There are certain movies that everyone, even novice filmgoers, will recognize: Stanley Kubrick’sThe Shining; David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia; David Fincher’sFight Club; Mike Nichols’ The Graduate. Each is lauded by critics, admired by filmmakers, and adored by audiences. And yet none of them made this list.
That’s because the criteria for our list of the 100 Must-Watch Movies to See Before You Die is extremely strict and weighted in historical context. More than a “best movie of all time” list, here are the ones that changed the course of cinema upon their initial release. The ones that inspired or fundamentally altered entire movie genres. Some of these movies are pushing 100 years old, while others were released within the last decade. Regardless, they all hold an important place in the canon of cinema as we know it.
Every self-respecting movie fan owes it to themselves to see each of these at least once before they visit that multiplex concession stand in the sky. Our picks range from horror staples like The Thing to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas to markers of entire eras like The Social Network. So if you’re asking yourself “what should I watch?” this list is perfect for you. We know you’ve got time on your hands – better get started!
There are certain movies that everyone, even novice filmgoers, will recognize: Stanley Kubrick’sThe Shining; David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia; David Fincher’sFight Club; Mike Nichols’ The Graduate. Each is lauded by critics, admired by filmmakers, and adored by audiences. And yet none of them made this list.
That’s because the criteria for our list of the 100 Must-Watch Movies to See Before You Die is extremely strict and weighted in historical context. More than a “best movie of all time” list, here are the ones that changed the course of cinema upon their initial release. The ones that inspired or fundamentally altered entire movie genres. Some of these movies are pushing 100 years old, while others were released within the last decade. Regardless, they all hold an important place in the canon of cinema as we know it.
Every self-respecting movie fan owes it to themselves to see each of these at least once before they visit that multiplex concession stand in the sky. Our picks range from horror staples like The Thing to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas to markers of entire eras like The Social Network. So if you’re asking yourself “what should I watch?” this list is perfect for you. We know you’ve got time on your hands – better get started!
Goodfellas (1990)
Country: USA
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriters: Martin Scorsese, Nicholas Pileggi
Stars: Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino
In the pantheon of American mobster movies, Martin Scorsese’s 1990 drama is the most cinematically accomplished. At 146 minutes, the director allows himself enough time to pull out every device in his toolkit, from freeze frames to jump cuts to fourth wall-breaking monologues to tracking shots. Oh, that tracking shot.
Easily the film’s most memorable scene, it took several days and eight takes to get Henry and Karen Hill’s (Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco’s) Steadicam-shot stroll through the Copacabana just right. And it had to be right, because it functions as a visual metaphor for the first first part of the story—the wonderful world is wide open to this couple.
As the film progresses, so too does the pacing, mimicking the speed at which Henry’s life is spiraling out of control. It’s frazzled and frenetic. Scorsese himself intended “to begin Goodfellas like a gunshot and have it get faster from there, almost like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer. I think it's the only way you can really sense the exhilaration of the lifestyle, and to get a sense of why a lot of people are attracted to it.”
Parasite (2019)
Country: South Korea
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Screenwriters: Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin-won
Stars: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam
Bong Joon Hoblew people’s minds when he released Parasite in 2019. The story gives a close-up view of the class conflict, social inequality, and wealth disparity that occurs in South Korea and across the world. Parasite follows the four members of the Kim family who are all unemployed and scraping to get by. Their life takes a turn when they find themselves with the opportunity to scam their way into all of them working for the affluent Park family. The film is a satirical take on capitalism and it observes how the inequality in our world can start to affect and impact a person’s mental state, and how far greed can take us.
Parasite was the first South Korean to win the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. It also went on to win four awards at the 92nd Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. It also became the first non-English language film in Academy Awards history to win Best Picture, and the first South Korean film to be nominated in the category. When we mentioned films that have torn down barriers in the movie industry, this is without a doubt one of them. Not only was it one of the several groundbreaking Asian stories that have been told in recent years, like Minari, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Crazy Rich Asians, but it has also opened the door for films to win big in these categories without the need to be translated, dubbed or boxed into the “foreign” categories during award season. And another thing? They proved that diverse and unique stories like these perform well at the box office, too.
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
Country: USA
Director: John Landis
Screenwriters: Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, Chris Miller
Stars: John Belushi, Tim Matheson, Stephen Furst, Kevin Bacon, John Vernon, Verna Bloom, Donald Sutherland, Karen Allen
You'd be hard-pressed to find a heterosexual male's college dorm that doesn't have one of two posters on the common area wall: Scarface with gun in hand, and John Belushi rocking the "College" sweater.
The Belushi joint, of course, comes from Animal House, the most respected (and funniest) of all college movies. It centers on the mischievous Deltas, a ragtag crew of frat-rejects who wreak anarchy on campus, much to the dean's chagrin. Animal House paints the collegiate experience as one long sex, booze, and debauchery-fueled bender. That wasn't the case for us, unfortunately; we just played Xbox until the wee hours before stumbling into class in the same sweatpants everyday.
No wonder so many live vicariously through the Belushi poster.
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Country: USA
Director: Mel Brooks
Screenwriters: Andrew Bergman, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg, Al Uger
Stars: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Madeline Kahn, Mel Brooks, Dom DeLuise
You can't talk about comedy on celluloid without mentioning Mel Brooks, the visionary behind Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, and The Producers. His best film remains the righteously politically incorrect Blazing Saddles, a spoof of the western that confronts race head-on.
Check the credits on the screenplay—that's Richard Pryor's name, just one indication that the material here isn't going to be handled with kid gloves. The plot, at its most distilled, involves the new sheriff of Rock Ridge. His name is Bart (Cleavon Little) and he's black. As you can probably guess, this isn't a smooth transition for the racist townsfolk.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Country: United Kingdom
Directors: Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones
Screenwriters: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin
Stars: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin
British comedy troupe Monty Python are the kings of irreverence, and Holy Grail is their crowning achievement.
An oddball send-up of the legend of King Arthur, this nutty historical farce is equipped with all of Python's best traits: intelligent satire, pointless asides (usually animated and always great), gleeful excess (the limb-severing Black Knight fight), and multiple, sometimes unrecognizable, performances from each Python member.
Bananas (1971)
Country: USA
Director: Woody Allen
Screenwriters: Woody Allen, Mickey Rose
Stars: Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalban
Woody Allen's 1971 comedy (the second he wrote, directed, and starred in) follows Fielding Mellish, a blue-collar product tester who feigns interest in the fictional warring country of San Marcos, and eventually travels there to settle the conflict.
Bananas comes from Allen's early slapstick years, and if you haven't seen it, you won't believe how fast the man can move (especially in a scene where he questions himself in court). The movie's filled to the brim with gags (being pressured into performing surgery by his proud father) and set pieces (the wide world of sports coverage of his wedding consummation) that really take it the extra mile.
The movie, coming after the initial success of Take the Money and Run took Allen from new talent to established comedy star.
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Country: USA
Director: Rob Reiner
Screenwriters: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner
Stars: Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Fran Drescher, Bruno Kirby
You don't have to be an undying Mötley Crüe fan to appreciate This Is Spinal Tap, director Rob Reiner's hilarious send-up of the music industry at large and hair metal culture of the 1980s in particular.
Presented as a "real" documentary, Spinal Tap is a work of committed brilliance. As the self-centered and at times delusional members of the fictional heavy metal group Spinal Tap, actors Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer deliver every line of dialogue and perform each exaggerated song with such vigor that This Is Spinal Tap feels like the funniest episode of Behind The Music ever made.
Coming to America (1988)
Country: USA
Director: John Landis
Screenwriters: David Sheffield, Barry W. Blaustein
Stars: Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, James Earl Jones, Madge Sinclair, John Amos, Shari Headley, Eriq La Salle, Louie Anderson
Younger heads might not realize it, but Eddie Murphy was once the funniest man in Hollywood. Coming to Americais his best movie, an airtight riot that's as funny today as it must've been when it came out.
As a sweet-hearted African prince living in Queens, Murphy never misses a beat, playing brilliantly off of Arsenio Hall (as his sidekick, Semmi) and appearing in makeup as a handful of other characters. (The Murphy-heavy barbershop scene is one of comedy's great sequences). If you claim to know comedies but haven't seen this classic, slap yourself immediately—watching Coming to America is a rite of passage.
Rushmore (1998)
Country: USA
Director: Wes Anderson
Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson
Stars: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams, Seymour Cassel, Brian Cox, Mason Gamble, Connie Nielsen, Luke Wilson
Wes Anderson's films are an acquired taste. The critically hailed writer-director populates his well-manicured films with charming yet socially inept characters. The fixation on symmetry and consistently wry humor has been a source of scorn in later efforts like The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited. But Rushmore, the first film to put Anderson on the map, is more than a collection of tics and quirks.
The film makes its hero an arrogant nerd (a spot-on Jason Schwartzman) who gets caught in a love triangle with his academy's first grade teacher (Olivia Williams) and a strange millionaire (Bill Murray, in his resurrection role).
Whenever Schwartzman and Murray go toe-to-toe, Rushmore is sublimely hilarious. Anderson finds ways to make otherwise loathsome characters (a self-righteous 15-year-old geek, a rich prick) seem sympathetic. You'd probably want to knock Schwartzman's character out in real life, but in Rushmore you root for him.
Boogie Nights (1997)
Country: USA
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Screenwriter: Paul Thomas Anderson
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Don Cheadle, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Burt Reynolds, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, Heather Graham
Don't worry, you don't have to watch this at 1 a.m. with the volume down low. It's a movie about the porn industry, but it doesn't play into the smuttier areas as much as you'd think. Boogie Nights follows one man's up and coming (pun) career in the porn industry and the people he meets there. That includes a vet (Julianne Moore), a tycoon (Burt Reynolds), and Rollergirl (Heather Graham) who never takes her skates off, even while performing.
The movie's greatest surprise (besides the size of the main character's penis) was Marky Mark, Mr. Calvin Klein Undies himself, in the starring role as famed fucker Dirk Diggler. Wahlberg brought a grounding all-American appeal (with a dash of innocence) to the what would otherwise be a risky sell to the general public.
My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Country: USA
Director: Gus Van Sant
Screenwriter: Gus Van Sant
Stars: River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Rodney Harvey, Grace Zabriskie, William Richert, James Russo
In 1991, gay cinema hit the mainstream with My Own Private Idaho, Gus Van Sant's reimagining of Shakespeare's Henry histories. Starring River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, the film follows two hustlers exploring the American Northwest.
Stripped of sentiment, it's a careful study of one of film's most beloved characters: the drifter. It gave Van Sant the clout to become the filmmaker behind hits like Good Will Hunting, important political films like Milk, and art house gems like Elephant and Paranoid Park.
