200+ Great Films

Image from Lifeboat (1944) — Tallulah Bankhead in "Lifeboat" -- one of Hitchcock's greatest films

RECOMMENDED FILMS
This set of lists makes it pretty easy to find a good film: if it’s on one of these lists, chances are you will enjoy the film.
Please Note: Although most of these titles in the table below have been checked for availability, some may be currently out of stock or may have been withdrawn from circulation by the studio.


MINDTOOLS RECOMMENDS Movie Making/Hollywood: Mulholland Drive A The Stunt Man A The Player A The French Lieutenant’s Woman A Melding Fact with Fiction: K-19 Hurricane A Beautiful Mind Hidalgo Cartesianism, Memory, and Alternate Realities: Fight Club Momento Vanilla Sky The Matrix Film Noir: Double Indemnity Touch of Evil Mildred Pierce The Third Man The Maltese Falcon Underground Sci-Fi: Mars Attacks Buckaroo Banzai Dark Star Dark City (1998) The Lathe of Heaven (1980) Zardoz Best Lina Wertmüller: Seven Beauties (1976) Swept Away (1974) Best Woody Allen: Crimes and Misdemeanors Manhattan Sweet and Low Down Radio Days Sleeper Take the Money and Run Deconstructing Harry (1997) Annie Hall Play it Again Sam Bullets over Broadway Hannah and Her Sisters Underground/Offbeat/Unusual: Liquid Sky Dark Star The River’s Edge Looking for Richard The Rapture Wild at Heart Red Rock West Avalon Night on Earth The Emerald Forest Baghdad Cafe Crumb Foreign Films: Babbette’s Feast Pele the Conqueror Ju Dou Jesus of Montreal Dersu Uzala Il Postino The Shop on Main Street Wings of Desire Lesser-Known Classics from Hollywood’s Golden Era: The Red House The Sea Wolf M Street Manhattan Tales* Now, Voyager The Letter The Razor’s Edge Rain The Trial Bend of the River Cimarron (1931) Comedy: The Producers Planes, Trains and Automobiles The Gold Rush The Philadelphia Story The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944, VHS) The General Silent Movie Films and Communism: Citizen X One, Two, Three The Amazing Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks October Burnt By the Sun Stalin’s Projectionist * Limited Availability	* AFI LIST OF 100 ALL-TIME BEST (1998) 1. Citizen Kane, 1941 2. Casablanca, 1942 3. The Godfather, 1972 4. Gone With the Wind, 1939 5. Lawrence of Arabia, 1962 6. The Wizard of Oz, 1939 7. The Graduate, 1967 8. On the Waterfront, 1954 9. Schindler’s List, 1993 10. Singin’ in the Rain, 1952 11. It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946 12. Sunset Boulevard, 1950 13. The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957 14. Some Like it Hot, 1959 15. Star Wars, 1977 16. All About Eve, 1950 17. The African Queen, 1951 18. Psycho, 1960 19. Chinatown, 1974 20. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975 21. The Grapes of Wrath, 1940 22. 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968 23. The Maltese Falcon, 1941 24. Raging Bull, 1980 25. E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial, 1982 26. Dr. Strangelove, 1964 27. Bonnie and Clyde, 1967 28. Apocalypse Now, 1979 29. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939 30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948 31. Annie Hall, 1977 32. The Godfather Part II, 1974 33. High Noon, 1952 34. To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962 35. It Happened One Night, 1934 36. Midnight Cowboy, 1969 37. The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946 38. Double Indemnity, 1944 39. Doctor Zhivago, 1965 40. North by Northwest, 1959 41. West Side Story, 1961 42. Rear Window, 1954 43. King Kong, 1933 44. The Birth of a Nation, 1915 45. A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951 46. A Clockwork Orange, 1971 47. Taxi Driver, 1976 48. Jaws, 1975 49. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937 50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969 51. The Philadelphia Story, 1940 52. From Here to Eternity, 1953 53. Amadeus, 1984 54. All Quiet on the Western Front, 1930 55. The Sound of Music, 1965 56. MAS*H, 1970 57. The Third Man, 1949 58. Fantasia, 1940 59. Rebel Without a Cause, 1955 60. Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981 61. Vertigo, 1958 62. Tootsie, 1982 63. Stagecoach, 1939 64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977 65. The Silence of the Lambs, 1991 66. Network, 1976 67. The Manchurian Candidate, 1962 68. An American in Paris, 1951 69. Shane, 1953 70. The French Connection, 1971 71. Forrest Gump, 1994 72. Ben-Hur, 1959 73. Wuthering Heights, 1939 74. The Gold Rush, 1925 75. Dances With Wolves, 1990 76. City Lights, 1931 77. American Graffiti, 1973 78. Rocky, 1976 79. The Deer Hunter, 1978 80. The Wild Bunch, 1969 81. Modern Times, 1936 82. Giant, 1956 83. Platoon, 1986 84. Fargo, 1996 85. Duck Soup, 1933 86. Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935 87. Frankenstein, 1931 88. Easy Rider, 1969 89. Patton, 1970 90. The Jazz Singer, 1927 91. My Fair Lady, 1964 92. A Place in the Sun, 1951 93. The Apartment, 1960 94. Goodfellas, 1990 95. Pulp Fiction, 1994 96. The Searchers, 1956 97. Bringing Up Baby, 1938 98. Unforgiven, 1992 99. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967 100. Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1942	* A NON-AFI LIST OF FILMS BETTER THAN The Graduate Rebecca, 1940 Spartacus, 1960 Do the Right Thing, 1989 Beauty and the Beast, 1947 (French) Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1979 (Australian) You Can Count on Me, 2000 Burnt by the Sun, 1994 (Russian) The Man With a Movie Camera, 1929 (Russian) Babette’s Feast The Seventh Seal, 1956 (Swedish) Traffic, 2000 The Game, 1997 Fight Club, 1999 Rain, 1932 Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968 Telling Lies in America, 1997 Ran, 1985 (Japanese) Children of Paradise, 1946 (French) Blade Runner, 1982 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962 Eyes Wide Shut, 1999 The Bicycle Thief, 1949 (Italian) The Letter, 1940 Taxi Driver, 1976 Greed, 1924 The Seven Samurai, 1954 (Japanese) Sunset Blvd., 1950 Groundhog Day, 1993 Crumb, 1994 Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1980 (German) East of Eden, 1955 The Lathe of Heaven, 1980 Momento, 2000 Sleeper, 1973 “M”, 1933 Open City, 1945 Blow Up, 1960 Aguirre: The Wrath of God, 1977 The Magnificent Ambersons, 1942 Nashville, 1975 White Heat, 1949 Akira, 1988 The General, 1927 Excalibur Seven Beauties Hoop Dreams Sullivan’s Travels, 1941 Reservoir Dogs, 1992 The Cat People, 1942 Come Back, Little Sheba Seventh Heaven, 1927 Potemkin Intolerance Das Boot Wild at Heart Pele the Conquer, Swedish, 1987 The Return of Marin Guerre, French, 1982 Of Mice and Men Seven Beauties What’s Eating Gilbert Grape Dirty Harry Wise Blood Wings of Desire Mr. Skeffington Black Narcissus, 1947 Dirty Harry Wise Blood Pinocchio, 1940 Wings of Desire, 1987 (German) Refifi, 1958 (French)

