50 Great Movies, 2016 Edition
1. Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
2. Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
4. Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)
5. Star Wars (1977, George Lucas)
6. Duck Soup (1933, Leo McCarey)
7. The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
8. Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Th. Dreyer)
10. Omohide Poro Poro (1991, Isao Takahata)
11. Lawrence of Arabia (1962, David Lean)
12. City Lights (1931, Charlie Chaplin)
13. Spaceballs (1987, Mel Brooks)
14. My Neighbor Totoro (1988, Hayao Miyazaki)
15. Ran (1986, Akira Kurosawa)
16. The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
17. The Fog of War (2003, Errol Morris)
18. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Steven Spielberg)
19. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, Steven Spielberg)
20. The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)
21. The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968, Isao Takahata)
22.. Mimi wo Sumaseba (1995, Yoshifumi Kondo)
23. La Dolce Vita (1960, Federico Fellini)
24. The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming)
25. Paths of Glory (1957, Stanley Kubrick)
26. Elizabeth (1998, Shekhar Kapur)
27. Network (1976, Sidney Lumet)
28. Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)
29. Floating Weeds (1959, Yasujiro Ozu)
30. The Big Sleep (1946, Howard Hawks)
31. The Red Shoes (1948, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
32. Throne of Blood (1957, Akira Kurosawa)
33. Modern Times (1936, Charlie Chaplin)
34. Young Frankenstein (1974, Mel Brooks)
35. Blazing Saddles (1974, Mel Brooks)
36. Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (1984, Hayao Miyazaki)
37. Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)
38. Dreams (1991, Akira Kurosawa)
39. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1968, Sergio Leone)
40. Fantasia (1940, Walt Disney)
41. Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963, Stanley Kubrick)
42. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996, Jim Mallon)
43. Clue (1985, Jonathan Lynn)
44. Beetlejuice (1988, Tim Burton)
45. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986, John Hughes)
46. Metropolis (1926, Fritz Lang)
47. The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
48. Ben-Hur (1959, William Wyler)
49. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Wes Anderson)
50. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Ang Lee)
I am currently working on one of my book manuscripts that will be
published later this year. This book (tentatively titled "Hang Time") features movie and music essays, as well as personal essays. Right now, I am performing one final copy-editing sweep, tightening up the chapters, cutting out what works, and seeing what needs to be added in order to reach my goal of 80k words. One other manuscript is finished, and there are two others I'm planning to complete before launching.
Four years ago, I published a list of "50 Great Movies," give or take a couple extras. I decided to rewrite and revise that list for Hang Time, and share the results with everyone on Ghibli Blog. This is a very lean and mean list of great movies that mean everything to me. These movies have inspired me, thrilled me, challenged me. It's all very personal and not meant to be an academic study of "the greats," whatever that means. Art is only valuable if it means something to you. Right?
I wonder if I should turn this list into a book? That's always a possibility for a future project, however I believe there are already many Greatest Movies books available now. What do you think? Would you like to see this list expanded into a book? For now, I will leave that decision to you. My plate is very full at the moment. I need to figure out what to do with the Studio Ghibli book project.
Anyway, please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions, and thank you very much for supporting Ghibli Blog. You are the reason all of this exists.
4 comments:
An interesting list. I always think people's personal lists are much more interesting than "objective" ones, mainly because it is impossible for people to be 100 percent objective about art. Everyone approaches every movie differently, leading to all these diverse responses. I also like to think the stories and filmmakers we connect to the most say a little about ourselves, our own lives, not merely our taste.
I watched part of an episode of The Big Bang Theory and one of the character's female friends pointed out that the Nazis would have been vaporized by the arc of the covenant even if Indiana Jones hadn't intervened.
I eagerly await your book. I'd happily pay money for more of your writing. I think a lot of your readers on this blog probably feel the same way.
The Wizard of Oz... Sorry but your list is not credible to me anymore. This movie is ridiculous, mediocre and visually ugly and grotesque (I am not speaking about technique), although his morality is laudable.
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