3. For A Few Dollars More (1965)
In my mind, this is the best “team-up” western ever made, given the relationship between Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef’s rival bounty hunters. They spend half of the movie getting on each others nerves, before making a peace that brings the two of them together for a blazing final hour. This was Sergio Leone’s second “Man With No Name” movie and here his skills as director are honed to absolute perfection.
For A Few Dollars More is considered another staple spaghetti western from a time when hundreds of the things were being made each year. But this one stands out as perhaps the first spaghetti western that pushed itself further, flying free from its cheap, pulpy origins and emerging as a work of genuine art. It’s rarely anything but gripping and beautiful to watch, and will no doubt – as it already has done in many his other pictures – find itself referenced in Django Unchained.