Jeff's Favorite Movies

As of today, I've watched and rated 2,800 movies, assigning each a numerical rating 1 (a waste of life) and 10 (loved it). Of course, this rating took place over many many years and I can't claim that my ratings have been consistent over the long haul; I'm sure that my tastes have changed during this journey. But although I'd like to, I can't watch all 2,800 movies over again to try and be more consistent, so for what it's worth, here is the list of the 70-or-so movies I've rated 9 or 10, followed by the 320-or-so-next-best films I've rated as 8.

I generally favor movies that are heavy in the plot department; there are many movies which are highly regarded on the Internet Movie Database or by critics which I don't like at all. Breathless is one such example. To me, it felt like nothing happened, and I rated it a 4 (I've since re-rated it as 7, because I now better appreciate it's allure, but it's still not a favorite). Even the highly-regarded Citizen Kane falls into that category; I rated it a 7 since although it might have introduced lots of new film techniques and had many interesting perspectives, the plot itself was totally boring to me. I didn't ever really care what "Rosebud" meant, so the rest of the film's goodness was lost on me. So those are two movies that don't quite make it onto my list of favorite movies. If you strongly disagree with both of these non-recommendations, you might as well stop reading here because my tastes don't align with yours. But if you tentatively agree, keep reading.

To rate a movie highly (that is, rate it as if I'd really enjoy watching it again, which is what my rating of 8 means), it has to have at least one of the following: a great plot, gorgeous photography, be a musical, contain beautiful music such as the way Kubrick used music, be a great science-fiction movie, or include anything about Italy, or especially Rome, for which I'm a total slut. I'm not at all adverse to non-American films; many of my 300-or-so-next-best films are black-and-white subtitled films. So if you're still reading and these things also tickle your fancy, here are my favorite 300-or-so movies out of the 2,319 I've watched.

I welcome you to email Jeff.Bondono@gmail.com with any comments on my choices.

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My Favorite 60 or so Movies, listed alphabetically

  1. Alien: Terrific sci-fi horror film. A distress signal brings a spacefaring crew to a planet where the horror begins. Be sure to watch this one, and at least the first sequel, Aliens.
  2. The Best Years of Our Lives: Three World War II veterans return home after the war with difficult adjustments to make. This movie touches a lot of people, including me, and shows a time capsule of an America long gone. Plus, geez, that musical score is just delicious.
  3. (subtitled) The Big Parade: In my opinion, this silent film is the best ever made demonstrating the horrors of World War I, especially after the innocence and idylism of the first two acts. Difficult to find, but if you come across it, don't miss it.
  4. The Birds: A classic Hitchcock horror flick. It'll leave a lasting impression on you that you'll contemplate whenever you see an electric power line where a flock of birds are perching. Yikes it makes me shiver just to think about it. Watch this movie!
  5. Blade Runner: The best science-fiction movie ever made. What a spectacular view of the future of Los Angeles, great accompanying sound track by Vangelis, and adaptation of a short story by one of the greatest sci-fi authors ever, Philip K. Dick. One of the last movies made with entirely in-camera effects, before CGI took over.
  6. (subtitled) Das Boot: Settle down for the slow pace of this movie, with the pay-off that you'll gain an understanding about life in a submarine during wartime. A German U-Boat crew terrorizes British convoys and pays a heavy price for their actions. Terrific action film, the best submarine movie I’ve ever seen.
  7. Brief Encounter: The story of an affair, proficiently told with beautiful photography, perfect pacing, great acting by two every-people, and accompanied by Rachmaninov's great Second Piano Concerto. Sit down and enjoy 90 minutes of well-told romantic indulgence.
  8. Charade: A young woman’s husband is killed by a small gang who believes he made off with all the loot from their robbery. They assume she has the loot and they now want their fair share, regardless of who gets hurt. Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and other merely great actors in a who-dunnit with plenty of twists and turns.
  9. (subtitled) Cinema Paradiso: A sweet love story to the movies, about a very young boy whose father was killed at war but was given fatherly love by Alfredo, the movie theater projectionist in his small town in Sicily. He idolizes Alfredo and the movies he shows and grows to replace him as projectionist after an accident forces Alfredo into retirement. He finds love but it’s ended abruptly by the girl’s parents who don’t think he’s good enough for her. He serves in the military and comes back to town disillusioned. We jump forward 30 years to when he’s a successful film maker in Rome and receives a call that Alfredo has died, whereupon he returns to his hometown to attend the funeral, reminisce and receive a gift from Alfredo. Bring kleenex. If you're reading this you probably love movies, as I most assuredly do, so you owe it to yourself to watch this love story to the movies.
  10. A Clockwork Orange: Every Kubrick movie is great, but a few are even greater than the others. This one's about violent youth, and society's way to deal with them, with a typically-superb Kubrick soundtrack. (if you haven't already watched every single movie that Stanley Kurbrick directed, you should stop here and watch them all. Every Kubrick movie is exceptional. After you've watched them all, please continue)
  11. (subtitled) Cranes are Flying: Young lovers Boris and Veronika are separated when he secretly enlists in Russia’s WWII army. Both suffer greatly because of the war. Though the same story has been told many times, this 1957 Soviet film that features inventive hand-held camera work, superb compositions, and means of filming that communicate much more than standard techniques would have done.
  12. Crash: I like movies which weave seamingly-disparate stories into a unified theme, and this one does it superbly, with a compelling soundtrack that builds to the climax.
  13. (subtitled) The Cremator: Wow, what a superb black comedy of the macabre, featuring great inventive camera work, lots of fish-eye-lens, modern fast-paced cutting, and turning quite horrific at the end. A very odd man runs his ‘Temple of Death’, a crematorium adjacent to a cemetery in Prague, and transforms from a pacifist not-quite-family man into something much darker.
  14. (subtitled) La Dolce Vita: Just a great glimpse of 1960's Rome, the story of a stale reporter attempting to enjoy 'the sweet life', but not really enjoying anything at all. Great Italian music, plus, a thousand bonus points just for being an Italian movie set in Rome.
  15. Donnie Darko: Teen-aged Donnie Darko is spared from death in his bed by an evil angel in the form of a rabbit who predicts his world will end in a month and encourages him to commit a series of crimes, which sets Donnie on a journey to figure out what's happening to him and why.
  16. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Another wierd sci-fi masterpiece. Can you erase someone from your past? Are you sure you want to?
  17. Fargo: Jeez I hate that I like this movie so much, but a lot of people do so I guess it's all right. Crime mystery, great likeable cops, terrible awful murderous criminals, the climactic scene has stuck with me for a long time now, makes me squirm in my chair as I write this. Maybe that's part of what makes a movie great?
  18. Fiddler on the Roof: This one's probably my favorite musical of all time. The songs are fantastic, Topol was born to play the part of Tevye, the other actors are also great, the photography is beautiful, and I can identify with Tevye's loss of control over his children. It's a lesson of humility many of us must learn.
  19. Fight Club: This movie is just so wacked out, so fresh and original, and so much fun to watch over and over, that I've gotta believe that once you watch it it'll become one of your favorites, too.
  20. Forrest Gump: One of the few best movies of all time. We just weave through Forrest's life, the mundane, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, and all the while we admire the plain and simple value of being good.
  21. The Godfather: The life of a New York mafia boss and his sons.
  22. (subtitled) The Great Beauty: You've made it to my absolute favorite movie of all time (so far). It's a love story to Rome, with gorgeous cinematography, an incredible soundtrack, and all-to-brief visits to many of the incredibly beautiful places I love in Rome. I wish I could meet Stefano, who has the keys to all the best places in Rome. And if none of this was enough, this movie has the best, most peaceful closing credits in any movie from any era. This is modern Italian cinema at its very best. Plus, a thousand bonus points just for being an Italian movie. If I've convinced one reader to watch this movie, then I'm happy, because this movie deserves to be watched over and over again.
  23. The Green Mile: A faithful adaptation of a Stephen King book about the inmates and guards on death row. One of the inmates has a special power which the guards discover.
  24. (subtitled) The Hidden Fortress: Peasants, general, princess and lots of gold travel across borders, similar plot to Star Wars (R2D2 and C3P0 help Solo and Skywalker get Princess Leah to safety). Superb comedy, superb direction, love the scene where the generals fight with spears.
  25. (subtitled) The Human Condition, Parts I, II and III: A powerful 9-1/2 hour epic anti-war trilogy with superb black-and-white cinematography and great music, telling its tale with very little battle footage. It tells the story of Kaji, a Japanese pacifist during World War II who agreed to improve productivity in an iron-ore mine in Japanese-occupied Manchuria in exchange for amnesty from military service. He worked on treating the miners more fairly to improve productivity, including 300 Chinese POWs that were dumped on the mine by the military and treated very poorly by most of the other mining overlords. For this he was arrested, beaten, and his amnesty revoked for siding with the POWs. Kaji's relationship with his wife, Michiko, is depicted during this movie as well, to setup Kaki's motivations through the rest of the story. That covers the first movie in the trilogy, named "No Greater Love". After having his amnesty from the draft revoked, the second movie, named "Road to Eternity", follows Kaji through reporting for service, basic training, and eventual leadership of his own platoon during WWII, ending with the nearly complete massacre of his platoon in a battle against a Russian tank column. The brutality of the Japanese in disciplining their own troops is one focus of this central part of the trilogy, and it includes the only battle scenes in the trilogy, about 45 minutes worth if memory serves me correctly. In the finale, named "A Soldier's Prayer", Kaji leads the couple remaining survivors from his platoon and various refugees picked up along the way on a long trek on foot through now Soviet-occupied territory to return to southern Manchuria in the hopes that something remains of their towns and families. All he wants is to return to his wife. He has to surrender along the way and becomes a forced laborer being mistreated in a Soviet work camp, reversing the role he held in the first part of the trilogy. The intensely-building suspense of "Will he make it home to Michiko, and will she even still be there?" holds our interest during this superb finale. 9-1/2 hours is a big commitment, but I found this epic trilogy to be well worth the investment of my time.
