My Favorite 100 Movies

[Updated 1.5.11]
Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars®
(* = recent addition)

The Top 20 (alpha order): 2001, All About Eve, Babe, The Best Years of Our Lives, City of God (Brazil), Cinema Paradiso (Italy), The Conformist (Italy), Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather II, Hannah and Her Sisters, Hero (China), Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (France), Lawrence of Arabia, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, My Fair Lady, Once Upon a Time in America, Parenthood, Requiem for a Dream, The Seven Samurai (Japan), The Shawshank Redemption, Wall-E

Top 100 in alphabetical order

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. The 400 Blows * (France, bw)
3. A Clockwork Orange
4. A Room With a View
5. A Wednesday (India) *
6. After the Wedding (Denmark) *
7. Aliens
8. All About Eve (bw)
9. Amadeus
10. Annie Hall
11. Apocalypse Now!
12. As Good as It Gets
13. Babel (Mexico)
14. Babe
15. Baraka * (Documentary)
16. Battle of Algiers (France-Algiers, bw)
17. The Best Years of Our Lives (bw)
18. Big Fish
19. Brazil
20. The Bridge On the River Kwai
21. Carmen (Spain, flamenco version)
22. Casablanca (bw)
23. Central Station * (Brazil)
24. Chicago
25. Chungking Express * (China/Hong Kong)
26. Cinema Paradiso (Italy)
27. City of God (Brazil)
28. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
29. Conformist, The (Italy)
30. Conversation, The
31. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (China)
32. Dances With Wolves
33. Dangerous Liaisons
34. Departures * (Japan)
35. Devils on the Doorstep * (China)
36. Diva (France)
37. Doctor Strangelove (bw)
38. Double Indemnity (bw)
39. The Empire Strikes Back
40. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
41. Field of Dreams
42. Finding Neverland
43. Finding Nemo
44. Fitzcarraldo (Germany)
45. Gandhi
46. The Godfather
47. The Godfather, Part II
48. Good Bye, Lenin! * (Germany)
49. Goodfellas
50. Goodnight Mister Tom
51. Graduate, The
52. The Gray Fox
53. Groundhog Day
54. Hannah and Her Sisters
55. Hero (China)
56. Hoop Dreams (Documentary)
57. Hope and Glory
58. House of Games
59. Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (France)
60. Kolya (Czech Republic)
61. L'america (Italy)
62. The Last Emperor
63. L'avventura (Italy, bw)
64. Lawrence of Arabia
65. La Femme Nikita (France)
66. The Last Emperor
67. The Last Picture Show (bw)
68. The Lives of Others (Germany)
69. Lord of the Rings Trilogy
70. Manhattan (bw)
71. The Maltese Falcon (bw)
72. Memento
73. Million Dollar Baby
74. Minority Report
75. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington *
76. My Brilliant Career
77. My Fair Lady
78. The Namesake *
79. Network
80. Night of the Hunter (bw)
81. Norma Rae
82. Nowhere in Africa (Germany)
83. October Sky
84. On the Waterfront (bw)
85. Once Upon a Time in America
86. Open Range
87. Out of the Past (bw)
88. Parenthood
89. The Philadelphia Story (bw)
90. Platoon
91. The Player
92. Rabbit-Proof Fence *
93. Raging Bull (bw)
94. Raising Arizona
95. Requiem for a Dream *
96. The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2)
97. Run Lola Run (Germany)
98. Salaam Bombay! * (India)
99. Schindler's List (bw)
100. The Seven Samurai (Japan, bw)
101. Shakespeare in Love
102. Shane
103. The Shawshank Redemption
104. The Silence of the Lambs
105. Singin' in the Rain
106. Sunset Boulevard (bw)
107. The Sweet Smell of Success (bw)
108. To Kill a Mockingbird (bw)
109. To Live (China)
110. Together (China) *
111. Traffic
112. Turtles Can Fly (Iraq-Iran-France) *
113. The Twilight Samurai (Japan)
114. Umberto D * (Italy)
115. V for Vendetta
116. Walkabout
117. Wall-E
118. Whale Rider
119. Winged Migration (Documentary)
120. When Harry Met Sally
121. Zelary (Czech Republic)

Ok, so I can't count - that's why I had them auto-numbered.. call this a "baker's 100", you get ten dozens. 'So many movies, so little time..' (to paraphrase Raising Arizona)

Thirty are foreign language films.. always watch the subtitled and not the 'dubbed into English' versions.. once you know the dialogue (usually once), you can watch them without subtitles and see just the film itself.. A few more titles are films in English from foreign directors, such as Once Upon a Time in America (Leone, Italy), The Last Emperor (Bertolucci, Italy), and The Namesake (Nair, India).

