1. THE FILMS OF BUDD BOETTICHER

Five movies to spend your life contemplating, learning from, enjoying. In the late '50s, director Boetticher took Randolph Scott's ramrod frame and granite face and, in The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station, crafted a series of low-budget morality plays livened by ruthless action and even more ruthless character-acting from supporting villains played by the likes of Lee Van Cleef and Richard Boone. Starkly beautiful, always tough-minded, and resolutely unsentimental. Plus: the superlative biographical documentary A Man Can Do That. Boetticher did.