Films you have to see before you die

[on:]

Recently i decided to see films that I've heard recommended over and over again so I decided to watch some, in the recent months I watched

- Casablanca
- The Godfather trilogy
- Dances with wolves
- Once upon a time in America
- Once upon a time in the West
- The Good the Bad and the Ugly
- Scarface
- Pulp Fiction (can't believe I didnt see this sooner)

I've just ordered

- A Clockwork Orange
- Apocalypse Now
- Full metal jacket
- One flew over the cockoos nest

So I'll be watching them soon. But what other films do I have to see before I die?

(Other than the Futurama Movies)

[Reply #1 on:]

Wedding Trough

Kids

I Stand Alone

[Reply #2 on:]

- Dr. Strangelove
- Z

I see a large portion of Stanley Kubrick movies here...

[Reply #3 on:]

That video in Ring.

[Reply #4 on:]

Lawrence of Arabia

Bridge on the River Kwai

Star Wars   

speaking of Kubrick:

2001

[Reply #5 on:]

• Wild At Heart
• From Dusk Till Dawn
• Trainspotting
• True Romance
• Deer Hunter

[Reply #6 on:]

I bet if you tried hard enough, you could see every film ever made before you die.

Well, what are you waiting for?

[Reply #7 on:]

 

Originally posted by ~FazeShift~:
I bet if you tried hard enough, you could see every film ever made before you die.

Well, if you live a little longer than the average life expectancy, then yes...

IMDB lists:

358,729 movies released theatrically
56,011 made for TV movies
49,366 direct to video movies

Assuming every movie can only be in one of those categories and is approx. 1.5 hours long, we get a total duration of all films of 696,159 hours.

With an average life expectancy of 76 years, you've 666,212 hours to watch. Good luck ;-)

This works, of course, only if no new movies were produced.

[Reply #8 on:]

Lord Of The Rings. The epic :P

Complete with hotties 

[Reply #9 on:]

My list of the essential movies to see before you die:

The Indiana Jones Trilogy

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Almost Famous

Patton

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

The Breakfast Club

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The Star Wars Trilogy

Titanic

Lord of the Rings Trilogy

The Lion King

Day the earth stood still

American History X

History of the world Part I

Young Frankenstein

Forrest Gump

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

The Wizard of Oz

The Exorcist

Clue

[Reply #10 on:]

Easerhead and Video Drome for sure.

[Reply #11 on:]

Donnie Darko is definitely a must. As is The Royal Tenenbaums too. And also Crash.

...edited because someone other than me made this post...with stupid fingers. This is what I get for having smart small cousins in my home who somehow figured out my password. Although I have to agree with the choices, considering I have all of them.

[Reply #12 on:]

laptopmoerder: Find me an infant and I'll set up the Clockwork Orange Force-O-Watcher chair! 

I'll also need a team to continue my work after I'm dead!

Spaceballs, Airplane, This Is Spinal Tap, Blazing Saddles, Groundhog Day, Big Lebowski, Monty Pythons Holy Grail and Life Of Brian, Top Gun, Knight Rider The Movie.

And Leon.

[Reply #13 on:]

A Clockwork Orange,Braindead,Platoon and Eraserhead

[Reply #14 on:]

Movies that haven't already been mentioned:

Duck Soup
MASH
A Shot in the Dark
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
E.T.
Alien
The "Back to the Future" trilogy
The Sting
The Untouchables
The Great Dictator
Ben Hur
Buth Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
Schindler's List
The Adventures of Robin Hood (the Errol Flynn 1938 version)
Die Hard
Spartacus
Arsenic and Old Lace
The Princess Bride
Das Boot
Psycho
JFK
Modern Times
We need a John Wayne movie here .... uhm, pick Rio Bravo or El Dorado

[Reply #15 on:]

Nice list.

