Too Soon? Ok, this is serious stuff, but there has to be a balance between total panic, and being able to be distracted if not have a laugh, right? The reality is we have a lot of time on our hands inside in our homes right now, and we can't think about this apocalyptic stuff every waking minute, or we will literally going insane ala Jack Nicholson in The Shining!(One of my all time favs, I might add).
So, I've seen a lot of people online asking for suggestions about things to watch. Obviously there are a ton of TV shows out there, and a lot of new or newish movies as well. But being a film buff, and having gone to film school, I have a passion for older films, so I've compiled a list of 201 of my favs. Some you've seen, classics, some are more obscure, possible a few or many that you haven't seen. There will be omissions for some of you, everyone has their fav which I understand, films are very personal.
For this list I thought I'd group them by director. One thing I did when I was in film school was I'd take a director and just binge all of their films in a row. It's nice to see the progression and use of similar themes of a certain director from film to film. Organizing this list made one thing glaringly clear - Almost all of the most famous directors in the history of film are men. Of course there are incredible female directors that I included - Elaine May, Katheryn Bigelow, Agnes Varda. But it really shows what a male dominated industry it's been over the years. Thankfully this has been changing with many female directors getting more opportunities and making great films in recent years. (Greta Gerwig, Ava DuVernay, and Sophia Coppola to name a few)
So enjoy this list. Let me know what you think if you watch any of these films and they leave an impression on you. Stay safe, stay sane. Love each other, don't get cabin fever. Get outside, take a walk, stay 6 ft away from the closest human, then come home and watch a great film!