This list is always changing.
Newer: Departures, A Wednesday, After the Wedding, Whale Rider, Central Station, Umberto D, L'avventura, Wall-E, Good Bye Lenin, Baraka, Devils on the Doorstep, The Namesake, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Together, Turtles Can Fly

Just Removed: It's a Wonderful Life, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Citizen Kane, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ugetsu (Japan), Slumdog Millionaire, Duck Soup, Auntie Mame, Patton, Mephisto, A Christmas Story, Sybil, Gangs of New York, Back to the Future

Low on the List (next to go): The Last Picture Show, As Good As It Gets, Devils on the Doorstep, Norma Rae, Manhattan, Goodfellas TV Miniseries (that would be in the top 100): 1. Band of Brothers (10 hrs) 2. Planet Earth (12 hrs) 3. Into the West (12 hrs) 4. Brideshead Revisited (10 hrs) 5. Lonesome Dove (6 hrs) 6. The Prisoner (13 hrs, 17 episodes)

World's Best Nature Films

World's best nature films (updated 1/03/13) *=new

• Baraka (Ron Fricke, 1992, doc.)*
• The Bear (L'ours, 1988)
• Flight of the Navigator
• Fly Away Home
• March of the Penguins (doc.)
• Never Cry Wolf (1983)
• Planet Earth (2007; mini-series, doc.)
• Touching the Void
• Walkabout (1971)
• White Fang
• Winged Migration (2001, doc.)

Dir: Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats, 2001, France (10*) Perhaps the best feature length documentary film, seven years in the making The terrific Australian film Walkabout was the first dvd I ordered, and is just as much a romance film as anything else. When you watch it, write down the poem from end of the film. Doc of course refers to documentaries.

World's Best Romance Films

The world's best romance films, those without comedy Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars® (* = new additions)

• A Room With a View (also in Romantic Comedy)
• A Town Like Alice (mini-series)
• A Very Long Engagement [photo rt]
• The Age of Innocence
• An Education * [photo top]
• Atonement
• Bad Timing, a Sexual Obsession
• Brideshead Revisited (mini-series)
• Casablanca
• Children of a Lesser God
• The Crying Game
• Dangerous Liaisons
• Days of Heaven
• Doctor Zhivago
• Five Easy Pieces
• Hannah and Her Sisters (also Romantic Comedy)
• Heat and Dust
• House of Games
• Il Postino
• It's a Wonderful Life
• My Brilliant Career
• The Namesake *
• Now, Voyager *
• Out of Africa
• The Road Home
• Sense and Sensibility
• Sex, Lies and Videotape
• Shall We Dance? (Japan)
• Slumdog Millionaire
• Tess
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Under the Sun * (Sweden)
• Wings of the Dove
• Women in Love
• Zelary * (Czech Republic) [photo rt]

I had to include the incomparable Brideshead Revisited here, even though it was a PBS / Masterpiece Theater for television, and about 8 hrs long (it also made Jeremy Irons a star). Laurence Olivier, who won an Emmy, was in both that and Love Among the Ruins. The Australian film Walkabout was the first DVD I ever ordered. Also Australian, A Town Like Alice was also a PBS mini-series, but only 4 hours.

World's Best Comedy Films

[* = new additions]

• Airplane!
• Auntie Mame
• Babe
• Baby Boom
• Beautiful Girls*
• Beetlejuice
• Being John Malkovich
• Born Yesterday
• City Slickers
• Clueless
• Dr. Strangelove (bw)
• Driving Miss Daisy
• Duck Soup (bw)
• Ghostbusters
• Going in Style
• Good Bye, Lenin!* (Germany)
• A Great Wall
• Hannah and Her Sisters*
• Heathers
• Kind Hearts and Coronets (bw)
• M*A*S*H
• Midnight Run
• Mister Roberts
• Parenthood
• The Producers (original)
• Raising Arizona
• The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming!
• Singles
• Thank You For Smoking
• The Thin Man (series)
• Tootsie
• Wall-E*
• When Harry Met Sally*

