Sergio Leone became king of the spaghetti Western by casting handsome Americans in top-notch Italian oaters with a sleazy twist. But 1968’s Once Upon a Time in the West was different, a morbid epic of gunslingers and vengeance that takes its time to remind you that the frontier was hell. With both America’s eternal hero, Henry Fonda, and the pugnacious Charles Bronson playing against type, it was Leone’s ultimate statement on the vile, vile West, and the movie that changed him from a B-movie master to a true legend of cinema. – Richard Whittaker
Jan. 3 & 5
