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

Comments(5)

    Comment by aiabx at 11:18 am on 29 April 2006 at

    72. There’s a few partials in there as well, but i didn’t count them.

    Comment by Leslie at 10:44 pm on 29 April 2006 at

    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.

    Comment by Jeff K at 4:31 pm on 30 April 2006 at

    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.

    Comment by Luisa at 8:51 pm on 2 May 2006 at

    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.

    Comment by Peter Cook at 10:19 pm on 7 May 2006 at

    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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