1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die: The 1980s to the 2000s

[Cena's Little Helper]

Hello all,

About a year ago, I came across a great book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Jay Schneider and published by Cassell Illustrated (London, England) in 2004. As is evident from its title, the book recommends to its reader a substantial amount of movies to watch. Additionally, however, it presents these movies in chronological order and also gives to each movie a rationale for its inclusion (these rationales are written by film professionals and scholars).

While I would definitely recommend this book to any film buff, I will now present the list of these films in the hopes of generating discussion. Hopefully, such discussion will revolve around the particular movies included within this list or about movies that posters feel should be included within this list but are not. Personally, I find the list to be very thorough and, if I was only given these movies to watch and nothing else for my lifetime, I would feel that I had received all that film could offer.

For the sake of both relevancy and attention-getting, I will post this list in decade increments and will start with the 2000s and work my way backwards (until I reach the 1950s, where, at that time, I will post the remainder of the list). Moreover, I will bold those movies on the list which I would recommend and will give a brief reason for why I recommend them. I will probably post the 1990s sometime late next week, but most definitely before the weekend. Each listing is posted thus: Name of Film (Year Released) / Name of Director. So, without further ado, here are the movies of the 2000s:

Nine Queens (2000) / Fabián Bielinsky
The Captive (2000) / Chantal Akerman
In the Mood for Love (2000) / Wong Kar Wai
Ali Zaoua, Prince of the Streets (2000) / Nabil Ayouch
Gladiator (2000) / Ridley Scott
Kippur (2000) / Amos Gitai
Yi Yi (2000) / Edward Yang
Requiem for a Dream (2000) / Darren Aronofsky
Amores Perros (2000) / Alejandro González Iñárritu
Meet the Parents (2000) / Jay Roach
Signs & Wonders (2000) / Jonathan Nossiter
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) / Ang Lee
Traffic (2000) / Steven Soderbergh
The Gleaners and I (2000) / Agnès Varda
Memento (2000) / Christopher Nolan
Dancer in the Dark (2000) / Lars Von Trier
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) / Joel Coen
Amelie (2001) / Jean-Pierre Jeunet
What Time Is It There? (2001) / Tsai Ming-liang
Y Tu Mamá También (2001) / Alfonso Cuarón
Kandahar (2001) / Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Spirited Away (2001) / Hayao Miyazaki

The Piano Teacher (2001) / Michael Haneke - Very morbid film from one of my favorite living directors. A storyline very similar to Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. Most importantly, though, it shows that brilliance / intellectual maturity and physical maturity do not necessarily entail emotional maturity.

The Son's Room (2001) / Nanni Moretti
No Man's Land (2001) / Danis Tanovic
Moulin Rouge (2001) / Baz Luhrmann

Monsoon Wedding (2001) / Mira Nair - Beautiful and exhilarating film about the days leading up to a traditional Punjabi wedding in modern-day India. If you liked either Bend It Like Beckham or Love, Actually, then you will love this movie (except, I just hope you realize that it is about ten times better than each of those).

Fat Girl (2001) / Catherine Breillat

Mulholland Dr. (2001) / David Lynch - See my comment about The Piano Teacher sans the similarity to The Glass Menagerie. I can't really compare this film to anything else (except maybe to Lynch's previous work) because it is unlike anything else you have ever seen.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) / Wes Anderson
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) / Peter Jackson
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001) / Steven Spielberg
Gangs of New York (2002) / Martin Scorsese
The Pianist (2002) / Roman Polanski
Talk to Her (2002) / Pedro Almodóvar

City of God (2002) / Fernando Meirelles - I don't think I have met a single person who has seen this film about the favelas in Brazil and not loved it. Moreover, I don't think I have ever met anyone who has not seen this, so my talking about it and recommending it is kind of redundant.

Russian Ark (2002) / Aleksandr Sokurov
Chicago (2002) / Rob Marshall
The Barbarian Invasions (2003) / Denys Arcand
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) / Quentin Tarantino

Note: The names of each film are presented as they would be on the cover of its English-language VHS/DVD release.

 

[Cena's Little Helper]

Hello all,

Well, here are the films from the 1990s. As I did in my previous post, I will bold in black films which I personally find exceptional and would thus highly recommend. Furthermore, I will bold in red films which I am not very fond of or which I find very overrated. Also, as I did in my last post, I will give a brief explanation for why I find a certain film exceptional, bad, or overrated:

No Fear, No Die (1990) / Claire Denis
Reversal of Fortune (1990) / Barbet Schroeder
Goodfellas (1990) / Martin Scorsese
Jacob's Ladder (1990) / Adrian Lyne

King of New York (1990) / Abel Ferrara - Some people love Abel Ferrara, but I personally think he is nothing more than a poor man's Scorsese. Anyway, this film is about a drug kingpin (Christopher Walken) who gets out of jail and attempts to reclaim the streets of New York City that he once so dominantly ran. In the end though, I feel that this was just a poorly shot and scripted film fans of Abel Ferrara like to excuse as an attempt to depict the grim reality of impoverished urban life.

Dances with Wolves (1990) / Kevin Costner
Europa Europa (1990) / Agnieszka Holland
Pretty Woman (1990) / Garry Marshall
Archangel (1990) / Guy Maddin
Trust (1990) / Hal Hartley
Close-Up (1990) / Abbas Kiarostami
Edward Scissorhands (1990) / Tim Burton
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990) / John McNaughton
Total Recall (1990) / Paul Verhoeven
Once Upon a Time in China (1991) / Tsui Hark

Boyz 'n the Hood (1991) / John Singleton - The film about teenagers in South Central Los Angeles that started the "American 'hood" genre of films that flourished in the early and mid-1990s. However, unlike most of the films that it inspired, Boyz 'n the Hood in no way glamorized the African-American culture that it depicted; in fact, it showed it exactly for what it was (and, to some extent, still is): unnecessarily violent and wholly unreasonable. It is such a shame that John Singleton's promise proved to be nothing more than an illusion.

