mgroves

This is as good as list as any to gauge my own experience and “film literacy”. The 102 essential movies to see.

* denotes movie that I have seen already

 *2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick
 The 400 Blows (1959) Francois Truffaut
 8 1/2 (1963) Federico Fellini
 Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) Werner Herzog
 *Alien (1979) Ridley Scott
 All About Eve (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
 Annie Hall (1977) Woody Allen
 Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
 *Bambi (1942) Disney
 The Battleship Potemkin (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
 The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) William Wyler
 The Big Red One (1980) Samuel Fuller
 The Bicycle Thief (1949) Vittorio De Sica
 The Big Sleep (1946) Howard Hawks
 Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott
 Blowup (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
 Blue Velvet (1986) David Lynch
 Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Arthur Penn
 Breathless (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
 Bringing Up Baby (1938) Howard Hawks
 *Carrie (1975) Brian DePalma
 *Casablanca (1942) Michael Curtiz
 Un Chien Andalou (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
 Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) Marcel Carne
 Chinatown (1974) Roman Polanski
 *Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles
 *A Clockwork Orange (1971) Stanley Kubrick
 The Crying Game (1992) Neil Jordan
 *The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Robert Wise
 Days of Heaven (1978) Terence Malick
 Dirty Harry (1971) Don Siegel
 The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) Luis Bunuel
 Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee
 La Dolce Vita (1960) Federico Fellini
 Double Indemnity (1944) Billy Wilder
 *Dr. Strangelove (1964) Stanley Kubrick
 *Duck Soup (1933) Leo McCarey
 *E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Steven Spielberg
 Easy Rider (1969) Dennis Hopper
 *The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Irvin Kershner
 *The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin
 *Fargo (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
 *Fight Club (1999) David Fincher
 Frankenstein (1931) James Whale
 The General (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
 *The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
 *Gone With the Wind (1939) Victor Fleming
 *GoodFellas (1990) Martin Scorsese
 The Graduate (1967) Mike Nichols
 Halloween (1978) John Carpenter
 A Hard Day's Night (1964) Richard Lester
 Intolerance (1916) D.W. Griffith
 It's a Gift (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
 *It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Frank Capra
 *Jaws (1975) Steven Spielberg
 The Lady Eve (1941) Preston Sturges
 Lawrence of Arabia (1962) David Lean
 M (1931) Fritz Lang
 *Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior (1981) George Miller
 The Maltese Falcon (1941) John Huston
 The Manchurian Candidate (1962) John Frankenheimer
 Metropolis (1926) Fritz Lang
 Modern Times (1936) Charles Chaplin
 *Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
 Nashville (1975) Robert Altman
 The Night of the Hunter (1955) Charles Laughton
 Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero
 North by Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
 Nosferatu (1922) F.W. Murnau
 On the Waterfront (1954) Elia Kazan
 Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Sergio Leone
 Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tournier
 Persona (1966) Ingmar Bergman
 Pink Flamingos (1972) John Waters
 Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
 *Pulp Fiction (1994) Quentin Tarantino
 Rashomon (1950) Akira Kurosawa
 Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
 Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Nicholas Ray
 Red River (1948) Howard Hawks
 Repulsion (1965) Roman Polanski
 The Rules of the Game (1939) Jean Renoir
 Scarface (1932) Howard Hawks
 The Scarlet Empress (1934) Josef von Sternberg
 Schindler's List (1993) Steven Spielberg
 The Searchers (1956) John Ford
 The Seven Samurai (1954) Akira Kurosawa
 Singin' in the Rain (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
 Some Like It Hot (1959) Billy Wilder
 A Star Is Born (1954) George Cukor
 A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Elia Kazan
 *Sunset Boulevard (1950) Billy Wilder
 Taxi Driver (1976) Martin Scorsese
 The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed
 Tokyo Story (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
 Touch of Evil (1958) Orson Welles
 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) John Huston
 Trouble in Paradise (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
 Vertigo (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
 *West Side Story (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
 The Wild Bunch (1969) Sam Peckinpah
 *The Wizard of Oz (1939) Victor Fleming
 

26. Out of 102. I fail hard. And some of that 26 I barely remember. Looks like I have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe I’ll flip through the old PVR listings of TCM and AMC and see if I can’t watch a few.

I’m slightly curious as to why Empire Strikes Back is on there, but not Star Wars. Seems like you couldn’t watch the 2nd without the 1st. I would go ahead and lump episodes 4,5,6 all together as one movie, if it was me. But not to worry, because I’ve seen every Star Wars movie a few times. Other than that, it looks like an excellent list. Kubrick is well represented along with all the other greats, so I think this list would be a good task to accomplish in, say, the next year.

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