precedents in the dream world, and the story pretty much existed within those limitations. I really liked the way the story took place on several planes simultaneously, but like I’ve said before, I love movies that play around with time. I even liked the way the backstory was intermittently revealed throughout the timeline. It can be hard to pull that off. The Fountain tried and failed in my opinion, even though the movie was pretty good overall.

The films have to revolve around a single sport and must include a decent amount of playing time in order for me to consider it a true “Sports Movie.” For example, Tin Cup is obviously a sports movie because of the plot and playing time. The Sandlot qualifies as well, but barely. In contrast, Resurrecting the Champ revolves around boxing but isn’t a sports movie in my opinion. Neither is The Black Stallion, even though it concludes with a horse race. Anyway, here’s the list:

Top 25 Sports Movies of All Time:

1. Hoosiers
2. The Natural
3. Rudy
4. Rocky II
5. Miracle
6. 61*
7. For Love of the Game
8. Seabiscuit
9. The Greatest Game Ever Played
10. Field of Dreams
11. Mystery, Alaska
12. Wind
13. Cinderella Man
14. Eight Men Out
15. Rocky
16. Any Given Sunday
17. The World’s Fastest Indian
18. The Hustler
19. The Endless Summer
20. Caddyshack
21. Major League
22. Tin Cup
23. Invincible
24. Remember the Titans
25. Bad News Bears

Honorable Mentions (Or, 25 more, with special attention to obscure sports):

Victory
1. Any Given Sunday
2. Breaking Away
3. Wimbledon
4. Days of Thunder
5. American Flyers
6. Aspen Extreme
7. The Program
8. The Best of Times
9. The Flying Scotsman
10. K2
11. The Rookie
12. Blue Chips
13. The River Wild
14. Brian’s Song
15. Goal: The Dream Begins
16. The Longest Yard
17. Rocky IV
18. Brewster’s Millions
19. Rocky III
20. Soul of the Game
21. 8 Seconds
22. The Pistol
23. Side Out
24. Downhill Racer

Movies That Have a Place In Our Hearts (Or, a little nostalgia never hurt anyone):

1. Rad
2. Longshot
3. Rocky Balboa
4. Winners Take All
5. By The Sword
6. The Scout
7. Bull Durham
8. Kingpin
9. Happy Gilmore
10. Let it Ride
11. Paper Lion
12. The Legend of Bagger Vance
13. Heaven Can Wait
14. North Dallas Forty
15. Slap Shot
16. American Anthem
17. Hot Dog: The Movie
18. Ice Castles
19. The Pride of the Yankees
20. Cool Runnings
21. Diggstown
22. Talladega Nights
23. Rebound
24. The Last American Hero
25. Caddyshack II

That’s my list. I guess the most important selection/ranking criteria for me was… If I’m watching TV on a rainy Sunday afternoon at 3:37 pm and a game is coming on at 4:15 pm, I’m probably flipping through the channels looking or something to watch until the game comes on. If I stumble upon a movie in the first tier, the odds are close to 100% that I’ll put down the remote and probably forget to change it back in time for the start of the game. The movies are that good. The same situation plays out for the remaining films, but the odds go down for each tier. Does that make sense?

I should add that I omitted several titles on purpose. People always say that they love movies like Chariots of Fire and Raging Bull. That’s probably the cinematic equivalent of Nielsen testers lying about watching NOVA on PBS instead of American Idol on FOX. This is what comes to mind when I think of Raging Bull. Movies like that simply aren’t very entertaining. As a result, they’re not on my list.

Still, don’t assume that because a movie you like isn’t listed here, it means I didn’t consider it (although it might). This isn’t a database of all sports-related films. There are also plenty of Almost Sports Movies, like The Champ, The Eiger Sanction and The Hurricane, but I just didn’t think they qualified.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on my criteria and my selections.