Favorite Westerns, No. 36

 


Do you like a good Western? It's a classic genre in film and this year I've decided to look at some of my favorite Westerns. So, join me each Friday as I count down my favorite Westerns from No. 50 to No. 1. 

Mitch Robbins: Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?" Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering "how come the kids don't call?" By your eighties, you've had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can't stand but who you call mama. Any questions?

City Slickers (1991)
Starring: Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby, and Jack Palance
Director: Ron Underwood
About: This is, perhaps, another unconventional choice for the list. But sometimes, we need comedy. And this one has both comedy and gives you some food-for-thought. I've long enjoyed Crystal as a performer, and this is one of his better films. A group of friends, nearing 40 and from the big city, try their hand in the west. Along the way, they learn to appreciate their lives and the things they have. This film also features a delightful performance from Palance. You laugh a little. You think a little. It's not from the John Wayne school of westerns, but it has long appealed to me.

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