Heist (2001)

I like all of Mamet’s films, but Heist is head and shoulders above the rest, IMO. Besides being a well written heist film with a great cast, it rewards rewatching. I’ve watched it so many times, but the last time I watched it, I caught a new detail I hadn’t noticed before.

The wicker man (1973)

Shaun of the dead

The Shawshank redemption

The thing

No movie collection is complete without Scott Pilgrim versus The World

• The Godz Must be Crazy
• The Godz Must be Crazy II
• Top Secret!

I always recommend the Hitchcock movies from his middle era. My favorites:

• Lifeboat
• Rebecca
• Strangers on a Train
• Dial M for Murder
• Rope
• Rear Window
• The Man Who Knew Too Much
• North By NorthWest
• Vertigo
• Psycho

Rear Window is my all-time favorite movie. It’s a perfect film, where every shot and line means something. Grace Kelly’s appearance is the most beautiful that any woman has ever been, in any film. The rest are all 10 out of 10s.

And look for Hitchcock’s famous cameos in every movie, always close to the beginning, and usually amusing.

There’s a lot of movies I really like. But I believe these to be my all time favorites:

Master and Commander

Rogue One

Tron: Legacy

Arrival

Brain Candy and Strange Days

Pacific Rim. They never made any sequels though, so don’t bother looking.

Adding in some documentaries, I’d highly recommending watching these climbing docs as a trilogy to understand the scope of what’s being achieved as well as understanding the different approaches to the sport:

The Dawn Wall: Introduces you to climbing legends such as Tommy Caldwell and the difficulty of the sport, with the main focus being one climb in Yosemite.

Free Solo: Takes the dawn wall and makes it look entry level, focuses on Alex Honnold who climbs ‘free solo’ meaning without ropes or a partner.

The Alpinist: Difficult to put into words, focuses on an almost completely unknown climber called Marc-André Leclerc who is to climbing as Michael Phelps is to swimming. This guy completes climbs even the greatest in the sport consider far from humanly achievable, with part of the doc being a battle to even find the guy to film as he doesn’t care for media attention or fame for his climbs.

The docs all contribute to the understanding of what drives the people pushing the bar of what’s considered possible, and in the subsequent docs the previous climbers appear frequently in interviews that adds a kind of continuum which is why I love these 3 together rather than as individual pieces.

City of God - movie about the struggles of growing up in a tough spot in Rio de Janeiro, it’s just great

Gattaca - my favourite sci fi film, it’s just a simple concept … what if we could tell who you were going to grow up to be, just from your blood

I’m going to restrict this list to older movies and imports since there’s already most of Hollywood’s best listed by other people.

• Ran (1985): Japanese take on King Lear. Kurosawa.
• 12 Angry Men (1957): Fonda has doubts about the man charged. Sidney Lumet.
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962): Based on actual WWI British officer T.E. Lawrence, but more story than history. David Lean.
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975): Jack Nicholson leads this Milos Forman movie about what it was like in mental hospitals (based on Ken Kesey’s book of same name – see also Keroac book On the Road for more of that generation).
• The Man Who Would Be King (1975) : Sean Connery and Michael Caine star in John Houston movie based on Ruyard Kipling story. There are more famous names to pack in there, but mostly the story is great (though told from a supremely Colonial POV).
• Grand Illusion (1937): French Jean Renoir film classic about WWI.
• Beauty and the Beast (1946): French Jean Cocteau masterpiece of the fairytalke before it got Disney-fied.
• The Tin Drum (1979): German Volker Schlöndorff film of Günter Grass story about a boy who won’t grow up.
• Amarcord (1973): Italian Federico Fellini film about growing up. You could sub in Nights of Cabiria or Satyricon as a starter Fellini pic.
• Kes (1970): British Ken Loach film about a boy and a bird.
• Winter Light (1963): Swedish Ingmar Bergman about a priest struggling with faith. The 7th Seal probably a better place to ease in to Bergman, though.
• A Man for All Seasons (1966): British Fred Zinnemann telling of how Sir Thomas More was stuck between his Church and his King. For an alternate take on same chunk of history, see Wolf Hall.

There’s so many more. Rosselini’s Open City, Jodorosky’s El Topo/Santa Sangre, Errol Morris documentaries (Fog of War, etc.), Les Blank docs (from music to Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe), oh! and Herzog flicks! I should stop.

My thought process for this was asking myself what movie I’d recommend to people who have little to no experience or interest in specific genres. Tried to pick a wide range of movies

Comedies (my favorite genre)

• Kung Fu Hustle (probably favorite movie of all time): fun comedy action movie involving gangsters and a poor neighborhood. Think classic Hong Kong kung fu meets super hero movie. Haven’t met anyone who didn’t like the film
• Airplane: insanely funny movie with nonstop jokes. One of the best movies for comedy because you’ve got all types of jokes (puns, visual humor, recurring jokes etc)
• Blazing Saddles: revovles around a small western town through the perspective of a former slave turned sheriff. Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little have such great chemistry
• The Naked Gun trilogy: if you liked Airplane you’ll love the Naked Gun. Has a lot of ridiculously silly lines told with a straight face.

