In continuing the celebration of America at 250, here are 250 American movies to watch. Notes:
1)
What
is an ‘American’ movie? It’s a movie that has A) American production and/or
director; B) a predominately American cast; C) an important American setting.
Now some of the films on this list just have one or two of the three. For examples
Star Wars in not in an American setting, and Once Upon a Time in the West was
an Italian production. Only those films which could not reasonably be
considered ‘American’ were left out of consideration (Lawrence of Arabia is not
set in America, doesn’t star Americans, and wasn’t directed by an American –
for example).
2)
All
sorts of films were considered: Documentaries, experimental works, cartoons –
they’re all in there. Many of these films – about 100 – were on my essential 20th century American movies list, from 2019, with explanations of their importance. I also explain that some of these films are not good - but that they are important nonetheless. I do not like many of these films. I also have seen fewer than the 2019 list - there's a fair number I'm including based on general vibes, so: grain of salt. I've asterisked them.
3)
I
limited myself to a max of two films per director, so as to not over-saturate.
That list is at the end, as well as a couple of other superlatives.
Without
further ado:
Blacksmith
Scene, 1893
Rip Van
Winkle, 1903
The
Great Train Robbery, 1903
White
Fawn’s Devotion, 1910
The Land Beyond the Sunset, 1912
Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life, 1913
Gertie the Dinosaur, 1914
Birth of a Nation, 1915
Where Are My Children?, 1916
The Poor Little Rich Girl, 1917
Nanook of the North, 1922
Robin Hood, 1922*
Safety Last!, 1923
Sherlock Jr., 1924
Greed, 1924
The Gold Rush, 1925
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, 1927
Wings, 1927
The Jazz Singer, 1927
The
Fall of the House of Usher, 1928
The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra, 1928
The Last Command, 1928
The
Crowd, 1928
Steamboat
Willie, 1928
There
It Is, 1928
Lambchops,
1929
A Bronx Morning, 1931
Grand Hotel, 1932
The
Music Box, 1932
Freaks, 1932*
Duck Soup, 1933
King Kong, 1933
42nd Street, 1933
Snow-White,
1933
Little Miss Marker, 1934*
Top Hat, 1935
Modern Times, 1936
Showboat, 1936
Dodsworth, 1936
My Man
Godfrey, 1936
Rose
Hobart, 1936
The Old Mill, 1937
Bringing Up Baby, 1938
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939
Ninotchka, 1939
The Wizard of Oz, 1939
Gone with the Wind, 1939
Peace
on Earth, 1939
My Little Chickadee, 1940*
His Girl Friday, 1940
The Grapes of Wrath, 1940
Fantasia, 1940
Superman, 1941
Citizen Kane, 1941
Sullivan's Travels, 1941
The Maltese Falcon, 1941
Casablanca, 1942
Stormy Weather, 1943
Meshes
of the Afternoon, 1943
Der
Fuehrer’s Face, 1943
Gents Without Cents, 1944
The Lost Weekend, 1945
It's a Wonderful Life, 1946
The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946
Out of the Past, 1947
Gentleman’s
Agreement, 1947
The Cat
Concerto, 1947
Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948*
The Third Man, 1949
White Heat, 1949
All the King's Men, 1949
All About Eve, 1950
Gerald
McBoingBoing, 1950
Treasure
Island, 1950*
An American in Paris, 1951
The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951
A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951
Singin' in the Rain, 1952
High Noon, 1952
The
Tell-Tale Heart, 1953
White Christmas, 1954*
Carmen Jones, 1954
Rebel Without a Cause, 1955
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956
The Searchers, 1956
What’s Opera Doc, 1957
12 Angry Men, 1957
Sweet Smell of Success, 1957
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, 1958
Vertigo, 1958
Imitation of Life, 1959
Some Like It Hot, 1959
Psycho, 1960
West Side Story, 1961
Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961
Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961
To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962
The Manchurian Candidate, 1962
The
Music Man, 1962
The
Great Escape, 1963
The Pink Panther, 1963
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 1964
The
Hangman, 1964
Meat
Joy, 1964
A Charlie Brown Christmas, 1965
In the Heat of the Night, 1967
Bonnie and Clyde, 1967
The Graduate, 1967
Night of the Living Dead, 1968
Once
Upon a Time in the West, 1968
Planet of the Apes, 1968
2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969
Easy Rider, 1969
I Am Joaquin,
1969
Patton,
1970
Woodstock,
1970
Shaft,
1971*
(nostalgia),
1971
Our
Lady of the Sphere, 1972