  26. Hunt for Red October: A great submarine thriller filled with suspense.
  27. Inception: Top-notch sci-fi with great visuals, and plenty of mind-bending to make it worth several viewings.
  28. Interstellar: Superb sci-fi thriller depicting the search for a new home for humanity after we've finished ruining the Earth due to the poor decisions made during the Trump administration. (I hope I'm wrong about this, but truly fear that the election of this moron is the tipping point)
  29. It Happened One Night: An early romantic comedy from the 1930's that holds up pretty well 80 years later.
  30. It's A Wonderful Life: The best Christmas movie ever stars Jimmy Stewart as George Baily, Donna Reed as his wife, Lionel Barrymore as the town grinch, and Henry Travers as George’s guardian angel, sent to Earth to earn his wings by helping a man in ruin by showing him how much worse the world would have been if he’d never been born, despite the fact that George never was able to live the life of his youthful ambitions.
  31. The King and I: I just love the songs in this musical. The story is cliche, the acting might not be the best, but wow I do love the music.
  32. King Kong: Great sci-fi, the way it used to be made.
  33. King Kong: A pretty darned good modern remake of the original King Kong.
  34. Koyaanisqatsi: A 90-minute-long music video of time lapse fast motion and extreme slow motion photography with themes of nature, man, and the conflict between them. Accomanied by a Philip Glass score. Highly recommended.
  35. (subtitled) Last Year at Marienbad: A movie with polarized reviews. Many people hate it, thinking it's the epitome of pretentious French cinema. I happen to really like the film as a beautifully-photographed black-and-white masterpiece that is a real brain-twister. Sit back, enjoy the photography, the sounds, the mirrors, the talking, the circles that don't quite return to their starting point. For me, this one's a blast! Past, Present and Future are mashed together seemingly randomly. Mantras of the narrator are repeated over and over, sometimes with slight variations. A man tries to convince a woman who claims she doesn't know him that they met here last year and had an intense relationship. My first time watching resulted in sheer confusion. During my next few viewings, I tried to piece together a coherent story, reading articles on the internet (like these) for ideas. But there is no coherent story - each potential explanation makes sense for 80% of the movie, then fails miserably for the other 20%. Eventually, I found I enjoy the film best if I just sit back and enjoy the photography, the narration, the bits of story, and accept that this is abstract cinema at its finest.
  36. Memento: Wow, I've finally found a guy with a worse memory than mine. Q: What happens if you can't remember a thing, and you tell the story backward? A: You get a great movie!
  37. (subtitled) Metropolis: Silent sci-fi film which wrote the book on science fiction in the movies. Watch this film and consider how many of its scenes have been copied over and over again, even still in modern sci-fi movies.
  38. The Naked Island: A masterfully crafted cinematic poem about a peasant family of four who are the only inhabitants of a small Japanese island where they terrace-farm the land. Their daily workload is tremendous, rowing to the mainland, collecting water, bringing it back and hauling it up the terraces to water their plants individually. Their story is told without any dialog (!), but instead has gorgeous musical accompaniment, and features beautiful black-and-white photography in which many individual frames of the movie could be cut out, printed and hung on a wall as artwork. Be prepared for a very unusual experience when you sit down to watch this movie. It is excruciatingly slow and you must clear your mind and enjoy the photography, the music, the slowly-exposed story of these people and their environment. After watching, be sure to watch again with the original soundtrack (not audio track 2), but with subtitle track 2, which is an English translation of the Japanese director’s and music composer’s commentary track.
  39. 1917: Two men from the trenches of WWI France are given the assignment of warning troops some distance away to not attack the Germans tomorrow morning since it’s a trap. Amazingly shot in a few no-cut segments which were cleverly blended together to make a movie that looks like it has no cuts at all. The director’s commentary is excellent, explaining a lot about how the movie was made. The cinematographer’s commentary is superb, though, explaining the shots, cameras used, lighting, etc.
  40. North by Northwest: Hitchcock sure knew how to create a great entertaining thriller! This one will keep you enthralled from start to finish. If you've never seen it, you're in for a treat!
  41. Once Upon a Time in the West: A trio of outlaws, Frank, Cheyanne and Harmonica compete for the supposed riches and perhaps the attention of the gorgeous new widow in town. Superb photography, outstanding sound, beautiful music, some humor sprinkled in, and a good-enough story line to keep it interesting. Clear your mind and enjoy the craftsmanship on this often-slow-paced film, easily among the best few westerns ever made.
  42. The Pianist: A terrific holocaust movie that will leave you a changed person. Beware that this will be depressing and disturbing, but it's a film you won't forget.
  43. (subtitled) The Piano Teacher: A young student falls in love with his much older sadistic and masochistic piano teacher.
  44. The Prestige: Who will come out on top in this lifelong rivalry between two magicians, involving one-upmanship, stealing of trick secrets, injuring each other, and murder? Are you watching closely?
  45. (subtitled) Raise the Red Lantern: Wicked treachery between the four wives and servants of a Chinese prince, with the real star of the show being the superb photography, especially of the gorgeous palace.
  46. (subtitled) Rashomon: Conflicting testimony of crimes of rape, murder and robbery are told by the three participants in these actions. Then they are recalled during a pounding rainstorm by three people taking refuge under the Rashomon Gate in 12th-century Kyoto, Japan. They seek to figure out the truth, but are frustrated in this effort. Perhaps each testimony is the truth that each witness would have been proud of? This 1950 Japanese movie, directed by Akira Kurosawa and featuring Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura is a true classic, along with The Seven Samurai. So influential worldwide that the term 'the Rashomon Effect' has come to mean what occurs when an event is given contradictory interpretations by the individuals involved.
  47. Roman Holiday: This one's just the ultimate feel-good romantic comedy for me. I love the scenery, I think I've been everywhere except the police station and inside Joe's apartment, and wow, Audrey Hepburn's first movie! Gregory Peck and her enjoy a romantic weekend in my favorite city.
  48. (subtitled) Run Lola Run: Lola run through Berlin to help her criminal boyfriend, and you gotta love it. Rinse & Repeat. All with fast-paced nearly non-stop action. My favorite non-war-related German movie.
  49. Schindler's List: The very best holocaust movie ever made. You will never forget this one.
  50. (subtitled) A Separation: Superb story of a married Iranian couple in which the wife decides to separate, setting off a chain of events that might destroy her husband. Prepare for intense drama from start to finish.
  51. Seven: A retiring homicide detective and a young detective new to the area are thrown together into investigating a series of murders related to the seven deadly sins. Terrific thriller. Shocker of an ending.
  52. (subtitled) The Seven Samurai: This is another superb Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa and featuring Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura, as is Rashomon. In this one, seven unemployed samurai soldiers are hired in 1587 by a small peasant farming village to defend the village from impending attack by bandits. It took me a few viewings (and listening to the DVD commentary tracks) to understand the Japanese culture and history in this movie, but once I did so the movie advanced from a really fun action movie into a masterpiece. It's been imitated many times, but never bettered.
  53. (subtitled) The Seventh Seal: A knight and his squire return home from the Crusades through a Europe ravaged by Black Plague, while Death threatens that the knight’s end is near. He buys time to do one last good deed by playing a game of chess against Death and uses that borrowed time to save a young family. A superb movie filled with never-to-be-forgotten scenes, great photography, some humor, several memorable characters, and an intense message.
  54. The Shawshank Redemption: This is one of the very best movies of all time. Based on a Stephen King short story, a man is wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. The characters he meets and friends he makes there will pull at your heartstrings. Perhaps it's all a bit contrived and unrealistic, but it's a terrific way to spend 2 hours or your life. Or 4, or 6, or...
  55. The Shining: A family man / author takes a winter job as the caretaker in a huge lodge-type hotel that will probably be snowed-in for the winter. Writer’s block and family problems ensue. One of the best horror movies ever. Be sure to watch it.
  56. A Simple Plan: Three guys happen upon a stash of lost cash and decide on a simple plan to keep it for themselves. Things unravel and become less and less simple as time goes on.
  57. Sophie's Choice: Sophie is a holocaust survivor from Poland who emigrated to the United States and met and fell in love with Nathan, an mentally-unstable holocaust historian, and Stingo, a southerner who became best friends to both of them, and lover to Sophie. Her holocaust story unfolds over the duration of the movie.
  58. Star Wars IV: A New Hope: This, the first movie released in the Star Wars series, will always be the best Star Wars film of all time. Period. It was such a shock to see when it came out; we'd never seen anything like this before. Later we learned that much of this was put together in a computer, and that CGI just continued to improve and get more complex and overwhelming with each new movie; that trend continues today. For the story and the characters and the action in this Star Wars series, this original movie has stood the test of time quite nicely. They even tried copying the story, essentially word for word, in 2015's The Force Awakens, but BB8 is no R2D2, and there wasn't even a Wookie. Watch the original again.
  59. (subtitled) Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: This silent film tells the story of a farmer and his girlfriend who plan to murder the farmer's wife. Be careful what you wish for! This is a great example of a well-done silent film: the musical soundtrack is perfect, and the story is so well told visually that very few intertitles are needed.
  60. Titanic: Spectacular disaster film meets love story meets standing on the bow of a ship and flying through the air. What could be better? If you're the person who hasn't seen this yet, you should watch it.
  61. To Kill a Mockingbird: A father teaches tolerance to his children by example. If only this lesson had been learned back in 1962 instead of still not yet...