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Country: USA
Director: John Schlesinger
Screenwriter: Waldo Salt
Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes
The word "bromance" is a recent neologism, but it works to describe John Schlesinger's seedy, emotional drama Midnight Cowboy. Powered by a pair of magnificent performances, the film follows a male prostitute (Jon Voight) who forges a close friendship with a sickly con man (Dustin Hoffman).
The only X-rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture, Midnight Cowboy isn't always pleasant; it is, however, a necessary inclusion on our list of movies to watch before you die.
Lost in Translation (2003)
Country: USA, Japan
Director: Sofia Coppola
Screenwriter: Sofia Coppola
Stars: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris
First off, how can you not love Bill Murray? The comedy legend could do a mime routine and still leave us in stitches, thanks to his uncanny ability to derive laughs out of stares, raised eyebrows, and indifference.
Which all plays greatly into Sofia Coppola's unconventional romantic comedy Lost in Translation, starring Murray as a disenchanted actor making ends meet by working in Japanese commercials. His disillusionment is matched by that of an unhappily married, younger woman (Scarlett Johansson) he meets at a hotel bar.
Budding butterfly-in-stomach feelings emerge, but Coppola, who also wrote the script, steers clear of cheesy sentiments, instead grounding the hypnotic Lost In Translation in fine-tuned subtlety.
Mean Girls (2004)
Country: USA
Director: Mark Waters
Screenwriter: Tina Fey
Stars: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Tina Fey, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, Lizzy Caplan, Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Daniel Franzese, Tim Meadows, Jonathan Bennett
Teen comedies are given to immaturity - but not Mean Girls. Screenwriter Tina Fey, who's smarter in her sleep than most Hollywood writers on three cups of coffee, penned a sharp, witty film that defied stereotypes. The hilarious Saturday Night Livewriter approached teenage cliques with an inclusive spirit. The characters, from Lindsay Lohan's scheming good girl to Rachel McAdams' despicable monster, aren't caricatures; they're nuanced portraits that helped turn the movie into an enduring cult classic.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
Country: USA
Director: Adam McKay
Screenwriters: Will Ferrell, Adam McKay
Stars: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Vince Vaughn, Fred Willard, Chris Parnell
When Anchormanwas first released, filmgoers exited theaters more confused than amused. At the time, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell's anything-goes satire of '70s newscasters bewildered with its overt ridiculousness; in hindsight, we just weren't ready.
It isn't until the second or third viewing that Anchorman's greatness becomes obvious. By then, the tone is accepted and the point—that Ferrell and his collaborators did whatever they thought was funny, without any regard for mass audiences—was understood. Today, we're certain that Anchorman was a gift from the comedy gods.
Anchorman is one of the most quotable movies ever, a tour de force of absurdity, and a gathering of our generation's most important funnymen.
Some Like it Hot (1959)
Country: USA
Director: Billy Wilder
Screenwriters: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Joe E. Brown, Pat O'Brien
Billy Wilder, one of American cinema's heroes, took on the screwball comedy with Some Like It Hot. Two friends inadvertently get involved with the mob and have to go on the run. There's no better way to hide than to get into drag, which is exactly what these two bumbling jazz musicians do.
Marilyn Monroe's never been more charming, and Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis have never been funnier. To understand the appeal of these three silver screen legends, you have to go straight to the source.
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Country: USA
Director: George Cukor
Screenwriter: Donald Ogden Stewart
Stars: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey
During the time of the Production Code, a lot of films were forbidden from covering certain topics, including sex outside of marriage and "first night" scenes. Films even had to tiptoe around depictions of seduction. The Philadelphia Story, about a well-to-do woman caught in a love triangle, played it coy: it danced around the issue of extramarital affairs by having the characters divorce, fall in love again, and remarry—all while keeping the screwball comedy ripe with pratfalls and smart dialogue.
Rightfully so, this old Hollywood rom-com served as Katharine Hepburn's silver-screen comeback, ending her "box office poison" reputation, and also featured two of the greatest romantic leads of all time, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.
In the Mood for Love (2000)
Country: Hong Kong
Director: Wong Kar-wai
Screenwriter: Wong Kar-wai
Stars: Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Siu Ping Lam, Rebecca Pan
The second part of an informal trilogy, Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love follows two neighbors who discover that their spouses are having an affair, and the ensuing romance that blossoms out of their friendship.
The story takes place during the conservative 1960's in a Hong Kong full of chic dresses, doll house-like sets, and saturated neon palettes that makes it quite simply one of the most beautiful movies ever filmed. The film's strenuous 15 month shoot went through two directors of photography and miles of footage. In fact, it was only fully assembled weeks before the date to submit it to Cannes, where it won the Technical Grand Prix, and went on to win dozens of others around the world, breaking hearts along the way.
When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
Country: USA
Director: Rob Reiner
Screenwriter: Nora Ephron
Stars: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby
When Harry Met Sally... explores two subjects the right way: Can (heterosexual) men and women just be friends? And, is there anything more hilarious than Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in a Jewish deli?
Besides giving pop culture one of the most beloved (and starkly realistic) couples ever, this movie perfectly packaged a then-hard-to-define romantic situation: To this day, people still describe their friend-zoning as being "stuck in a Harry-and-Sally relationship."
Talk to Her (2002)
Country: Spain
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar
Stars: Javier Camara, Dario Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Geraldine Chaplin, Rosario Flores
Almodóvar's 2002 masterpiece centers on the friendship between Benigno and Marco, two men caring for women in comas. Marco attends to Lydia, a matador who was about to leave him; Benigno, a nurse, has formed a delusional relationship with Alicia, the dancer he obsessed over from afar.
Out of this ridiculous set-up, Talk to Her becomes one of the most probing looks at compassion Almodóvar has ever produced. It's also got the weird sexual stuff and loving nods to film the Spanish filmmaker is known for, sometimes at the same time: There's a hilarious silent film within the film where a tiny man climbs into the vagina of a sleeping woman.
The film succeeds in making the viewer feel pity and even love for a man who has committed a vile act. The level of control required for such a reaction has few precedents, making it one of the most unique experiences in cinema. Considering that he made this coming off the heels of All About My Mother, his best work to date at the time, makes Talk to Her all the more impressive.
For his efforts, Almodóvar won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
8 1/2 (1963)
Country: Italy
Director: Federico Fellini
Screenwriters: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Sandra Milo, Anouk Aimee
In terms of meta filmmaking, Federico Fellini's masterpiece 8 ½ is the genuine article. Largely autobiographical, the Italian trailblazer's best movie delves into the mind of a stressed-the-fuck-out director (Marcello Mastroianni) who escapes the annoyances of pesky producers and job-related woes by wafting through his subconscious. Truly ahead of its time, 8 ½ enraptures with its forward-thinking mesh of dream sequences and flashbacks, all staged with accessible elegance.
It's hard to describe this masterpiece in words - it's one of those movies you have to watch to appreciate.
The Red Shoes (1948)
Country: United Kingdom
Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Screenwriters: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Keith Winter
Stars: Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring
The masterful team of Powell and Pressburger created their grandest work with this film about a ballet, loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's morality tale about a pair of magic shoes.
The story takes a romantic look at the high price of ambition, the dues paid when one aspires to greatness. The ballet created for the film is one of the most technically marvelous sequences in movie history, featuring some truly inspired dancing and camera trickery. The talent of the protagonist is quite literally impossible, making the ending all the more gut wrenching.
But don't just take our word for it. Martin Scorsese considers it, along with Renoir's The River, to be the two most beautiful color films ever made.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Country: USA and United Kingdom
Director: Jim Sharman
Screenwriters: Jim Sharman, Richard O'Brien
Stars: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O'Brien, Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell, Jonathan Adams, Meat Loaf
The Midnight Movie to which all others are compared, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a musical dressed in a cheap monster suit filmed on a sound stage with plenty of leftover sci-fi props. It launched a thousand midnight screenings and created a cult of devoted followers that trail-blazed screening traditions like shouting at the screen, ritual jokes and dress—if you've been to a showing of The Roomwhere people yell the dialogue back at the actors, it's because The Rocky Horror Picture Show did it first.
But be warned: this is one of those movies you have to watch with friends. It's just not the same on your own.
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Country: USA
Directors: Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
Screenwriters: Betty Comden, Adolph Green
Stars: Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell
Twenty-five years after the talkies took Hollywood by storm, Singin’ in the Rain poked a little musical fun at the transition from the actors’ point of view. (What if a silent screen legend had a laughable speaking voice?)
Though Debbie Reynolds is charming and Donald O’Connor out-dances them all, this is Gene Kelly’s show. In addition to starring and providing the choreography, Kelly was credited as co-director, too. While on the sunny surface it’s the perfect old-timey Hollywood musical, many of the same movie star antics that were being lampooned in the film were happening behind the scenes: Reynolds couldn’t dance and Kelly let her know it (though he did later cop to his bad behavior). O’Connor had to be hospitalized and was ordered three days of bed rest following his brilliant “Make ‘Em Laugh” routine. And Kelly was terribly ill during the filming of the titular dance number. As if running a 103-degree temperature weren’t uncomfortable enough, the constant stream of water caused his wool suit to shrink over the days it took to complete the scene. Dignity, always dignity.
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Country: USA
Directors: Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise
Screenwriter: Linda Woolverton
Stars: Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, Bradley Pierce
Disney's own version of La Belle et la Bete was the first animated film to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, and—we suspect without doing much research on the topic—the first film involving bestiality to be nominated for that award as well.
The G-rated take on the classic fairy tale tells the story of a selfish prince-turned-beast who is cursed by an enchantress for his vanity. To turn him and his castle full of workers back into humans, he must earn the love of a beautiful woman. Enter: Belle, a kinda-feminist (by Disney standards) badass who's well-read, self-sufficient, and with standards high enough that she doesn't fall for the town's brain-dead pretty boy. Instead, she's into the wounded monster of man who challenges her and treats her with respect. That said, he's still pretty much a buffalo on two legs.
The Lion King (1994)
Country: USA
Directors: Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff
Screenwriters: Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, Linda Woolverton
Stars: Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Moira Kelly, Nathan Lane, Rowan Atkinson, Ernie Sabella, Robert Guillaume, Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin
Normally, kids don't line up to see a mash-up of Hamlet and the Biblical tales of Joseph and Moses, yet Disney succeeded in making that happen with The Lion King. Guess all it takes is Elton John. Props to the singer for letting Disney introduce kids to heavier topics, like a beloved father getting trampled by a stampede of wildebeests. (We're still not over it.)
The 2019 remake sucked, but the original animated Lion King remains one of the most heart-wrenching stories in Disney's catalogue. It broke new ground with its use of CGI, and went on to spawn one of the most popular (and stomach-able) Broadway musicals ever. It's the fifth longest-running show in The Great White Way's history and the highest-grossing show of all time. Hakuna Matata, baby.
