(H/t Good Brownie) I’m a little lowbrow for this list, I think, but the top 50 in England’s Sunday Mail are:
1 Apocalypse Now 2 The Apartment 3 City of God 4 Chinatown 5 Sexy Beast 6 2001: A Space Odyssey 7 North by Northwest 8 A Bout de Souffle 9 Donnie Darko 10 Manhattan 11 Alien 12 Lost in Translation 13 The Shawshank Redemption 14 Lagaan: Once Upon A Time in India 15 Pulp Fiction 16 Touch of Evil 17 Walkabout 18 Black Narcissus 19 Boyzn the Hood 20 The Player 21 Come and See 22 Heavenly Creatures 23 A Night at the Opera 2 4 Erin Brockovich 25 Trainspotting 26 The Breakfast Club 27 Hero 28 Fanny and Alexander 29 Pink Flamingos 30 All About Eve 31 Scarface 32 Terminator 2 33 Three Colours: Blue 34 The Royal Tenen-baums 35 The Ladykillers 36 Fight Club 37 The Searchers 38 Mulholland Drive 39 The Ipcress File 40 The King of Comedy 41 Manhunter 42 Dawn of the Dead 43 Princess Mononoke 44 Raising Arizona 45 Cabaret 46 This Sporting Life 47 Brazil 48 Aguirre: The Wrath of God 49 Secrets and Lies 50 Badlands.
The ones in bold are ones I have seen. There are some in there I would have specifically excluded and I would have worked in a few films like Cool Hand Luke, Twelve Angry Men, and, of course, Starship Troopers.
Erin flippin’ Brockovich? I think you might be too highbrow for this list. It was a good movie, the kind of thing you would watch on HBO if you stumbled across it on a rainy Saturday, but one of the fifty must-see movies of all time? Please.
Just off the top of my head: Godfather, Godfather II, Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs, It’s a Wonderful Life, Gandhi, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dr. Strangelove, and I could go on forever.
Even in the lowbrow comedy genre, I would consider Animal House, Planes Trains & Automobiles, Groundhog Day, and a host of others ahead of Erin Brockovich.
I never saw Erin Brockovich, so I can’t really comment, but personal favorites I’d put in contention: The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, all three Monty Python movies, the South Park Movie, the Big Labowski, Fargo, Repo Man, and To Kill a Mocking Bird; just right off the top of my head.
I’m shocked not to see very many (or any, don’t know on some) movies that are about real events. Schindler’s list (sp?) and Hotel Rwanda would be two that I think must be seen by everyone. Both are hard to see, but need to be seen to keep things like that in your mind rather than ignoring them.
Also, you can not ignore Casablanca. Yes, to todays eyes it looks old and everything seems like a cliche, but that it because IT started it all. I contend that you can find something that came from Casablanca in almost every movie.
Just a couple of thoughts, North by Northwest (No. 7) is a good Hitchcock choice, but I would tag Notorious as his best work. Maybe that reflects a complete lack of a sense of humor on my part.
At no. 48, Aguirre: The Wrath of God (or better, Aguirre: Der Zorn Gottes) is as startling a portrait of an utterly rational madman (played by Klaus Kinski) as you will ever see on film, at least until your next Herzog/Kinski collaboration. “Fresh meat” will never mean quite the same thing to you again!
Dreadful, as such things usually are, especially when they’re put together by committee, and most especially when that committee is small enough, as this was obviously was, that someone with no discernable taste or experience of films more than fifteen years old can skew the results. (My most generous reading would be that whoever put Erin Brockovich on the list simply had not seen fifty movies in his or her lifetime. And Fight Club, Dawn of the Dead, and Scarface suggest they pulled a young unemployed male in off the streets for balance.)