  62. Twelve Angry Men: No color, no special effects, almost completely one setting, but superb acting and great storytelling combine to show how a great movie was made back in the day. The jury in a New York City murder trial is frustrated by a single member whose skeptical caution forces them to more carefully consider the evidence before jumping to a hasty verdict.
  63. 2001: A Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick brought us the ultimate sci-fi movie, filled with spectacular pre-CGI graphics accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack of classical music. This movie above all others gives me a sense of what it might be like to travel through space: breakneck speed in a slow motion reality of what it's really like to fly through the aether. Sit down in your recliner for this one, slow down your heartrate, turn up the volume, and let the beautiful images and sound wash over you as you figure out the storyline.
  64. (subtitled) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg: A musical (actually an OPERA, since all words in this movie are sung, none spoken) about idyllic young love interrupted by separation due to war, and the long-term impact of that separation on it’s young lovers.
  65. Wait Until Dark: This thriller about a blind lady (Audrey Hepburn) and a band of thugs builds ever so slowly into one of the best horror climaxes of all time.
  66. West Side Story: Superb music, dancing and storytelling in this adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set in 1960s New York where teenage gangs oppose each other due only to their ethnic differences and prejudices.
  67. White Christmas: One of the two greatest Christmas movies of all time, with "It's a Wonderful Life". But the advantage has to go to White Christmas, since it's an upbeat musical. And wow, what a great set of songs (and dances) are in this movie. Two army buddies team up to give their old General a great Christmas, and to find romance and snow in the meantime.
  68. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Wow, if there was an opposite of White Christmas, it's this one. A bitter married couple tear each other apart during a night of drinking. Be prepared to be depressed and to hate the characters, but Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton do a heck of a job of acting in this one.
  69. (subtitled) The Young Girls of Rochefort: Superb lighter-than-air pastel-colored musical about 3 couples searching for love in care-free Rochefort, France, during the construction and the weekend of a carnival. Lots of singing and dancing, humor, likable characters, a forward-moving plot, and really enjoyable music are to be found in this totally over-the-top fantasy.

In case you agree with my list of favorite movies, here are my 300-or-so-next-best films that you might also enjoy, again listed alphabetically
(The best 34 in this bunch are in bold font)

  1. Ace in the Hole
  2. (subtitled) The Adventure (L'Avventura): First movie in the series about alienation (L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse, Red Desert) by Antonioni. A group of friends takes a yacht to a small uninhabited volcanic island. One of the women disappears. Her girlfriend and boyfriend hook up, but he's unwilling to commit. Loaded with gorgeous photography, superb compositions, and a quite beautiful leading lady.
  3. The Adventures of Robin Hood: This is a movie from my own Dad's childhood, almost 20 years before I was born. Wow, could they ever make a fun movie back then. When you think today's action movies are spectacular, sit down with this one and watch how they did it just as well back then. Plus, you get to enjoy a soundtrack by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, one of my favorite modern composers.
  4. Advise and Consent
  5. (subtitled) After the Wedding: The owner of a poor orphanage in India tries to obtain funding from a wealthy man in Denmark, and after the wedding of that man's son, everything changes bit by bit.
  6. Airplane!: A slapstick comedy about the happenings on an airplane flight
  7. Aliens: A sequel that's as good as the original!
  8. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930): WWI trenches, transformation of young men from the glory of war to their awakening to the reality of death, fear, and disillusion.
  9. All Quiet on the Western Front (2022): An initially-naive young German soldier experiences the terrors of World War I when he is stationed in the trenches on the western front. I liked this better than the 1930 film version of the story because of it is beautifully filmed with a spectacular sound track, but it is admittedly shallower than that original version in its storytelling and human interaction.
  10. All the President's Men: Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein expose a 'dirty tricks’ fund controlled by Haldeman which was used to sabotage democratic candidates and was eventually brought to light because of the Watergate Break-in, and which led to Nixon’s resignation.
  11. (subtitled) Alphaville: Fantastic mix of sci-fi, film-noir, comedy, over-the-top music, and the superb voice of the Alpha-60 computer. A secret agent posing as a reporter travels to Alphaville, a futuristic city in another galaxy, to destroy an evil scientist named Von Braun who has created the Alpha-60 machine which outlaws love and self-expression.
  12. Amadeus: Mozart's life story
  13. American Beauty: A bored suburban family man has a mid-life crisis after having a crush on his daughter’s hot high-school friend. His OCD wife has a crisis of her own. And his daughter does some growing up. All this, plus a great soundtrack.
  14. American History X
  15. (subtitled) Amores perros: A Spanish film similar to Crash. Three interwoven stories: a young man who wants to make enough money from dogfighting to steal his brother's wife away, a model who gets in a car accident and falls apart from her husband, and a hired murderer who wants to avoid his last assignment.
  16. Angels & Demons: A thriller at the Vatican
  17. Annie Hall: Funny and touching romantic comedy about a neurotic New York comedian (Woody Allen) who falls in love with an insecure ditzy nightclub singer (Diane Keaton).
  18. The Apartment: Clerk in huge company is intimidated to provide his apartment to executives for their use to have sex with female employees, but becomes disgruntled with the arrangement when he learns that the elevator operator he likes is being had in his apartment by the company president.
  19. (subtitled) Apocalypto: I enjoyed the heart-pounding action from minute one through minute 139. There's very little dialog, so the subtitles are pretty easy to keep up with.
  20. Arlington Road: A spy thriller
  21. Arsenic and Old Lace: Comedy about a newlywed man who learns, while leaving on his honeymoon, that his two maiden aunts are serial murderers. Then his serial killer brother arrives on the scene.
  22. (subtitled) Ashes and Diamonds
  23. Atonement: A young girl thinks her older sister’s boyfriend is a sex fiend and falsely reports him as having raped another girl. He is arrested, then released to serve in the British Army during WWII. The young girl comes to her senses later in life and has a difficult time atoning for her mistake. The 5-minute steadicam scene of the British retreat from the Germans at Dunkirk is spectacular.
  24. (subtitled) Autumn Sonata: Narcissistic mother, a concert pianist, comes to visit grown daughter and her husband, who are taking care of her other daughter who is suffering from a degenerative neural disease. Things start out cordial, but after a while a fierce recollection of harsh feelings from daughter toward her neglectful mother is unleashed, now that she is grown and emboldened and can reflect on her childhood.
  25. Avatar: The first great non-gratuitous 3D movie. A fun plot, good morals, bad guys who are easy to hate, and pleasing graphics to boot. Watch it in 3D if you can. A disabled marine sent on a unique mission to the moon Pandora becomes torn between following his orders which will destroy the environment of the moon, and protecting the unique inhabitants of that world.
  26. Awakenings: Long-term catatonic patients are cared for by a new doctor who takes a sincere interest in trying to figure out how to help them.
  27. Baby Doll: A failed middle-aged farmer and his child bride live in a broken down home in this southern-drawl comedy, where he burns down the Cotton Gin of his competitor and loses the respect and affection of his wife.
  28. Back to the Future: Marty McFly, a typical American teenager of the Eighties, is accidentally sent back to 1955 in a plutonium-powered DeLorean 'time machine' invented by a slightly mad scientist. During his often hysterical, always amazing trip back in time, Marty must make certain his teenage parents-to-be meet and fall in love - so he can get back to the future
  29. (subtitled) Ballad of a Soldier: A Russian WWII soldier performs some heroics in battle that prompt his commanding officer to grant him a 2 day trip home as a reward, so he can fix his mother’s roof. The journey home is filled with adventure and various kinds of love, taking much longer than expected, turning his 2-day stay at home into a 10-minute stay, just enough time to see his mother and say hello. A touching film with surprisingly little Soviet propaganda; really just credit to a soldier who fought for his country.
  30. Baraka: Second installment of the art-film trilogy of Chronos and Baraka and Samsara (below), successors to Koyaanisqatsi (one of my top-60). Baraka and Samsara are very similar; Baraka has perhaps more incredibly beautiful scenes; Samsara has perhaps more of a message and is technically better.
  31. (subtitled) The Battle of Algiers: The story of Algerian resistance fighters during their 1950s fight for independence from the French government.
  32. (subtitled) A Beautiful Mind: Genius mathematician accepts a job as a government code-breaker but is actually going mentally insane, and he fights this illness until death.
  33. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead: Brothers decide to rob a jewelry store since the insurance will cover the losses and no one will get hurt, but things go terribly wrong.
  34. Being John Malkovich: A puppeteer discovers a portal into John Malkovich’s mind in this very funny and clever movie.
  35. Ben-Hur
  36. (subtitled) The Bicycle Thieves: Great story of the desperation of a man struggling against society in post- WW II Rome.
  37. (subtitled) The Big City: An entire conservative Indian family’s life is changed when the wife has to get a job to make ends meet.
  38. (subtitled) Black Book
  39. Black Hawk Down: Intense modern war movie about a helicopter shot down during fighting in Somalia.
  40. Blade Runner 2049: The sequel to Blade Runner, not as superb as the original, but still quite good.
  41. The Box: Married couple receives the Box with a button inside. Push it and someone dies, you get a million dollars, and by the way your life will become hell.
  42. Brand Upon the Brain: Experimental black-and-white imitation-silent film with narration (choose audio track from 8 different narrators) about a man who goes back to paint-over his childhood home to erase the memories that he recalls while doing so. Not for those who dislike or don’t appreciate silent films like Metropolis or The Passion of Joan of Arc.
  43. Brazil: Highly inventive dystopian sci-fi comedy about a worker in a senseless super-bureaucratic government who becomes just another terrorist enemy of the state while trying to free a wrongfully-arrested man and chasing after the woman of his dreams.