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Country: USA
Director: Victor Fleming
Screenwriters: Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf
Stars: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton
The Wizard of Oz plays out like your worst nightmare: hordes of tiny, creepy men with spraytans; a kitschy town that looks like a super-sized department store Christmas window display; human-sized flying monkeys; and an evil green witch laughing maniacally at things that, frankly, aren't particularly funny. Nevertheless, this is a children's movie, and a beloved one at that.
Though The Wizard of Oz was a box office flop upon release (it just barely recouped the three million dollars spent on production) it got a second life with annual, holiday season telecasts starting in 1956. To this day, parents and children are delighted by Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow skipping to see the Wizard.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Country: USA
Director: David Lynch
Screenwriter: David Lynch
Stars: Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, Robert Forster
Director David Lynch's most important film since Blue Velvet, this 2001 gem launched the career of Naomi Watts and was voted the best movie of the 21st century in a BBC poll of international film critics. Originally conceived as a television pilot, the film shares common ground with Twin Peaks, featuring a female lead surrounded by a cast of obtuse and original characters.
While Twin Peaks flirted with and subverted classic soap opera tropes, Mulholland Drive threw narrative convention to the wind. The result is a weird portrait of Los Angeles and Hollywood as nightmare. It nabbed Lynch Best Director at Cannes, reinvigorating the veteran director's career and attracting critical and popular priase, a rare feat for the master of cult cinema.
Freaks (1932)
Country: USA
Director: Tod Browning
Screenwriter: Willis Goldbeck and Leon Gordon
Stars: Wallace Ford, Harry Earles, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates, Henry Victor
Tod Browning stands as one of the horror genre's most important directors, if only for creating the 1931 classic Dracula, which stars the iconic Bela Lugosi and ranks as one of the greatest monster movies of all time. But Browning was also prolific prior to Dracula, shooting nearly 50 films in all genres.
Browning went for an unheard of realism when casting his next horror film, Freaks, sidestepping costumes and makeup to hire people with real-life deformities to play a bunch of circus oddities. For audiences at the time, Freaks was too shocking to stomach. The film was banned in the United Kingdom and Browning saw his stock in the moviemaking world plummet to the point of no return.
Those who've yet to see Freaks should seek it out immediately for both its stunning audacity and one-of-a-kind creepiness. Browning's daring warrants endless acknowledgement.
Dracula (1931)
Country: USA
Director: Tod Browning
Screenwriter: Garrett Fort
Stars: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan
Depending on how you feel about modern-day vampires, Bela Lugosi's turn in director Tod Browning's classic adaptation of novelist Bram Stoker's Draculais either the most important acting performance in horror history or the catalyst for infuriating crap.
We reside with the former camp, but also sympathize with the latter. Playing Count Dracula as a suave charmer, Lugosi established the blueprint for future undead ladies' men like Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer on HBO's True Blood) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson in the Twilight movies). To the influential Hungarian actor's credit, though, he was also able to scare us by simply leering over a sleeping woman. The same can't be said for today's emo vamps.
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
Country: USA
Director: Ed Wood
Screenwriter: Ed Wood
Stars: Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tom Keene, Tor Johnson, Dudley Manlove, Joanna Lee, John Breckinridge, Maila Nurmi (Vampira), Bela Lugosi
Over 50 years have passed since the heyday of Edward D. Wood Jr.'s filmmaking pursuits, yet the man behind such misfires as the cross-dressing drama Glen Or Glenda and giant-rubber-octopus-starring Brides of the Monster remains Hollywood's all-time worst director. That's something to be proud of.
If Ed Wood were still alive today, we'd hope that he'd feel a ton of gratification from knowing that all of his movies hold up as endlessly hilarious works of non-art; that's not what he intended, and that's why they work. Forced camp just isn't as fun as the real thing.
Plan 9 From Outer Space proves that must see movies don't have to be great, or even good. The modicum of story revolves around aliens resurrecting Earth's dead in order to halt a potentially universe-shattering nuclear weapon from discharging. But, as in any Ed Wood production, plot is meaningless, as well as idiotically presented; what's most important, and most enjoyable, are the scenes in which boom microphones are clearly visible, prop tombstones shimmy whenever characters move their feet, and Wood's chiropractor walks around with a cape over his mouth to hide the fact that he's not star Bela Lugosi, who died early in the shooting process (RIP!).
Psycho (1960)
Country: USA
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: Joseph Stefano
Stars: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Martin Balsam, John Gavin
Until 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was known as the "master of suspense," but his brand of white-knuckle tension was reserved for thrillers and noir mood pieces. With Psycho, his adaptation of author Robert Bloch's popular novel of the same name (based on real-life serial killer Ed Gein), Hitch was a man on a mission. Responding to critics who'd said he was past his prime, the defiant filmmaker wanted to scare the hell out of them. In turn, he also defined the modern horror film as we all know it.
The bloodshed is barely visible, yet Psycho's preoccupation with mental instability chill more than any amount of gore. Anthony Perkins, an unimposing-looking guy, plays Norman Bates, the proprietor of a roadside motel where the doomed Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) checks in one night and interferes with Bates and "mother's" lifestyle. Knives come out, composer Bernard Herrmann's shrieking score kicks in, and Psycho stabs its way into the history books.
Among its many first-rate elements, Psycho is notable for its brilliant sense of audience manipulation. At the time, Leigh was a big-time movie star, so offing her so early into the picture was an ingenious move (one suggested by Hitch's wife and close collaborator, Alma Reville). It's a tactic that set the standard used by subsequent horror directors like Wes Craven and John Carpenter to find new ways to truly, deeply shock audiences.
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Country: USA
Director: George A. Romero
Screenwriters: George A. Romero, John Russo
Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Bill Cardille, Kyra Schon
Ask Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman or original series showrunner Frank Darabont: George A. Romero's genre-defining Night of the Living Dead is the most important zombie movie of all time. It's also one of the most important horror movies of all time.
The set-up is basic: Seven random people barricade themselves inside a nondescript farmhouse as flesh-eating corpses stalk around outside. Independently made back in 1968, Night Of The Living Dead pushed horror's boundaries with extraordinarily graphic scenes of cannibalism and the ballsy choice to have a black leading man during the Civil Rights era.
Above all else, though, it's still scary as hell.
Halloween (1978)
Country: USA
Director: John Carpenter
Screenwriters: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Nick Castle, P.J. Soles, Nancy Kyes, Brian Andrews
The formula, by now, is legendary: Take a group of promiscuous high schoolers, throw in one vestigial virgin and one psychotic killer and watch the horror unfold. John Carpenter’s Halloween didn’t invent the slasher picture, but it set the bar for all those that followed.
Shot for just $325,000, the film earned close to $50 million in U.S. box office receipts alone, making it—to this day—one of the most profitable independent films of all time. But its success was no fluke. As is so often the case, it was the tight budget that forced the filmmakers to get creative, finding innovative ways to make do with what they had, not whine about the money they were missing. (Case in point: Michael Myers’ eerily blank face, which is just a manipulated William Shatner mask.)
Shot in 20 days, the film is also noted for its camerawork, which has the audience identifying with the villain for the first part of the film (a device used to similarly creepy effect in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Bob Clark’s Black Christmas). While the implications of this have been debated by many over the years—feminists have come down on both sides, some calling the film a triumph for women, others calling it degrading—Carpenter himself has dismissed all definitions of Halloween as anything but what it was intended to be: a horror film, plain and simple. And a groundbreaking one at that.
Suspiria (1977)
Country: Italy
Director: Dario Argento
Screenwriters: Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi
Stars: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bose, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett
Some films, like Suspiria, should never be remade. Even though Luca Guadagnino's 2018 rework was pretty damn good, no director could ever match the sheer artistry of the original, which is the kind of film that seems like it could only have been made in the 1970s.
The first of Argento’s “The Three Mothers” trilogy (Inferno and The Mother of Tears followed), Suspiria is a giallo horror film about an American dancer at a German ballet academy harboring a coven of witches. Don’t bother trying to add it all up, just sit back and enjoy the Technicolor ride.
Subtle he is not. The film is a prime example of the stylistic choices that have come to define Argento’s work—vibrant colors, over-the-top orchestrations of violence, and haunting symphonic rock scores (here provided courtesy of Goblin)—with the end result being a nightmarish quality that’s as stylish as it is polarizing.
There’s really no in-between with Suspiria; you love it or you hate it. The Village Voice’s J. Hoberman said it best when he called Suspiria “a movie that makes sense only to the eye."
The Exorcist 1973)
Country: USA
Director: William Friedkin
Screenwriter: William Peter Blatty
Stars: Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Max von Sydow, Jason Miller, Lee J. Cobb
You know the deal: It's the "scariest movie ever made" and the one where a pre-teen girl tells a priest that his mother "sucks cocks in hell" and upchucks green vomit all over his Catholic garb.
The Exorcist is a horror milestone that needs little explanation, mainly because the film speaks all for itself. And by "speaks," we mean "causes sleepless nights and inspires loose bladders."
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Country: USA
Director: Tobe Hooper
Screenwriters: Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper
Stars: Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen
The two most important horror movies in light of the current state of the genre are Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Halloween is the prototypical slasher flick. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a slasher, too, but it stands out from Halloween because of its extreme grit. Watching Tobe Hooper's 1974 film, even today, is too much like watching a snuff film.
It is one of the only films this writer has ever seen that, when the the killer first appeared, triggered a horrible looping thought of: "I don't want to watch this I don't want to watch this I don't want to watch this." And the writer has seen many horror movies. But there's something so—it seems silly to use a meaningless word like "real." There isn't a word for this. It's just terrifying.
The film, on paper, is patently ridiculous. Family of cannibals. Van of kids. Death. But truly, this movie is scary. Too scary.
The Thing (1982)
Country: USA
Director: John Carpenter
Screenwriter: Bill Lancaster
Stars: Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Richard Masur
It's not hyperbolic to declare John Carpenter's The Thing the greatest remake of all time. In fact, the unimaginative filmmakers cranking out soulless reboots today would do well to study this violent and dark blueprint on how to update material with an eye for endgame politics and nihilism.
Carpenter's wild film remains faithful to the premise of the 1951 original, The Thing From Another Planet, about a crew of researchers trapped inside a Norwegian camp as a shape-shifting creature picks them off one by one. Wisely, though, the original's ante gets upped considerably with a series of gross-out setpieces. The best of of the bunch involves the film's human characters being tied to chairs by Kurt Russell in hopes of discovering who is now an alien. Staged with high tension, the sequence builds methodically before erupting into a grandiose showcase of creepy-crawlies, chests that burst open, and faces that contort into tentacles with eyeballs.
A total hoot that's both cold-blooded and accessible, The Thing is one of the best films that doesn't normally get included in the canon. One of the quintessential movies to watch before you die.
