List of Shame

Completed on November 30, 2013.

Recently, I've been planning on posting my all-time top 50 movies list, but it just never felt quite adequate. Although I've seen a substantial number of films in my lifetime (I've rated more than 2000 on Netflix), I'm still lacking in my knowledge of cinema. When it comes to films before 1990, I certainly have a lot to catch up on. Below is my "List of Shame". These are the 100 "essential" films that I still haven't seen. These are ranked by order of their user ranking on FlickChart (as of June 20, 2012). I vow to watch as many as I can and will cross them off as I see them.


Monty Python and the Holy Grail
North by Northwest
Citizen Kane
Seven Samurai
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Ghostbusters
Yojimbo
The Third Man
Die Hard
Blade Runner
Rashômon
M
Ikiru
Chinatown
The Night of the Hunter
The 400 Blows
Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Bicycle Thief
The Maltese Falcon
The Seventh Seal
The General
The Philadelphia Story
Sunset Blvd.
The Conversation
The Big Sleep
A Fistful of Dollars
The Searchers
La Dolce Vita
Duck Soup
8 1/2
His Girl Friday
Shadow of a Doubt
Badlands
Persona
To Kill a Mockingbird
Metropolis
Rope
For a Few Dollars More
The Wild Bunch
The Hustler
Once Upon a Time in the West
Rio Bravo
Days of Heaven
Lawrence of Arabia
The French Connection
My Neighbor Totoro
Breathless
Life of Brian
Manhattan
The Magnificent Seven
Young Frankenstein
The Thing
Stalag 17
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
High Noon
The Grand Illusion
Out of the Past
Shaun of the Dead
The Deer Hunter
Ran
Miller's Crossing
Anatomy of a Murder
Nosferatu
The Blues Brothers
The Lady Vanishes
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Laura
Arsenic and Old Lace
The 39 Steps
Brazil
Mean Streets
Platoon
This Is Spinal Tap
Airplane!
Harold and Maude
Bride of Frankenstein
Sweet Smell of Success
Frankenstein
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Batman
Sherlock Jr.
The King of Comedy
Predator
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Dirty Harry
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Glengarry Glen Ross
The Last Picture Show
Being There
Clerks.
Harvey
The Dirty Dozen
The Outlaw Josey Wales
To Catch a Thief
Night of the Living Dead
Grave of the Fireflies
The Manchurian Candidate
Rosemary's Baby

How many on this list are you yet to see? Feel free to confess in the comments!

17 comments:

  1. I don't even wanna know what my list of shame would look like! Can't wait to see some reviews for some of these.

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  2. Uhhh. I think I've only seen 4 or 5 on this list, lol. Horrible!

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  3. @Shala! Haha, I don't feel so bad now.

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  4. I count 37 that I've seen, but then again I'm quite a bit older (actually, my age is the same as the number of films--ha!).

    I don't think I've ever commented before, so I'll say here that I love your blog and your perspective on movies. Keep watching and reviewing!

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  5. Thanks a lot Michelle, what a nice thing to say. Glad you enjoy my blog. :)

    I hope to catch up with your number!

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  6. Great list ahead of you to watch. Most of these I haven't seen either. I have a Movie Bucket List too: http://randomfilmbuff.com/2012/08/17/d-10/

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  7. This looks like my list haha. We have a lot to catch up on. Yours is getting there though, always a great feeling to start ticking them off.

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  8. I'm glad I'm not the only film critic not to have seen Citizen Cane! I know I should watch it but I just can't bring myself to.

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    1. Haha I'll get around to it soon enough, so you'll be on your own then.

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  9. Quite a few of those are on the IMDb top 250 list. I hope to see during 2013: M, Yojimbo, Metropolis, The Hustler, Duck Soup, Grave of the Fireflies, The Night of the Hunter, The Wild Bunch, Stalag 17, High Noon.

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  10. Hi Shane --- of the few still unwatched you MUST see Sunset Boulevard. A masterpiece. Thanks for a great site.

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    1. Just watched it last night! It was ssooo good!

      Thanks for stopping by. :)

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  11. I see you've only got six left on the list. Of them I would recommend To Kill a Mockingbird the highest. It's five stars from me, and if you took a look at my rating distribution on Letterboxd you saw that I rarely hand out a 5.

    When you complete this have a little celebration, take some time off, then realize that it starts again with other films that you keep hearing people mention that you are curious about. (I'm still doing that myself.)

    I'll start you off with one per decade - not homework assignments, but films I think are genuinely damn good:

    1920s - Safety Last
    1930s - Trouble in Paradise
    1940s - The Ox-Bow Incident
    1950s - Throne of Blood
    1960s - Spartacus
    1970s - Chinatown
    1980s - Das Boot
    1990s - Schindler's List (or Hoop Dreams if you've seen Schindler)
    2000s - The Lives of Others
    2010s - I'll go with something a little obscure since I assume you've seen most of the well known, highly rated films of the last few years - Another Earth

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    1. Thanks for the recommendations! I've seen all of them except the first 4 you mentioned and Das Boot. Wasn't a fan of Another Earth though.

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