  44. Breach: An aide in the Pentagon is charged with exposing his boss as a spy.
  45. Breakfast at Tiffany's: Audrey Hepburn falls in love with George Peppard in the New York of 1960.
  46. (subtitled) The Bridge (Die Bruecke): In the final days of WWII, 7 German high-school-aged teenagers idolize the war effort, then are drafted. They’re thrilled to serve until they learn what fighting is really like.
  47. Bridge of Spies: During the Cold War in 1960, an American lawyer is assigned to defend a Soviet spy in his trial, then to arrange an exchange of that spy to obtain Francis Gary Powers from the Soviets. This movie features some interesting shots of 1960 Berlin.
  48. The Bridges of Madison County: All right, maybe it's a glorified soap opera, but it sure did leave a silky milk chocolate taste in my throat.
  49. The Bridge on the River Kwai: Epic tale of rebellion and sabotage by prisoners of war charged with building a bridge for the enemy.
  50. Brigadoon
  51. Bronco Billy: Clint Eastwood leads his ragtag circus ensemble from town to town and crisis to crisis.
  52. The Browning Version: The life of a harsh schoolteacher (the antithesis of Mr Chips) is turned completely upside-down and thoroughly destroyed on his last day before retiring from the school where he’s taught for 30 years.
  53. The Bucket List: Dying guys Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman decide to see stuff on their bucket lists before death.
  54. The Butterfly Effect
  55. (subtitled) Capernaum: A 12-year-old boy living in extreme poverty with his family in Beruit tries to prevent his parents from giving away his 11-year-old sister for marriage to a 30-year-old, but fails, so he runs away and is taken in by an even poorer Ethiopian refugee woman with a young baby. While she works during the day he takes care of the baby for her, until one day when she’s arrested by immigration and when she fails to come back home for a few days he realizes its up to him to help the baby and himself survive. He returns home for his non-existent papers and learns his sister died from pregnancy, so he stabs the 30-year-old husband and is sent to prison. He sues his real parents for neglecting all their children.
  56. (subtitled) The Captain (Der Hauptmann): In the last days of WW II, a German soldier who is deserting finds an abandoned Captain's uniform. He puts it on to save himself from pursuit, other solders see him and follow him as a leader, and we watch as he commits a series of atrocities as more and more people follow him and no one steps forward strongly enough to stop him.
  57. (subtitled) Carmen: Bizet's opera Carmen features great music and a story involving a soldier who falls into unrequited love.
  58. Carnage: One boy hits another with a stick on the playground and breaks two of his teeth. The parents meet in one couple’s apartment and spar with each other in a witty evolving battle.
  59. Casablanca
  60. Cinderella Man: A boxer, who is apparently washed-up due to age and persistent injuries, loses his boxing license and is forced to take some time off during the depression, and becomes motivated to make a comeback when he cannot feed or shelter his family due to lack of work. His manager happens upon a last-minute fight he could fit into, and that gets him back into boxing.
  61. (subtitled) Cleo from 5 to 7: Two hours in the life of a gorgeous woman singer in Paris who is awaiting the results of a biopsy, fearful of a cancer diagnosis.
  62. Cloud Atlas
  63. Colossus: The Forbin Project: Those damned computers! Give them superior intelligence and ultimate power -- what could go wrong?
  64. The Conjuring: A modern haunted house / exorcist-like movie in which a couple moves into a house that seems haunted and asks paranormal investigators to check things out.
  65. Conspiracy Theory: Seemingly-crazy and paranoid cab driver Mel Gibson thinks everything around him is evidence of a conspiracy, and he loves Julia Roberts.
  66. Contact: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence finally detects a signal; one with a difficult message to decode that leads to the journey of a lifetime
  67. Countdown to Zero: A sensible and sobering documentary urging the reduction in nuclear weapons.
  68. Crimson Tide
  69. Curious Case of Benjamin Button
  70. (subtitled) Daguerreotypes: The lives of the shopkeepers along the Rue Daguerre, in Paris, where the filmmaker, Agnes Varda, lived
  71. Dancer in the Dark: Wow, I watched this for the first time in December of 2016, and it's the most unique musical I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of them). I recommend this one very highly if you want a unique instance of the genre, along with some superb music and dancing.
  72. Dark City
  73. The Dark Knight
  74. The Day the Earth Stood Still: One of the great sci-fi films of all time. A space traveller has important news for Earth, but a hostile greeting from humans makes it difficult to deliver.
  75. Deadfall
  76. Deceived: A woman’s husband is involved in swindling a valuable antique necklace from his museum, even after he dies in a car accident.
  77. The Devil All the Time: A young boy is surrounded by evil through his entire life with disasterous results.
  78. (subtitled) Les Diaboliques: The wife of a brutish schoolmaster and a teacher who was his former lover, join forces to drown him in a bathtub then dump him in the school’s swimming pool. But when the pool is drained, he is not there. A police inspector keeps hounding them for clues to the man’s death.
  79. The Disappearance of Alice Creed
  80. (subtitled) Divorce Italian Style: A 40-year-old Sicilian man wants to divorce his wife since he now loves a 20-year-old hottie, but of course, divorce is not allowed in Catholic Italy. So he sets her up to cheat on him with the intent to kill her in a fit of rage and get a short jail term for the crime of passion, then marry the hottie.
  81. Dodsworth
  82. Dog Day Afternoon: A suspenseful bank robbery goes bad and becomes a media circus
  83. Dogville: This one offers a fresh way of storytelling, and is worthy of a watch if only to enjoy great art expressed through creative filmmaking. If you have the attention span for this one, there is a nice pay-off.
  84. Don't Breathe: An intense suspenseful thriller / horror movie set in an abandoned neighborhood of Detroit.
  85. Don't Look Up: A comet is discovered that’ll crash into Earth and destroy all life. Science tries to convince leadership to launch a deflection mission, but science-adverse leadership ignores them and sides with corporate interests instead. A satire that rings absolutely true in today’s world on so many levels, like governing for re-election alone, distrust of true science and promotion of fake science, attention to social media above all else, public belief of made-up news, etc.
  86. (subtitled) Downfall (Der Untergang): Powerful story of Hitler's last days in the bunker, and the surrender of Germany.
  87. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb: Satire about an insane General who orders a squadron of bombers to drop their nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union, and how the politicians, military, and diplomats in the War Room try to either intensify or stop the attack.
  88. Dunkirk
  89. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
  90. Edge of Tomorrow
  91. (subtitled) 8 1/2: The surrealistically-told story of a film director with director’s block, who is under pressure to make a movie but has no idea what it’s about, who the characters are, who the actors will be, or what they will say, constructed from episodes from Fellini’s lifetime, with dreams and fantasies seamlessly interwoven with reality.
  92. (subtitled) Eight Deadly Shots: 6-hour Finnish miniseries about a poor farmer’s decline into alcoholism by addiction to making and drinking moonshine, including his abuse of his family and authorities, and ending with the shooting of four policemen he fears are out to arrest him.
  93. The 11th hour: A documentary about global warming.
  94. Ender's Game: Children are taught to be battle-ready through game-playing in order to defeat the alien Formics.
  95. The Exorcist: That kid's got the devil in her.
  96. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: A search for closure after 9/11.
  97. Eye in the Sky: How to deal with civilians during wartime?
  98. Eyes Wide Shut: Kubrick's last film, a married couple plays with fire when they allow their marriage to be challenged due to temptation and fantasy.
  99. A Face in the Crowd: Andy Griffith plays a small-town southern singer and schmoozer who is discovered by a radio show host, gains in popularity, and rises into a powerful media star.
  100. Fail-Safe: 1960's tale of military’s control of nuclear weapons going wrong. A real thriller.
  101. Falling Down: Michael Douglas, a successful engineer, suddenly snaps.
  102. Femme Fatale: Erotic thriller
  103. (subtitled) Fermat's Room
  104. (subtitled) A Film Unfinished
  105. Finding Vivian Maier: A woman's lifelong street photography is discovered after her death.
  106. Firewall
  107. (subtitled) Floating Weeds: Well-made movie about the leader of a troupe of travelling actors who returns to the city where his illegitimate son and one-time-girlfriend live. The troupe returns there occasionally, where he sees his son, masquerading as an uncle. The son is now grown and falls in love with a girl in the troup. This is Ozu’s remake of his own 1934 silent film ‘A Story of Floating Weeds’ (Floating Weeds means Drifters). This version of the film features superb photographic compositions in every scene, with splashes of color (especially red) in most compositions, especially in the lower-right corner.
  108. The Fly: Superb sci-fi horror movie with great character development, great acting, a love triangle, and a super-intense last half hour. A scientist has developed a teleportation machine that works great for inanimate objects. He must make adjustments to let it work on living flesh.
  109. Forbidden Planet
  110. Forks Over Knives: Meat, Dairy and Heart Disease
  111. Foul Play: Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase foil a plot to murder the pope, with lots of terrific comedy mixed in.
  112. Full Metal Jacket: Kubrick's tribute to the harshness of boot camp, the horror of combat, and the effect they can have on their pawns.
  113. Galaxy Quest: Very funny spoof of Star Trek, with a good story line and a nice strong message.
  114. The Game
  115. Gattaca
  116. (subtitled) The General: Very funny silent film, with lots of action, lots of outright humor, and tons of subtle humor in Buster Keaton's acting
  117. Get Out: Daughter entices black boyfriends, then brings them home to meet Mom & Dad, whose job it is to supply new bodies for aging relatives.
  118. The Grey Zone: This is an intense Holocaust film about the Jewish assistant of Dr Mengele and the Jewish work crews in the crematoriums of Auschwitz, who remain alive day by day in a moral dilemma by working for the Nazis against their fellow Jews. They finally strike back but at huge cost.
  119. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Two detectives try to piece together a 40-year-old murder among a powerful Swedish family of high-powered businessmen, misfits and Nazis.