1776, 1972
The Godfather and The Godfather II, 1972 and 1974
F for
Fake, 1973
Badlands,
1973
The
Exorcist, 1973
Enter the Dragon, 1973
Chinatown, 1974
Blazing Saddles, 1974
Hearts and Minds, 1974
Jaws, 1975
Nashville,
1975
Carrie,
1976
All the President’s Men, 1976
Network, 1976
Rocky, 1976
Taxi Driver, 1976
Star Wars, 1977
Grease, 1978
National Lampoon’s Animal House, 1978
Killer of Sheep, 1978
The Muppet Movie, 1979
Apocalypse Now, 1979
All
That Jazz, 1979
Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, 1979
Airplane!, 1980
My Dinner with Andre, 1981
Escape from New York, 1981
Blade Runner, 1982
Koyaanisqatsi, 1982
Tron, 1982
The Big Chill, 1983
The Right Stuff, 1983
El Norte, 1983
The Terminator, 1984
A
Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984*
Stop Making
Sense, 1984
The
Purple Rose of Cairo, 1985
Clue,
1985
Back to
the Future, 1985
Ferris
Bueller’s Day Off, 1986
An American Tail, 1986
The Princess Bride, 1987
Wall
Street, 1987
Good
Morning Vietnam, 1987
Robocop, 1987
Die Hard, 1988
Coming to America, 1988
Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 1988
For All Mankind, 1989
Do the Right Thing, 1989
Sex,
Lies, and Videotape, 1989
When
Harry Met Sally…, 1989
Goodfellas,
1990
The Silence of the Lambs, 1991
Unforgiven, 1992
Malcolm
X, 1992*
Jammin’ in New York, 1992
Groundhog Day, 1993
Little Women, 1994
Pulp Fiction, 1994
Clerks, 1994
The Shawshank Redemption, 1994
Toy Story, 1995
The Usual
Suspects, 1995
Chris
Rock: Bring the Pain, 1996
Independence Day, 1996
Titanic, 1997
The Big Lebowski, 1998
The Truman Show, 1998
Saving
Private Ryan, 1998
More,
1998
Office Space, 1999
The Matrix, 1999
Iron
Giant, 1999
American
Psycho, 2000
Almost
Famous, 2000
Mulholland
Drive, 2001
A Beautiful
Mind, 2001
Legally
Blonde, 2001
Ocean’s
Eleven, 2001
Shrek,
2001
The
Lord of the Rings, 2001 – 2003
Bowling
for Columbine, 2002
Lilo
and Stitch, 2002
Chicago,
2002
The Fog
of War, 2003
Pirates
of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003
Lost in
Translation, 2003
The
Incredibles, 2004
Mean
Girls, 2004
The New
World, 2005
Idiocracy,
2006
The
Devil Wears Prada, 2006
Everything
Will Be OK, 2006
Hairspray,
2007
There
Will Be Blood, 2007
Synecdoche
New York, 2008
Milk,
2008
Frost/Nixon,
2008
The
Dark Knight, 2008
The
Hurt Locker, 2009
Winter’s
Bone, 2010
The
Social Network, 2010
Black
Swan, 2010
Bridesmaids,
2011
Django
Unchained, 2012
The
Avengers, 2012
Moonrise
Kingdom, 2012
12
Years a Slave, 2013
Citizenfour,
2014
A Girl
Walks Home Alone at Night, 2014
The
Martian, 2015
The Big
Short, 2015
Spotlight,
2015
Moonlight,
2016
13th,
2016
Get
Out, 2017
The
Greatest Showman, 2017
Spider-Man:
Into the Spider-Verse, 2018
Nomadland,
2020
Judas
and the Black Messiah, 2021
Bo
Burnham: Inside, 2021
The Power
of the Dog, 2021*
Everything
Everywhere All at Once, 2022
Top
Gun: Maverick, 2022
Oppenheimer,
2023
American
Fiction, 2023
Anora,
2024
Civil
War, 2024
Sinners,
2025*
And so there it is. 250 American Movies for the 250th anniversary of
America. Side note: this was a much harder list to make than the songs.
Superlatives:
32 directors with two films: Brad Bird, James Cameron, Frank Capra, Charlie
Chaplin, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Curtiz, William Dickson, Dave Fleischer,
Victor Fleming, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Elia Kazan, Stanley Kubrick, John
Landis, Spike Lee, Sidney Lumet, Terrence Malick, Christopher Nolan, Rob
Reiner, Franklin J. Schaffner, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg,
Quentin Tarantino, King Vidor, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Robert Wise, William
Wyler, and Robert Zemeckis.
28/29 Best Picture Winners: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Wings, Grand Hotel,
Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, The Lost Weekend, The Best Years of Our Lives, All
the King's Men, All About Eve, An American in Paris, West Side Story, In the
Heat of the Night, Patton, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Rocky, The
Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, Titanic, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, The Lord
of the Rings, The Hurt Locker, 12 Years a Slave, Spotlight, Moonlight, Nomadland,
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Oppenheimer, Anora.
Palme d'Or recipients: The Third Man, The Lost Weekend, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse
Now, All That Jazz, Sex Lies and Videotape, Pulp Fiction, and Anora.
No comments:
Post a Comment