1000 films to see before you die

I beg to differ–Bette Davis does a star turn,Thelma Ritter and George Sanders play their caricatures to the max, and there is just enough plot to support all the brittle witty dialogue. And Marilyn is, not surprisingly, gorgeous.

But back to our assignment: where are Boudu Saved From Drowning or Adam’s Rib or Battleground or Best In Show? And is Children of Paradise going to be listed down the road under E for Enfants? If the list is big enough to include turkeys such as Braveheart or Big Chill or Con Air or Buckaroo Banzai, then how could they leave off all of Judy Holiday’s movies?

I think you mean “Return to the Planet of Babe.”

I’m not outraged so much as baffled. I mean, I thought the Brady Bunch movie was hysterically funny, and Amelie was pretty adorable, but… c’mon.

And Breaking the Waves? Buffalo 66? feh.

Alien but not Aliens– a serious lapse in judgment probably due to a prejudice against sequels that will have its one exception in Godfather 2.

I was ready to be utterly outraged when I saw Crash listed, but it turns out to be Cronenberg’s death-fetish-fest about psychotic perverts, not the gross one.

Non-famous Henry is right: Braveheart is a turkey. But Apocalypto is some kind of twisted masterpiece, and didn’t make the list. Not that I’ve any desire to swell Mel G.’s coffers.

Other arguably odd omissions:

The Apu Trilogy (Ray) [Maybe they’ll be listed individually, but, in that case, Aparajito is an odd omission]

Amarcord (Fellini)

City Lights (Chaplin)

Yes, the Apu films should certainly be on there. Really wonderful movies.

If they have Austin Powers & Ace Ventura on the list they should have Caddyshack. I strongly agree with the above poster. Maybe Bill Murray’s performance is to deep for the Guardian reviewers.

No CaddyShack.

WTF.

How’s Apocalypto a masterpiece? If Apocalypto is a masterpiece, then all the Lethal Weapon movies must be masterpieces too, and, for that matter, pretty much every standard action movie since The Magnificent Seven.

Also any version of “Annie!”

Harry,

You think that’s bad? I saw “Holy Moses!” before I saw either of them! I didn’t even know what spoof the spoof I was seeing was ripping off!

Princess Bride should certainly be on any such list. And Anne of Green Gables (and even the sequels) are quite nice, too.

I think it is truly amazing that there are EXACTLY 1000 movies we must see before we die. What are the chances of that? Aren’t we lucky there aren’t 782 movies we must see before we die? Or 1351 movies to see before we die?

I’ve only gotten to the A’s, but it’s not looking that bad so far. There are some strange choices (Ace Ventura?) but also some good choicees that could have easily gotten overlooked (Akira, Alphaville and Amores Perros for instance). Apocalypto is well worth excluding from any such list; good costume design and some decent action sequences do not amount to a “must-see” movie… oh, and there’s the whole weird, racist depiction of the Maya thing.

Actually, they manage to screw up before the list even begins.

Alphabetically, they begin with Ace in the Hole.

Which means that they skipped A Better Tomorrow.

Then, at #2, they have…Ace Ventura?

Two egregious mistakes before I even start scrolling down. 998 films to go…I don’t think I’ll make it.

Dissing Buckaroo Banzai? Laugh while you can monkeyboys…

Meantime, some pretty essential films left of this list! After agreeing wholeheartedly about All About Eve and Caddyshack, as well as All Quiet on the Western Front (must get the 1930 Milestone directed version, and not the Richard Thomas lead from 1979), here’s a short list of films in my library I can’t believe they overlooked:

Adam’s Rib and The Awful Truth–I don’t know, maybe I’ve read too much Cavell, but I can’t get enough of these things. Then again, they probably already have The Lady Eve, His Girl Friday, and The Philadelphia Story slotted (as I suspect they have Pather Panchali slotted for Ray’s trilogy stand-in) & figured they had to cut somewhere. Still…

To politics: no Premminger’s Advise and Consent or Rossen’s All the King’s Men? Criminal!

Every Chayefsky script should make it: where’s The Americanization of Emily?

Action flicks seem to make this list in undue numbers: where’s Liman’s Bourne Identity?

Finally, a personal Top 50 that really bums me out by its absence (especially since I could look at Claire Forlani all day long & Wright was just perfect): Schnabel’s Basquiat.

But then, why make a list like this if you don’t intend to piss people off so much they waste twenty minutes of an afternoon ranting about it!

A few more additions that meet my definition of “Essential”:

Along Came Jones

Along Came Jones: Westerns::Scream: Horror.

Gary Cooper spoofing himself (and Westerns in general), in a movie that actually turns out to be a pretty good Western.

The African Queen

Certainly not Casablanca in terms of overall quality, but if you could only see one Humphrey Bogart movie, this one probably best exemplifies “Bogey-ness.”

And something from the Abbott & Costello Meet . . .” genre, but definitely not “Africa Screams,” which is essentially Abbott & Costello Meet the Three Stooges, because that one is godawful.

American Pie really doesn’t deserve to be on there either.

Lots to agree with in the B and C lists, too, some of them again good choices that could easily have gotten passed over (City of God and Brick, for instance). Also evidence of someone being deliberately loopy (Chicken Run a movie for the ages? I don’t think so) but it kind of balances out.