  120. (subtitled) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: The original Swedish version of this movie is superb, too. Two detectives try to piece together a 40-year-old murder among a powerful Swedish family of high-powered businessmen, misfits and Nazis.
  121. Gladiator
  122. The Gold Rush: Very funny Charlie Chaplin comedy about a small bumbling man who participates in the Alaska Gold Rush, where all the burly men go. He falls in love with a dancer and befriends a man who strikes it rich in gold and shares the wealth. I prefer the 1925 silent version over the 1942 narrated remake. Filled with great scenes including eating a stewed shoe (at 17:30), dancing dinner rolls (at 58:00), and the cabin teetering on the edge of a cliff (at 1:14:40).
  123. Gone Girl: A woman disappears mysteriously, and all the clues, uncovered slowly, lead to suspicion that her husband killed her.
  124. The Good Earth
  125. The Good Liar: Swindler old man romances an old rich woman to fool her into giving him her money. Things turn more serious than he’d hoped for.
  126. Good Will Hunting
  127. Grand Canyon: A study in friendships, especially an unlikely one that lasts.
  128. Gravity: Two astronauts working on the Hubble Space Telescope during an EVA from the Space Shuttle work together to survive after an accident leaves them stranded in space.
  129. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
  130. (subtitled) Harakiri: An aging ex-Samurai comes to a clan’s headquarters, asking them to let him commit suicide in their courtyard. They tell him the story of another Samurai who did the same thing a few weeks ago. He slowly reveals the family relationship between him and that prior samurai, and the revenge he’s extracted for the cruelty of that prior suicide. Gets a bit silly during the final battle scene, but other than that an intense drama.
  131. Harvey
  132. (subtitled) Headhunters
  133. (subtitled) High and Low: An employee’s son is kidnapped, and the rich executive boss has to decide whether to pay to have the son recovered. Then the 2nd half of the film deals with the attempt by the police to find the kidnapper and bring him to justice.
  134. His Girl Friday: Whirlwind comedy about a newspaper editor who wants to retain a woman as his star reporter and also as his wife.
  135. The History of the World, Part 1
  136. A History of Violence: A small-town family man is visited by people claiming to be from his criminal past
  137. Hotel Rwanda: A hotel manager houses over a thousand Tutsi refugees during their struggle against the genocide being commited by the Hutu militia in Rwanda, Africa.
  138. Hour of the Wolf: Great horror movie about an artist who suffers a nightmarish mental breakdown after he and his young wife move to a sparsely populated island. Great soundtrack, great special effects, brief scenes remind me of Eraserhead, Dracula, and The Birds.
  139. The Hurt Locker
  140. I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang: Returning vet looking for a career falls in with bad friends and participates (at gunpoint) in a $5 robbery. He's sentenced to a chain gang, and we follow his life as he tries to rehabilitate himself.
  141. (subtitled) Ikiru: A worker in the bureaucracy of the post- WW II Tokyo city hall with terminal cancer decides to make a contribution to society that will outlast him.
  142. In Bruges: Dark comedy about two hitmen who botched their last job are sent by their ruthless boss to Bruges to cool down for a while, as they await their next assignment.
  143. In Cold Blood: Two drifters murder a rural family because they think that family has a stash of cash in their home, then the police try to catch them.
  144. In the Heat of the Night: A talented black homicide policeman passes through a southern town during the 1960s and is arrested for a murder. He clears himself with the good-old-boy sheriff and goes on to lead the murder investigation, proving the worth of a black man to this town of bigots.
  145. An Inconvenient Truth: The facts of climate change, and what we don't want to do to repair it.
  146. (subtitled) Infernal Affairs: This is the original version of 'The Departed", and is a much tighter film than the remake, being more cinematic, with a great succinct plot. A gangster infiltrates the police and a policeman infiltrates the gang. Each team wants to find and eliminate the traitor.
  147. Inside Man: Can the bank robber walk right out the front door of the bank and get away with it all?
  148. Into the Wild
  149. It: The kids of Derry face Pennywise during summer vacation
  150. (subtitled) Jacquot de Nantes: The story of Jacque Demy (Varda’s husband) as a child, including events during his childhood that went on to appear in each of his movies, written and filmed while he was dying of AIDS.
  151. (subtitled) Jean de Florette: A greedy landowner and his backward nephew conspire to block the only water source for an adjoining property in order to bankrupt the hunchback owner and force him to sell his farm to them so they can unblock the spring and grow carnations on the property. Beautiful music and cinematography. The sequel is Manon of the Spring.
  152. (subtitled) La Jetee: The precursor to Twelve Monkeys. An experimental film made with narration over still photos (except one video clip of the woman waking up) about experiments in the aftermath of WWIII to travel to the future to obtain what’s necessary for humanity to survive.
  153. Joker: The back-story of the Joker’s life before he became Batman’s arch-enemy. Disturbing bio of a failed clown and commedian, ignored by society, and his downward spiral of attempts at gaining acceptance, understanding his childhood, and commiting horrific crimes.
  154. Jewel Robbery: Great comedy about a woman who is willingly swept off her feet by the robber that stole all the jewelry in the jewelry store she was visiting while her husband bought her a huge diamond ring.
  155. (subtitled) Kapo: Superb story of a Jewish girl who, with the help of a kind man, outsmarts the Nazis to survive WW II in a work camp.
  156. Kind Hearts and Coronets: Great comedy about a man who’s aristocratic family has snubbed his mother and himself, so he decides to murder them all. Then he is accused of murdering is first love’s husband and while on death row, where he writes his memoirs, including the story of all the murders he really performed.
  157. The Killing: A superb early-Kubrick movie about a heist at a racetrack, what can go right, and what can go wrong.
  158. (subtitled) The King of Kings: Cecil B DeMilles' legendary silent film about Jesus Christ's oppression, death and resurrection.
  159. Kramer vs. Kramer
  160. La La Land: Music and aspiring performers in today's Los Angeles
  161. The Life of David Gale: An activist against the death penalty is convicted of rape and murder and placed on death row, where he gives interviews to a reporter to explain his life story. And more.
  162. Life of Pi
  163. Little Children: Sarah & Brad and their small children, and their spouses and friends, and the town pervert and an ex-town-cop intersect and build to a crashing climax.
  164. (subtitled) The Lives of Others: The East German habit of spying on each other
  165. (subtitled) Lola: Jacque Demy tells, in French New Wave style, a really good story of the intersecting lives of several characters in France during the 50s in his first full-length film. Lola is a dancer/entertainer/prostitute with an American sailor who lovers her, an old flame who reappears in her life, and her ex / father of her child who has reappears after 7 years overseas. This is a brief film that moves right along and therefore keeps one’s interest, and one with beautiful scenery, for example the super-picturesque shopping arcade named Passage Pommeraye in the city of Nantes, France. Many of the characters love each other, Frankie, Roland, and Michel love Lola, Lola maybe loves Roland and Michel, Madame Desnoyers loves Roland, her daughter Cecile loves both Roland and Frankie. Not only are they connected with encounters, but with history. For example, Madame Desnoyers used to be a dancer like Lola is, and Celine wants to be one. All of them exhibit some innocence in that even when they lie to each other, they go back and correct those lies later. And, by the way, beautiful actress playing Lola will be Marcello’s lover Maddelena in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, and Guido’s wife in Fellini’s 8 1-2.
  166. Lolita: A middle-aged man goes to all lengths to win the heart and the body of a teen-aged girl who is the daughter of a woman who takes him in as a boarder for the summer.
  167. Looper
  168. The Lost Room
  169. (subtitled) Love Me If You Dare: Childhood friends taunt each other through life. The final 15 minutes will leave you reeling.
  170. Love Me Tonight: A very funny comedy romantic musical with memorable tunes and clever lyrics. A Parisian tailor poses as a baron to collect the large amount owed him by an aristocrat, and meanwhile falls in love with a princess. If you can get past the age of this 1932 film and the over-the-top acting of Maurice Chevalier, you’re in for a real treat with this one.
  171. (subtitled) M
  172. Magnolia
  173. The Maltese Falcon
  174. Man on a Ledge: An escaped convict who claims his innocence uses unusual means to attempt to prove it while he’s out on a ledge threatening to commit suicide.
  175. The Man Who Wasn't There: Superb black-and-white film-noir about barber who bumbles his way into setting off a chain of events which has tragic consequences for everyone involved. Great cast, great acting, great photography. Didn't like the ending, but still, its a great movie.
  176. Man With a Movie Camera: This 1929 silent film is shot by a man wandering around Moscow for a day, contrasting man and machine as he goes. He frequently appears in the film. If you enjoy Koyaanisqatsi, I think you'll enjoy this film, made 53 years earlier but foreshadowing the themes and techniques used in that movie.
  177. Manhattan: A Woody Allen romantic comedy about friends in New York and a midlife crisis.
  178. (subtitled) Manon of the Spring: This is the sequel to Jean de Florette, in which the now-grown daughter of the hunchback is a shepherdess who learns of Cesar and Ugolin's deceipt of her father and extracts revenge on those men who caused her father's death years earlier.
  179. Marnie: Hitchcock thriller about a man who gets involved with a disturbed woman
  180. Marriage Story: Couple (director and actress in New York plays) with a young child, decides to get divorced. Wife and child move to LA for her to act in a TV show, and the divorce turns ugly.
  181. The Martian: an astronaut stranded on Mars tries to survive.
  182. The Matrix
  183. Men in Black
  184. Minority Report
  185. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
  186. (subtitled) Modern Times: Silent Charlie Chaplin comedy
  187. Monsieur Hire: Erotic thriller about an unpopular middle-aged man suspected of murdering a young woman, and peeping at another woman across the courtyard of his apartment building.
  188. Moulin Rouge!: A young man falls for a beautiful nightclub star who is also desired by a jealous duke, all accompanied to fabulous inventive use of music.
