The 14 best Western movies to watch right now

This movie has everything for everybody — sweeping desert landscapes, dramatic gunfights, train robberies, and a villainous Henry Fonda. Director Serio Leone took learnings from some of his smaller films and decided to write a masterpiece that captivates with a solid story and great characters. You’re sucked in from the very first scene when Charles Bronson’s mysterious Harmonica character faces off against three cowboys across the railroad tracks while playing a tune on his namesake instrument, which creates a thread through the remainder of the film. To get his hands on prime land in Sweetwater, railroad baron Morton hires killers (led by Fonda’s character Frank) to off property owner Brett McBain and his family. But when McBain’s new wife arrives to find them all dead, she inherits the land. Outlaws Cheyenne and Harmonica take it upon themselves to look after her, but it’s soon clear that some ulterior motives against Frank are involved in the do-good task.

Quentin Tarantino movies have a knack for devising violence toward people in history that had it coming. Just as we couldn’t get enough of Brad Pitt killing Nazis in Inglorious Basterds, we took great pleasure in watching Django (Jamie Foxx) and Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) take out slave owners in Django Unchained. Set in the South two years before the Civil War, the film follows bounty hunter Dr. Schultz and freed slave Django on a quest to find Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who was separated from him in the slave trade years before. Their journey leads them to Calvin Candie’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) plantation “Candyland,” which sets the scene for the bloodbath to come. True to Tarantino’s style, the gory film delivers with a satisfying climax that’s almost as gratifying as seeing a plantation’s walls splattered with the blood of those who benefited from the slave trade. When you punctuate the story with Ennio Morricone’s score, Django Unchained is a masterpiece in every way.