101 Movies

[stoutfellow]

Since I list "movies" among my interests, I guess I'm obligated to deal with this one, gacked from autographedcat. It's Roger Ebert's Jim Emerson's list of "the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies"; I've bolded the ones that I've seen.

“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
“Bambi” (1942) Disney
“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 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
“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
“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've seen just under half of them. Most of the rest are in my collection, and will get seen sooner or later.

Comments

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Why do lists like that annoy me so much? I think of myself as fairly movie literate, but a lot of those movies are not what I think of as necessary to movie literacy.

OTOH, it doesn't look like you've seen either Fargo or Laurence of Arabia. I envy you seeing both of them for the first time.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Eh, I don't take lists like this very seriously; I just enjoy looking at other people's choices.

I'm thinking that this summer - with most everything on TV in reruns and me not teaching - I'm going to try to watch an appreciable fraction of my collection. Your suggestions have been duly noted.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

I try not to take them as seriously as Certain Persons do Harry Potter, but for some reason they make me indignant when I don't agree with them.

You need to watch Psycho, too.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Noted. Thank you.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I've seen about 75 on that list, not counting the Dali movie I couldn't stand to watch more than about a few minutes. But I must admit it is more interesting with the movies people have _not_ seen.

Avoid "Persona", though, it is awful even for Bergman. And any 101 list without "Koyaanisqatsi" is flawed. ,-)

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I'll also give some should-see suggestion based on the ones you haven't yet had the fortune to see.

-Fargo (because it is funny)
-Fight Club (because it is actually rather clever)
-Battleship Potemkin (it is so extremely classic)
-Blade Runner (also extremely classic and genre-typical)
-Dr Strangelove (a masterpiece. But Kubrick's best movie - "Path of Glory"? - isn't on the list, sadly)
-Taxi Driver (brilliant)
-"M" (very, very classic)
-The Third Man (one of the best movies of its time)
-Once Upon A Time In The West (perhaps Leone's best movie, though I like his Eastwood trilogy more)

However, it is entirely possible to survive without having watched Halloween, Schindler's List and Psycho. And I think both the Crying Game and Pulp Fiction are overrated, while of course watch-worthy. Mad Max 2 is fun but arguably more in for the genre than the quality of the movie.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I've seen "Paths of Glory". I have tapes or discs of all of the others you name, except "Fight Club", "Blade Runner", and "Taxi Driver", but haven't gotten around to watching them. Thanks for the recommendations.

[filkferengi]

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" totally rocks!

Be Governed Accordingly.

:)