True Grit (1969)

After a decades-long career and defining the 20th-century cowboy archetype, John Wayne won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as the drunken, cantankerous, eye-patched U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn. He famously joked, “If I’d known that, I would have put that patch on 35 years ago!” Wayne shed his usual flawless Hollywood vanity for this role, allowing his character to be overweight, flawed, and morally ambiguous. His climactic charge — galloping across a meadow with the horse’s reins in his teeth and pistols blazing — is one of the most iconic moments in cinema history. Unlike many films of the era, the story centers on a fiercely determined 14-year-old girl, Mattie Ross (played by Kim Darby). Her quest for justice and refusal to be intimidated in a male-dominated frontier society give the movie a unique, progressive emotional core. — Leila Melendez