Thank goodness for memes on a bad day. Saw this orgininally at Phantom Scribbler and Mystery Mommy, but it’s been everywhere. It’s from this list of “movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies.” (Looks like, as usual, I know enough to fake it but not credibly. Again.) The ones I’ve seen are in bold.
“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 (one of my favourite movies)
“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 (really, I must get around to watching this)
“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
I gotta admit, as a pop-culture junkie I expected to have seen more of these. And so many of them I’ve seen parts of, even can recite scenes from, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the whole movie.
I’d list Empire Strikes Back, Fight Club and any Monty Python from this list as my favourites. I’m surprised Bull Durham isn’t on here – I think it’s a star among sports movies. Are your favourite movies in here?
Do you know what the intended ‘genre’ of this list is?? We could easily make up a list of flicks and bold 95% of them to make us look like as knowledgeable in the movieworld as Ebert.
Oh shot – didn’t mean for that to sound critical in any way, just wonder what the intent of this meme is…old movies? new movies? historical? satirical? award winners? am I making any sense now??
Hey, Nancy, that was a much better idea. I should have just made a list of 100 movies I’ve seen, then I could bold them all!!
(grin)
If you click through the link to the source, you can see the justification for this particular list. I agree, it’s lacking a lot, but my brain is too sluggish this morning to discern what I’d add…
I think my inability to watch on-screen violence is working against me–I’ve seen hardly any of those movies. If someone bleeds in it, I probably haven’t seen it (a few exceptions in the sci-fi genre, but it’s a good rule for me).
That’s ok. I’m perfectly comfortable with being movie-illiterate. 😉
Yes my favourite movis are in this list and I am shocked that you haven’t seen them! How can you possibly live this long (well not that long, but in the terms of movie goers) and not seen the Godfather??????????????? 😉
I have the box set if you’d like to expand you mind! Not movies but TV : I have all released seasons of the Sopranos in case you are looking for a new addiction. And please subscribe to TMN so you can get hooked on Big Love and we can discuss polygamy and Viagra. 🙂
I haven’t seen godfather either…
and my all-time favourite is not listed. How could they ignore The Princess Bride?! 😉
Godfather was such a great book to read, but have yet to see the movie.
My father (a movie fanatic) says Godfather II is one of the best movies he has ever seen. Ever.
I just this very moment noticed that my ‘oh shit’ came out as ‘shot’.
whatever
It appears that I like to comment here today.
my favorite movie is on the list, fight club!!! i see something new everytime i see it. i quote it alot too. i love movies so much, i haven’t seen the godfather but i have netflix and it’s on it’s way so i’ll only have to admit to that for a few more days, lol.
Forest Gump
Indiana Jones
Big
The Fugitive
October Sky
Fly Away Home
Mansfield Park
Medecine Man
Finding Forrester
Millions
Not a list of all time greatest movies. Just some of the ones I can see on my shelf. They were good enough that we bought them.
You are sadly deficient in your film noir category. The 1954 (Judy Garland/James Mason) version of “A Star is Born” is one of my desert island movies. And you must see Night of the Hunter. So many pop culture references came from it…
Caddyshack? No Caddyshack? It’s a crime….and no Rocky (the original only, please). And yes, Danidearest, Bull Durham should be there as well. Makes me think somebody has something against sports movies??
Yah, Marla, I’m a little shy on film noir exposure. And Suze, I like Princess Bride so much that when we heard the labour and delivery rooms at our hospital had VCRs, we brought that one with us! Sadly, the VCR was broken, as I had 26+ hours to pass! Moe, yes, Indiana Jones for sure, too.
And John Hughes / 1980s teen comedies are speciously absent – Pretty In Pink, 16 Candles, Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller… not deep, but deeply ingrained into my psyche!
If you’re talking 80’s…St. Elmo’s Fire was one of my faves.
Not sure what ‘film noir’ means (is that like bleu nuit? heh heh) but some of my ‘older’ faves are:
Sound of Music
Wizard of Oz
The Sting (LOVE IT!)
All the President’s Men
Great Gatsby
King Kong (Fay Wray) original
of course my preteen faves:
Star Wars
Grease
have seen both hundreds of times…
Dani, I knew someone had to bring up The Breakfast Club. I think those John Hughes films were important for highlighting class distinctions in the so-called class-free USA (ya, I saw Friday’s Oprah). I really think he was in Edith Wharton territory, and with a great soundtrack to boot!
And where is Wes Anderson’s stuff? Rushmore should be there.
And where is Apocalypse Now?