Jim Emerson, a film critic, has compiled a list of 102 movies he believes EVERYONE has to see in order to be able to carry on an informed discussion of movies. They aren’t supposed to be the BEST 102 movies ever, because everyone has subjective ideas about what a good movie is. Look at me for instance. I LUH-HUVE the movie “UHF”. Now, would anyone who isn’t a “Weird Al” Yankovic fan make that outrageous claim. 🙂 They might be culturally impactful, or just have great cinematography, or just have that “je ne sai qua.”
Now, I love movies, as much or more than the next person but some of these I haven’t even heard of. I’m now on a mission to say that I’ve seen all 102 of these films. Following the lead of Kottke, I’ve listed the movies and indicated which ones I’ve already seen as of April 26, 2006.
- “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,” “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
35 out of 102. Well, not TOO bad and it could be a little higher than that since I THINK I’ve seen some of the others, but I can’t remember exactly. So I’m considering them as “not seen”. Time to start watching more movies. My Netflix queue is gonna be HUGE.