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Mon 10 Feb, 2003 05:59 pm
Hi, I am a newbie who's fanatic about movies!
So I think it is the best to introduce myself by listing my favourite movies - I am a huge fan of silent movies; in general I know more classic movies than movies from the last 30 years. I also try to find foreign movies, so don't be surprised to find several foreign language movies in my Top 50 list.
I appreciate comments about this list, but even more I am interested in your list - what are your favourite movies or what are in your eyes the best movies ever?
Top 25 movies (in chronological order; sorry, but I can't say which one is the best of these - they are all exceptional!):
Berg-Ejvind Och Hans Hustru (The Outlaw and his wife) (Victor Sjöström, Sweden, 1918)
Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (Paul Wegener, Germany, 1920)
The Big Parade (King Vidor, USA, 1925)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim, USA, 1925)
Sunrise (F. W. Murnau, USA, 1927)
M (Fritz Lang, Germany, 1931)
Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, USA, 1933)
Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, USA, 1936)
La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, France, 1937)
The Wizard Of Oz (Victor Fleming, USA, 1939)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, USA, 1941)
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, USA, 1942)
To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1942)
La Belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast) (Jean Cocteau, France, 1946)
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1950)
Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1952)
Singin' In The Rain (Gene Kelly / Stanley Donen, USA, 1952)
La Strada (Federico Fellini, Italy, 1954)
Touch Of Evil (Orson Welles, USA, 1958)
Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) (Francois Truffaut, France, 1959)
Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, USA, 1959)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1960)
Andrei Rublev (Angrey Tarkovski, Russia, 1969)
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, USA, 1974)
Hotaru no haka (Grave Of The Fireflies) (Isao Takahata, Japan, 1988)
Top 50 movies
Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, Germany, 1920)
Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, USA, 1924)
Battleship Potemkin (Sergej Eisenstein, Russia, 1925)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, USA, 1925)
Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed) (Lotte Reiniger, Germany, 1926)
The General (Buster Keaton, USA, 1927)
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, France, 1928)
Trouble In Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1932)
Sons Of The Desert (William A. Seiter, USA, 1933)
Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (Walt Disney, USA, 1937)
The Adventures Of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz, USA, 1938)
Le Jour Se Lève (Daybreak) (Marcel Carné, France, 1939)
Fantasia (Walt Disney, USA, 1940)
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, USA, 1941)
The Third Man (Carol Reed, UK, 1949)
Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, USA, 1950)
The Night Of The Hunter (Charles Laughton, USA, 1955)
The Searchers (John Ford, USA, 1956)
Paths Of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, USA, 1957)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1958)
Jules et Jim (Francois Truffaut, France, 1962)
Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson, USA, 1964)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, UK, 1968)
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1972)
The Thin Red Line (Terence Malick, USA, 1998)
OOooh, will be back tomorrow - need to go watch Westminster.
Welcome, brunt!
Really impressive list -- you might like to follow the ongoing discussions of Ebert's picks of 100 great movies.
Okay, I'll share mine too; not nearly as classic as brunt's but I like 'em for what they are and what they mean to me.
