102 must-see movies Posted by rae in entertainment, friends
at 9:02 am on Friday, 28 April 2006

Stealing a meme from Harald, here is my version of the list:

✔  “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” and “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

So I have 63/202 (or maybe 64, if Godfather parts 1 & 2 count as two separate movies; ya, I’m too lazy to count them all..)

So what’s the word Andy? Have you seen at least 75 of them?

And I expect Craig has seen more than I have.

Update: Harald posted another list, this one is the top 50 book-to-movie adaptations, which he got from Film of the book: top 50 adaptations revealed by Mark Brown of the Guardian.

I’m such a meme follower. Here’s my list. A ‘b’ in front means I’ve read the book, and an ‘m’ means I’ve seen the movie.

b m 1984
- m Alice in Wonderland
- - American Psycho
- m Breakfast at Tiffany’s
- - Brighton Rock
b  m  Catch 22
b m Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
- m A Clockwork Orange
- - Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
b - The Day of the Triffids
- - Devil in a Blue Dress
- m Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
- m Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
b m Doctor Zhivago
- - Empire of the Sun
- m The English Patient
- m Fight Club
- m The French Lieutenant’s Woman
- m Get Shorty
- m The Godfather
- m Goldfinger
- m Goodfellas
b m Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
- - The Hound of the Baskervilles
b m Jaws
- m The Jungle Book
- - A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
- - LA Confidential
- m Les Liaisons Dangereuses
- m Lolita
b m Lord of the Flies
- m The Maltese Falcon
b m Oliver Twist
- m One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- - Orlando
- m The Outsiders
b m Pride and Prejudice
- - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
b - The Railway Children
- m Rebecca
- m The Remains of the Day
- m Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)
b m Sin City
- m The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
- - The Talented Mr Ripley
- - Tess of the D’Urbervilles
b m To Kill a Mockingbird
- m Trainspotting
- - The Vanishing
b m Watership Down
  • aiabx
    72. There's a few partials in there as well, but i didn't count them.
  • Leslie
    Hah. 83. Peter's somewhere in the 90s. Squirmy's score is pretty bad, but he *has* seen the entire 5 year run of Babylon 5.
  • Jeff K
    I'm about a 50 score on the movie list. Most of those old ones bore me. Anyway, I must say that it is good that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is in the book/movie area. Both book and movie are great, *but* the movie largely missed the point, hm so did Alice in Wonderland, and so did ...

    Oh ya, as for the old movies, I watched Double Indemnity recently. A total bore. "To have and to Have not" was wildly better. The Bogart/Bacall chemistry was amazing.
  • Luisa
    I'm at about 50, too, but probably a good deal higher since I often forget movies. I'm excited to see some movies from the 40's I haven't seen before. I'll have to try and find them. Old movies are my very favourite. Well Jeff, I guess we're not into the same kinds of movies at all.

    Hey, Reid! I don't see The Matrix in that list. That's good. Very good. If one more person goes on about how good that movie was, I'll shoot them.
  • I know Laura will happily join you in your Matrix-cide behaviour, Luisa. That trilogy went bad so fast it made George Lucas look like a master.

    On the subject of old movies, some of the older ones can be found at archive.org. Titles like Nosferatu, The General, and Battleship Potemkin.
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