  189. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: The nice-guy (Jimmy Stewart) finishes first for once.
  190. The Music Man: In the early 20th century, Harold Hill poses as a professor of music to con the townspeople of an Iowa town into spending their money to buy musical instruments, uniforms, and music for their children to form a marching band.
  191. My Fair Lady: Henry Higgins takes on the challenge to teach Eliza Dolittle how to speak properly and behave like a lady in this really funny musical with clever lyrics.
  192. My First Mister
  193. My Man Godfrey: Slapstick comedy about a woman who takes in a homeless man to be her butler just to defeat her sister in a scavenger hunt, but falls in love with the disinterested butler.
  194. My Voyage to Italy: An exposition, by Martin Scorsese, to the Italian films which influenced him and which he loves.
  195. My Winnipeg: Extremely funny pseudo-documentary about the director’s home town of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and his understanding of the people there, his family when he was growing up, the hockey and how it was destroyed by the evil NHL, and the heroic woman who will restore Winnipeg to its rightful past glory once again.
  196. The Next Three Days: Wife is arrested and convicted of murdering her boss after work, and husband attempts to break her out of prison and reunite the family.
  197. Niagara: Hitchcock-like thriller about two couples vacationing in Niagara Falls, one (with Marilyn Monroe) having deep marital problems, and the other playing the part of the innocent young kids that get mixed up in the misbehavior of the first couple, all set against the scenery and tourist sites of Niagara Falls.
  198. Nightcrawler: An intelligent misfit begins filming accidents, fires and crime scenes when he sees another crew making a living doing that. He sells them to a local news station desparate for ratings. He goes too far.
  199. Ninotchka
  200. No Country for Old Men: Horror chase thriller about a man who discovers a drug transaction gone bad and tries to steal the money he finds on the scene.
  201. (subtitled) No Man's Land: Two soldiers from opposing sides of the Bosnia/Serbian war become trapped in a no-man’s-land trench between their respective front lines, while a third soldier becomes a living booby trap. UN Peacekeepers don’t handle the situation effectively, and reporters become scavengers.
  202. Nocturnal Animals: A woman’s ex-husband from 20 years ago sends her a book manuscript to review about a violent and disturbing attack on their family by a car of young thugs at night along a deserted west-Texas highway.
  203. The Notebook: An old man reads his demented wife the notebook that detailed their love.
  204. (subtitled) Le Notti Bianche: Romantic story of a love triangle, with superb filming and compositions, beautiful sound track, and some unforgettable scenes, set in a small neighborhood of Venice.
  205. (subtitled) Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog): Half-hour sobering holocaust documentary about the Nazi death camps, told by narration over high impact photos and videos of the actual camps
  206. Olive Kitteridge: a great character study that grabbed my interest at the start and held on through the 4 one-hour episodes.
  207. On Golden Pond: Grumpy old grandpa is mellowed out by a month-long visit from his 13-year-old step-grandson.
  208. On the Waterfront: Good story about bad boy Marlin Brando rebelling against the crooked shipping bosses. He gets the babe, too.
  209. (subtitled) Open Your Eyes
  210. (subtitled) Orpheus: A poet in love with the grim reaperess goes to the afterlife to recover the life of his wife. Great special effects for the time, great story, beautifully made with tremendous post-WWII scenery.
  211. The Painted Veil: An infectious disease Dr Fane and his wife Kitty, in a loveless marriage, travel to Shanghai and then deep into China to help solve a Cholera epidemic after Kitty has an affair in Shanghai with a diplomat. Gorgeous scenery and interesting music among much suffering and a dead marriage.
  212. (subtitled) Pan's Labyrinth (Laberinto del Fauno): A young girl lives out a fairy tale in the midst of the atrocities commited by her sadistic army officer stepfather.
  213. Paranormal Activity
  214. Particle Fever
  215. (subtitled) The Passion of the Christ
  216. (subtitled) The Past: A man returns from Tehran to Paris at his wife's request for divorce finalization, and walks into a complicated family situation from events of the past year or so.
  217. (subtitled) Pather Panchali: The story of an impoverished family in India at a time of great crisis.
  218. Paths of Glory: Kubrick explores the divide between leaders and workers, in the context of WWI trench warfare. After soldiers take extraordinary losses during a battle and therefore retreat, the general raises charges of cowardice and their commander must defend them in a court martial which might result in executions.
  219. (subtitled) Persona: Gorgeous abstract film something like Last Year At Marienbad in that there is no way to make complete sense of the movie, you can attempt several theories but none of them work correctly to explain the entire film. The closest, for me, is that an insane woman actress, who didn’t want children and wished her newborn son would die, goes crazy, and splits into two personalities who argue the facts of her life to try and reconcile her insanity. Roger Ebert, on the other hand, argues for a literal interpretation: the actress Elizabeth suddenly stops talking in the middle of a play, is committed to a psychiatric hospital, and nursed and cared for by the chatty Alma at a summer house on the water, where the two women somehow merge. Regardless of interpretation, this movie contains many many gorgeous photographic compositions and is an interesting romp through unreality. Plus, we get to watch two beautiful women for 90 minutes.
  220. The Phantom Carriage: The last person to die on New Year's Eve before the clock strikes twelve is doomed to take the reins of Death's chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year in this groundbreaking silent film. I like the first soundtrack best.
  221. Pickup on South Street: A pickpocket unknowingly steals film that’s being smuggled to the Soviets and becomes a target for the smugglers and a sweetheart of his beautiful victim.
  222. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of Black Pearl
  223. The Place Beyond the Pines: Relationship between a cop and a robber transfers 15 years later into a relationship between their children
  224. Planet of the Apes
  225. Platoon
  226. (subtitled) Il Postino: The Postman gets an education about poetry, love and friendship.
  227. The Prince and the Pauper
  228. Prisoners: Young daughters from two families disappear, and one of the fathers is quite sure who did it. When the police find no evidence therefore release that man from custody, the father takes things into his own hands.
  229. Project Nim
  230. Psycho: Really a very good horror movie that grabbed my interest from start until near the finish. Norman Bates or his Mother murders a woman who’s stolen $40,000 from her boss, then a detective who came around searching for the woman, then perhaps the couple who came around searching for the detective.
  231. (subtitled) Purple Noon: The original French version of "The Talented Mr Ripley", interesting to see the differences in interpretation of the story. I like both, but probably the American version better.
  232. Raging Bull: The rise and fall of the boxer Jake LaMotta who’s violent both professionally and in his private life, ruining his marriages by constantly accusing his wives of cheating on him and beating them as punishment.
  233. Raiders of the Lost Ark: Archaeologist Indiana Jones fights snakes and Nazis to sieze the Ark of the Covenant, the ancient wooden box covered in gold which housed the two tablets of the ten commandments.
  234. The Railway Man
  235. A Raisin in the Sun
  236. The Reader: Young man in Germany is seduced by a 30-year-old woman who turns out to have been a Nazi guard, who is subsequently tried. The movie probes the guilt felt by the after-WWII generation in Germany due to their love for parents, teachers and clergy who they later learned might have done terrible things during the war.
  237. Rear Window: Jimmy Stewart witnesses a murder but has a difficult time proving it
  238. Red River
  239. Red Sparrow: The masochist in me loves the training of this Russian agent.
  240. Reign Over Me
  241. Rendition
  242. Requiem for a Dream: Very disturbing, very well done drug addiction story. A mother dreams to lose weight, fit into an old dress, and be on TV, praised by her friends. Her son dreams to be with his girlfriend, and be rich. The dreams are challenged by drug addictions. The movie features fast-paced-cutting, and superb musical accompaniment.
  243. Reservoir Dogs: A jewel theft goes very wrong and the gang members suspect one of them tipped off the cops, in this very brutal film that features great storytelling technique.
  244. (subtitled) The Return: The absent father of two boys returns after 12 years to take them on a fishing trip which exposes his poor fathering skills and abusive personality, and which ends in tragedy and mystery in this contemporary Russian masterpiece.
  245. The Revenant
  246. (subtitled) Rififi: The perfect heist.
  247. The Right Stuff: The heroic story of the 7 original astronauts for NASA
  248. Rocky: A struggling Philadelphia boxer tries to rise to the challenge of getting his one and only shot at the big time when his manager arranges a match against the heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed.
  249. The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming: A New-England town easily convinces themselves that the Russian sailors who ran aground are actually a deadly invasion force in this excellent comedy
  250. Russian Ark: A single-scene steadicam walk through The Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia
  251. (subtitled) Le Samourai: A hitman evades capture despite the police suspecting his alabis are faked
  252. Samsara: Beautiful third installment of the art-film trilogy of Chronos and Baraka (above) and Samsara, successors to Koyaanisqatsi (one of my top-60). Baraka and Samsara are very similar; Baraka has perhaps more incredibly beautiful scenes; Samsara has perhaps more of a message and is technically better.
  253. Samurai Rebellion: A young woman is forced to marry into a family when the local clan leader rejects her after she bears his child. The family finds her to be a great wife. The local clan leader then wants her back once the child becomes the only heir to that leader, and the family doesn’t want to let her go. Their rebellion against authority has consequences.
  254. (subtitled) Satantango: In this extremely long (7 hour) and slow-burning art-house film, set in a perpetually rainy, muddy and depressing post-Soviet Hungary, a collective farm goes out of business and the residents spend their time drinking and arguing while waiting for their final payout. Then one prior resident-turned-con-man, long thought to be dead, returns with his own plans to spend the last of the money and scatter the remaining residents. Meanwhile, the town mourns when a young girl kills her cat and then herself while the farmers got drunk and danced and sang in the local bar. Beautifully photographed in black and white extremely long and slow takes. Wikipedia plot summary is excellent, as are the IMDB reviews.