Kelly's Heroes
Godfather, The
Pulp Fiction
Right Stuff, The
Princess Bride, The
Raising Arizona
Jaws
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Fast Runner, The
Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, The
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Diner
Time Bandits
Chicago
Commitments, The
Big Trouble in Little China
Little Big Man
Stunt Man, The Boogie Nights
Natural, The
Saving Private Ryan
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Silverado
Big Chill, The
True Romance
Citizen X (HBO -- not released commercially)
Local Hero
In-Laws, The
Christmas Story, A
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Jerry Maguire
Verdict, The
All That Jazz
Full Metal Jacket
Goodfellas
Matrix, The
Scrooge (1970)
Amadeus
Apocalypse Now
Shakespeare in Love
Something Wild
Forrest Gump
Rocky
Big Lebowski, The
My Favorite Year
Blues Brothers, The
Seven Samurai, The
Gandhi
Beauty and the Beast (Disney, 1991)
Man Who Would Be King, The
Ran
Being John Malkovich
Bridge of the River Kwai, The
Rain Man
Broadway Danny Rose
American Beauty
Arthur
National Lampoon's Animal House
As Good As It Gets
Front, The
Die Hard
Grifters, The
Manchurian Candidate, The
Reservoir Dogs
Hannah and Her Sisters
Fargo
Field of Dreams
Annie Hall
Lawrence of Arabia
Schindler's List
Killing Fields, The
Groundhog Day
Excalibur
Godfather II, The
Untouchables, The
Breaking Away
Empire Strikes Back, The
Babe
Last Emperor, The
Kramer vs. Kramer
Terms of Endearment
World According to Garp, The
Magnolia
House of Games
Aliens
Dave
Superman II
After Hours
Miller's Crossing
Fame
Mary Poppins
Toy Story
Electric Horseman, The
Hard Day's Night, A
League of Their Own, A
Unforgiven
Color Purple, The
Shawshank Redemption, The
Cider House Rules, The
Prince of the City
My favorite movie of all time is THE THIRD MAN.
Any attempt to make a complete list of my favorites would exhaust me and would end up missing a few I'd forgottten at the time. I'll say this, though: very very few of them were made in the past 20 years. This has not been a great period for moviemaking. I feel sorry for kids who are just starting to go to the movies now.
My top 25 (by date)
Modern Times (1936)
Grapes of Wrath, The (1940)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Casablanca (1942)
Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Shichinin no samurai (1954) ...aka The Seven Samurai
Paths of Glory (1957)
Smultronstället (1957) ...aka Wild Strawberries
Det Sjunde inseglet (1957) ...aka The Seventh Seal
I Compagni (1963) ...aka The Organiser
Akahige (1965) ...aka Red Beard
Pierrot le fou (1965)
Le Roi de coeur (1966) ...aka King of Hearts
La Voie lactée (1969) ...aka The Milky Way
O Dragão da Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro (1969) ...aka
Viskningar och rop (1972) ...aka Cries and Whispers
Scener ur ett äktenskap (1973)...aka Scenes from a Marriage
Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974)...aka The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Une femme fidèle (1976)
Ai no corrida (1976) ...aka Empire of the Senses
Messidor (1979)
Blade Runner (1982)
Unforgiven (1992)
The Crying Game (1992)
The next 25 (by date)
Bronenosets Potyomkin (1925) ...aka Battleship Potemkin
Metropolis (1927)
Un chien andalou (1929)
Key Largo (1948)
Los Olvidados (1950) ...aka The Young and the Damned
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Les Quatre cents coups(1959) ...aka The 400 Blows
The Graduate (1967)
Little Big Man (1970)
Krajobraz po bitwie (1970) ...aka Landscape After the Battle
Family Life (1971)
Solyaris (1972) ...aka Solaris
Amarcord (1973)
C'eravamo tanto amati (1974) ...aka We All Loved Each Other So Much
Manhattan (1979)
Amator (1979) ...aka Camera Buff
Fanny och Alexander (1982) ...aka Fanny and Alexander (1983) (USA)
Die Unendliche Geschichte (1984) ...aka The NeverEnding Story
My Left Foot (1989)
Field of Dreams (1989)
Boyz N the Hood (1991)
In the Name of the Father (1993)
Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Being John Malkovich (1999)
larry richette:
Don't feel sorry for younger film viewers. They have a lifetime of great viewing ahead of them. There are plenty of nights that one just wants to sit back and watch a good film and because of the great past directors/actors there are plenty to choose from. Keep those rental stores in business.
The big reason why I invested in a big screen TV was to watch older films pretty much like they were seen in a theater. I agree that it only means that younger film goers aren't stuck with the movies produced for their target market. I have younger friends who want to see a classic older film rather than a newer film, including foreign. I had a group over recently to see "Woman in the Dunes" and they were bowled over by the story and imagery. When the escape took place, they were as silent and enthralled as if they were hypnotized.
