5 Best Western Movies Of The 2020s, According To Letterboxd

They're still making great Westerns, you just have to dig a little bit if you want to find them. Following our recent look at the top five highest rated 21st century Westerns on Letterboxd, we noticed that no films from this decade were in the top five, with Chloe Zhao's "The Rider" (a 2017 festival premiere which released in theaters in 2018) the most recent movie to rank in the upper echelons. Only one film which premiered in 2020 or later made it to the site's top 100, and it was the most underseen in the entire countdown, which got us wondering about what other titles from this decade were next in line for a spot in the best-rated Westerns list.

For the following, we went to the Letterboxd master list of Westerns, filtered by decade, and removed any shorts or TV miniseries which had been added to their database. After that, we removed any movies with fewer than 2,000 logs by users — the threshold for entry on the primary top 100 Westerns list, to ensure that each movie has a cult audience at the absolute bare minimum — but did cross reference with the 2010's list. So any 2019 movies which didn't release in US theaters until 2020 or later would be eligible.

What we found are that the best Westerns this decade were made far away from the American West, with bold, unique takes on the genre more common internationally than in its natural home. Many of the following five movies have flown under the radar (even to us!), so we've used the glowing words of Letterboxd users to argue why you should try and seek these out.

If you're looking for a Western for younger audiences which could serve as a gateway drug to the genre, look no further than the 2020 animation "Calamity," a vibrantly animated twist on the story of Calamity Jane. In a genre where there aren't many stories featuring strong female leads, this coming-of-age tale rebels against the strict gender roles of the Old West, working effectively as a biopic of the famous frontierswoman's younger years. It's also a plainly fun adventure.

Set during the Colorado gold rush of 1863, it follows Jane and her family as they travel in a caravan across America to Oregon; when her father is injured on the way, she's not allowed to step up and take a leadership role because she's a girl. In rebellion, she secretly spends her nights learning to lasso and ride a horse. She also starts making her own pants, as she's tired of wearing skirts and other feminine clothing.

Over on Letterboxd, this rebellious coming-of-age movie has been celebrated for its unique animation style as much as its empowering, family-friendly message. User abunchoffoxes wrote: "Once in a while you come across an animated film whose art style is so vibrant and different it makes you really excited about the endless possibilities of the medium all over again." User Dan K agreed, writing: "A feast for the eyes. I don't know of any film that looks like this. It not only commits to an outline-less style, but it also has a unique and very unconventional color palette." There's something to grip viewers of all ages in this one.

There's been a Western boom in Brazil in recent years, with three of the highest rated Western movies of this decade so far on Letterboxd hailing from there. The first on this list is director Erico Rassi's film "Same Old West," set in the country's region of Goiás, which is here rendered as a desolate landscape a lightyear away from the romanticism you'd expect from an American take on the genre.

Opening with a woman fleeing into the distance while two men argue, this neo-Western is a commentary on the inherent machismo of the genre, and the ultimate subversion of the idea of it as an attainable fantasy. The two leads (played by Ângelo Antônio and Babu Santana) aimlessly drink their way across the region, frequently talking about women despite not having any idea how to talk about them — they've fantasized about being lone rangers, but the desolation left in their lives has led them into an endless cycle of violence and misery.

Although not widely seen outside of Brazil, the movie has prompted a lot of expansive reviews on Letterboxd analyzing its themes. User Matheus Fiore summed it up best when he wrote: "Westerns usually come alive through characters full of dreams; the conquest of land, gold, the beloved woman, the reaffirmation of myths ... none of that exists in Érico Rassi's film. Here, the myth is in ruins. It's a brutal, broken West, where dreaming is not allowed. All the characters seek is revenge for what they have lost." It sounds like the ultimate antidote to the cliches of a Hollywood Western.