[Reply #16 on:]

Some good choices so far, but a lot are pretty overrated and would be wastes of your time. As for ones that haven't been mentioned that you should see:

Ikiru
Straw Dogs
Taxi Driver
The King of Comedy
Yojimbo
The Fly (the 1986 remake)
Reservoir Dogs (If you like Pulp Fiction you'll like this)
The Searchers
Le Samourai
Evil Dead II (not exactly essential, but fun)

[Reply #17 on:]

All Quiet on the Western Front.
The Original Shaft.
Stalingrad 1993 Version.
Get Carter, The original one.
Chinatown.

[Reply #18 on:]

Street Fighter: The Movie.

[Reply #19 on:]

 

Originally posted by laptopmoerder:
 Well, if you live a little longer than the average life expectancy, then yes...

IMDB lists:

358,729 movies released theatrically
56,011 made for TV movies
49,366 direct to video movies

Assuming every movie can only be in one of those categories and is approx. 1.5 hours long, we get a total duration of all films of 696,159 hours.

With an average life expectancy of 76 years, you've 666,212 hours to watch. Good luck ;-)

This works, of course, only if no new movies were produced.

Perhaps we ought to sift through this list to weed out let's say 15% as "really bad" movies not to be watched ever, and another 25% as "borderline". They are to be saved for the end, when you are nearing death. Therefore if you croak, you're not missing much.

The rest need to be grouped into appropriate age categories, and screened from let's say five to death, showing movies that are appropriate to the age group of the viewer. It would not be appropriate, for example, to screen the Rocky Horror Picture show to a seven year old, and then show the same subject Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at fifty. Nor would it be appropriate to ever subject anybody over the age of thirty to a film where youngsters somehow get one over on their older opressors. This could seriously fuck with the subject's appreciation of the film.

We can also rule out watching children's movies after twelve, but begin to re-introduce them after forty, once the subject has accquired a nostalgia for childhood, and films that do not involve a brutal decapitation of the actors at key moments.

Also, the subject must at some point sleep. Let us say that six hours of sleep will be fine, as long as the subject is rigourously conditioned to this from birth.

The subject will be fed intravenously, and waste will be collected directly by tubes in the chair that will be the subject's world. The chair will imprison and sustain them for their entire lives.

Perhaps this does not sound like fun.

All I can say is that I would not like to be the subject.

Meh. I'm drunk, tired, and don't really have anything interesitng to add.

[Reply #20 on:]

More movies to add:
Nosferatu
Boondock Saints
all three Evil Dead films
Dead And Breakfast
Tank Girl
Bubba Ho-Tep
The Princess Bride
The Thing
all of Romero's Dead films
They Live
everything from Mel Brooks

There's probably others, but I'm tired.

[Reply #21 on:]

The Wild Bunch
The Shining
The Long Good Friday
Mona Lisa
Clerks
Waiting For Guffman

[Reply #22 on:]

The Graduate

North By Northwest (or any given Hitchcock film, really).

Lolita (Kubrick version)

Bah, forget this.  Everyone else's covered most of the important ones.

[Reply #23 on:]

chasing amy
mallrats
clerks
dogma
jay and silet bob strike back
clerks animated
clerks 2

[Reply #24 on:]

 

Originally posted by ~FazeShift~:
laptopmoerder: Find me an infant and I'll set up the Clockwork Orange Force-O-Watcher chair!   

<Bender>An infant, eh? Well, I'll see what's in stock...</Bender>

I was bound up in a straight jacket and my gulliver was strapped to a headrest with like wires running away from it. Then they clamped like lidlocks on my eyes so that I could not shut them no matter how hard I tried.

The little guy will like it ;-)

[Reply #25 on:]

The Princess Bride (mentioned, but thought I'd second it.. )

Contact

Pleasantville

Dead Poet's Society (A little melo- on the drama, but still very affecting)

And it doesn't work for everybody....but American Dreamer is a favorite of mine.  It's sort of a nerdy fannish romantic screwball comedy... (Might make a good double feature with Galaxy Quest, in a weird way... ) (For a total thematic triple feature, toss in the just-mentioned Pleasantville, put some Iffy Pop in the microwave and settle in...  )

[Reply #26 on:]

Ying Xiong! (Hero)

Your eyes will have orgasms and thank you by picking out hotties more often. 

