Once Upon a Time in the West

Hey, it's a Blu-ray viewing! I took an actual physical disc out of its case, popped it into my PS4, and navigated my way through a brief menu in order to play this film. Imagine that!

This is how I know I'm not a film geek, but rather just a bored guy who likes watching movies. True film geeks lose their shit over this thing. No joke! It has a 4.4 out of 5 on Letterboxd, where all the film geeks go, and where I just pretend to fit in, doing my thing, hoping not to get called out for, say, not popping a big old boner for this Spaghetti Western. That's higher than the 4.3 held by Star Wars, The Shining, Casablanca, and Alien - hell, The Godfather only even has a 4.6. I don't think I've seen a 4.7. Whatever - my point is, nerds go apeshit for Sergio Leone. (Also a 4.4? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.) Even Wikipedia says, "The film is now generally acknowledged as a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made." High praise!

What I'm driving at here, in case you couldn't tell, is that I just don't see it. I liked this movie plenty - like to the tune of a 3.5 or maybe even a 4 - but I'm not fully understanding the "greatest western of all time" praise. What gives? Someone, please - Trev? - enlighten me! Is this one of those cases where I need to take a hard look at everything that came out prior to 1968 in order to fully appreciate what I just saw here? I mean, I won't lie, the final showdown, the payoff, is real fuckin' great. The way Ennio Morricone's score swells to this climactic crescendo before going silent, the way Bronson and Fonda stare each other down with this ridiculous tension - I get it. It's awesome. But that's ten great minutes in a two-and-a-half-hour movie. A two-and-a-half-hour movie full of silence and staring. Ambience? Sure, but man, there's a limit to how much stress you can milk out of a series of tracking shots.

It also bugs me - I'm just gonna say it - that some of the actors here are clearly speaking Italian or something else and that they've been dubbed over in English. Grinds my gears. Same thing happened with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Alright, so maybe my nitpicks are only nitpicks.