I will always love the old westerns and rugged cowboys. Anything with John Wayne gets my attention (my ringtone is “Fill Your Hand You Son of a B****”) I really like Tom Selleck as a cowboy too, Monte Walsh and Quigley are staples.
True Grit is a great movie. The 2010 Coen brothers version is also terrific, one of the very, very few remakes that were worth doing. The "fill your hand" line makes it into the remake as well. I don't know if it comes from the book.
There was an interesting discussion when the 2010 version came out about the way it captured 19th century spoken English. Capturing period dialect is a high art. Hollywood has tackled it in various ways, with the Cecil B. DeMille mock Biblical narrations, vaguely Shakespearian formulations, Conan-speak, and highly affected aristocratic twaddle being noteworthy cinematic inventions that have acquired a faux "authenticity" among audiences that don't have any real standard of comparison.
The 19th century is near enough that linguists do have some solid ideas about how spoken English actually sounded in various places, and a lot of the scholars thought the Coen brothers got it right (or at least better than most). Jeff Bridges made a wonderful Rooster Cogburn, distinctive enough to make you forget about John Wayne for the duration of the film. Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross was also great. She was 14 when the movie was filmed, and she got a well-earned Oscar nomination for her portrayal. She's all growed up now and still making movies (and singing ... and she would probably be wise to make a choice between the two), but True Grit will probably be the film they chisel into her tombstone someday.
In recent years, I have been helpfully suggesting good political and especially Cold War films to high school teachers. On a couple of occasions, the conversation has broadened. I like to toss in the Jeff Bridges/Hailee Steinfeld True Grit as a curveball suggestion for a good coming of age film. It is indeed the coming of age story of Mattie Ross, a 14 year old character played by a 14 year old actress, and it's a subversive suggestion because it is an entirely non-sexualized film and therefore suitable for middle and high school students (without irritating parents). I'd love to see how a class full of modern 8th or 9th grade girls would react to Mattie Ross, who would be their contemporary. Usually "coming of age" becomes code for boys discovering girls and vice versa, but that is artificially limiting the genre. Two of my other recent favorites, Columbus and Leave No Trace are also completely non-sexual coming of age stories. I'm sure there must be many others if we started to think about survival and war movies, many of which feature teenagers forced to grow up much too fast. But again, yes to True Grit, both versions.