Top 20 Movies Every Film Fan Must See (1 Viewer)

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As compiled by Collider Videos. Actually 25 movies as the entire Star Wars Trilogy, Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Godfather 1 and 2 are entries. The only movie I haven't seen is Seven Samurai.

I've seen 'em all!

I guess I'm not a serious film fan then. I've never seen any of these films:


Goodfellas
The Usual Suspects
Die Hard
The Dark Knight
Apocalypse Now
Fight Club

The Godfather I & II

Taxi Driver
Seven Samurai
The Matrix
Unforgiven


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I'm always amused by lists. They are fun to read, not because what's on them but nearly always because of what's left off.


I do a peculiar thing. Every five years I make a top ten movie list to see how my tastes change. My top three movies haven't changed in 30 years. But the other seven are in flux.

I still haven't seen Citizen Kane and the Seven Samurai, they on my list of movies I want to see. Every time I think about my top 10 movies, it's always the same titles, maybe in a slightly different order.

I don't agree with all of those movies as being something that everyone should see but I've seen them all.

Not only seen them all I own them all.

ScottHM said:

I guess I'm not a serious film fan then. I've never seen any of these films:


Goodfellas
The Usual Suspects
Die Hard
The Dark Knight
Apocalypse Now
Fight Club

The Godfather I & II

Taxi Driver
Seven Samurai
The Matrix
Unforgiven


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Whoa! I guess you're not.

I understand why CITIZEN KANE is an important film. But I've never met anyone who loved it with emotion, with feeling, with passion. I don't know anyone who loves CITIZEN KANE.

Carabimero said:

I understand why CITIZEN KANE is an important film. But I've never met anyone who loved it with emotion, with feeling, with passion. I don't know anyone who loves CITIZEN KANE.

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Hey Alan, nice to meet you

I would love to know what there is to be passionate about in that movie....for me the whole point was that it was impossible to get to know that man, or anyone really. The distance, necessary to make the thematic point (at least the one I got), seemed to preclude any true interpersonal involvement on my part. I admire the artistry and craft of that movie, the cutting edge techniques for the time, but as a piece of emotional film making, it leaves me cold.

Steve Christou said:

Whoa! I guess you're not.

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When you don't appreciate profanity and gruesome violence there are a lot of films that don't have appeal.


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ScottHM said:

When you don't appreciate profanity and gruesome violence there are a lot of films that don't have appeal.


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Then, yeah, you want to stay away from those movies.

I wouldn't trust any list that didn't include or at least make honorable mention to the following:


The Wizard of Oz

Gone With the Wind

The Sound of Music

Doctor Zhivago

Singin' In the Rain

It Happened One Night

Network

Ben-Hur

King Kong (1933)

Fantasia (1940)

City Lights

The Towering Inferno

The Graduate

The Goodbye Girl

National Velvet

How Green Was My Valley

Laura

Two for the Road

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

My Fair Lady

Driving Miss Daisy

A Star Is Born (1954)

Cinema Paradiso


Putting Fight Club, The Matrix and (choke!) The Dark Knight ahead of most of these is just wrong! Yeah, fun thing - lists. They serve no purpose in general except to exclude movies that aren't our own personal favorites.

Every time I see a header like that, I have this compulsion to make my own list without reading the one in the OP (but I did read everyone's responses and my list will overlap slightly with Nick's).


Top 20 movies every film fan must see (off the top of my head):


KING KONG (1933)

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)

CITIZEN KANE (1941)

CASABLANCA (1943)

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)

SEVEN SAMURAI (1954)

THE SEARCHERS (1956)

SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)


Okay, that's the first ten. These are the next ten:


DUCK SOUP (1933)

TOP HAT (1935)

GRAND ILLUSION (1937)

THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942)

NOTORIOUS (1946)

RED RIVER (1948)

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)

VERTIGO (1958)


When you're done with those, you've got a good basis on which to continue your film education. I limited the list to pre-1960 because you need a grounding in the Golden Age before moving on from there.


Remember, it's not about what you love or what turns you on, it's about what films best convey the essence of cinema as a popular art form. So they should be films that garnered significant critical acclaim (although not always at the time they came out) and had popular acclaim as well, while in some way advancing the art of cinema and the careers of its greatest practitioners, hence the inclusion of various iconic figures.


I was pretty lucky to have grown up in an era when these films played regularly on TV, so pretty much every film fan of my generation (Baby Boomers) got a good grounding in film history just from watching TV. And many of them played revival theaters when I was in college, so I also got to see them on the big screen while attending film school.


I remember sitting with my siblings and watching KING KONG and CASABLANCA and various Hitchcock films on TV and going to friends' houses and we'd sit and watch DEAD END (1937) and HIGH SIERRA (1941) and films like that on a Sunday afternoon when we didn't feel like going out. It was much easier being exposed to film classics in those days. Whereas, when Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and Cartoon Network came on, good luck getting kids to watch old movies.

The General.

So far there has been no mention of silent movies. Every serious film fan should see some. (IMHO of course).


The main problem with the original list is that it seems to be heavily current-centric. I watched it last night before going to bed and don't feel the need to watch it again, but I only remember two films before 1960 on the list: Citizen Kane (41) and 7 Samural (54). I have disks of all the movies on the list and have seen all of them except Braveheart. (And I'll get around to it eventually. I'm one of those people who has hundreds of disks still in the shrink wrap. It's a fault and I'm working on it. But not very hard-- I've bought 5 criterions in the B&N sale since it started and haven't opened even one of them yet.)

I fail as I haven't seen four of the films on the list.


I also will have a forever stunted film education as I have no interest in seeing "Gone With The Wind", "Some Like It Hot" and "The Best Years Of Our Lives".

Yeah, lists are made for debate, but this one isn't even worth that. How many pre-seventies films are on it? Hardly any, it really tells you more about the age range of the people who work there.

I've seen them all, most of them multiple times. I own all of them except Apocalypse Now and Citizen Kane. And, while I understand the accolades for Apocalypse Now (which I felt I only needed to see once), I'm at a loss for the world's love for Citizen Kane. Easily, positively, one of the most boring films I've ever seen.


Speaking of boring films, thank goodness they didn't include 2001: A Space Odyssey in the list!


Mark

Carabimero said:

I would love to know what there is to be passionate about in that movie....for me the whole point was that it was impossible to get to know that man, or anyone really. The distance, necessary to make the thematic point (at least the one I got), seemed to preclude any true interpersonal involvement on my part. I admire the artistry and craft of that movie, the cutting edge techniques for the time, but as a piece of emotional film making, it leaves me cold.

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Just a guess on my part, but maybe that is exactly what Welles was going for.

Mark Booth said:

...I'm at a loss for the world's love for Citizen Kane. Easily, positively, one of the most boring films I've ever seen.

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I enjoy the movie quite a bit but I think its importance or being known as the greatest movie stems from how different it was at the time it was made. Welles did things that are still copied today.