Top 3 Great Westerns to Watch if You Already Miss Taylor Sheridan’s Landman
You might have never thought Leonardo DiCaprio would be a big Western star.
Taylor Sheridan is now a leading Western expert on modern TV, masterfully handling five (not long ago — six) successful shows at a time. With Yellowstone concluding its story with the final season back in 2024, Sheridan is heading towards a brighter future for his currently running Western-y series like Landman or 1923, but all of them still need some time before eventually coming back to the screen.
Luckily, Western genre is Hollywood’s darling that has expanded its own boundaries to new heights in the last several years — some of the movies are just what the doctor ordered for those who can’t wait to see what’s next for Landman.
Killers of the Flower Moon ( 2023)
Directed by Martin Scorsese, the movie might provoke a deja vu feeling among Landman’s fans who already got used to seeing all the mess that a discovery of oil production can cause.
Killers of the Flower Moon is based on a true story and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as World War I vet Ernest Burkhart who, driven by his corrupt uncle Hale’s instigations, marries a woman from Osage Nation that owns oil headlights. Soon Oklahoma is shaken by a series of shocking and brutal murders of Osages who made it clear about their resistance towards oil hunters.
Having received 10 Oscar nominations last year, Killers of the Flower Moon is considered one of Scorsese’s best works across his decades-long career, with the movie still holding a score of 93% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Though the flick might seem like challenging entertainment with its lengthy run of more than 3 hours, every minute of it is surely worthy of the entire evening you might select for the watch.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
A movie that many still think was unjustly snubbed at the Oscars back in 2022, The Power of the Dog is a real-life story turned into a powerful message about toxic masculinity, loneliness and sexual repression which are pretty rare elements in Western films.
Following the events that make wealthy ranch-owning brothers Phil and George Burbank distance from each other more and more, The Power of the Dog is a collection of outstanding performances from all four leads of the cast that includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee.
It’s an even bigger shame for the Academy that hasn’t granted any of them an award for their acting work, even though the movie’s director and writer Jane Campion still secured an Oscar for Best Director. The Power of the Dog came as a fresh take on the Western genre, yet it’s still widely overlooked.
The Revenant (2015)
Though its snowy landscapes aren’t exactly what Westerns always preferred to show, The Revenant follows the genre’s more profound ideas of revenge and bravery. The movie that secured Leonardo DiCaprio’s first and very long-awaited Oscar, The Revenant follows the story of Hugh Glass who, trying to survive in frozen forests, is determined to carry out his personal mission to kill the man who murdered his son and left Hugh himself to die.
The film is one of the most recent genre gems, with DiCaprio delivering a powerful and quite tragic performance captured through Alejandro González Iñárritu's masterful directorial vision.
The Revenant was one of the leads in the Oscars race back in 2016, garnering 12 nominations and eventually winning in 3 of them, taking the awards for Best Actor, Best Director and Best Cinematography.