(Not only that, but what theater can you go to and end up discussing the film immediately after with a whole group of people? After "Woman in the Dunes," everyone couldn't believe what they'd just seen and couldn't stop talking about it. I had to excuse myself to retire so they'd go home).
brunt:
I have a "top 30" list and the newest film is a 1964 Stanley Kubrick film. I really have not seen many exceptional four star films since. They are there, but none seem to have the edge like the following:
1) Children of Paradise (Marcel Carne-1945)
2) Les Parents terribles (Jean Cocteau-1948)
3) Late Spring (Yasyjiro Ozu-1949)
4) Harp of Burma (Kon Ichikawa-1956)
5) Show White and the Seven Drarfs (Walt Disney-1937)
6) Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock-1943)
7) Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman-1957)
8) Born Yesterday (George Cukor-1950)
9) Ossessione (Luchino Visconti-1942)
10) The Elusive Corporal (Jean Renoir-1962)
11) Los Alvidados (Luis Bunuel-1950)
12) 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini-1964)
13) The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Wells-1942)
14) Hobson's Choice (David Lean-1954)
15) Lola Montes (Max Ophuls-1955)
16) Les Carabiniers (Jean-Luc Godard-1963)
17) America, America (Elia Kazan-1963)
18) Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick-1964)
19) Devil is a Woman (Joseph von Sternberg-1935)
20) Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir-1939)
21) The Good Fairy (William Wyler-1935)
22) Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi-1953)
23) Bring Up Baby (Howard Hawks-1938)
24) Divorce Italian Style (Pietro Germi-1961)
25) Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch-1932)
26) The Big Heat (Fritz Lang-1953) BEST FILM NOIR
27) Lili (Charles Walters-1953)
28) Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder-1950)
29) Repulsion (Roman Polanski-1965)
30) The Entertainer (Tony Richardson-1960)
Now that I have reviewed my list, I am surprised the majority of my choices fell into the 1950's time period. I believe most on the list are available on VHS.
Say what you want, I do feel sorry for younger viewers because the art of film is in decline now. This means that what they see in theaters forms their taste and their taste will therefore be lowered. Relatively few of them will search out old or classic movies to watch at home, so they few of them will gain any appreciation of how great film can be at its best. If they think some drivel like PULP FICTION represents film at its height, they will never be able to respond to the real masterpieces of film art.
Maybe we need a MOVIE forum separate from the FILM forum. I'm sure that smacks of semantics to some, but the realities of the industry and the relative evolution (or de-evolution, depending on your perspective) of motion pictures since the mid-seventies (re: Jaws, Star Wars, Saturday Night Fever) have created what is, to me at least and I think to most, a very clear line between the two. Certainly many, many artists cross that line from project to project and some can't easily be pegged as "film maker" or "movie maker", but I think it you ask most people to explain the difference, they could do so. I think I'll post that idea to see if it gets any support.
larry richette:
I agree with you somewhat regarding younger viewers. There is some good news though...in Astoria (just over the East River from Manhattan) we have a great museum "American Museum of the Moving Image" and they show a very eclectic range of films daily. The films range from silents, classics and new films. Last week they were running late 20's silent films (features) along with the early sound versions and the audience included a wide range of ages. Yes, there were younger viewers there.
I give my nieces and nephews classic films for the holidays and/or their birthdays. When they are young I give them "King Kong". "Treasure Island, "Frankenstein", "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", etc. When they get older I give classics like: "Dr. Strangelove", "Lawrence of Arabia" and "America, America".
A couple years back one of my nephews called me and said he liked "Cast Away" (Hanks) and he had remembered I had given him the Robinson Crusoe film and he pulled the VHS out and viewed the Crusoe film again. We had a good conversation about the two films.
Anytime I am at a family function, most of the relatives come over and talk "films"...from age 8 to whatever. Hey, I'm happy to talk about "Stuart Little", "The Hours" or the original "King Kong".
African Queen
Dr. Zhavigo
Lord of the Rings
Casa Blanca
Debbie Does Dallas
"Orphans of the Storm" directed by D.W. Griffith and starring the Gish sisters (1921).