Love, Matt xx
1. Sunset Blvd.
2. Double Indemnity
3. The Lost Weekend. {Billy Wilder}
4. Some Like it Hot
5. Ace In the Hole
6. One, Two, Three
6A. The Apartment
7. Apocalypse Now
8. The Godfather
9. The Godfather Part II. {Francis Ford Coppola}
10. The Conversation
11. One From the Heart
12. Rumble Fish
13. 2001:A Space Odyssey
14. A Clockwork Orange
15. Dr. Strangelove {Stanley Kubrick}
16. Barry Lyndon
17. The Shining
18. Lolita
19. Blow Up
20. The Passenger
21. Zabriske Point
22. Red Desert {Michelangelo Antonioni}
23. L'Avventura
24. L'Eclisse
24. Shampoo.
25. Harold and Maude
26. Being There {Hal Ashby}
27. Coming Home
28. The Last Detail
29. Annie Hall
30. Broadway Danny Rose
31. Sleeper {Woody Allen}
32. Manhattan
33. Crimes and Misdemeanors
34. Zelig
32. Black Narcissus
33. Peeping Tom
34. A Matter of Life and Death {Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger}
36. The Thief of Bagdad
36A. The Red Shoes
37. A Woman Under the Influence
38. Faces
39. Husbands
40. Minnie and Moskowitz {John Cassavettes}
41. Gloria
42. Killing of a Chinese Bookie
43. Opening Night
44. Taxi Driver
45. Mean Streets
46. Raging Bull {Martin Scorsese}
47. The King of Comedy
49. After Hours
49. Network
50. Dog Day Afternoon
51. Serpico {Sidney Lumet}
52. Prince of the City
53. The Verdict
54. On The Waterfront
55. A Face in the Crowd
56. Baby Doll {Elia Kazan}
57. East of Eden
58. A Streetcar Named Desire
59. In a Lonely Place
60. Rebel Without a Cause {Nicolas Ray}
61. Johnny Guitar
62. MASH
63. The Long Goodbye
64. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
65. The Player {Robert Altman}
66. Nashville
67. Secret Honor
68. Short Cuts
69. The Exorcist.
70. The French Connection
71. Sorcerer {William Friedkin}
72.. To Live and Die in LA
73. Cruising
74. Eraserhead
75. Blue Velvet
76. The Elephant Man {David Lynch}
77. Wild at Heart
78. Mulholland Drive
79. Videodrome
80. Dead Ringers
81. Scanners {David Cronenberg}
82. The Fly
83. Crash
84. Touch of Evil {Orson Welles}
85. Citizen Kane
86. Klute
87. All the President's Men
88. The Parallax View {Alan J. Pakula}
89. Sophie's Choice.
90. Five Easy Pieces
91. The King of Marvin Gardens {Bob Rafelson}
92. Head
93. Don't Look Now
94. The Man Who Fell To Earth {Nicolas Roag}
95. Walkabout
96. Aguirre, Wrath of God
97. Fitzcarraldo
98. Nosferatu the Vampyre {Werner Herzog}
98. Grizzly Man
99. Days of Heaven
100. Badlands
101. The Tree of Life {Terrence Malick}
102. The Thin Red Line
103. Two-Lane Blacktop
104. Cockfighter {Monte Hellman}
105. The Shooting
106. Ride in the Whirlwind
107. Freaks
108. Dracula {Tod Browning}
109. London After Midnight
110. Psycho
111. Vertigo
112. Strangers on a Train {Alfred Hitchcock}
113. The Birds
114. Notorious
115. Alien {Ridley Scott}
116. Blade Runner
117. Santa Sangre
118. El Topo {Alejandro Jodorowsky}
119. Holy Mountain
120. The Heartbreak Kid
121. Mikey and Nicky {Elaine May}
122. A New Leaf
123. Ishtar
124. Cléo From 5 to 7
125. Le Bonheur {Agnes Varda}
126. Vagabond
127. JAWS
128. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. {Steven Spielberg}
129. Schindler's List
130. Raiders of the Lost Ark
131. Chinatown
132. Rosemary's Baby
133. The Pianist {Roman Polanski}
134. Repulsion
135. The Tenant
136. Point Break
137. Near Dark {Kathryn Bigelow}
138. The Hurt Locker
139. The Seventh Seal
140. Cries and Whispers
141. Persona {Ingmar Bergman}
142. Wild Strawberries
143. Fanny and Alexander
144. The Sweet Smell of Success
145. The Ladykillers {Alexander Mackendrick}
146. The Man in the White Suit
147. Seconds
148. The Manchurian Candidate {John Frankenheimer}
149. Birdman of Alcatraz
150. Seven Days in May
151. Rashamon
152. Seven Samurai
152. Ran {Akira Kurosawa}
153. Throne of Blood
154. Yojimbo
155. The Driver
156. 48 Hours {Walter Hill}
157. The Warriors
158. Southern Comfort
159. Where's Poppa?
160. The Jerk {Carl Reiner}
161. Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
162. Oh God!
163. Young Frankenstein
164. Blazing Saddles
165. High Anxiety {Mel Brooks}
166. The Producers
167. History of the World Part I
168. Frankenstein
169. The Bride of Frankenstein
170. The Invisible Man {James Whale}
171. The Old Dark House
172. It's a Wonderful Life
173. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
174. It Happened One Night {Frank Capra}
175. Meet John Doe
176. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
177. Altered States
178. The Devils
179. Women in Love {Ken Russell}
180. Tommy
181. Lair of the White Worm
182. Out of the Past
183. I Walked With a Zombie {Jacques Tourneur}
184. Cat People
185. Curse of the Demon
186. Lawrence of Arabia
187. Doctor Zhivago
188. The Bridge on the River Kwai {David Lean}
189. Great Expectations
190. Once Upon a Time in America
191. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly {Sergio Leone}
192 Fistful of Dollars
193. Once Upon a Time in the West
194. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
195. Amadeus {Milos Forman}
196. Ragtime
197. Modern Times
198. City Lights {Charles Chaplin}
199. The Great Dictator
200. The Wizard of Oz
201. Gone With the Wind. {Victor Fleming, both in the same year, 1939!}
202. Odd Man Out
203. The Fallen Idol {Carol Reed}
204. The Third Man
205. Fargo
206. Raising Arizona
207. Blood Simple
208. No Country For Old Men {Joel and Ethan Coen}
209. Barton Fink
210. The Big Lebowski
211. All That Jazz
212. Lenny {Bob Fosse}
213. Cabaret
214. The Searchers
215. The Quiet Man
216. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance {John Ford}
217. My Darling Clementine
218. The Grapes of Wrath
219. The Maltese Falcon
220. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. {John Houston}
221. The Asphalt Jungle
222. The African Queen
223. The Misfits
224. Au Hasard Balthazar
225. Pickpocket
226. The Trial of Joan of Arc. {Robert Bresson}
227. L'Argent
228. A Man Escaped
229. Diary of a Country Priest
230. Breathless
231. Weekend
232. Masculine/Feminine {Jean-Luc Godard}
233. Pierrot le Fou
234. Alphaville
235. This is Spinal Tap
236. Misery {Rob Reiner}
237. The Princess Bride
238. The Wild Bunch
239. Straw Dogs
240. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia {Sam Peckinpah}
250. Cross of Iron
251. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
252. Brazil
253. Time Bandits {Terry Gilliam}
254. The Fisher King
255. Twelve Monkeys
256. Last Tango in Paris
257. The Conformist
258. Before The Revolution {Bernardo Bertolucci}
259. The Last Emperor
260. Querelle
261. Berlin Alexanderplatz
262. Veronika Voss
263. In a Year of 13 Moons {Rainer Werner Fassbinder}
264. Effi Briest
266. Death in Venice
267. The Damned {Luchino Visconti}
268. The Leopard
269. 8 ½
270. La Dolce Vita
271. La Strada {Federico Fellini}
272. Nights of Cabiria
273. Shoot the Piano Player
274. Jules et Jim
275. The 400 Blows {François Truffaut}
276. Day for Night
277. Fahrenheit 451
278. Suspiria
279. Phenomena {Dario Argento}
280. Deep Red
281. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
282. Safe {Todd Haynes}
283. Far From Heaven
284. Punch-Drunk Love
285. There Will Be Blood {PT Anderson}
286. The Master
287. Magnolia
288. Solaris
289. The Mirror {Andrei Tarkovsky}
290. Stalker
291. Late Spring
292. Tokyo Story {Yasujirō Ozu}
293. Floating Weeds
294. The Last Laugh
295. Sunrise {F.W. Murnau}
296. Nosferatu
297. Pather Panchali
298. Aparajito
299. Apur Sansar {Satyajit Ray}
300. The Big City
301. Charulata
"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."