* ABOUT THE AFI LIST: In an amusing and light-hearted book about film ( Ten Sure Signs a Movie Character is Doomed…), critic Richard Roeper suggested that the AFI list has many films that simply do not belong among the “top 100.” He asks: is The Graduate really the 7th best film of all time? Although there may be no truly bad films on the AFI list, from the standpoint of movie fans looking to broaden their horizons and by mining the rich history of film, the AFI list has many flaws. First of all, since the list is just of American films, it eliminates many of the world’s great classics. Second, the whole idea of ranking films in order is dubious at best; there is a class of excellent films, but individual rankings within that class are near pointless since each film is excellent in its own way. Third, some films (such as The Graduate and The Silence of the Lambs) appear to have been included because of the momentary impact they made in popular consciousness rather than for their importance to film history or their continued relevance. To be sure, the AFI list includes great masterpieces, such as Vertigo and Citizen Kane. But it can be argued that both Hitchcock and Welles are underrepresented on the list; there are many Welles or Hitchcock films not presently on the list that would surely be better choices than The Graduate! With these thoughts in mind, I endeavored to create a somewhat whimsical list of films better than The Graduate. I tried to follow these rules: (1) the films could not already be on the AFI list (lest I merely reorder the AFI list — an even more dubious exercise than the present one!); (2) some of the same directors and genres from the AFI list had to be included; (3) foreign films should be included; and (4) from a movie fan’s point of view the list had to have an entertainment or viewability quotient similar to that of films that did make the AFI list. Viewability is always a concern. After all, from the consumer’s point of view, the ultimate question is: do I want to spend money on this? The column at the right of the table is the result of this experiment in list building. -ab

Tools for Understanding

200+ Great Films

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