Actors have also made their name starring in Western films, including Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, James Stewart and Jeff Bridges, to name a few.

These are the best movies about American presidents. The critically-renowned Steven Spielberg directed the Oscar-winning 2012 biographical historical drama Lincoln, starring cinema great Daniel Day-Lewis as the sixteenth President of the United States Abraham Lincoln.

Along with its absorbing and tragic romance tale, Brokeback Mountain is a lovingly captured film that shows us the inner drama of the characters and sweeping, epic landscapes with thought and care. Apple Yet another excellent western directed by Kevin Costner—way before his Yellowstone days, by the way— Open Range is a classic from the aughts.

The history of movie Westerns more or less begins with the end of the Old West itself. Westerns thrived in the silent era, and though the genre’s popularity has ebbed and flowed ever since — largely fading from view in the ’80s but enjoy several resurgences in succeeding decades — it’s never threatened to fade away.