Natalie Wood in ‘The Searchers’

Natalie Wood with John Wayne (on horse) and Jeffrey Hunter in the 1956 western The Searchers. It's a famous film, for sure, but let's not get into the very weird story in which the big hero was a traitor, fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War, and a guy who feels like his niece is better off dead than living with Native Americans. It's pretty uncomfortable. In its time, the film was regarded as a classic and also as an analysis or maybe even critique of a certain type of Americana, the obsession with the loner hero. Now it's a well-made movie that is just pretty uncomfortable and not-too-nice all the way through.