Runners-Up: Animal House, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Gung Ho!, La Cage Aux Folles (France), A Night at the Opera*, Smoke Signals, The Sunshine Boys, The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe (Italy), Young Frankenstein The Thin Man series is hard to classify, is it crime/mystery or comedy? It certainly stood out for the cleverly sarcastic repartee of the two characters, Nick and Nora Charles, expertly played by William Powell and Myrna Loy. The first two in the series are the best; the thin man actually refers to a victim, not to William Powell, and the dog Asta is the true scene stealer of the series. In all honesty, I like the series for its bizarre romance (he's always leaving her with ex-cons he helped put away), but without their humor they would be droll mysteries indeed. [Updated: 6.22.09]

World's Best Children's Films

Live Action / or Mixed

• A Christmas Story
• A Boy Ten Feet Tall
• The Bad News Bears
• Babe
• Black Stallion, The
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (animated/live mix)
• The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
• Mary Poppins (animated/live action mix)
• My Dog Skip
• Peter Pan (2002, animated/live action mix)

Animated

• 101 Dalmations (animated)
• Beauty and the Beast (animated)
• Cars (computer animated)
• Finding Nemo (computer animated)
• Hoppity Goes to Town (animated)
• Lady and the Tramp (animated)
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (animated)
• Silly Symphonies (Walt Disney's, animated)
• Toy Story 1 (computer animated)
• The Triplets of Belleville (animated)
• Wall-E (computer animated)*
• Wallace and Gromit: 3 Amazing Adventures (clay-mation)

Snow White was the first full-length animated feature film in 1938. Wallace and Gromit are Nick Park's Oscar winning short films (Wallace is his dad, Gromit the dog is himself). He's also responsible for Chicken Run, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Flushed Away, full-length animation films. He won Oscars for the shorts Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers (incredible), A Close Shave and the full-length Were-Rabbit. A Boy Ten Feel Tall features a terrific supporting performance by Edward G. Robinson in his last film. It's hard to believe he never received an Oscar® nomination; this would have been a good chance to right that wrong. The Triplets of Belleville, though animated, is really going to be understood and enjoyed more by adults; it's 'old school' animation, hand-drawn frame by frame, and even parodies old b&w cartoons in the beginning. It won many awards for animated film, and had the bad timing of being released the same year as Oscar®-winner Finding Nemo. Babe, Beauty, Nemo, and Poppins were all nominated for Best Picture. Babe is my favorite children's film and favorite animal film; let's also throw in favorite Australian film!

World's Best Westerns

• The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez
• The Big Country *
• Broken Trail (mini-series)
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
• The Claim
• Dances With Wolves
• The Grey Fox
• Into the West (mini-series)
• Heartland
• Hidalgo
• High Noon
• Jeremiah Johnson
• Lonesome Dove (mini-series)
• McCabe and Mrs. Miller
• Open Range
• Shane
• She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
• Silverado
• The Three Burials of Malquiades Estrada
• Tom Horn
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• Unforgiven

Runners-Up: Fistful of Dollars, The Good the Bad and the Ugly (wah wah wah...), The High Country*, The Long Riders, The Magnificent Seven, The Man from Snowy River, The Missouri Breaks*, Once Upon a Time in the West*, One-Eyed Jacks*, The Proposition*, Ride the Pink Horse*, The Searchers, The Shooter, Comanche Moon (mini-series) I included the mini-series here because they were classic westerns and should not be missed. Interesting how many were directed by actors: Dances and Range (both by Costner), Three Burials (Tommy Lee Jones), Unforgiven (Eastwood). Was there ever a villain as bad or as great as Jack Palance in Shane? You kinda had to pull for a guy that well-dressed, especially when Alan Ladd looked like an urban cowboy! Hidalgo, though not technically a western, was about men racing horses cross-country, close enough for me!

[update: 9.18.09]

World's Best Musical and Concert Films

• A Coal Miner's Daughter
• A Hard Days Night
• All that Jazz
• An American in Paris
• Amadeus
• Black Orpheus (France/Portugal)
• Bride and Prejudice (India)
• Carmen (Spain, flamenco version)
• Chicago
• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
• The King and I
• The Music Man
• My Fair Lady
• Singing in the Rain
• Strictly Ballroom
• West Side Story

Concert Films

• The Cranberries: Live
• Dead Can Dance: Toward the Within
• Jimi Hendrix (documentary)
• The Last Waltz
• Led Zeppelin (2 dvd, live history)
• Peter Gabriel: Secret World Live
• Pat Metheny: Speaking of Now: Live (easily the world's best guitarist!)
• Police: Synchronicity Concert
• Stop Making Sense
• The TAMI Show
• Woodstock (documentary)

