Ulzana’s Raid is one of the rare movies that has a particularly strong theme—violence: what does it mean, and how is it used? To perfectly...
1972’s Ulzana’s Raid
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Western Movies
1958’s Terror in a Texas Town
The year 1958 saw two Westerns with similar stories: William Wyler’s big-budget, color The Big Country and the low-budget, black-and-white Terror in...
Dinos in the West
If we can be expected to accept animated cowboy chameleons and marauding aliens in our newfangled Western movie world, we may as well toss in...
True Grit
The 2010 True Grit may not have grabbed any Oscars, but it did rake in more money than any Western since Dances With Wolves. The DVD and Blu-ray...
Stars in My Crown
The 1950 movie Stars in My Crown stars Joel McCrea as a Civil War vet, Josiah Gray, who arrives in a Tenneesee town as the new pastor. The story is...
Ambush
Robert Taylor’s second Western after Billy the Kid, 1950’s Ambush, is an underrated cavalry picture. Hard boiled characters were everywhere in that...
Tim Holt Western Classics
Warner Bros. has issued the first of what I hope will be several Tim Holt collections. This five-disc, 10-movie set shows Holt at the beginning of...
Home on the Rango
Since the movie Rango opened nationally in March, the critics have struggled to get a fix on it. They can’t seem to make up their minds whether...
Quanah Parker Looks Promising
Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry and his writing partner Diana Ossana have their plates full with a number of new Western-themed movies in the...
Hart Ranch Reopens
After he finished what would be his last, and one of his best films, Tumbleweeds, in 1925, William S. Hart bought the land where the picture was...
Mangold’s Texas Ranger
James Mangold didn’t get quite as much attention as the Coen brothers when he retooled the black-and-white Western 3:10 to Yuma. But his ambitious...
True Grit
Fans of the original version of True Grit may be divided in their opinions about the remake, but we all have the Coen brothers to thank for...