Brunt:
"Song of the South"
"Shane"
"The Lost Weekend"
"Angels with Dirty Faces"
"North by Northwest"
"Manchurian Candidate"
"On the Waterfront"
"Shane"
"Bonnie and Clyde"
"The Killing"
"Once Upon a Time in the West"
"Dracula"
"The Man with the Golden Arm"
"Fargo"
"House of Games"
"Das Boot"
"Dial M for Murder"
"Dr. Strangelove"
"The Graduate"
"Experiment in Terror"
"Bullitt"
"Bambi"
"In the Heat of the Night"
"East of Eden"
and
"Shane"
The Matrix
Beetle Guise
Big
Princess Bride
The Hunt For Red October
Das Boat
The Negotiator
Out of Africa
As Good As It Gets
My Life As A Dog
Cinema Paradiso
Steel Magnolias
Fired Green Tomatoes
Moon Stuck
The Rain Man
All of the Pink Panther Movies
All of James Bond
Tequila Sunrise
Seven
A ton of westerns from the 50s (including Shane)
A ton of silly sci-fi from the 50s
All the Aliens
All the Terminators
All the Die Hards
Pulp Fiction
Last Tango In Paris
Don Juan D'maroco
All of Brando's movies
All of Johnny Depp's movies
And almost all of the films everyone else has already named.
Mary Poppins? Did Brunt include Mary Poppins?
I shiver thinking about it.
No one has included "Sullivans Travels".In fact,I don´t think I´ve seen a single Preston Sturgess film in anyone´s list.Strange.
Midnight Cowboy
Blow-Up
Husbands...John Cassavetes
I really think that these three are my favourites.
Damn it´s a tough question.
Hi Brunt
My list should come as no surprise, but I always enjoy reading these threads.
Top twenty:
1. Andrei Rublyov (1969)
2. Chagrin et la pitié, Le [The Sorrow and the Pity] (1971)
3. Dharmaga tongjoguro kan kkadalgun [Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East] (1989)
4. Enfants du paradis, Les [The Children of Paradise] (1945)
5. Grande illusion, La (1937)
6. Kuroi ame [Black Rain] (1989)
7. Ningen no joken I-III [The Human Condition] (1959-61)
8. Pather Panchali (1955)
9. Suna no onna [Woman in the Dunes] (1964)
10. Yi yi [A One and a Two] (2000)
11. 42: Forty Two Up (1998)
12. Anne Frank (2001) (TV)
13. Babettes gæstebud [Babbette's Feast] (1987)
14. Die Marquise von O [The Marquise of O] (1976)
15. Hai Shang Hua [Flowers of Shanghai] (1998)
16. Lone Star (1996)
17. Nostalghia (1983)
18. Smoke Signals (1998)
19. Ta'm e guilass [Taste of Cherry] (1997)
20. Tengoku to jigoku [High and Low] (1963)
Next thirty:
21. Apostle, The (1997)
22. As Good As It Gets (1997)
23. Central do Brasil [Central Station] (1998)
24. Chocolat (1988)
25. Conversation, The (1974)
26. Dead Man Walking (1995)
27. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
28. Espíritu de la colmena, El [The Spirit of the Beehive] (1973)
29. Fanny och Alexander (1982)
30. Hotaru no haka [Grave of the Fireflies] (1988)
31. Idi i Smotri [Come and See] (1985)
32. Jean de Florette (1986)/Manon des sources [Manon of the Spring] (1986)
33. L.I.E. (2001)
34. Ladri di biciclette [The Bicycle Thief] (1948)
35. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
36. Local Hero (1983)
37. Ma vie en rose [My Life in Pink] (1997)
38. Men with Guns (1997/II)
39. Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995)
40. Ponette (1996)
41. Say Amen, Somebody (1982)
42. Secret Défense (1998)
43. Smultronstället [Wild Strawberries] (1957)
44. Spoorloos [Vanishing] (1988)
45. The Visit (2000)
46. Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948)
47. Un coeur en hiver [A Heart in Winter] (1992)
48. Urbania (2000)
49. Viskningar och rop [Cries and Whispers] (1972)
50. Vredens Dag [Day of Wrath] (1943)
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