Runners-up: Cabaret, Dames, Damn Yankees, The Gay Divorcee, Golddiggers of 1933, Swing Time, Oliver! [Updated after seeing West Side and Music Man in widescreen! It makes ALL the difference, seeing the director's intended view.. they oughtta outlaw fullscreen in Hollywood] Most musicals are vastly overrated, some are downright unwatchable (anyone get through Tommy or Superstar without brain damage?). In Oklahoma they resorted to spelling out the state's name, now that's a lack of lyrical ingenuity. Sad that Marni Nixon sang in My Fair Lady, The King and I, and West Side Story and got NO billing credit at all! The best classic Broadway style musical for me is My Fair Lady. Incredible lyrics, so good that Rex Harrison didn't even have to be able to sing to win an Oscar and a Tony. Based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, it had a solid artistic foundation to begin with. Of course, the ripoff in the movie is that Julie Andrews, who made the stage role what it was, was passed over for Audrey Hepburn (Marnie Nixon had to dub her singing), everyone's box office darling; Andrews won the Oscar that year anyway for Mary Poppins. Listen to the original cast recording on CD to hear the difference with Andrews! Dames (34), not a great film, but is a great example of the insanity of early Busby Berkley; he's responsible for the musical numbers, original choreography, and inventiveness: neon violins played by dancers in the dark, all forming one giant violin; dancers forming a giant eyeball and a singer rising from the iris ("I Only Have Eyes for You"); floor cams sliding throught the spread legs of 100 grinning dancers; naked dancers bathing silhouetted behind shower curtains; the giant Carmen Miranda fruit hat - Busby was tripping 40 yrs before anyone else, and everyone else pales in comparison! Amadeus is of course, the play about the life and music of Mozart, not a classic musical but still full of music (maybe "too many notes", inside joke). Best Picture Oscars went to Amadeus, Chicago, and My Fair Lady. This Carmen, of the 18 or so, is Carlos Suare's flamenco version, where a dance troup is rehearsing for a flamenco performance of Bizet's Carmen and two dancers lives begin to mirror the story. This is easily the best dance film ever made. Bollywood's Bride and Prejudice is a total trip - who else could have thought of a musical comedy of Austen's Pride and Prejudice? The gigantic dance number with the women teasing the men is worth the price of admission alone (but lose the ballads); throw in world-class beauty Aishayra Rai and you're in nirvana! TAMI (for Teenage Awards for Music International) was an early concert film (from 66?) that had James Brown, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, many others, and kind of set the precedent for modern concert films.

Double Indemnity and the Birth of Film Noir

Double Indemnity (1944) was Billy Wilder's first serious film, and is given credit for the birth of film noir, literally "night film", which describes a visual style and mood of a type of dramatic film, usually crime, that's much more gritty and realistic than most films prior to this era.

Film noir was mostly shot at night or in dark interiors; there's lots of use of shadows, dimly lit edges, light from Venetian blinds (which simulates bars across characters), backlit smoke (Indemnity uses both cigars and cigarettes, Out of the Past is a tribute to cigarettes, each star is always smoking onscreen, especially when it gets tense).

Film noir got its origins in 30's detective stories, often called pulp fiction, gritty stories with sex, violence and seedy characters. Even the heros were often common people with street wisdom, often with a tough upbringing. Soldiers returning from World War 2 and a cinematic audience that had survived the Great Depression demanded more adult films in theme, subject, and style.

Wilder was impressed by author John Kain's pulp novella of "Double Indemnity", the same author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, but it was considered unfilmable due the the Hayes Code (of censorship). The script went through years of re-writes and applications before being allowed to be filmed in 1944. The Hayes Code first suppressed sex in films, then violence, later socialism, and was used to pass judgment on over 28,000 works of art! Apparently no freedom of the arts exists, just more minor ones that don't affect as many people, such as the press (who reads?) Wilder then had a difficult time casting the lead parts, two murdering adulterers.

He wanted Barbara Stanwyck all along, but eventually had to challenge her to get her to take the image-shattering role, "are you an actress or a mouse?" After several refusals by actors, including George Raft, who had a knack for turning down breakthrough parts like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, he convinced Fred McMurray to break his screen image of light romantic comedies to attempt something serious. His first scene with Stanwick, when he meets her at her home in a towel, uses his comedic skills along with some terrific dialogue.

Wilder also convinced leading actor Edward G. Robinson to take a non-starring character role, meaty enough for at least two important speeches that Robinson absolutely nailed. Crime novelist Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye) was brought in for his realistic dialogue, plenty evident here especially the opening scenes between Stanwyck and McMurray, but he, an introvert, and Wilder, an extrovert, didn't get along at all and never worked together again. Ironically,they were nominated for an Oscar together for their screenplay. Wilder later used Chandler as his model for his Oscar-winning Best Picture The Lost Weekend.