  255. Saving Private Ryan: Heroism and sacrifice set over a week of time beginning with the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach, then searching for a soldier named Private Ryan in order to send him home, and finally helping his platoon defend a strategic bridge from the Germans.
  256. Seance on a Wet Afternoon
  257. The Searchers: Macho John Wayne hunts down the Comanches that captured his niece through Monument Valley
  258. (subtitled) The Secret in their Eyes: A government investigator spends a lifetime trying to resolve his attraction to his superior while trying to solve the murder of a young woman, which devastated her husband, even after his retirement.
  259. (subtitled) Seduced and Abandoned: Superb Italian comedy about a Sicilian father whose 15-year-old daughter was impregnated by his older daughter’s fiance, and tries to salvage the family’s honor.
  260. Seems Like Old Times: Chevy Chase is forced to help bank robbers, then begs his ex-wife, Goldie Hawn, a defense attorney, to help him out with food and a place to sleep.
  261. Seven Pounds: Will Smith's character donates his organs to seven deserving people
  262. Shadow of a Doubt: Uncle Charley comes to visit his small-town sister and the rest of the family, especially her daughter, but is followed by a possible scandal due to a crime he might have committed.
  263. The Shape of Water: A cleaning lady at a top-secret government facility falls in love with the sea monster being studied.
  264. (subtitled) Shoah: 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust, told through interviews with witnesses, survivors and perpetrators.
  265. Shop Around the Corner: Jimmy Stewart is a clerk in store in Budapest, and falls in love with a pen pal he writes to, who he learns is a fellow clerk in the store. Lots of good comedy in this feel-good Christmas movie.
  266. (subtitled) The Shop On Main Street: A kind-hearted poor Arian man is given control of a button shop run by an elderly Jewish woman during the purge of Jews from a Slovakian city. He and his wife think he is being given the riches of the shop and the Jewish family, but she is nearly deaf, nearly blind, and confused, thinking he’s just looking for work.
  267. Shutter Island
  268. (subtitled) The Silence: Crime thriller about the killing of 2 teenage girls, 23 years apart, in which the wrong man is blamed in the end
  269. The Sixth Sense
  270. (subtitled) Sleep Tight: Cesar, a miserable man who works as an apartment concierge, takes a special interest in an attractive woman who lives there. He goes to great lengths to trouble her and several other people who live in the building.
  271. (subtitled) The Soft Skin: Married middle-aged author meets single young stewardess and they have an affair. They spend more and more time together and this takes a toll on his marriage and also their relationship.
  272. Some Like It Hot: Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis, musicians in a jazz band, need work and have to hide-out from gangsters, so they take a job in a female-only band that's to perform for 3 weeks in Miami. Dressed in drag and with their falsetto voices, they meet Marylin Monroe, the band's singer, and Tony Curtis tries to woo her, imitating a rich oil baron. Wow, what a fabulous nearly-see-through dress she wore during their date! This very funny comedy is well worth a couple hours of real fun.
  273. Something the Lord Made
  274. (subtitled) Il Sorpasso: A loud-mouthed intensely dislikable braggart takes a shy introverted law student on a very humorous 2-day road-trip through Rome to the Tuscan countryside, visiting relatives and friends, convincing him to enjoy life the way the braggart does. Will they ever make it back to Rome?
  275. The Sound of Music
  276. Source Code: A soldier is in a time-loop trying to figure out who is going to detonate a home-made nuclear device in Chicago so he can be stopped in time.
  277. Spartacus: Kubrick tells the story of Spartacus, a slave of Rome who becomes a gladiator trainee, then escapes the training camp and leads an army of freed gladiators and other slaves in a revolt against a decaying Roman Republic in the 1st century BC.
  278. A Special Day: A gay man spends the a day with a woman who’s in a loveless marriage, while nearly all other people in the apartment building spend the day at a Mussolini rally in Piazza Venezia.
  279. Splendor in the Grass: High school sweethearts break up because the girl won’t go far enough, and things between them spiral out of control until they meet again several years later and realize, I think, the great life they could have had together but threw away.
  280. Spring: A young man, down on his luck, visits Italy and has an intense love affair, but then it seems like she changes... An oh, the Italian scenery...
  281. Stagecoach
  282. Stalag 17
  283. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn: First installment in the unbroken story told in Star Trek II, III and IV. Superb space opera with the ultimate villain, Kahn, threatening the Enterprise and Kirk but without Kirk’s experience. Plus the whole Spock thing.
  284. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: Third installment in the unbroken story told in Star Trek II, III and IV. On their way home to Earth from Vulcan, a probe attacks Earth and the skeleton crew of the destroyed Enterprise, now on a Bird of Prey, must save the Earth from destruction by travelling to the past for a couple of whales.
  285. Star Trek: Superb reboot with tons of action and great humor. Vulcan destroyed by Romulans, Kirk prevents them from destroying Earth too.
  286. Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
  287. Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi
  288. Strangers on a Train: a Hitchcock thriller – can you be coerced into a murder?
  289. (subtitled) Stray Dog: Excellent Kurosawa detective thriller with a superb view into life in postwar Japan.
  290. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
  291. Synecdoche, New York: Psychotic director of plays has many unusual illnesses and directs a play to end all plays with a cast of thousands in a huge warehouse, rehearsing for several decades while working out the script.
  292. Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
  293. The Talented Mr. Ripley: Tom Ripley is hired by Dickie Greenleaf's father to convince Dickie Greenleaf to come back home from Rome to New York. Things in Italy get complicated.
  294. (subtitled) Tampopo: A comedy about eating, with several stories, the main one being about a truck driver who stops off at a small floundering ramen shop and decides to help the pretty proprietress, Tampopo, revamp the recipes, menu, and the store itself to make it the most popular ramen shop in the area.
  295. Taxi Driver: A socially-inept taxi driver deteriorates into a psychopath in his attempt to woo a campaign worker and save a child prostitute, but somehow gets away with it all after being proclaimed a hero in the newspapers.
  296. 10 Cloverfield Lane: A woman is held in a basement without her consent, for her own good (?), and then escapes into a totally different genre of a movie.
  297. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
  298. They Shall Not Grow Old: Stunning documentary made from authentic restored WWI footage with real WWI soldier voice-overs. Trench warfare, the terrible daily life of British soldiers in the war, kids put into an impossible situation, sympathy toward the enemy who also wanted nothing to do with this, the inability of civilians to understand what happened, the list of things this movie is "about" is silly to try to enumerate since there’s just so much in this movie that there is no substitute for watching the movie.
  299. 3:10 to Yuma: (2007)
  300. 3:10 to Yuma: (1957) A small-time rancher suffering through a drought takes a job to deliver a captured outlaw to jail, but the outlaw’s gang is determined to free their leader at any cost.
  301. Tiger Bay: A precocious 12-year-old tomboy wants a toy gun so the boys will let her play with them. A 30-year-old sailor returns home to a fiancee who has abandoned him for another. He kills the fiancee, the tomboy witnesses the murder and ends up with his gun, the sailor convinces the tomboy to help him escape, and the tomboy thwarts the police in their murder investigation.
  302. (subtitled) Timecrimes: A man becomes caught in a time loop with various copies of himself, and has to figure a way out so he can rejoin his real life.
  303. (subtitled) Tokyo Story: An elderly couple visit their children and grandchildren far away in Tokyo, but aren’t welcomed very warmly and realize the children aren’t really willing to spend any significant time with them, despite their advanced age.
  304. (subtitled) The Tree of Wooden Clogs: A gorgeous and very slow-paced view of a year in the life of several families of Italian farm peasants who live in landlord-provided housing at the end of the 1800s. Their daily routines are shown in detail, one young son becomes among the first sent to school, a marriage and wedding night in a convent results in an orphan being adopted the next day. They gather at night to tell horrific stories and scare each other silly, breaking out in laughter. I found their lives fascinating to learn about, and felt at the end like I knew these people very well. A second watching 4 years later made me like it even more.
  305. (subtitled) Tristan und Isolde: If you'd like to try out opera, but have always been afraid, then this opera by Wagner, or 1984's Carmen by Bizet would be a great way to dip your toes into the water. Tristan und Isolde if your a bleeding Romantic like me, Carmen if you're not. This particular version of Tristan und Isolde is in great sound, unlike other DVDs of great performances you might find.
  306. (subtitled) Triumph of the Will: Well described as ‘The infamous propaganda film of the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg’, this chilling documentary of actual footage of a week-long rally of the Nazi party just after Hitler consolidated his control over the entire German state shows what Hitler wanted the German people to see in order to gain more support. It’s a well made film showing the beginnings of an incredibly evil group of leaders who were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of human beings.
  307. True Grit: Feisty girl hires federal marshal to hunt down the man who killed her father.
  308. The Truman Show: Unbeknownst to him, an insurance salesman lives his life while it’s being broadcast to the public, the most popular reality show on television.
  309. Twelve Monkeys: an edge-of-your-seat sci-fi thriller, based upon and greatly expanding La Jetee. A prison inmate is sent back in time to discover the roots of the man-made virus that has killed most of the human population on Earth.
  310. 12 years a slave: A free black man is sold into slavery.
  311. 25th Hour
  312. U-571: Very good submarine WWII movie about a group of Americans who are to board a disabled German U-boat, steal the enigma machine, and scuttle the sub, all before the German rescue ship arrives to fix the sub.
  313. (subtitled) Umberto D: A retired man apparently cast-out by society struggles to survive financially in Rome, along with his dog Flick.
  314. Unfaithfully Yours: Hilarious story about an orchestral conductor who believes his wife has been unfaithful, therefore he plots his revenge.