Okay class–time to turn to today’s assignment:

They left out Destry Rides Again, Dinner at Eight, 42nd Street and Gentleman Jim. I can understand leaving out Follow The Fleet–but how do you forget 42nd Street??

BUT they also omitted Gandhi and Forrest Gump, for which they should be thanked. Which more than balances out including Face/Off–what is it with this Cage fetish?

AND they included Dark Star and Crooklyn. Thanks for small favors.

The D’s are the weakest so far. Some good choices still, but Dead Presidents, Dick Tracy, Dirty Dancing and especially Dumb and Dumber are all thoroughly missable movies. (Evidently one of the judges is convinced, mistakenly, that Carrey’s real brilliance was in the days of his rubber-faced witless comedies.) Dead Man is a notable omission.

Not much to disagree with in the E’s excepting the omission of Enemy at the Gates, the only decent Hollywood film about the Eastern Front, where after all the Second World War was basically decided. (In fact, are there any other Hollywood films about the Eastern front?)

The F’s are also pretty good (yes, with the exception of Face/Off — and I’m betting the same person with the Carrey comedies fetish is also nursing the Cage action movies fetish). The Fiddler on the Roof is a truly glaring omission there, though, as is For a Few Dollars More. (Though I guess they did get The Good, The Bad and the Ugly in there later.)

Gandhi is not really an acceptable omission, actually. The movie it could’ve bumped? The terminally overrated Gummo, easily. Other than that, the G’s are also pretty good.

#44–Das Boot is there under B for Boot.

But where is “Animal House”? If one sign of a good movie is the number of lines of dialogue it thrusts into the culture, then Animal House belongs to be there. These list-makers, after all, gave us “Blues Brothers,” which is a much inferior movie, notwithstanding Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Cab Calloway, etc. (give me the T.A.M.I. show if it’s clips we want).

And Gandhi? three hours plus of a wax figure posing as a person. I like Ben Kingsley, but this is bad hagiography.

Honestly, why bother getting wound up over a list that is of course going to be subjective? Eg, at #43, Dirty Dancing is stated to be “thoroughly missable” – possibly for you, Dr Slack, but not for any female growing up in the 80’s. Thoroughly unmissable for us lot.

Henry: Das Boot is there under B for Boot.

Ah. Right! I feel better now, thanks.

As for Gandhi, I think a good case can be made that it’s hagiography (even Indian government propaganda), but the same is true of Alexander Nevsky‘s relationship to Russia (Stalinist Russia, no less) and not necessarily a reason for excluding it.

Katherine: why bother getting wound up over a list that is of course going to be subjective?

Because it’s fun. What kind of a question is that?

(As we’re on CT, let me rephrase that. It can be useful and instructive to trot out and examine the bases of one’s aesthetic preferences from time to time, even and sometimes especially in a tongue-in-cheek polemical fashion and despite the impossibility of reifying anyone’s opinions as objective truths.)

Dirty Dancing is stated to be “thoroughly missable” – possibly for you, Dr Slack, but not for any female growing up in the 80’s.

Fair, but even so, that doesn’t necessarily make it a “must” for a general movie-going populace, in the same way that Dumb and Dumber and Con Air‘s vast box office successes in later years wouldn’t seem to me to necessarily qualify them for that honour.

Also, no “Godfather 2.” Stop the insanity.

Upon long reflection, that may be even more extreme than their bizarre omission of “Grease 2,” without which we may never have had any works from the Michelle Pfeiffer oeuvre.

Con Air, no, but Dumb and Dumber probably could. Depending on how we define “enormous cultural importance.”

Dumb and Dumber? How so? Honestly? I mean, I know it was popular and feted as funny and all that, but I’m not sure how it could be defined as being culturally important. I suppose you could just about make an argument for it highlighting the dumbing down of popular culture or something.

Lester

Earrings of Madame De… didn’t make it either. I bet Lola Montes will be the representative Ophuls.

Dumb and Dumber? How so?

A great many people who grew up in the nineties will cite it as one of their favourite comedies and a wonderful memory that will stay with them forever.

What’s that you say? That doesn’t necessarily redeem its cheesiness and shallowness? Eeeexactly.

Oh, and I second comment 41: God bless them for leaving out Forrest Gump.

Other notable omission is “Desert Hearts,” which I think is billed as the first mainstream movie with gay characters falling in love that doesn’t end in tragedy.

Also notable for casting Mrs. Roper from Three’s Company as a homophobe.

Kill Bill must have seemed too obvious a choice… but then maybe not, since Independence Day and Men in Black made the cut. Again, someone just trying way too hard to be populist. Also some overrated films, especially Leaving Las Vegas and The Limey… and was that really the best they could do for the J’s? I don’t remember The Jerk or Jerry Maguire being all that shit-hot, for instance.

But again there’s some good stuff on there (Irreversible, Mephisto, The Killing), and especially under the I’s, some movies I’ve never seen that sound pretty fantastic. (I can’t believe I’d never heard of In This World.)

I wonder what happened to part two of the H’s.

If you go to part one of the H’s the link to part two is in the sidebar.

The worst pick of the list so far for me (as in, a worse pick than Ace Ventura) is Naked, hands down. I think people tend to be too free with the word “pretentious,” but every frame of that film cries out for that description.