We're staying in Brazil for the first movie on our list to break through into Letterboxd's top 100 highest rated Westerns, where it's currently ranked at number 60. That's one spot higher than "The Magnificent Seven." The minimum number of views required for entry on that Letterboxd list is 2,000, and with only 2,534 ratings, "Sertânia" can stake a claim as the most obscure movie to also be one of the finest in the genre. This stark black-and-white period piece from director Geraldo Sarno — his last film before he died in 2022 — follows the final moments of Antão (Vertin Moura) as he experiences vivid fever dreams after being shot by bandits who have taken over his small town. What follows is a hallucinatory, avant-garde journey through the brutal history of the region where the movie is set.

It sounds like a challenging but rewarding watch, which has inspired a lot of intriguing analysis from Brazilian cinephiles on Letterboxd. User Barmilliv wrote: "The editing constantly breaks linearity, causing memories and the present to organically intertwine and bringing the flow of memory closer to the delirious state of a man between life and death ... The absence of color in no way diminishes the impact, as the violence, sadness, and suffering remain evident in every shot. Everything is presented as a memory retrieved by someone who witnessed those events, allowing the stories of the backlands to be reborn before the viewer as if they had never ended."

Currently, the only way to see it is to learn Portuguese and watch an unsubtitled upload of the film on YouTube. With the acclaim from the devoted movie nerds who've seen it, we hope a version international viewers can understand becomes available soon.

The only English language Western to crack this list — although "The Power of the Dog" came in at a close sixth — director Kelly Reichardt's critical darling should have introduced her to a wider audience. Instead, this 2019 festival premiere released in theaters the weekend before COVID shut them down, flopping at the box office, with most cinephiles seeing it via the comfort of their laptop screens. Luckily, this Oregon set drama about a cook (John Magaro) and a Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee) teaming up to steal milk from a wealthy landowner's cow found a cult audience and now sits comfortably within Letterboxd's top 50 Westerns. Currently sitting at number 48, it's rated higher than "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and the Coen Brothers' "True Grit."

Although a tale about capitalism, as the two impoverished characters attempt their get-rich-quick scheme of using the cow's milk to make the best 'oily cake' in the region, "First Cow" has also resonated as a tale of friendship. It's surprisingly quaint and soothing despite the inherent tension of breaking the law. There's no wonder viewers discovering it during the pandemic found it comforting.

As user Wes summed it up: ”'First Cow' takes tense situation after tense situation and imbues it with a tender, careful study. Once again, the pacific northwest plays a crucial backdrop in the development between a relationship between two men as their bond grows from unlikely to crucial. Rivers and trees and the dirt under the leaves becomes as intertwined in how their journey unfolds (and ends) just as much as the titular cow herself. A piece of cinema that is a much-needed reprieve from all the madness."

And we're returning to Brazil for the highest-rated Western of the 2020s, another 2019 festival premiere — which picked up the Jury Prize at that year's Cannes Film Festival — which didn't see the light of day in American theaters until a couple of weekends before COVID closed them. This Weird Western from "The Secret Agent" director Kleber Mendonça Filho is equally reminiscent of both spaghetti Westerns and wild thrillers like "Mad Max" and "Assault on Precinct 13," spinning a sci-fi tinged tale about a small town whose residents discover that it's disappeared from the map amidst a water shortage.

Soon, a UFO-shaped drone is spotted above the skies, all their phone reception disappears, and a water tanker that does turn up has been ruptured by countless bullet holes. What unfolds after that is a bloody David vs Goliath tale, as the residents must team up to fight off outsiders who want far more than just their land. Currently sitting within the top 40 highest rated Westerns on Letterboxd, one spot above "Dances with Wolves," Filho's wild genre-bending epic is undoubtedly the most exhilarating on this list — a love letter to classic Euro Westerns and American thrillers that's delightfully unpredictable.

Letterboxd user Josh Lewis summed up its appeal: "A completely bonkers movie that begins as a Brazilian social drama, observing the townspeople's cultural rituals and impoverished conditions at the hand of a corrupt mayor with an almost Western-inflected sense of community. By the end, this has somehow transitioned into a full-blown spaghetti Western splatter comedy version of "Assault on Precinct 13" about an impoverished community's armed resistance in the face of colonial genocide." It's proof there's still exciting new ground to be broken in the Western genre.