Blue Velvet (1986)
Country: USA
Director: David Lynch
Screenwriter: David Lynch
Stars: Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern, Hope Lange, Dean Stockwell
The film industry is full of weird dudes. But none translate their eccentricities to the bigscreen as seamlessly—or as often—as David Lynch.
Using the same quirky formula that would make Twin Peaks such a hit in the '90s, Lynch tells the story of a sexy chanteuse (Isabella Rossellini) pinned under the thumb of an nitrous-huffing psychopath (Dennis Hopper) who's holding her family hostage. And then there are the two youngsters (Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern) playing teen detectives, tying to unravel the mystery.
Following the box office failure of Dune, Blue Velvet was Lynch’s attempt to make something personal. In Lynch on Lynch, the director notes, “After Dune I was down so far that anything was up! So it was just a euphoria. And when you work with that kind of feeling, you can take chances. You can experiment.”
And experiment he did. Using style to soften its brutal acts, the cult classic paints a surreal portrait of the juxtaposition between Anytown, USA and the perversity that lurks beneath its perfectly-manicured lawns.
Scream (1996)
Country: USA
Director: Wes Craven
Screenwriter: Kevin Williamson
Stars: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Drew Barrymore, Jamie Kennedy
Wes Craven's Screamis one of the only mainstream meta-horror films that matters. For his genre targets of choice, the screenwriter opted for the then-dead slasher flick template, unleashing a masked killer onto a band of unsuspecting (and incredibly coifed) youngsters, all of whom are pin-up-level attractive.
Except, in Scream, the potential victims knew a great deal about how slasher movies worked, and Williamson's script deftly uses their consciousness to routinely subvert the audience's expectations. Eventually, the Scream franchise would devolve into passable flicks that focus too much on the comedy and hardly at all on the scares. But we'll always have Craven's original - and the fact that it was inspired by true events - to cherish.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Country: USA
Directors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez
Screenwriters: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez
Stars: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard
If, 20 years from now, you're for some reason asked to explain the history of found footage horror movies, you'll have to return to the source, to the little indie that could, The Blair Witch Project.
Released in 1999, the film wanted to be seen as non-fiction, an actual record of three students pursuing a local legend in Maryland. (Yes, this is the film that spawned countless arguments with dummies who think recent incarnations of Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Paranormal Activity are based on true events). Costing less than a million dollars, The Blair Witch Project went on to gross about 250 times that amount.
Fat Girl (2001)
Country: France and Italy
Director: Catherine Breillat
Screenwriter: Catherine Breillat
Stars: Anais Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero De Rienzo, Arsinee Khanjian
Too little attention is paid to the many female directors creating profoundly meaningful work in the film industry. The situation was even more dire at the turn of the century, when French filmmaker Catherine Breillat made A ma soeur - Fat Girl en anglais - a film about two sisters experimenting with sex and the angry affair that complicates gender stereotypes and amplifies sexism to horror movie levels.
This is not a film to 'enjoy' in the classic sense of the word. You endure it, and leave feeling gut-punched.
King Kong (1933)
Country: USA
Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Screenwriters: James Creelman, Ruth Rose
Stars: Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot, Robert Armstrong
Screenwriters James Creelman and Ruth Rose executed a deft okie-doke when they brought King Kongto life in 1933. At first, the gigantic ape was presented as a villainous monster, the sure-to-be doomsayer for beautiful actress Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) when she's abducted by jungle natives and strung up as a sacrifice to Kong.
As the story progresses, though, Kong softens up. By the film's end, the once-scary beast has earned the audience's affections, giving its tragic episode atop the Empire State Building a poignancy that's uncommon for monster movies.
On the technical side, King Kong was truly groundbreaking back in '33. Basically, this RKO Radio Pictures production was just a bunch of guys playing with toys. All the oversized beasts on display, from various dinosaurs to Kong himself, were miniature models constructed by Marcel Delgado. Kong was actually four different models, including a 24-inch one used during the film's climactic scenes atop the Empire State Building.
Remember those epic movies you'd make with action figures in the bathtub? King Kong is the ultimate version of that.
Jaws (1975)
Country: USA
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriters: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
Stars: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton
In 1974, novelist Peter Benchley's Jaws emerged as a best seller, an unlikely thriller about a killer great white shark and the few men brave enough to battle it. As an enjoyable page-turner, Benchley's book works just fine, but it wasn't until Steven Spielberg endured a hellish shoot to complete his 1975 blockbuster adaptation that the homicidal fish earned its scary stripes.
Mostly kept off-screen—the unintended result of the animatronic shark's regular malfunctions on set—Spielberg's underwater antagonist strikes fear in viewers' bones through mere suggestion, be it a camera shot beneath swimmers' dangling legs or composer John Williams' iconic score. When Jaws does finally show his razor-sharp teeth, the shocks are ferocious. Blockbusters have never been the same.
Alien (1979)
Country: USA and United Kingdom
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Dan O'Bannon
Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton, Veronica Cartwright, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto
Depending on who you ask, Ridley Scott's Alienis either sci-fi or a haunted house story set in space. Either way, it's taken on new meaning since the Department of Defence published UFO -- sorry, UAP footage in April.
Alien meshes genres so well that it shrugs off categorization. Sigourney Weaver, in her breakout role, runs shit as heroine Ellen Ripley, one member of a crew trying to survive a terrifying, quick, and bloodthirsty alien rampaging on their ship.
Under Scott's watch, Alien is full of genuine scares, palpable tension, and dazzling visual effects. Speaking of the FX, the alien's design, credited to H.R. Giger, is the freakiest of its kind; with a long, jai-alia-racket-shaped head and Velociraptor-like arms and legs, the film's monster is the stuff of intergalactic nightmares. It's also the benefactor of one of cinema's all-time great taglines: "In space, no one can hear you scream."
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
Country: USA
Director: George Lucas
Screenwriter: George Lucas
Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, James Earl Jones
The staunchest George Lucas haters could write volumes on why Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hopeis one of the most overrated movies of all time, a cheesy space opera that's aged poorly after being poorly made in the first place. Unfortunately, Lucas' 1977 game-changer has become such a cultural juggernaut that its initial wonderment has been forgotten.
Tossing a variety of influences into his typewriter, from Akira Kurosawa's samurai epics to old-school westerns and 1950s spaceship visuals, Lucas set out to create an epic set completely above the clouds using the most advanced special effects possible. Fortunately, he didn't rely solely upon artificial trickery; Lucas birthed an endless stream of colorful, memorable flesh-and-blood characters, charming robots, and imaginative creatures to carry out his elaborate rescue mission narrative.
The first Star Wars film does have flaws, but its sporadic bumps are ultimately smoothed over by Lucas' unbridled ambition, playful imagination, and desire to push cinema in a forward direction.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Country: USA
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriter: Lawrence Kasdan
Stars: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, John Rhys-Davies, Ronald Lacey, Denholm Elliot
You know a film has made it when it's deemed historically significant by the U.S. Library of Congress (if it was British, it would have been knighted). The epic fantasy pioneers (and sand castle enthusiasts, apparently) George Lucas and Steven Spielberg teamed up for a movie that aimed at the heart of the American imagination.
Harrison Ford is the roguishly handsome professor by day and the roguishly handsome tomb raider by night. In uncovering the secret artifacts of civilizations ancient and powerful (and stealing them), he fulfills the American dream of owning everything.
In the first film of what would become a trilogy (yes, a trilogy—the fourth film never happened, and neither will the fifth; we're closing our eyes and covering our ears, la la la) Indiana Jones stumbles upon a Nazi plot to use the supernatural Ark of the Covenant to form an immortal army and take over the world. It's all going great until Indy foils them in a swashbuckling fashion that would make Douglas Fairbanks proud.
There are no shortage of thrills in this opus of action from the father of the blockbuster. Raiders of the Lost Ark was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won across the board for its technical prowess, pushing Industrial Light and Magic to its Nazi-face-melting, boulder-chasing best.
Back to the Future (1985)
Country: USA
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Screenwriters: Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale
Stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F. Wilson
The legacy of Back to the Future casts it as great popcorn entertainment, which is definitely accurate. But Robert Zemeckis' breakout film is also something more: It's arguably the best time travel movie ever made.
Looking past Michael J. Fox's vibrant performance (which is great, mind you) and Christopher Lloyd's loony presence, what stands out is the film's airtight script, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale. By nature, time travel movies can turn the mind into sludge, yet somehow Back To The Future is coherent and easily digestible from end to end.
Now that we've gotten the analytical jargon out of the way, it's time to acknowledge just how much fun Zemeckis' family flick is, from the snappy dialogue between Fox and Lloyd, to Crispin Glover's charmingly neurotic turn as the younger version of Fox's character's pops.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Country: USA
Director: James Cameron
Screenwriters: James Cameron, William Wisher
Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick, Joe Morton, S. Epatha Merkerson
His holier-than-thou public persona might drive us up the wall, and Avatar is still an unholy mating of Dances With Wolves and FernGully (he really wants to make three more of these??) but we've got to hand it to James Cameron: He's the king of sequels.
Showing that his extraordinary sequel to Alien, 1986's Aliens was no fluke, Cameron followed up his own sci-fi standout The Terminator with a second round that's more ostentatious and ultimately superior to its predecessor.
Arnold Schwarzenegger once again plays the mostly-silent cyborg sent back from the future, though this time he's a good guy; the villain is a 'borg that's able to regenerate its human shell (dressed in a cop uniform and played with imposing menace by Robert Patrick) and hell-bent on killing young John Connor (Edward Furlong).
Cameron didn't waste a penny of the film's reported $100 million budget (a staggering sum back in '91), packing the visceral T2 with a ridiculous amount of explosions, car wrecks, man-sized robots, and bodily transformations.
Jurassic Park (1993)
Country: USA
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriters: Michael Crichton, David Koepp
Stars: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough, Jeff Goldblum, Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards, Samuel L. Jackson, Wayne Knight, Bob Peck
For kids who grew up loving dinosaurs, Jurassic Park tickled fancies like none other. Adapted from a Michael Crichton novel, Steven Spielberg's dinos-are-back adventure benefited greatly from the late visual effects giant Stan Winston's awe-inspiring dinosaur animation, life-sized creations that looked scary as hell and moved with convincing agility.
As in Crichton's book, the prehistoric beasties are given a second life through experimentation with fossilized dino-DNA; designed as an expensive, private island attraction, Jurassic Park quickly becomes the stomping grounds for angry Velociraptors, a hungry T-Rex, and acid-spitting creatures.
The magic of Jurassic Park, like the best of Spielberg's films, lies in its ability to make the fantastical tangible; from the first time we see a brontosaurus munching on leaves, to the vicious Tyrannosaurus Rex's frightening introduction, the dinosaurs more than earn eye-rubbing disbelief.
