Wild Westerns

Rated: M – medium level violence

This epic 1968 Sergio Leone spaghetti Western starring Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson is regarded as one of the greatest Westerns of all time. A young woman, Mrs. McBain (Claudia Cardinale), moves from New Orleans to frontier Utah, on the very edge of the American West. She arrives to find her new husband and family slaughtered, but by whom? The prime suspect, outlaw Cheyenne, befriends her and offers to go after the real killer, assassin gang leader Frank (Henry Fonda). He is accompanied by Harmonica (Charles Bronson), a man already on a quest to get even.

Rated: PG – mild themes, violence and infrequent language

This critically acclaimed “gaunt, mysterious and superbly calibrated” (The Guardian) western, directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Michelle Williams and Paul Dano is set in 1845, during the earliest days of the Oregon Trail – a brutal 3,490km east-west route used by emigrants and traders, accessible only by wagon, horse or foot. A wagon team of three families has hired the mountain man Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Claiming to know a short cut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path across the high plain desert, only to become lost in the dry rock and sage. Over the coming days, the emigrants must face the scourges of hunger, thirst and their own lack of faith in each other’s instincts for survival. When a Native American wanderer crosses their path, the emigrants are torn between their trust in a guide who has proven himself unreliable and a man who has always been seen as the natural enemy.

Rated: PG – Mild violence

Voted number one in BBC Culture’s 100 greatest foreign-language films in 2018 and regarded as one of the most influential films of all time, this 1954 Japanese epic action film is considered director Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece. In a small village regularly looted by armed bandits in 1586 Japan, the village elder, Gisaku, advises the villagers to hire a ronin (masterless samurai) to defend them. The villagers hire the veteran Kambei Shimada, who advises that they need six other samurai to protect their lands. Kambei recruits the necessary samurai and they move to the village. After the village farmers’ initial distrust of the samurai, Kambei plots a defense strategy, and the samurai start training the farmers how to defend their lands and families for the battle that approaches.