  315. Unknown: Liam Neeson thriller, set in Berlin, with Bruno Ganz and Sebastian Koch. A scientist and his wife travel to Berlin so he can make a presentation at a conference. He is separated from his wife and another man takes his place; his wife disavows knowing the scientist; and then we learn there’s a lot more at stake here than a scientific presentation.
  316. The Usual Suspects
  317. V for Vendetta
  318. Valkyrie: The story of the July 20, 1944 assassination and political coup attempt against Adolf Hitler by Germans Army officers who understood that Hitler was ruining Germany and Europe and attempted to do something about it.
  319. Vertigo: A man with a fear of heights becomes obsessed with the wife of a friend, a disturbed woman who he follows around San Francisco and falls in love with, only to witness her apparent suicide. Then he sees her look-alike and becomes obsessed all over again. Spectacular Tristan&Isolde-like score by Bernard Herrmann.
  320. (subtitled) A Very Long Engagement: The story of a young woman’s relentless search for her fiancee, who disappeared from the trenches of World War I, presumed dead since he was convicted of treason and punished by being pushed into the No Man’s Land.
  321. (subtitled) The Wages of Fear: Four men are hired to drive two trucks carrying a half-ton of explosive nitro-glycerine over terrible dirt roads in South America without the necessary safety equipment. Slow start but very intense second half.
  322. Valkyrie: The story of the July 20, 1944 assassination and political coup attempt against Adolf Hitler by Germans Army officers who understood that Hitler was ruining Germany and Europe and attempted to do something about it.
  323. Water for Elephants: A veterinarian student takes a job caring for animals in a travelling circus, and falls in love with the ringmaster’s wife.
  324. Wayne Shorter Zero Gravity: Superb documentary about the life and music of jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter
  325. What Dreams May Come
  326. (subtitled) Where Is The Friend's House?: A small boy is punished in school for turning in his homework on a sheet of loose paper instead of in his notebook, that lets the teacher and him see his progress through the year. He’ll expell the kid if he does it again. But his best friend takes home the boy’s notebook the next day by mistake since it looks just like his own. He spends the entire afternoon and evening trying to return the notebook to the boy, but doesn’t know where in the next village over he lives. This is the first movie in the so-called 'Koker Trilogy' of Abbas Kiarostami. The second movie in the trilogy, And Life Goes On is also superb, in which the director of ‘Where is the Friend’s House’ returns to Koker and nearby villages shortly after a major earthquake which killed 50,000 people. The Iranian people exhibit kindness and determination to go on, despite the devastation. The third film in the trilogy, Through the Olive Trees shows the filming of the scenes of the married couple from ‘And Life Goes On’, in which the two actors are not really married, but the man really really wants to marry the woman.
  327. (subtitled) The White Sheik: An early Fellini comedy, in which a newlywed wife leaves her husband for an hour to meet a movie star she admires, until it turns into much more than an hour.
  328. (subtitled) Wild Strawberries: A grumpy 78-year-old retired Doctor or Professor Isak Borg wakes from a nightmare foretelling his death on the day he’s to travel 400 miles from Stockholm to receive an honorary degree from the University of Lund. He travels there by car with his daughter-in-law, Mariana, being grumpy along the way. The journey represents his life, and will presumably end with his death. It's clear that Mariana doesn't like Borg. They stop at a house on a lake which was where his family spent their summers during his childhood (he was one of ten children), where the Wild Strawberries grow. There he relives a day from his childhood as his present self watching that day as in a dream. Sara, the cousin he was to marry is gathering strawberries for her elderly uncle's birthday when Borg's younger brother Sigfrid kisses her, she responds passionately, and the stains on her apron from the strawberries that tumble away represent her losing her cherry that day. A young woman who looks just like that cousin and is also named Sara wakes him up in the present and asks him for a ride to the University. He agrees, and she brings along 2 male friends, her fiancée (a minister, representing the conservative Borg) and a chaperone who is more interesting to her, representing Sigfrid. This Sara represents Borg's second-chance, a sort of do-over. They get in a car accident and take on 2 more passengers – the married couple in the other car which was wrecked badly. That couple fights constantly in the car, so are kicked out so as to not corrupt the children (Sara and her 2 boyfriends). The remaining 5 stop for lunch and to visit his 96-year-old cold-as-ice mother. He is the last surviving of her 10 children. She shows him photos and toys from his childhood, and a pocket watch with no hands on it which had been in his nightmare. After they leave it starts raining and he sleeps in the car. He dreams of the day he learned that Sigfrid had stolen Sara from him, then he dreams of a test at the university, administered by the husband from the fighting couple, in which he fails all questions about becoming a doctor. He is declared incompetent, then taken to a scene where his wife Karin cheats on him, telling her lover what a cold man Borg is, and that he won't even care about her infidelity. He awakes in the car and tells Mariana about his recent dreams about death and judgment. She says her husband, his son, Evald, has similar dreams, because when she told him she was pregnant, he said it was wrong to bring a child into this world, and that though her dreams are to live and give birth, his dreams are to die. So she is questioning what to do about her fetus - it comes from a line of 3 generations of cold, unlikable people. At one point in the journey he asks Sara which of her men she prefers; she cannot choose either one. They arrive at the University, he receives his honorary degree, Evald and Mariana get back together, deciding to have the baby, and attend a party that night without Borg (that party is Borg's funeral, the party his family goes to without him). Meanwhile, Sara and her 2 men serenade him and congratulate him. Sara, in fact, tells Borg that she really loves him, always and forever. He recalls the day as he goes to sleep, (i.e. as he dies), with a smile on his face, because Sara finally chose him after having rejected him earlier in life.
  329. (subtitled) Wild Tales: An excellent Argentinian movie made of 6 unrelated short stories about people under extreme stress.
  330. Witness for the Prosecution: Beautifully made crime/courtroom mystery with great acting and a few real twists at the end
  331. The Wizard of Oz
  332. (subtitled) Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
  333. (subtitled) Yearning: The younger brother of a man killed during the war falls in love with his widow while they run a family grocery store that is threatened by a large supermarket that opens nearby.

And finally, a few TV series which I've especially enjoyed, again in alphabetical order

  1. 24
  2. Alias
  3. All in the Family
  4. The Andy Griffiths Show
  5. The Americans: Spy thriller series about a husband-and-wife team of Russian spies implanted into a Washington DC neighborhood.
  6. Black Mirror: a modern Twilight Zone
  7. Bloodline: Watch the first and second season, third season is terrible
  8. Breaking Bad: The best TV drama series ever, watch it start to end, it's the best series that's ever been on TV, IMHO.
  9. Chernobyl: 5-hour HBO documentary about the Chernobyl disaster, how it unfolded, the first responders, the attempt to prevent the disaster from becoming catastrophic, and the trial that uncovered exactly why the disaster happened.
  10. The Crown
  11. (subtitled) Deutschland 83: During the peak of the Cold War in 1983, a 24-year-old East German soldier goes undercover to infiltrate the West German military.
  12. The Dick Van Dyke Show
  13. The Diplomat: A new ambassador to Britain is appointed as her tryout for the vice-presidency. A British carrier is sunk in the Persian Gulf and she tries to maintain cool heads and avoid war while finding out who sunk it, and her ex-ambassador husband both helps her and makes her job more difficult.
  14. Downton Abbey: I can't believe I was suckered into this soap opera, but darn if I don't love every character and wish they were still on my TV set
  15. ER
  16. The Expanse: Season 1 had a great story line and superb effects; shows great promise for a long-term great sci-fi show if they continue
  17. The Fall: Ice Queen policewoman solves the cases of the Belfast Strangler, a serial killer in Belfast who tortures and strangles women, and has been doing so for 15 years.
  18. Fargo
  19. The Good Wife
  20. The Handmaiden's Tale
  21. Green Acres
  22. Homeland: Especially the first 3 or 4 seasons, subsequent seasons are not as intense
  23. House of Cards
  24. I, Claudius: 1000 bonus points for being about the Roman Empire
  25. I Love Lucy
  26. Lost
  27. Lost In Space
  28. M*A*S*H
  29. Man in the High Castle
  30. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: An extremely funny series about a housewife and mother of 2 young children who discovers she has a talent for stand-up comedy after her husband leaves her. Both her parents, her ex-husband's parents, and her agent are also super-quirky and funny.
  31. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
  32. One Strange Rock
  33. Ozark: Another great show along the line of Breaking Bad. Accountant gets involved in money laundering, then has to scramble and get deeper and deeper into drug business trouble to launder enough to save his family.
  34. Outlander: Season 1 is quite good. Beyond that, not so much. A happily-married English woman on vacation in Scotland with her husband visits a stone circle, touches a stone, and is transported back 200 years to the time of Scottish Clans, with some people planning rebellion against England, and a constant struggle between the fiercely independent people and the British occupying forces, led by a Sadistic captain who is dedicated to punishing her new Scottish husband.
  35. The Practice
  36. Saturday Night Live: The first several years; after that it faded, IMHO
  37. Schitt's Creek: Very funny comedy series about a wealthy family of eccentric people who lose all their money and have to regroup by moving to the armpit town of Schitt’s Creek, their only remaining asset, which they once bought as a joke. Though the series initially earns your allegiance by virtue of it's comedy, it will make you love and root for its unusual characters, and perhaps teach you a bit of tolerance along the way.
  38. The Sopranos
  39. Star Trek: The Original Series: the best sci-fi ever
  40. Star Trek: The Next Generation: the other absolute best sci-fi ever, or do I have these reversed
  41. Twin Peaks
  42. Vikings
  43. The West Wing
  44. The Windsors - Inside the Royal Dynasty: Very good CNN historical documentary series about the Windsor family, the British Royal Family who changed their name to The Windor Family after WWI, and rules, under QEII, to the present, with Charles, William and George waiting in the wings. Great companion to The Crown, which dramatizes the history of this family.

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