Despite being snubbed by the Oscars and a harsh review from the New York Times , Clint Eastwood’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly clinched first place in Collider’s list of “10 Genuinely Perfect Western Movies.”

Clint Eastwood’s Western faced a brutal New York Times review

Back in January 1968, critic Renata Adler opened her New York Times review with a couple of not so flattering words. Besides renaming the movie “The Burn, the Gouge and the Mangle,” she also attacked its violence.

Indeed, her full opening sentence read: “‘The Burn, the Gouge and the Mangle’ (its screen name is simply inappropriate) must be the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre.”

Fortunately, her reaction did not go on to define the film’s lasting place in cinema.…