The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

60. 1966 - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
United Artists

Honourable Mentions: The Battle of Algiers, The Professionals, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Despite For a Few Dollars More being a high for Leone, there's no disputing the majesty of its successor, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Possibly the definitive Western, let alone the definitive Spaghetti Western, Leone's Civil War epic re-teamed Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef but played the latter more to type as the villainous Angel Eyes, with Eastwood assuming the role of a younger Man with no Name, this time called "Blondie".

The real star of the film, though, is Eli Wallach as Tuco - "the Ugly" from the title - whose performance combines a perfect mixture of comedic timing and genuine pathos so as to outwrestle the film from his two co-leads.

With his third entry in the Dollars Trilogy, Leone's formula was fully established, only blown up to a more sweeping scale that would become the hallmark of his (sadly just three) remaining efforts. Whether you favour his preceding or succeeding films, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is still a masterpiece.

 
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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.