There is a purpose to Slate’s contrarian-ness. Stephen Metcalf blows the whistle on the bizarre enthusiasm by cineastes for the 1956 John Wayne movie The Searchers, often chosen as the best movie ever made in polls of critics and cited as such by filmmakers. In my view, The Searchers is a turgid, wooden, boring and weird movie, which I have now seen three times in a desperate effort to have my eyes opened to its greatness. Truth is, as Metcalf says, it stinks, no matter what the film snobs say.