The Casual Movie Critic

101 Movies you've got to see before you... April 30, 2006

Posted by TheCasualCritic in movie talk

Well, time to step up to the plate and go through the list and see how many essential movies I've seen. As bc mentioned the list was posted on Roger Ebert's site, but it's not actually Ebert's list. The list was picked by Ebert's editor, Jim Emerson, whose overall expertise in movies I am not familiar with, therefore I will try to avoid commenting on whether I agree with the selection as being representative of the entire cinematic spectrum. My list would certainly be different...

As I went through the list I found a large number of movies that I have seen but however I have almost completely forgotten, some to the point that it's not even worth listing them as "seen". What a shame...

• "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick (It is rare that a scifi novel gets a proper screen treatment. A.C. Clarke's masterpiece certainly got a majestic screen version)
• "The 400 Blows" (1959) Francois Truffaut
• "8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini
• "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) Werner Herzog (I am actually pretty sure I have seen it, but unless I will rewatch it, I can hardly remember anything)
• "Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott (Wow this was made in 1979?!)
• "All About Eve" (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
• "Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen
• "Bambi" (1942) Disney (Interesting, the only Disney on the list)
• "Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein (Adding it to the list of things I really need to rewatch)
• "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler
• "The Big Red One" (1980) Samuel Fuller
• "The Bicycle Thieves" (1949) Vittorio De Sica (Why does US insist on making silly changes to movie titles? The original is in plural and anyone that saw this unforgettable movie, will appreciate the subtle difference that this change makes.)
• "The Big Sleep" (1946) Howard Hawks
• "Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott (Another rare sci-fi gem)
• "Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni (Another one that I saw but can't remember to save my life...)
• "Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch (Lynch. nuff said)
• "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) Arthur Penn (classic)
• "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 (meh, pretty sure I saw it too)
• "Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick (Malick's movies may very well all be on this list)
• "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 (Fellini belongs here)
• "Double Indemnity" (1944) Billy Wilder
• "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (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 (best of the original Star Wars trilogy)
• "The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin
• "Fargo" (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen(Hehe, interesting choice)
• "Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher(Indeed one of the modern instant classics)
• "Frankenstein" (1931) James Whale
• "The General" (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
• "The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part II" (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola(Yes, you must see Godfather before you die)
• "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 (heh)
• "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(gotta rewatch it though)
• "Psycho" (1960) Alfred Hitchcock (not even in my top 5 Hitchcock movies, but surely very influential)
• "Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino
• "Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa
• "Rear Window" (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
• "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) Nicholas Ray (Gotta see James Dean)
• "Red River" (1948) Howard Hawks
• "Repulsion" (1965) Roman Polanski
• "Rules of the Game" (1939) Jean Renoir
• "Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks (The original Scarface... I have it so I should watch it))
• "The Scarlet Empress" (1934) Josef von Sternberg
• "Schindler's List" (1993) Steven Spielberg (perhaps Spielberg's best)
• "The Searchers" (1956) John Ford (Hmm I really gotta watch this)
• "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

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