The Matrix (1999)
Country: USA and Australia
Directors: The Wachowskis
Screenwriters: The Wachowskis
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Joe Pantoliano, Marcus Chong
Every now and then, a movie comes along that's so bold, so creative, and so technically advanced that it leaves audiences in a state of 'oh-shit' wonderment. In 1999, that's exactly what the Wachowskis did withThe Matrix.
The Matrix is influenced by kung fu cinema, anime, Philip K. Dick, and cyberpunk. It's all there as computer hacker Neo (Keanu Reeves) fights his way through cyber-tyrants in an alternate dimension on a freedom mission that the directors rendered with techniques previously unseen, including, famously, bullet-time camera trickery.
Let's hope the upcoming fourth film in the series makes up for the Wachowskis two disappointing sequels.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Country: USA and United Kingdom
Director: Christopher Nolan
Screenwriters: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan
Stars: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman
The Dark Knight introduced audiences to a new kind of Batman and a new way of experiencing superhero movies. Rather than feeling straight out of a comic book page, Christopher Nolan's take feels freakishly grounded in a tangible reality. His vision of Gotham is essentially a mix of every major American city, which perpetuates the illusion that the kind of terror that reigns down on the metropolis could happen anywhere. And in this superhero story, the villain stands tall.
Forget your typical CGI evildoer, Heath Ledger's Joker gives every viewer something hauntingly real to be afraid of. The character is a testament to the talent and sacrifice of the late actor, who became only the second posthumous recipient of an Academy Award.
Enter the Dragon (1973)
Country: Hong Kong, USA
Director: Robert Clouse
Screenwriters: Michael Allin
Stars: Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Jim Kelly, Ahna Capri, Shih Kien, Robert Wall
Why is Enter the Dragon on our list of must see movies? It's quite simple. Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is the most iconic martial artist in the history of cinema. He was, by all indication, superhuman. Enter the Dragon is the first Chinese martial arts film made with the cooperation of a major American studio.
Bruce Lee is in Enter the Dragon. In the film, he participates in a competition on an island (not like that's ever been done since). He kicks ass. You'll love it.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Country: Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, and USA
Director: Ang Lee
Screenwriters: Wang Hui-ling, James Schamus, Tsai Kuo Jung
Stars: Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen, Cheng Pei-pei
Martial arts is a thriving genre in Asia, where crops of action heroes rise to stardom like athletes in America. Prior to Ang Lee's international smash, wire work and fight coordination lived mostly in warehouses and dojos and featured bland, predictable stories.
Here, director Ang Lee and fight coordinator Yuen Wo Ping make all the right moves, using an internationally known cast of Chinese actors and bringing the fight scenes outdoors (including the unforgettable sword fight on trees limbs). With a sincere love story, impeccable cast, and enough fight scenes for genre fanatics, this movie went off like a bomb, becoming the most successful foreign film in America. It is one of the rare foreign films to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
The Third Man (1949)
Country: United Kingdom
Director: Carol Reed
Screenwriter: Graham Greene
Stars: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alida Valli
Carol Reed's The Third Man, with a script by famed British novelist Graham Greene, is an exercise in anticipation. An American writer (Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna not long after WWII on a search for his friend Harry Lime. Except Harry's died, supposedly. Our intrepid writer, a seeker of counter-narratives, isn't convinced.
For the bulk of the movie, the viewer seeks Harry alongside the writer through the gorgeous chiaroscuro of black-and-white noir. There are intimations, shots full of shadows, an incessant score that teases and ratchets up the suspense. And then, voilà: Harry, played by none other than Orson Welles.
Harry lectures the writer, explaining his philosophy about death and power that chills the blood because of how true it sounds. The resurrection of the writer's former pal is not a happy occasion, not one bit.
Here's Harry, coming to the close of his famous "Cuckoo Clock" speech:
"Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
The film's philosophy is bleak and the execution is perfect. Above all, its lessons about power resonate today.
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Country: USA
Director: Billy Wilder
Screenwriters: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman, Jr.
Stars: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson
This noir is so deliciously intriguing that it can leave any dumbass who doesn't like "boring" black-and-white movies craving for more. Often cited as one of the greatest films in American cinema, the film follows a struggling screenwriter who forms an inescapable bond with a delusional (with a capital D) former silent film star, Norma Desmond (played by actual former silent film star, Gloria Swanson).
All of its Academy Award nominations aside, including Best Picture, Sunset Boulevard's most awe-inspiring contribution to movie history has to be its iconic (and maniacal) final lines. Not to spoil the film, but it will leave you questioning the idea of sanity.
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Country: USA
Director: Frank Capra
Screenwriters: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra
Stars: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell
It's A Wonderful Life should be required viewing for anyone who hates more than they appreciate. James Stewart plays a guy who's weighed down by financial debts. Having hit rock-bottom, he decides to off himself. Then, an angel descends from the clouds and walks Stewart through his timeline in order to realize just how fortunate he is.
Director Frank Capra's classic ends with an iconic final scene: Stewart races through his town in jubilation, returns home, and smothers his family with hugs and kisses alongside a Christmas tree. Undeniably hopeful, It's A Wonderful Life overcomes any schmaltz through its strong acting and radical argument for community.
Casablanca (1942)
Country: USA
Director: Michael Curtiz
Screenwriters: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid
Casabla—blah, blah, blah, right? Wrong! Sure the title's been referenced so much by precious film geeks that you hardly have the patience to give it a chance. But there are two very valid reasons it's on our list of 100 movies to watch: it's really fucking good, and legitimately important.
Set in Vichy-controlled Casablanca, Morocco, during World War II, the film focuses on American expatriate Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) as he struggles between maintaining his cafe (where he employs refugees who've escaped the Nazi regime) and the reemergence of his unrequited love, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), who is now married to the same type of man Blaine sought to protect.
The film dropped at the perfect moment in history: on November 26, 1942, to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa and the capture of Casablanca. Hence, the reason Tom Hanks compared the 2008 Iraq War film The Hurt Locker to Casablanca when presenting the newer movie with its own Best Picture Oscar.
Vertigo (1958)
Country: USA
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriters: Alec Coppel, Samuel Taylor
Stars: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore
Recently crowned the greatest movie ever made by British film mag Sight & Sound, Vertigoappeals to two usually-distinct movie lover factions: fans of psychological horror and those who appreciate a good romance.
Jimmy Stewart plays John "Scottie" Ferguson, a detective who's stricken by an overpowering fear of heights, and whose fragile psyche gets put into a tailspin as he begins an investigation into an old pal's young, beautiful wife (Kim Novak). The love story comes from Ferguson's tender interactions with Novak's Madeleine, all delicately handled by Hitchcock to evoke genuine compassion for both characters.
As for Vertigo's darker side, the film's second half—loaded with clever twists and startling reveals—effectively transposes Ferguson's crumbling sanity onto the viewer. Employing some unsubtle visual aids, Hitchcock manifests the character's internal paranoia through a kaleidoscope that's both dizzying and hypnotic.
Modern Times (1936)
Country: USA
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Screenwriter: Charlie Chaplin
Stars: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Tiny Sandford, Chester Conklin
The Little Tramp—Charlie Chaplin’s beloved character who made his debut in 1914—takes his final bow in fine form in Modern Times, as he tries his best to adapt to the changing world around him. And the post-Depression challenges he faces aren’t too different from the ones we face today: unemployment, poverty, and the ongoing trend of machines replacing people in the workplace. (The scene in which Chaplin literally becomes a cog in the wheel of a machine is a feat of physical comedy that is as laugh-out-loud funny today as anything Will Ferrell's doing.)
Proof that images speak louder than words, Modern Times is the perfect title as it defines the plot and Chaplin’s rather ironic decision to trash the script that had already been written and shoot the movie as a silent film in the heyday of talkies.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Country: Germany
Director: Robert Wiene
Screenwriters: Hans Janowitz, Carl Mayer
Stars: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover
The horror film as we know it can be traced back to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the 1920 German silent film directed by Robert Wiene. Before the film's monster, the somnambulist Cesare, even shows up, Caligari is an excellent demonstration of off-kilter creepiness, an effect achieved by Wiene through his decision to have all of the sets abstractly designed as dreamscapes populated by jagged, fantastical looking buildings.
But then Caligari, one of cinema's great mad doctors, sends his sleeping, hypnotically controlled man-servant Cesare out on the town to abduct the beautiful Jane Olsen (Lil Dagover). That's when Wiene's film reaches its apex of pure horror, and the degree to which The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has been influential amongst the genre's directors becomes immeasurable.
Metropolis (1927)
Country: Germany
Director: Fritz Lang
Screenwriter: Thea von Harbou
Stars: Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Gustav Frohlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Considering how awe-inspiring Fritz Lang's science-fiction classic Metropolis is today, one can only imagine how drastically minds were blown back in 1927, when the film debuted as the most expensive German movie production to date.
Every dollar is right there on the screen, with full-scale riots, dazzling laboratory experiments, and dystopian landscapes that look better than most of today's higher-priced and more technologically advanced sets and effects. Bluntly put, you can't call yourself a film lover until you've seen Metropolis.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Country: USA, United Kingdom
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Screenwriters: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke
Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester
2001: A Space Odysseyisn't really a movie—it's visual transcendence. Covering all of humanity's existence, from the dawn of man, when apes partied in rock pits, to an unidentifiable future, Stanley Kubrick's monumental examination of technology, evolution, and outer space doesn't follow a typical narrative structure, or pander to handicapped attention spans. By the end of its nearly three-hour running time, 2001 doesn't answer any questions and has no more than 100 or so lines of dialogue. Basically, it's Kubrick at his fuck-the-status-quo peak.
So, what's the point of it all? If you're interested in existential howls, 2001 is one cinema's coldest; if you're more apt to spark a doobie and watch movies in hopes of enhancing the high, it's a never-ending eye-gasm. Even before the extended laser-light show that sends one character into the future, looking like a Windows 95 screen saver on PCP, 2001 assaults the senses through pioneering special effects that, essentially, revolutionized both the sci-fi genre and the entire medium.
Blade Runner (1982)
Country: USA
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriters: Hampton Fancher, David Peoples
Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, M. Emmett Walsh, Daryl Hannah
In many ways, Blade Runner is one of the most accessible sci-fi movies of all time. Liberally adapting Philip K. Dick's short novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, director Ridley Scott fashioned the futuristic thriller as the most technologically advanced film noir, complete with "dames." It's the kind of gumshoe story Humphrey Bogart used to make, with Harrison Ford playing a retired detective on a mission to apprehend a shitload of fugitives. And who doesn't love a good, old-school crime saga?