Double Indemnity was nominated for these 7 Oscars (but won none):

• BEST MOTION PICTURE - Paramount (Going My Way won!)
• DIRECTING - Billy Wilder
• ACTRESS - Barbara Stanwyck
• CINEMATOGRAPHY (Black and White) - John Seitz
• WRITING (Screenplay) - Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler
• MUSIC (Music Score of a Drama or Comedy) - Miklos Rozsa
• SOUND RECORDING - Paramount Studio Sound Dept, Loren L. Ryder, Sound Director

Other classic film noir: Out of the Past, The Night of the Hunter, Panic in the Streets, D.O.A., The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man.

Modern Noir: Wait Until Dark, Diva (France), Chinatown, Shoot the Piano Player (France), House of Games, Taxi Driver, Blood Simple, Body Heat, The Silence of the Lambs. The style is also clearly evident in parts of other classic films such as In the Heat of the Night, The Godfather, Batman, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Hustler, and The Departed.

Thanks to Beth G for suggesting Double Indemnity

Great Film: Zhang Yimou's Hero

Hero (2002) is a Chinese epic from director Zhang Yimou. Actor Jet Li said the screenplay (by Li Feng, Zhang Yimou, and Wang Bin) was the best he had ever read and left him in tears. They often call this Jet Li's Hero to distinguish it from an earlier U.S. film (also worth watching but nothing great) starring Andy Garcia and Dustin Hoffman. Along with Li, the film also stars the most popular actress in the world, Ziyi Zhang, shown in the still shots above from Hero. The visually stunning style of Hero is the ultimate for an action-adventure film, going even one level higher than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's no wonder that Quentin Tarantino wanted to get his name on this one as "Q.T. Presents....", like he had anything to do with creating this masterpiece! He did the same thing to the terrific crime film in two parts, Chungking Express, which inspired Pulp Fiction. The story is a story within the story, as a warrior relates his tale to the king of Qi'in (which became China), of how he killed three assassins from neighboring kingdoms who were plotting to kill him. Bose found the film so incredible that it used a famous sword master sequence in a tv ad for a new tv surround sound system; they claim to have a hidden camera on a family who is appropriately 'jaw-dropped' by the film and sound. Hero is full of memorable scenes and sequences, I won't describe any, they have to be experienced at least twice. Watch it once with subtitles, then again without any distractions to the visual poetry because this is the cinamatic art at its highest level. Other great visual action films: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (China, Ang Lee); Spiderman; The Matrix; House of Flying Daggers (China, Z.Yimou); The Seven Samurai (Japan); The Empire Strikes Back; The Replacement Killers; Diva (France); Aliens; The Road Warrior; Run, Lola, Run (Germany).

World's Best Drama Films

Films in gold won Best Picture

• 12 Angry Men (bw)
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (bw)
• All About Eve (bw)
• Amadeus
• The Apartment
• Broadcast News
• Citizen Kane (bw)
• Dominick and Eugene (drama)
• Elmer Gantry (drama, bw)
• Empire Falls (mini-series)
• Fearless (Peter Weir's)
• Good Will Hunting
• Housekeeping
• Hud (bw)
• The Hustler (bw)
• The Last Picture Show (bw)
• Little Foxes (bw)
• The Magnificent Ambersons (bw)
• Midnight Cowboy
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (bw)
• Munich
• Network
• Nicholas Nickleby (8 hr)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• On the Waterfront
• Seven Days in May
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Stars Fell on Henrietta
• The Sweet Hereafter
• The Sweet Smell of Success (bw)
• Terms of Endearment
• To Kill a Mockingbird (bw)
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (bw)

Foreign Language Drama

• Babel (Mexico)
• The Conformist (Italy)
• El Norte (Mexico)
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Italy, bw)
• The Grand Illusion (France, bw)
• Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (France)
• Kolya (Czech)
• L'America (Italy)
• La Dolce Vita (Italy)
• The Motorcycle Diaries (US, in Spanish)
• The Return of Martin Guerre (France)
• To Live (China)

