Thursday, May 22, 2008

100 Must-See Movies

The complete list of 100 movies, in no particular order. Click through the links to see the details for each movie.

1 to 10
1: The Sting (1973)
2: Poltergeist (1982)
3: Clerks (1994)
4: American Beauty (1999)
5: Birth of a Nation (1915)
6: The Killing (1956)
7: Donnie Darko (2001)
8: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
9: Crash (2004)
10: Taxi Driver (1976)
11 to 20
11: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
12: Trainspotting (1996)
13: Amelie (2001)
14: Blade Runner (1982)
15: Heathers (1989)
16: Dawn of the Dead (1978)
17: To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
18: Scream (1996)
19: Duck Soup (1933)
20: Vertigo (1958)
21 to 30
21: Aliens (1986)
22: The Shining (1980)
23: Perfect Blue (1997)
24: Dark City (1998)
25: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
26: Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
27: Mulholland Drive (2001)
28: Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
29: Toy Story (1995)
30: Cabaret (1972)
31 to 40
31: Gladiator (2000)
32: Jurassic Park (1993)
33: The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
34: Spellbound (1945)
35: Labyrinth (1986)
36: The Blair Witch Project (1999)
37: The Last Detail (1973)
38: Dr Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964)
39: V for Vendetta (2006)
40: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
41 to 50
41: The Wizard of Oz (1939)
42: William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (1996)
43: Gojira (Godzilla) (1954)
44: Fight Club (1999)
45: Brazil (1985)
46: Amistad (1997)
47: The Breakfast Club (1985)
48: Shaun of the Dead (2004)
49: High Society (1956)
50: The Matrix (1999)
51 to 60
51: Seven (1995)
52: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
53: Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002)
54: Strange Days (1995)
55: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001 - 2003)
56: Wild Things (1998)
57: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
58: Paths of Glory (1957)
59: Empire Records (1995)
60: O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)
61 to 70
61: The Exorcist (1973)
62: Bugsy Malone (1976)
63: Ocean's Eleven (2001)
64: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
65: Full Metal Jacket (1987)
66: Goldfinger (1964)
67: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)
68: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
69: Pulp Fiction (1994)
70: Cube (1997)
71 to 80
71: Om Shanti Om (2007)
72: The Ring (2002)
73: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
74: Ghostbusters (1984)
75: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
76: The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
77: Paprika (2006)
78: 12 Monkeys (1995)
79: The Princess Bride (1987)
80: Rocky (1976)
81 to 90
81: Primer (2004)
82: Hot Fuzz (2007)
83: Memento (2000)
84: House on Haunted Hill (1959)
85: 3:10 To Yuma (2007)
86: Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
87: Casablanca (1942)
88: Children of Men (2006)
89: Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
90: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
91 to 100
91: Star Wars (1977)
92: 28 Days Later (2002)
93: Sneakers (1992)
94: Saw (2004)
95: Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
96: Scent of a Woman (1992)
97: Rosemary's Baby (1968)
98: No Country For Old Men (2007)
99: Schindler's List (1993)
100: Citizen Kane (1941)

If you've enjoyed my 100 Must-See Movies posts, please leave a comment.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Enjoyed and prodded me to find a fair few of them. :)

Zubon said...

An enjoyable series. I won't quibble with choices, although picking anything from the past decade seems potentially risky. I suppose it makes sense as must-sees for present American audiences. Saw, for example, might be entirely forgotten once the torture porn fad is gone; all the Saw films are interesting concepts with marginally watchable executions. And "American," since we have few international titles on the list.

Good call on which version of The Ring. I'll vote for Princess Bride over Lord of the Rings because it is so good in such a small package, as opposed to the 10 hours of sprawling Tolkien. Which is nice, when you want a 10-hour epic (with no Tom Bombadill).

Okay, I'll quibble with Dark City, another interesting concept with the late-game issues you mentioned. And huzzah for Fight Club as a potential #1.

Greg Tannahill said...

Oh, you should totally quibble with choices. I've been disappointed that there hasn't been as much quibbling as I wanted.

The natural problem with doing 100 Must-See Movies is that they have to be movies I've seen. And just by dint of who I am and when I was born, I've naturally seen more of the last 30 years' movies than I have those between 1920 and 1980.

I completely stand behind Saw. It's as influential a movie as Halloween, and happens to actually be decent cinema as well.

The difficulty with international cinema is that it is inherently less likely to achieve its mark with a Western audience simply because of the difference in cultural sensibilities. Great French classics like Jean de Floret and the Three Colours movies just leave me completely cold. Likewise I respect Akira Kurosawa but find his films long winded and unfocused.

Even non-American Western films... as an Australian, I just can't get excited about Australian cinema. We're still struggling to make anything that isn't either a cop movie or a moving exploration of gender identity. Our few forays into genre cinema have been... disappointing (ick, Cut).

For all the complaints that can be made about it, Hollywood is the world center of cinema for a reason. A higher concentration of talent, of money, and volume of pictures produced just makes them statistically likely to produce most of the best films. The trick is finding them among the much greater quality of rubbish that gets floated alongside.

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed this list. I just have three that I wish I had seen on here. I am almost positive that Grosse Point Blank is one of the finest movies ever produced. Also where you listed Toy Story, did you mean Toys (Robin Williams)? Finally, I think that Inside Man deserves an honorable mention.
Great compilation!

Greg Tannahill said...

Grosse Point Blank was... average. Sorry, it was.

I absolutely did NOT mean Toys. That movie was very, very bad. Excellent soundtrack notwithstanding.

And I can't say I've seen Inside Man. Tell me more about it.

Anonymous said...

No Sin City??? C'mon!

Unknown said...

The Lives Of Others (2006, subtitled - German) should be on this list for sure, its an amazing film with covers everything from politics, ethics, romance and morality. Perfect addition. You'll love it, I promise.

Lee Taylor said...

Wow, how awesome. I have no explanation for what took me to long to discover this list got finished. For the record, I agree with anon about grosse point blank.

Matt said...

Interesting list, and I'm hoping taht it wasn't a no 1 to 100 in that order, because if it was I must say I'm very disappointed with the top ten.

Having said that there are plenty of foreign movies out there that should be included, and that includes the Three Colour series from France - I'm Australian but still get the concept and feel of those movies - I don't think that being non-french means you will feel cold after watching them.

There are some brillient movies that have come out of Korean and Japan from early on and of late - sorry at work so they skip the memory.

However as for your dialect on the Australian film industry - well each to their own, while I;m not necessarily always enamoured by what comes out of it, there are some very good films being made in Australia - Matrix for one - classed as a Hollywood film, but made completely in Australia, hence an Australian film by virtue. Having said all that most unfortunately don't make a mark on the wider international community and hence why most people don't rate them nor see them.

Clearly you have been Americanise too much, especially with some of the movies on your list. But then again that's what lists are, very personal and personalise thoughts on what you like compared to what others like and they will always be full of conjecture as no-one will completely agree with eveyr list out there.

BTW I love Dark City - great concept and works brillently well.

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There are a lot of excellent movies in this list so I think The Blair Witch Project is the worst, because that movie didn't scared me at all, I have to say you I went to the cinema and I got slept because it was o
so boring.m10m

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American Beauty is excellent, as well as Fight Club. Pulp Fiction an all time classic.

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