What are the better westerns out there - ones that might hold up?
Oh, man, where to start, and how to organize...!
OK. After a few minutes of thought I'll give you something from each era that either did hold up for me viewing a decade or more late, or absolutely felt like a classic in the moment. And I'll stop around ten years ago which I consider current.
B&W Era:
I'm still working on the classics of this era so I don't have much to recommend:
Treasure of the Sierra Madre - Bogart is a lot more relatably human than most of his more iconic tough-guy roles and it was the first time I really got what made him such a big deal in his time.
Classic Western:
Rio Bravo - The template, but one of the better versions of it.
The Searchers - The treatment of native Americans is cringe level of the time but this film frequently captures the grand scale of the landscape in a way that became the standard for the next 50 years.
60/70s Revolution:
Filmmakers really start to experiment with the form.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Best of the spaghetti westerns that usher in this era.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - A western non-western fans can love.
High-Plains Drifter - First of several Eastwood twists on the revenge story and antiheroes.
True Grit - John Wayne doing something different.
80/90s Next Generation
Westerns have lost their box-office luster by this point, but filmmakers who loved them in their youth occasionally are allowed to play in this sandbox again.
Unforgiven - Eastwood's sharpest deconstruction of the genre.
The Quick and the Dead - Sam Raimi silliness/fun. The Hunger Games of shootouts.
Tombstone - More modern filmmaking applied to a traditional western script with a great cast.
Desperado - A latin-themed take on the Western drenched in Robert Rodreguez's signature style.
Contemporary
You don't have to accept much "of the time" stuff with these films made to modern sensibilities.
3:10 To Yuma - Another traditional western script but made to the day's standards.
No Country For Old Men - I tried to avoid westerns filmed in a contemporary setting, but this one is too good not to mention. If that's too much of a cheat or you've seen it, the Coen's remake of True Grit can replace it.