Docu-dramas, based on true stories

• A Beautiful Mind
• Alexander Nevsky (Russia)
• All the President's Men
• Citizen X
• Dead Man Walking
• Downfall (Germany)
• Drugstore Cowboy
• Elizabeth
• Finding Neverland
• Gandhi
• Hope and Glory
• In Cold Blood
• The Last Emperor
• The Madness of King George
• Mongol (Russia)
• The Motorcycle Diaries
• The Name of the Rose
• Norma Rae
• October Sky
• Reds
• Reilly, Ace of Spies (mini-series)
• Searching for Bobby Fisher
• Songcatcher
• Sybil
• Tucker: A Man and His Dream
• The World's Fastest Indian

Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring are two halves of the same novel, released simultaneously; theater goers could see the movie back-to-back as a double feature, or come back another day for the second part. This is an all-time classic, not to be missed. Nicholas Nickleby (played by Roger Rees) was a film version of the 8-hr London play; it was performed four nights a week in 2-hr segments; on Saturday it was performed in 2-four hour segments with a one hour lunch break. This is easily the best Dickens novel on film. I believe it was only 60 actors who played 250 roles. Milos Foreman directed both Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Bernardo Bertolucci directed both The Conformist and The Last Emperor.

World's Best Action and Adventure

Action and / or adventure films Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars®

• The Adventures of Robin Hood
• Around the World in 80 Days (original)
• Batman
• Ben-Hur (10 Oscars)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (China)
• El Mariachi (Mexico)
• The French Connection
• The Game
• Gladiator
• Hero (Jet Li's, China)
• La Femme Nikita (France)
• The Man Who Would Be King
• Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy
• The Raiders of the Lost Ark
• The Replacement Killers
• The Right Stuff
• The Road Warrior
• Run, Lola, Run (German)
• The Seven Samurai (Japan, bw)
• Spiderman
• The Stunt Man
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• V For Vendetta

We now have to include "Jet Li's" with the Chinese film Hero due to a U.S. one with the same name. This one involved two directors and had an incredible sequence used by BOSE for a tv surround sound system ad. Jet said it was the greatest script he had ever read. The Seven Samurai was the basis for the Western The Magnificent Seven, and for the space film Battle Beyond the Stars. People laughed at me when I saw Gladiator at the theater and told them it would get at least five Oscar nominations if people saw it. V For Vendetta is by the Washowski Brothers, who gave us the Matrix Trilogy. This revolutionary tome is even better, see if you recognize the voice behind the mask!

World's Best Sports Films

Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars®

• Breaking Away
• Bull Durham
• Chariots of Fire
• Field of Dreams
• Friday Night Lights
• Glory Road
• Golden Boy
• The Great White Hope
• Hoop Dreams (doc.)
• Hoosiers
• Million Dollar Baby
• The Natural
• Phar Lap
• Pride of the Yankees
• Raging Bull
• Requiem for a Heavyweight
• Seabiscuit (remake)

I guess I stretched a bit to make a sports list, as Bull Durham and Breaking Away belong in comedy, and Field of Dreams in fantasy & science fiction. Five boxing films and no Rocky... well, there are much better boxing films above. Raging Bull should have been Scorsese's first directing Oscar, and Goodfellas or Gangs of New York should have been his second, then his Oscar for The Departed could have gone to Alejandro Inarritu for Babel, which was filmed on three continents and in four languages. Friday Night Lights is probably the first great football film.

The World's Best Films Introduction

We will list and review the greatest films in history, wherever and whenever they were produced. We will also pan those often considered classics by those with either limited exposure or undeveloped powers of artistic discrimination. Great films: The Best Years of Our Lives, Lawrence of Arabia, City of God, Memento, The Seven Samurai, Hero (Jet Li's), Babe, Finding Neverland, Parenthood, Hannah & Her Sisters Bad films: Cleopatra, Rocky, Saturday Night Fever, Oklahoma, South Pacific, Rambo, Footloose, Blazing Saddles, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop (could a crime film be any slower paced?) Stuck in the middle with you: Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Kramer vs Kramer, Titanic (good special effects, bad plot) NOTE: I just found this Time magazine "re-review" of Titanic: "Titanic? I caused a bit of a ruckus by reviewing the film a few weeks before it opened and declaring it, at least artistically, "dead in the water." (Matt Drudge later claimed that I was put up to my pan by Time Warner boss Gerald Levin. Not true! I disliked the movie all on my own.) After rewatching it this week, I feel a bit warmer about the Winslet-DiCaprio love story, especially since serioso heterosexual romance has just about disappeared from movie screens in the intervening decade. But I still find the shipboard storyline clunky and unpersuasive, and I still can't wait for the damned iceberg to show up. Sue me for not having a heart." Enjoy and feel free to leave comments!