1. Heaven's Gate (1980; re-released 2013)
A cheat, but there's a very good reason Heaven's Gate is here. After Heaven's Gate's original financial and critical nuking in 1980, the amount of Westerns made and released by the big studios slumped. The amount of Westerns on release full-stop took a huge nosedive, if 1970s revisionism hadn't already almost left the genre for dead, by draining it of all the fun John Ford and Sergio Leone had spent all those years trying to put in. What the not-inexpensive restoration and re-release of Heaven's Gate means, what the critical re-evaluation means (critical response in 2013 was highly positive, as opposed to the alarmingly negative contemporaneous reaction), is that it's time to forgive the Western that supposedly killed Westerns. 2013 was a new beginning for Heaven's Gate, and perhaps for Westerns on the whole. Heaven's Gate's rightful reputation as one of the classics of the genre began in earnest from 2013 onward.