The magic of Blade Runner is that it's technically anything but old-school. It's noir meets Ziggy Stardust, with stunning set design shown in great detail through sprawling aerial shots. The world of Blade Runner is kaleidoscopic, full of neon lights and glowing vehicles that zoom through the sky. As Ford gets his Dick Tracy on, Scott goes to extensive lengths to one-up Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The 2017 follow-up, Blade Runner 2049, is also great, but we've got a soft spot for the original.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Country: United Kingdom
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Screenwriter: Stanley Kubrick
Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Warren Clarke, Patrick Magee, Carl Duering
A Clockwork Orange is Kubrick's daring salute to free will, even if it comes wrapped in malicious intent. Malcolm McDowell's character, a gang leader named Alex who rapes and steals for kicks, undergoes a radical reconditioning experiment that alters his internal reflexes; after the procedure, the smallest urge to do bad leaves him feeling sick and unable to defend himself against the vengeful folks he wronged prior to his personality transformation.
Set in an oddball future where people drop intricate slang in British accents and old women collect giant penis statues, Kubrick's dizzying adaptation of the classic Anthony Burgess novel is a movie that no other director, living or dead, could've made. The music, all loopy synthesizers and echoing bass, keeps the viewer on edge; the casualness of its violence, such as a vicious rape set to McDowell's acapella rendition of "Singin' In The Rain," defies morality; and the stylistic touches, particularly a three-way sex scene that's sped up to a ludicrous speed, as if someone's finger is glued to the fast-forward button, are downright strange.
As funny as it is disturbing, A Clockwork Orange is a movie that feels fresh and dangerous with each new viewing.
Videodrome (1983)
Country: Canada
Director: David Cronenberg
Screenwriter: David Cronenberg
Stars: James Woods, Deborah Harry, Sonja Smits, Peter Dvorsky
This delightfully weird movie from Canadian auteur David Cronenberg takes the disturbing tension of his earlier works, like The Brood and Scanners, and ratchets it up to a level all its own.
Tapping into the vapid business of consumer entertainment, Videodrome revolves around a cable television executive (James Woods) who's in a search of the ultimate in programming (pornography and violence, of course). His search leads him to Videodrome, a mysterious and primal broadcast that entertains to the point that it mutates the mind (think Half-Life, not Batman Returns).
The special effects, including a pulsating TV and videocassette vagina, are still undeniably disturbing. Thirty years later, the devices have changed, but Cronenberg's commentary on the changes human beings experience in the face of technology remains urgent.
Akira (1988)
Country: Japan
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
Screenwriters: Katsuhiro Otomo, Izo Hashimoto
Stars: Nozumo Sasaki, Mitsuo Iwata, Mami Koyama, Tetsusho Genda, Hiroshi Otake
If this were a countdown of the most important animated movies of all time, Katsuhiro Otomo's seminal anime Akiracould very well be number one. To this day, the film impresses with its David Cronenberg-like grotesqueries and Akira-Kurosawa-in-Hell brutality. This ain't for kids.
Otomo's two-hour epic was based on his own manga of the same name, about the fallout from a nuclear explosion in Tokyo. Now called "Neo-Tokyo," the ravaged city is the playground for a biker gang member who uses psychic abilities to wreak extreme havoc.
Conceptualized on the grandest of scales, Akira is the kind of story that could only be done justice through animation. It's also timeless, and we may be getting more Akira in the near future.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Country: USA
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriter: Melissa Mathison
Stars: Henry Thomas, Wallace, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, C. Thomas Howell
We were all children once, heading into adulthood with wide eyes, innocence, and wonderment. No filmmaker in cinema's history has worked this angle better than Steven Spielberg, and few movies have bottled the feeling of pre-teen magic better than E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Spielberg hit a sentimental grand slam with the title character, a lovable space invader who befriends a young boy named Elliot (Henry Thomas) and becomes the best friend a kid could ever ask for. The relationship between Elliot and E.T. is the glue that binds Spielberg's flick; it's impossible to watch E.T. and not wish that a cuddly little alien would land in your own backyard.
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Country: USA
Director: John Hughes
Screenwriter: John Hughes
Stars: Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Paul Gleason
Like Martin Scorsese to Catholic guilt or Stanley Kubrick to chilly sociology, John Hughes is the king of the teens, and The Breakfast Clubis his best work. Written and directed by the late Hollywood maverick, The Breakfast Club takes an everyday high school set-up—kids locked up in detention—and uses the situation to explore the psychology of teenagers both popular and socially ostracized. It might be set in 1985, but Hughes' funny and revelatory flick speaks volumes about modern-day young adults, just like it did 26 years ago.
Cleverly, Hughes carefully chose the most stereotypical caricatures and systematically tears through the preconceptions. The abrasive hoodlum (Judd Nelson) is really a lonely basket-case with serious daddy issues; the star athlete (Emilio Estevez) makes his classmates envious yet can't seem to make his father happy; and the popular girl (Molly Ringwald) that all the guys want to sleep with is actually a mega-prude. The Breakfast Club is like a group therapy session, just much more fun to watch.
The Goonies (1985)
Country: USA
Director: Richard Donner
Screenwriter: Chris Columbus
Stars: Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Corey Feldman, Kerri Green, Martha Plimpton, Ke Huy Quan, Anne Ramsey, Joe Pantoliano, Robert Davi, John Matuszak
The Goonies tells the tale of a group of kids who try to save their houses from being demolished, find an old Spanish treasure map from a pirate named One-Eyed Willie (really), deal with fugitives trying to steal said treasure, and befriend a monster that looks like he could've starred in The Hills Have Eyes. Ah yes, it's a classic coming-of-age tale that all children can relate to. Really, who hasn't been through this? Finding Spanish pirate treasure is, like, the first stage of puberty!
The film leaves audiences with a feeling of real nostalgia, despite the outlandish plot, of their own childhood: friends, adventures, and kicks we were too young to appreciate. It inspires the adventurer in everyone.
The Sandlot (1993)
Country: USA
Director: David Mickey Evans
Screenwriters: David Mickey Evans, Robert Gunter
Stars: Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, Patrick Renna, Chauncey Leopardi, Brandon Adams, Marty York, Grant Gelt, Denis Leary, Marley Shelton, James Earl Jones
Baseball, summertime, a group of your best friends, and a fight against a terrifying mastiff called "The Beast"—c'mon, what's not to love about the quintessential 1990s kids movie? The Sandlot defined the ultimate summer, making you feel bad when yours didn't live up.
Not only did it fill you with an unquenchable sense of adventure, the film confronted you with real life issues in the gentlest way possible. Got daddy issues? It's OK, you're not alone, because (you're killing me) Smalls' dad is absent, too. You don't fit in with kids 'cause you suck at sports? You'll find a cool athletic friend with a name like Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez who'll show you the ropes. Got a crush on a hot lifeguard? Be a man, pretend to drown, and use CPR as an excuse to kiss her!
Everything you needed as kid, you could find watching The Sandlot.
Toy Story (1995)
Country: USA
Director: John Lasseter
Screenwriters: Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow
Stars: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts, John Morris
And the prize for the first full-length computer-animated film goes to: Toy Story.
In addition to the fact that Pixar's first feature opened the door for other classic movies from the brilliant studio (such as Up and Monster's Inc.), the movie's witty script and groundbreaking images prompted many critics to call it the greatest animated film ever made. And not without reason—27 animators worked diligently on the film, illustrating every detail, down to each blade of grass, to tell the story of the misadventures of two lost toys - the iconic duo of Buzz and Woody - trying to find their way home.
However, Toy Story's greatest achievement is its balance of nostalgia, childhood wonder, and misty-eyed adult humor. That's the blend every kid's movie aspires to.
Scarface (1983)
Country: USA
Director: Brian De Palma
Screenwriter: Oliver Stone
Stars: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, F. Murray Abraham, Robert Loggia
If you enjoy pop culture only because it allows you to participate in culture at large, you have to see Scarface. By now, if you haven't already done so, you must feel as if you've already seen Brian De Palma's remake of the 1932 gangster picture about Al Capone. You've heard the dialogue sampled in rap; you've seen Tony Montana (De Palma and Stone's '80s version of Capone) and his large gun on posters and T-shirts. You've played GTA: Vice City.
But the references and the paraphrasable content don't capture the experience of sitting through the bloody epic. To really lose your soul alongside Tony, the Cuban refugee who becomes a drug kingpin and user, you have to spend those 170 minutes in his company.
The Godfather (1972)
Country: USA
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Screenwriters: Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola
Stars: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton
Francis Ford Coppola adapted Mario Puzo's pulpy novel The Godfather into an atmospheric meditation on America and capitalism's innocence lost—essentially the meat of all gangster movies. Gangster movies, the good ones especially, are almost always about America's failure (so the failure of capitalism) to protect and nurture its people. America won't do it, and so other organizations—the mob—will try. But these organizations commit similar sins. Only watching them befall a small cast of characters resonates in a bigger way than any macroeconomic report will.
"I believe in America." These are the first words spoken in Coppola's film, and the dimly lit images of violence and corruption will do everything to dissuade you of that belief. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) has long resisted the family business. Because he believed in America. And so he went to war. Only, the family business needs him. His ascension within that business (and his simultaneous fall from grace) makes for one of cinema's most sympathetic villains.
Virtually all mafia movies seek to cover this ground. It's just that none of them do it with the beauty or gravitas of The Godfather.
Citizen Kane (1941)
Country: USA
Director: Orson Welles
Screenwriters: Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles
Stars: Orson Welles, William Alland, Ray Collins, Dorothy Comingore, Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris, Agnes Moorehead, Harry Shannon
Don’t let its many accolades and firmly planted position as The Greatest Movie Ever Made scare you—Citizen Kane lives up to the hype.
After scaring the hell out of the country with his War of the Worlds broadcast, Orson Welles was able to write his own ticket to Hollywood. And what he wanted was simple: total control—from beginning to end, from pre-production to post. And he got it. Including final cut. Welles used the opportunity to create a compelling tale of the American Dream in the form of the fictional Charles Foster Kane, a media magnate (and thinly veiled version of William Randolph Hearst) on the ultimate search for power. We hate how familiar that sounds...
The film moved filmmaking forward by employing a flashback-heavy narrative that was formally reflected through the incredibly deep focus cinematography, among other innovations.
Unfortunately for Welles, his peak came too early. After all, how can one top a film that's widely considered to be the all-time greatest? Welles spent his final years putting his booming voice to work, narrating everything from Shogun to The Transformers: The Movie.
The Social Network (2010)
Country: USA
Director: David Fincher
Screenwriter: Aaron Sorkin
Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Joseph Mazzello, Rooney Mara
Incorrectly pinned down as "the Facebook movie" before its release, The Social Networkshowed that, when in the hands of a mastermind like David Fincher, the backstabbing ways of annoying smart kids can make for riveting cinema. The film's script, written by industry heavyweight Aaron Sorkin, roars with razor-sharp dialogue, well-placed humor, and the seamless fusion of multiple viewpoints.