[Reply #27 on:]

Citizen Cane
The Third Man
A Fistful of Dollars
American Gaffitti(A great non-Jedi George Lucas Film)

[Reply #28 on:]

Anyone mention Big Trouble In Little China yet?

[Reply #29 on:]

 

Originally posted by KPAT:
chasing amy
mallrats
clerks
dogma
jay and silet bob strike back
clerks animated
clerks 2

I noticed you forgot "Jersey Girl"

[Reply #30 on:]

damn

[Reply #31 on:]

Fight Club is an essential movie.

[Reply #32 on:]

 

Originally posted by tyraniak:
A Fistful of Dollars

Films that are blatant plagarism shouldn't get to count.

[Reply #33 on:]

Of course, the fact that A Fistful Of Dollars is one of the most poular and iconic Westerns produced makes it somewhat hard to exlcude from any list of films that you really ought to see. 

[Reply #34 on:]

The Truman Show
The Pink Panther Movies

[Reply #35 on:]

 

Originally posted by totalnerduk:
Of course, the fact that A Fistful Of Dollars is one of the most poular and iconic Westerns produced makes it somewhat hard to exlcude from any list of films that you really ought to see.   

For A Few Dollars More is way better anyway; as is Yojimbo, for that matter.

[Reply #36 on:]

Given the fact that Yojimbo was took most of it's ideas from the American Gangster novel Red Harvest, I wouldn't be so quick to point fingers if I were you.


Fistfull was a direct remake, but Leone couldn't get the rights. So, he, er, made it anyway (delaying it's American release for years). So while the plagurism charge isn't exactly untrue, the film is still meant as an adaptation rather than a cynical rip-off.

[Reply #37 on:]

After finally seeing 'Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom' recently, I can strike that off my little list of films I'd recommend to everyone to see before they die. I had been dying to see it for years and when I did.. It just wasn't as good as I thought it would be. It certainly pushed the envelope, rattled a few birdcages and done that pay-phone trick where you can make the little LCD screen say "Out Of Service" even though it's not (!)... But, I guess the lead-up to see it after all these years just didn't climax - exactly like masturbating for 3 hours without an orgasm (tiring, dissapointing and you're left with two options: Try again or just go listen to some Melvins and read through some text-file archives).

Anyway, enough of my rant about my failed orgasm: Western films suck! The closest film I liked that included some kind of a cowboy was 'The Last Picture Show' and he wasn't even a real cowboy - rather just some guy with a hat, tight jeans and that 1000-yard stare that is always fixated on the horizon that is incidently 1000 yards away at the back of the set.

[Reply #38 on:]

 

Originally posted by Nasty Pasty:
My list of the essential movies to see before you die:

The Indiana Jones Trilogy

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Almost Famous

Patton

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

The Breakfast Club

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The Star Wars Trilogy

Titanic

Lord of the Rings Trilogy

The Lion King

Day the earth stood still

American History X

History of the world Part I

Young Frankenstein

Forrest Gump

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

The Wizard of Oz

The Exorcist

Clue

Can't believe Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind isn't on here. Much less anywhere on the thread.

-Eternal Sunshine
-The Truman Show
-The Sixth Sense
-Jurassic Park
-Spider-Man 1 & 2
-Batman/Batman Returns
-Spirited Away
-Million Dollar Baby
-Walk the Line
-Crash
-Nightmare Before Christmas
-Big Fish
-Corpse Bride
-Beatle Juice (well actually that's just a personal choice)
-Pirates of the Caribbean
-Edward Scissorhands (I got a thing for Burton flicks)
-Scream 1 & 2 (3rd is meh)
-Halloween
-Nightmare on Elm Street (and the 2 sequels with Heather Langenkamp)
-Carrie
-Jurassic Park III (it's not good at all, but damnit is it funny)
-Cast Away
-The Glass House

Honestly, I think only half of those movies are worth seeing for before you die. But I liked them.

[Reply #39 on:]

Serenity
Instantly gains 1 billion nixorbucks

But seriously
Serenity
Cannibal: The Musical
Sin City