Action

• LOTR trilogy: I feel like this needs no explanation.
• Star Wars original trilogy: no hate to the prequels (and a lot of hate to the sequels) but nothing quite hits like the OG Star Wars trilogy
• The Mummy: fun, interesting plot, charming characters just the quintissential 90s action movie. Also a great first movie for many people’s bi-awakening 👀
• Police Story (trilogy, but mainly 3): it’s been a while since I’ve seen this trilogy but I distinctly remember really liking the third one because it features both Jackie Chan and Michel Yeoh as equal badasses. If you’ve never seen Jackie Chan’s Hong Kong films, this franchise is a great start.

Animation

• Spiderman Into The Spiderverse: beautifully animated movie that does an amazing job of capturing the feel comics in both style and vibes. Definitely way better than the sequel, in my opinion.
• Tokyo Godfathers: touching anime movie about 3 homeless people who ind a baby on Christmas. Don’t want to spoil any more than that but it has a good balance of comedy and drama and unlike other anime movies I’ve seen, completes the story so well that you’re not wanting more
• Up: my personal favorite Pixar movie and the first 20 min are a master class of short story telling. Was debating between this an Wall E but I think Up has a better story

Horror

Admittedly my least favorite genre. These movies are closer to thrillers than they are horror

• Train to Busan: zombie outbreak on a train. Premise is simple enough but the storytelling and characters are so well written that you get too attached and actually get anxiety when things are happening. It’s a movie with an ending that stays with you
• The Silence of the Lambs: there’s a reason Hannibal Lector is the most memorable part of this movie despite having only 16 minutes of screen time

Movies to watch only once

These are movies that will make you feel such intense emotions (usually sadness but not necessarily) that I would only watch once. No descriptions to avoid spoilers

• Grave of the Fireflies
• Schindler’s List
• Old Boy

• Alien, then Aliens, then stop. If you watch Alien 3 then watch Alien: Resurrection, too, to get the taste out of your mouth, but then definitely stop.

• Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• House of Flying Daggers

If you watch Star Wars, then watch in this order:

• Episode 4 A New Hope

• Episode 5 The Empire Strikes Back

• Episode 2 Attack of the Clones

• Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith

• Episode 6 Return of the Jedi

In no particular order, and not an exhaustive list

• The Big Lebowski
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Sin City
• Lord of The Rings Trilogy
• Star wars Original Trilogy & Rogue One
• Casablanca
• Mad Max Fury Road
• Arrival
• Pulp Fiction
• All the Studio Ghibli movies, but Especially Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited away, and Grave of the Fireflies
• Blazing Saddles
• Young Frankenstein
• Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
• Monty Python & the Holy Grail
• Jurassic Park
• Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Blade Runner
• Blade Runner 2049
• Mary & Max
• Akira
• Rocky
• The Godfather 1 & 2, and at that point I guess you might as well watch 3 as well
• Rashomon
• Chinatown
• Jaws
• All quiet on the western front
• Psycho
• Kill Bill 1&2
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Forest Gump
• Fight Club
• The Matrix (just 1)
• Silence of the Lambs
• Taxi Driver
• Back to the future trilogy
• The Usual Suspects
• Apocalypse Now
• Indiana Jones Trilogy
• Dune parts 1&2
• The Shining
• Dredd
• Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• The Room
• A Clockwork Orange
• Gone with the Wind
• V for Vendetta
• Trainspotting
• Fargo
• Ben Hur
• Children of Men
• Shoot 'em Up
• Logan *The Princess Bride
• Old Yeller
• John Wick series
• Most Disney/Pixar movies
• Most Don Bluth movies

Old classics:

• It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• Casablanca (1942)
• 12 Angry Men (1957)
• Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936)
• Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Drama/misc:

• Gandhi (1982)
• Network (1976)
• A Few Good Men (1992)
• The Truman Show (1998)
• Dead Poets Society (1989)
• Pay It Forward (2000)
• The Green Mile (1999)
• The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
• Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967)

PG sci-fi/fantasy:

• Back To The Future (trilogy, 1985+)
• E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
• Jumanji (1995)

Action/etc.:

• The Matrix (1999)
• The Terminator (series, 1984+)
• Die Hard (series, 1988+)
• Mission: Impossible (1996)
• Air Force One (1997)
• Independence Day (1996)
• Speed (1994)
• Limitless (2011)

Generally romance-centered (other than Casablanca):

• Titanic (1997)
• Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)
• The Notebook (2004)
• Ghost (1990)

Comedies:

• Duck Soup (1933)
• The Great Dictator (1940)
• Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1975)
• Office Space (1999)