Even though the characters are irritating children of privilege, Jesse Eisenberg (as the profoundly unlikeable Mark Zuckerberg) and Andrew Garfield are endlessly captivating, as is Justin Timberlake as Napster's Sean Parker.
Raging Bull (1980)
Country: USA
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriters: Paul Schrader, Mardik Martin
Stars: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci, Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, Frank Vincent
Go ahead and make a list of the Best Sports Movies and place Raging Bull at the top. It's the easy decision, because most sports movies suck, largely because they can't their heads out of the game.
Martin Scorsese's best film is about the headspace of the athlete, in this case boxer Jake LaMotta. For a sports movie, there's little time spent in the ring, and when the cameras do move between the ropes, it's into a ring that's shaped formally by LaMotta's ferocious and roiling interiority. Go back and watch the fights again—you'll see that Scorsese distorts the canvas, shrinks it or makes it vast, depending on LaMotta's mood. During one bout, he filmed the fight with fire burning beneath the lens, and the waves of heat distort the images.
Get out of here with the sports nonsense. Raging Bull is about the inherent ugliness of masculinity as its been conceived of for generations. Being a man in Raging Bull means being warped by jealousy, inferiority, self-loathing. It's maleness as monsterousness. No wonder the Academy gave the 1980 Best Picture award to Ordinary People, a living room drama. The truth wasn't pretty enough.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Country: USA
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriter: Paul Schrader
Stars: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel
We're firmly in the De Niro section of this must see movies list.
You heard his most famous line from Taxi Driver before you saw the film: "You talkin' to me?" But in Martin Scorsese's dirty '70s masterpiece, it's the next line that's most important: " 'Cause there's no one else here."
How strange that a film dominated by one point of view—a racist, sexist, and just generally disturbed one, at that—has come to be the ultimate expression of New York City, a place made up of millions of perspectives. And yet so many of us are drawn to Travis Bickle, the cabbie who only wants to clean himself up, maybe make a friend. And if that doesn't work out, he'll settle for cleaning up his city.
That's the summary minus the psychosis, but the awesome power of Taxi Driver lies in that psychosis. By watching, you commit to two hours in Bickle's headspace. There is no exit from the dripping neon seediness of Times Square porno theaters, and pimps posted up outside of East Village walk-ups.
Indeed, the American imagination can't escape Taxi Driver, even 44 years after the film's release. When you hear someone who's lived in the city for just a month complain about Manhattan turning into Disneyland, they're remembering Taxi Driver, a New York they experienced through the movies. New York is as much a film as it is a real place.
Rocky (1976)
Country: USA
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Screenwriter: Sylvester Stallone
Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, Burgess Meredith
Sylvester Stallone wrote himself into stardom with the 1976 Best Picture-winning Rocky. The inspirational David v. Goliath-style sports film was a keystone that set the standard for an entire genre of films. Rocky especially succeeds in its training montages, with memorable images of Stallone running through the particularly filthy streets of Philadelphia, up the Museum of Arts steps, punching meat carcasses, and rocking his signature gray sweats.
This marvel of editing inspired thousands of people to run around their hometown looking like a sweaty mess, raising their arms in celebration of imagined glories, maybe even ripping off a couple guttural cries of "Adrian!"
Chinatown (1974)
Country: USA
Director: Roman Polanski
Screenwriter: Robert Towne
Stars: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, Diane Ladd, John Hillerman, Darrell Zwerling
Think what you will about Roman Polanski on a personal level (he's disgusting). From an artistic standpoint, there’s no denying his brilliance; he’s a nuanced auteur who has been cited as an inspiration by scores of international directors, from Wes Craven to Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky to David Fincher. And Chinatown is his masterpiece.
This 1974 film, based on the California Water Wars that took place in the earlier part of the century, is a complex neo-noir in which private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) teams up with wronged housewife/femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to figure out who murdered her husband.
The film marked Polanski’s return to Hollywood, five years after the gruesome murder of his pregnant wife—actress Sharon Tate—at the hands of Charles Manson’s followers. And it was at the behest of ’70s super-producer Robert Evans that Polanski took the job at all; Evans felt that Polanski’s European heritage and tortured background might give Chinatown a distinctively darker edge. He was right.
Despite Evans and screenwriter Robert Towne’s opinions to the contrary, it was Polanski who insisted that the film’s ending be a decidedly un-happy one—a rarity in Hollywood (yes, even in the 1970s).
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Country: USA
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Screenwriters: John Milius, Francis Ford Coppola
Stars: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, Albert Hall, Harrison Ford
Most war movies aim to immerse viewers in the violence and brutality of combat; Francis Ford Coppola's hypnotic and devastating Apocalypse Now, on the other hand, eschews traditional ideals about the realistic objectivity of the war picture.
Staged with the hallucinogenic power of an acid trip, the iconic filmmaker's adaptation of Joseph Conrad's classic story Heart Of Darkness wraps its camouflage-paint-covered paws around your brain and drops visual grenades—ritualistic animal slaughter, a young fighter's death as a tape-recorded greeting from his mother plays, nighttime bombings that light up the sky like fireworks.
Its reputation as one of the most haunting and punishing examinations of man's dark side ever put to film is wholly earned.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Country: Italy
Director: Sergio Leone
Screenwriters: Age & Scarpelli, Sergio Leone, Luciano Vincenzoni
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach
If you see only one spaghetti western, it must be Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The plot elements are simple and ultimately unimportant: a wanted man, a stash of gold, plenty of pistols. From these basic moving parts comes a sweeping epic that succeeds because of the peerless score from the master Ennio Morricone, the gorgeous cinematography with haunted shots that Malick must envy, and the iconic image of Clint Eastwood you see above. Leone's films, and this one in particular, made Eastwood what he is today (recent questionable opinions aside).
Tarantino calls it one of his must see movies. Chances are, you will to.
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Country: USA
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Screenwriters: Sam Peckinpah, Walon Green
Stars: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sanchez, Ben Johnson
Let's talk about violence. Released in 1969, two years after Bonnie and Clyde let the squibs pop and the blood fly, American alcoholic and film director Sam Peckinpah made a motion picture that reveled in the sort of grittiness we take for granted in our westerns. The Wild Bunch, about a group of slovenly bandits faced with a changing, even more corrupt world than the one they already inhabit, paved the way for recent classics like Unforgiven and Deadwood.
Using slow motion and aggressive editing, Peckinpah depicted the damage of bullet against flesh in a way that had audiences recoiling. The frustration of a country at war is in this picture. The frustration of a director whose inner demons would ultimately get the best of him are in this picture. Death is in this picture.
Seven Samurai (1954)
Country: Japan
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Screenwriters: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni
Stars: Takashi Shimura, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Kato, Minoru Chiaki, Seiji Miyaguchi, Toshiro Mifune
Seven Samurai is widely considered to be one of the most important and expertly-made films off all time, in any country. Directed, edited, and co-written by Akira Kurosawa in 1954, it's a violent, epic (clocking in at over three hours) tale of vengeance and honor. Sounds like a description applicable to any martial arts flick, no? Perhaps, except that all others examples of the genre wish they were Seven Samurai.
Seven samurai are hired by the residents of a poor, downtrodden village for protection against bands of criminals during the late 1500s. With a plot as simple as that, Seven Samurai could've easily progressed on cruise control and preceded the storyless monotony and mindless brawn of The Expendables by 56 years. Kurosawa didn't get down like that, though. In this gem, the characters are all well-drawn, the performances hit their marks, and, not surprisingly, the action sequences are massive and seamlessly executed.
And about that "simple" plot: Seven Samurai is credited as being the first movie in which a group of experts are assembled for a common cause, a narrative device that's since been rehashed to death. The multi-hero plot trope is so common nowadays that it's actually difficult to accept that there was a "first" of its kind. Even movies without a single moment of swordplay have bit Kurosawa's style—think of Ocean's Eleven and its sequels.
Rashomon (1950)
Country: Japan
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Screenwriters: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto
Stars: Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyo, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki
The most intricate of Kurosawa's films, the groundbreaking Rashomon is still a jaw-dropper 60 years after the fact. Told through the eyes of four different characters, it's a courtroom drama minus any actual legal quarters or clichés—hell, Rashomon established many of the narrative ideas that have since devolved into clichés.
The plot: After a woman is raped and her husband slaughtered, a quartet of witnesses recount their versions of the events, frequently contradicting each other's accounts and twisting the story into an Auntie Anne's mystery that's tricky to decode the first time around.
Fans of lawyer and cop shows are no doubt familiar with the "Rashomon effect," even if they don't realize it. To broaden matters a bit, pretty much any piece of whodunit fiction told through eyewitness accounts owes its existence to this Kurosawa masterwork. Hollywood has tried several times to emulate Rashomon—sometimes well (Courage Under Fire), and other times so ineptly that you'd wish Kurosawa could backhand slap producers from beyond the grave (Vantage Point).
Breathless (1960)
Country: France
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Screenwriter: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Henri-Jacques Huet, Roger Hanin
Godard's first feature is one of the original and best-known artifacts of the French New Wave movement of the '50s and '60s. Breathless expressed the director's love for American pulp and Italian Neorealism, while using technically challenging techniques (jump cuts, long takes) and experimenting with narrative.
What's best about Godard, especially in his early work, is that his intellectualism never becomes too serious. Breathless features a larger than life Jean-Paul Belmondo, a man-sized child in gangster's clothes, who runs around Paris as if it were a playground, chasing pleasure while running from boredom (and the law). He shoots a cop and meets a woman (the irresistible Jean Seberg). On paper, the plot sounds unfinished, but the film's many fans (it earned a nod in Beyonce and Jay-Z's 'Bang Bang' video) prove it absolutely deserves a spot on our must see movies list.
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Country: Sweden
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Screenwriter: Ingmar Bergman
Stars: Max von Sydow, Bengt Ekerot, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson
This sparse but epic fantasy tale of Medieval Sweden follows knight Antonious Block (Max Von Sydow) as he plays chess with Death—guess who wins—delaying the Reaper so that he may accomplish one last worthwhile act before dying. Meanwhile, he inadvertently gathers a caravan that travels through the plague-ravaged land, encountering fools, religious fanatics, families, and an alleged witch.
The film's success stems not from its accuracy as a period piece, but from the timeless questions it asks about faith and existence. The look of Death as a white-faced figure with a dark robe has been imitated and parodied to no end, often by Woody Allen, who calls The Seventh Seal his favorite movie.
The film was shot in just 35 days, with a budget of $150,000. The Seventh Seal firmly established Bergman as a world class director who would go on to produce beautiful and challenging work for the rest of his career.
