(-4.75, -6.46) on
The Political Compass




Places of Interest
Archives
<< current
The 18½ Minute Gap
Check to have links open new windows.
Friday, April 28, 2006
What? No "Zardoz"?
Roger Ebert is a really interesting guy. Among other things, he wrote the screenplay for the Russ Meyer film, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. Which I've actually seen. And I really like his movie reviews. So now he's come out with his list of movies that are "the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They're the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat 'movie-literate.'" I have no idea how long the article will be available at his site, so I'm going to reproduce the list here with an indication of which ones I've seen (the ones with the solid bullet).
  1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick
  2. The 400 Blows (1959) Francois Truffaut
  3. 8 1/2 (1963) Federico Fellini
  4. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) Werner Herzog
  5. Alien (1979) Ridley Scott
  6. All About Eve (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
  7. Annie Hall (1977) Woody Allen
  8. Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Coppola
  9. Bambi (1942) Disney
  10. The Battleship Potemkin (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
  11. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) William Wyler
  12. The Big Red One (1980) Samuel Fuller
  13. The Bicycle Thief (1949) Vittorio De Sica
  14. The Big Sleep (1946) Howard Hawks
  15. Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott
  16. Blowup (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
  17. Blue Velvet (1986) David Lynch
  18. Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Arthur Penn
  19. Breathless (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
  20. Bringing Up Baby (1938) Howard Hawks
  21. Carrie (1975) Brian DePalma
  22. Casablanca (1942) Michael Curtiz
  23. Un Chien Andalou (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
  24. Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) (1945) Marcel Carne
  25. Chinatown (1974) Roman Polanski
  26. Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles
  27. A Clockwork Orange (1971) Stanley Kubrick
  28. The Crying Game (1992) Neil Jordan
  29. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Robert Wise
  30. Days of Heaven (1978) Terence Malick
  31. Dirty Harry (1971) Don Siegel
  32. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) Luis Bunuel
  33. Do the Right Thing (1989 Spike Lee
  34. La Dolce Vita (1960) Federico Fellini
  35. Double Indemnity (1944) Billy Wilder
  36. Dr. Strangelove (1964) Stanley Kubrick
  37. Duck Soup (1933) Leo McCarey
  38. E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Steven Spielberg
  39. Easy Rider (1969) Dennis Hopper
  40. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Irvin Kershner
  41. The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin
  42. Fargo (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
  43. Fight Club (1999) David Fincher
  44. Frankenstein (1931) James Whale
  45. The General (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
  46. The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
  47. Gone With the Wind (1939) Victor Fleming
  48. GoodFellas (1990) Martin Scorsese
  49. The Graduate (1967) Mike Nichols
  50. Halloween (1978) John Carpenter
  51. A Hard Day's Night (1964) Richard Lester
  52. Intolerance (1916) D.W. Griffith
  53. It's a Gift (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
  54. It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Frank Capra
  55. Jaws (1975) Steven Spielberg
  56. The Lady Eve (1941) Preston Sturges
  57. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) David Lean
  58. M (1931) Fritz Lang
  59. Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior (1981) George Miller
  60. The Maltese Falcon (1941) John Huston
  61. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) John Frankenheimer
  62. Metropolis (1926) Fritz Lang
  63. Modern Times (1936) Charles Chaplin
  64. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
  65. Nashville (1975) Robert Altman
  66. The Night of the Hunter (1955) Charles Laughton
  67. Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero
  68. North by Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
  69. Nosferatu (1922) F.W. Murnau
  70. On the Waterfront (1954) Elia Kazan
  71. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Sergio Leone
  72. Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tournier
  73. Persona (1966) Ingmar Bergman
  74. Pink Flamingos (1972) John Waters
  75. Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
  76. Pulp Fiction (1994) Quentin Tarantino
  77. Rashomon (1950) Akira Kurosawa
  78. Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
  79. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Nicholas Ray
  80. Red River (1948) Howard Hawks
  81. Repulsion (1965) Roman Polanski
  82. The Rules of the Game (1939) Jean Renoir
  83. Scarface (1932) Howard Hawks
  84. The Scarlet Empress (1934) Josef von Sternberg
  85. Schindler's List (1993) Steven Spielberg
  86. The Searchers (1956) John Ford
  87. The Seven Samurai (1954) Akira Kurosawa
  88. Singin' in the Rain (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
  89. Some Like It Hot (1959) Billy Wilder
  90. A Star Is Born (1954) George Cukor
  91. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Elia Kazan
  92. Sunset Boulevard (1950) Billy Wilder
  93. Taxi Driver (1976) Martin Scorsese
  94. The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed
  95. Tokyo Story (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
  96. Touch of Evil (1958) Orson Welles
  97. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) John Huston
  98. Trouble in Paradise (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
  99. Vertigo (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
  100. West Side Story (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
  101. The Wild Bunch (1969) Sam Peckinpah
  102. The Wizard of Oz (1939) Victor Fleming
This page is powered by Blogger.