Starting this week, I'm going to add something new to the 'Only in the Movies' blog. In addition to my regular movie reviews, movie franchise rankings, and the '10 Movies Everyone Should See' lists, I'm going to start 'Western Wednesdays'. It's one of my favorite movie genres, and there are a ton of great films to talk about.
In recent years our theaters have been filled with comic book movies and
computer animated family films, and that's not a bad thing, but when there are a few genres really dominating the market some others get pushed to the side. For Westerns, this has been happening for a long time. Occasionally there is a good one, but we are long past the days of John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, and Golden Age of Westerns. Some of this is because American Westerns aren't big box office draws in foreign markets. I think political correctness has damaged the genre, and Westerns simply fell victim to history. Once the "Space Race" came about in the 1960's, American film goers became less interested in the American frontier and more interested in the next frontier.
All of this isn't to say Westerns will eventually die off completely. Like I stated earlier, decent ones are still being made. I thought the 'True Grit' remake from a couple years ago was decent, last years 'The Hateful Eight' was fun, and I really enjoyed 'In a Valley of Violence' which was just released recently (You can check out the review for that one here: http://onlyinthemoviesblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/todays-movie-in-valley-of-violence-2016.html). I'm going to try to have a decent mix of classic Westerns and modern ones for these 'Western Wednesday' reviews and, hopefully, my appreciation of the genre introduces some people to films they may have otherwise not checked out.
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