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Country: USA
Director: Spike Lee
Screenwriter: Spike Lee
Stars: Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito, John Turturro, Rosie Perez
1989 was a very good year for the American independent film movement. Channeling the political awareness of the New Hollywood directors of the 1970s, Spike Lee and his late ’80s brethren (Steven Soderbergh, Michael Moore, and Jim Jarmusch among them) heralded the arrival of a new kind of filmmaking.
Like most of Lee’s films, Do the Right Thing—the story of racial tensions erupting into violence on the hottest day of the summer—was mired in controversy upon its release. Close-minded cultural pundits suggested that the film was likely to spark a series of similar riotous acts.
In 2008, he told New York Magazine: “People like Joe Klein and David Denby felt that this film was going to cause riots. Young black males were going to emulate Mookie and throw garbage cans through windows. Like, ‘How dare you release this film in summertime: You know how they get in the summertime, this is like playing with fire.’”
No violence came of the film, but it did ignite a dialogue—one which continues today—about the still-simmering tensions that exist in the world but are often denied or covered up. And the film has stood the test of time; it’s just as prescient and relevant today as it was 30 years ago. Not bad for a script that took Spike two weeks to write.
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)
Country: USA
Director: Melvin Van Peebles
Screenwriter: Melvin Van Peebles
Stars: Melvin Van Peebles, Hubert Scales, Simon Chuckster, John Amos
Over 19 days in 1971, Melvin Van Peebles directed, produced and starred in Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the indie film he also scored (played by Earth, Wind & Fire) and wrote. The year before, Van Peebles had made Watermelon Man for Columbia, a comedy about a white bigot who wakes up black. For his follow-up, Van Peebles wanted to make something even more antagonistic, a rough tale about a bad motherfucker bucking white authority. Columbia was gutless; Van Peebles would have to go it alone.
Melvin Van Peebles made his movie about his bad motherfucker, Sweet Sweetback, he of the long dick and no fucks given, and thank god he did. For the samples alone, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is worth its weight in vinyl (in particular, Madlib has sought out choice moments of the dialogue for many of his projects). Beyond rap, Song is largely credited with starting the Blaxploitation genre. It inspired scores of black filmmakers, including Spike Lee.
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)
Country: USA
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenwriter: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: James Spader, Andie MacDowell, Peter Gallagher, Laura San Giacomo
In 1989, American independent cinema got the boost it needed to create such works as Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, and other major works. The boost came in the form of Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Steven Soderbergh's Palm d'Or winner at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. From there, all the major studios wanted in. Independent movies as we know them today—especially as a genre, with a specific style and tropes—came into being.
Truthfully, Sex, Lies, and Videotape feels tame today. Which is actually what makes it one of our must watch movies. It follows Ann (Andie MacDowell), a woman in a bloodless marriage with John (Peter Gallagher). When John's old college buddy (James Spader) comes to town with a video camera and rocks to get off, everything changes.
Down By Law (1986)
Country: USA
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Screenwriter: Jim Jarmusch
Stars: John Lurie, Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Ellen Barkin
Indie godfather Jim Jarmusch, old deadpan himself, followed up his breakout feature Stranger Than Paradise with another comedy of vagabonds, this time pitting grizzly musicians (Tom Waits, John Lurie) opposite the lovably weird Roberto Benigni in a jailbreak movie that forgoes The Great Escape model for scaled-down drama about quiet moments and occasional bursts of lunacy.
The three acts of this well-tailored comedy break most prison film stereotypes (despite being set on the Bayou), and even a lot of comedy standards (Benigni delivers both comic relief and hope for the somewhat soulless Americans). Jarmusch works in small scale, bringing a slow and inquisitive camera to his subjects. Few in American film have this sort of patience, or think so highly of their viewers.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Country: USA
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Screenwriter: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Maria de Medeiros, Ving Rhames, Eric Stoltz, Christopher Walken, Bruce Willis
Has any other film in recent memory spawned more imitators than Quentin Tarantino's breakout smash? And not just crime movies. Everything from Donnie Darko to Juno has borrowed fromPulp Fiction's smart synthesis of pop culture detritus. What separates the originator from the pale imitations though, is the sense of real stakes.
Ultimately, the movie isn't punch-line after punch-line. You remember the humor, the talk of foot massages and brain matter, but it all serves a serious end. The final scene in Tarantino's most celebrated work, where the hitman Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) explains his philosophy on life, resonates in a way that goes beyond references to '70s cult TV.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Country: USA
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriter: Robert Rodat
Stars: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Davies, Ted Danson
Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg's hard-hitting account of World War II's pivotal D-Day, doesn't skimp on the sentiment. With a large ensemble of colorful characters, led by Tom Hanks' resilient army captain, Spielberg levels the viewer with a series of visceral battle sequences, but also intricate characterization. And the central story is a knockout: Matt Damon plays a missing soldier whose three brothers have been killed in action, inspiring Hanks to lead a search-and-rescue mission to save one man, even though many will be killed in the process.
The conflicts of "Should many die to help one?" provide sufficient emotion for Spielberg to milk, but the film's book-ending flashes to modern times are its ripest suppliers of visual waterworks: Damon's character, now an old man, brings his family to Hanks' grave, a powerful image strengthened by the sight of an American flag and an evocative score.
Sentiment aside, the opening scene is required viewing for film lovers.
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Country: USA
Director: Terrence Malick
Screenwriter: Terrence Malick
Stars: Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Dash Mihok, Elias Koteas, Jared Leto, Tim Blake Nelson, Nick Nolte, John C. Reilly, John Travolta
We're lucky, all of us. Terrence Malick is back in the spotlight, regularly making films. That wasn't always the case. When The Thin Red Line, the best American war film of the last few decades, hit theaters, it had been 20 years since his last feature.
Malick's war movie isn't like the others. As a filmmaker, the notorious recluse is more interested in the possibility of the human voice paired with moving images than with traditional exchanges of dialogue that serve story. He's more interested in the possibility of cutting between blades of grass and soldiers moving in streams and a bird crippled on the ground than traditional, transparent editing.
Malick is an artist, and his imperfect The Thin Red Line is his heavy meditation on grace, nature, and destruction. You kneel before it.
Fargo (1996)
Country: USA, United Kingdom
Directors: Joel Coen
Screenwriters: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Stars: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell, Peter Stormare
Before the fabulous TV series it inspred, the Coen brothers' Fargo was a prime example of a genre mashup. Some may see it as a straightforward crime drama, but that would ignore the supremely deadpan humor that twists the movie into something far more unsettling.
A pregnant police chief (Francis McDormand) is investigating a series of murders around the town of Fargo, North Dakota, while also following the exploits of a man (William H. Macy) who's hired two criminals to kidnap his wife. Peter Stormare and Steve Buscemi play the hired help. They couldn't be any lousier at their jobs.
The tragic pair brings humor out of the mundane macabre, like in the scene where they bicker like a married couple over how to split their newly-stolen car. Buscemi nurses a gunshot wound the entire time. Should you feel guilty about laughing? The Coens remain stone-faced, daring you to react.
Memento (2000)
Country: USA
Director: Christopher Nolan
Screenwriter: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Stephen Tobolowsky
The film that cemented Christopher Nolan as an international talent was a low budget operation that succeeded on the strength of its conceit. Memento's about a man, Leonard Shelby, who's lost the ability to create new memories. This makes it difficult to find and catch the men who raped and killed his wife, so he uses a complex system of notes and tattoos to remind himself of his goal.
The film moves against time, unfolding in reverse chronological order. Yes, it did not fair well in our ranking of Christopher Nolan projects, but it's still a must see movie, one that builds to a devastating climax that will leave you shook long after the credits roll.
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Country: USA
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Screenwriters: Darren Aronosfky, Hubert Selby, Jr.
Stars: Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Ellen Burstyn, Marlon Wayans
It's not a slight to label Requiem for a Dream, a film about four drug addicts on the path to self-destruction, one of the most depressing movies ever made. At every turn, director Darren Aronofsky puts the film's downbeat tone on front street, no more so than during Requiem's dizzying and relentless final act. With an alarming franticness, Aronofsky employs all kinds of camera tricks to disorient the viewer beyond belief, showing all four characters' ends in one roiling boil of images.
After its release, the film became the drug film par excellence, unseating Trainspotting in dorm rooms everywhere. It's also one of the most successful film adaptations of a novel ever. Of course, it must've helped that novelist Hubert Selby, Jr. closely collaborated with Aronofsky during the process.
Hunger (2008)
Country: United Kingdom, Ireland
Director: Steve McQueen
Screenwriters: Enda Walsh, Steve McQueen
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham
British visual artist Steve McQueen's debut focuses on the 1981 hunger strike staged by imprisoned IRA agent Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender). The film's power lies in the attention to physical detail rather than dialogue: the expression of the guards before a controlled beating, the cleaning of a hallway filled with piss, the labored breaths of a dying man.
Shot with a painterly eye for composition, Hunger is an ordeal. Viewers are made to endure the realities of the human body under duress, and there is nothing else like it. McQueen won numerous awards and grants for his first feature including a BAFTA award for "Special Achievement by a British Director." It's helped usher in a new phase of artists making successful and provocative films, most notably followed by designer Tom Ford's A Single Man.
Pink Flamingos (1972)
Country: USA
Director: John Waters
Screenwriter: John Waters
Stars: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Danny Mills
John Waters is one proudly freaky human. For the best and most culturally relevant introduction to Waters and his friends, proceed directly to the twisted comedy, Pink Flamingos. Starring drag icon Divine, the movie follows "the filthiest person alive" from one disturbing exploit to the next. During the course of the picture, Waters assaults basic human decency with any number of perverse sexual acts and moments of the grotesque.
Let's see. You've got soft fellatio, chicken fucking, artificial insemination via turkey baster, a gesticulating asshole, and, last but not least, shit eating. Because of these wonders, Pink Flamingos became a cult sensation that continues to shock over 40 years later.
Deep Throat (1972)
Country: USA
Director: Gerard Damiano
Screenwriter: Gerard Damiano
Stars: Harry Reems, Linda Lovelace, Dolly Sharp, Carol Connors
For a hot second in the 1970s, porn was a thing. As in, groups of people—couples, friends, husbands and wives—bought tickets and went to porn theaters to watch people have intercourse on camera. Regular people, not sweaty men looking to stroke off onto the seat in front of them.
Regular people went to see Deep Throat. How did it become the one? Being one of the first pieces of pornography helped, as did the hangover from the '60s. Maybe you didn't get to participate in Free Love. Or by 1972 you just had the memories. There was always Deep Throat, the 61-minute film about a woman who's clitoris is located in the back of her throat.
Roger Ebert reviewed it. The New York Times wrote about it. Never since has the public been so outwardly fascinated by porn.