Well, of the ones you haven’t seen, Doug, Badlands is terrific, somewhat altered now because Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are no longer total unknowns; The Searchers, All About Eve, and The Ladykillers (or any of the other Alec Guinness/Ealing comedies) are well worth seeing; A Night At the Opera should join all the early Marx Brothers on your list. Touch of Evil is more about a film buff’s appreciation of what Orson Welles could do with a limited budget than the single “must see” entry in his filmography, and Aguirre, while a personal favorite, isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of movie enjoyment.
Oh, and thanks for giving Repo Man a nod.
I never really “got” Lost in Translation – maybe my expectations were too high, but I was very underwhelmed. And I fully agree with Jason that Casablanca should have been on the list. The history of film would be unchanged absent Lost in Translation – but Casablanca’s staying power is a testament to its importance (as far as movies go). And no “Gone with the Wind?” That seems to be a major deficiency.
And I agree with Riley re: Touch of Evil, although film buffs seem to think it’s the be-all and end-all of noir. There’s a good line in it about “border towns incorporate the worst aspects of both countries” but otherwise it was unmemorable.
One other film on this list I thinks merits seeing (that makes a total of three) which I missed the first time through is “All About Eve”. I can’t imagine a major studio making a film today that would be carried mostly by the actresses, though George Sanders’ performance is memorable.
Punch Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind would be my recommendations, if nothing else but for the acting. It’s amazing to see two comedians do a 180 into such magnificent dramatic performances.
Is that “hero” the Dustin Hoffman/Andy Garcia flop? What a strange choice.
What? You have not seen A Night at the Opera? Run, do not walk, to your nearest video rental facility! Go ahead, I’ll wait.
(The world would be a whole lot better if more people randomly quoted Groucho Marx, I tell you what.)
Doug: Thanks for the link! Link-love is always welcome…
There are some puzzlers on that list, all right. I agree with John M.’s sentiments, although I’m not a Tarantino fan so I wouldn’t put any of his movies on the list. I didn’t hate Pulp Fiction – I just didn’t see what all the fuss was about. I’m glad to see Breakfast Club on the list, because there’s no other teen-oriented movie that compares to it.
“Hero” might be the recent Chinese film with Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, and Ziyi Zhang. A decent adventure, and an interesting character study, though the Chinese nationalism was a bit heavy. I suppose it was no worse than the American nationalism of John Ford’s cowboy trilogy (e.g She Wore a Yellow Ribbon).
It occurs to me that I’m probably not qualified to even offer opinions on movies. See, I enjoyed “Ishtar.” And, in college, my stomach for truly awful movies was legendary — the schlock they’d play on USA’s “Up All Night.” Stuff like “Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.” I’m more likely to quote that movie than Marx Brothers movies. Says the demonic imp in the movie, “I must torment you. It’s my job. You know I must.” My wife gets that one a lot.
Doug-
We’re all qualified to opine on movies. Only those who are truly bad at it get drafted to compile lists of must see movies though.
Hehe, apparently you’re right.
Of the ones on that list that you haven’t seen, I would recommend you first watch The Apartment, North by Northwest, The Searchers, and Manhunter (the original Hannibal Lecter movie, made by Michael Mann).
You probably won’t get the point, having not seen it, but about a week after September 11, 2001, AMC started running a marathon of The Searchers, showing it about twice a day for a few weeks, which I found quite appropriate. (AMC was advertising it before September 11, so it wasn’t a reaction to the attack.)
Pink Flamingos! A film for the whole family! Everyone should invite their in-laws over for a screening. ;-)
Off the top of my head, I’d add: Monty Python & the Holy Grail, Gattaca, and Dead Poets Society.
I’d delete: Royal Tenenbaums, and specify to get the studio edit on Brazil from the Criterion Collection. Gilliam’s extra 47 minutes are purely depressing.
Baffled by this weird selection? Look who sponsored it: Channel Four, who have just started a freeview movie channel, funded by advertising. Check out their schedules over the next few months and you will see how this selection came about.
50 Channel Four movies to see before you die!