Raise the Red Lantern (1991) / Zhang Yimou
Delicatessen (1991) / Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro
A Brighter Summer Day (1991) / Edward Yang
Naked Lunch (1991) / David Cronenberg
La Belle Noiseuse (1991) / Jacques Rivette

The Rapture (1991) / Michael Tolkin - A film about a promiscuous telephone operator (Mimi Rogers) who becomes a devout housewife once she "finds God." While there is more to the plot than what I have described, I leave it to you to rent this film and see what it is all about. However, I must say that I mention it because I don't think any film deals with theodicy (i.e., the problem of reconciling God's benevolence and omnipotence with the existence of evil in the world) as well as this one does.

My Own Private Idaho (1991) / Gus Van Sant
Thelma & Louise (1991) / Ridley Scott
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) / James Cameron

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) / Jonathan Demme - This, to me, is such an overrated film. I see it as nothing more than a conventional thriller that somehow swept the Oscars. Furthermore, I don't think it can touch Michael Mann's Manhunter (an adaptation of another one of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter books, Red Dragon, that was released a few years earlier).

JFK (1991) / Oliver Stone - Following Born on the Fourth of July and The Doors, something happened to Stone. And, unfortunately, I must say that whatever happened to him wasn't for the better. Watch the film that marked the advent of Oliver Stone, the crackpot conspiracy theorist!

Slacker (1991) / Richard Linklater - Today, Austin, Texas, is a haven for young professionals and IT companies. However, this film shows how it really was just a mere 15 or so years ago: a college town full of eccentrics, JFK conspiracy theorists (hey, Oliver Stone would love this place!), moochers, and, well, slackers.

Tongues Untied (1991) / Marlon Riggs
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991) / Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper

The Double Life of Veronique (1991) / Krzysztof Kieslowski
Strictly Ballroom (1992) / Baz Luhrmann
The Player (1992) / Robert Altman
Reservoir Dogs (1992) / Quentin Tarantino
Romper Stomper (1992) / Geoffrey Wright
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) / James Foley
Unforgiven (1992) / Clint Eastwood
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) / Francis Ford Coppola
Candy Man (1992) / Bernard Rose
A Tale of Winter (1992) / Eric Rohmer
Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992) / Nick Broomfield
The Crying Game (1992) / Neil Jordan
Man Bites Dog (1992) / Rémy Belvaux and André Bonzel
The Actress (1992) / Stanley Kwan
Farewell My Concubine (1993) / Chen Kaige
Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould (1993) / François Girard
Groundhog Day (1993) / Harold Ramis
Short Cuts (1993) / Robert Altman
Philadelphia (1993) / Jonathan Demme
Jurassic Park (1993) / Steven Spielberg
The Age of Innocence (1993) / Martin Scorsese
The Puppetmaster (1993) / Hou Hsiao-hsien
Schindler's List (1993) / Steven Spielberg
Three Colors: Blue (1993) / Krzysztof Kieslowski
The Piano (1993) / Jane Campion
The Blue Kite (1993) / Tian Zhuangzhuang
The Wedding Banquet (1993) / Ang Lee
Three Colors: Red (1994) / Krzysztof Kieslowski

Hoop Dreams (1994) / Steve James - In my opinion, the best documentary and sports film ever made. At the surface, a film about two African-American youths in Chicago who have aspirations to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Below the surface, an indictment of the capricious and exploitative nature of highly competitive high-school sports in America.

Forrest Gump (1994) / Robert Zemeckis
Clerks (1994) / Kevin Smith
Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) / Mike Newell
The Lion King (1994) / Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff
Sátántangó (1994) / Béla Tarr
Natural Born Killers (1994) / Oliver Stone
The Last Seduction (1994) / John Dahl

Pulp Fiction (1994) / Quentin Tarantino - Mr. Tarantino, the one and a half trick pony (Reservoir Dogs was good, not great). Sure, everything from Tarantino after this film has been nothing but plagiarism from Blaxploitation, Spaghetti Westerns, Eurotrash cinema, and Grindhouse movies. However, no film, since 1994, has yet to be as profound and influential as this one has. Tarantino's introduction of non-linear narrative into film will be seen as one of cinema's crowning achievements for years to come...even if almost all the rest of his filmography is thieving rubbish.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) / Frank Darabont
The Wild Reeds (1994) / André Téchiné

Chungking Express (1994) / Wong Kar Wai - This film is very, very tough to describe. The most I can tell you about this film while remaining coherent is that it consists of two different stories about different Hong Kong cops and their trouble with women. I definitely would not recommend this to everyone...I can easily see some people seeing no point in it. However, if you are a cinephile, this film is a must-see. It is simply sublime. Unfortunately, the reasons for its sublimity are, at least for me, ineffable (i.e., they cannot be accurately articulated).

Crumb (1994) / Terry Zwigoff
Heavenly Creatures (1994) / Peter Jackson
Through the Olive Trees (1994) / Abbas Kiarostami
The Kingdom (1994) / Lars von Trier
Dear Diary (1994) / Nanni Moretti
Casino (1995) / Martin Scorsese
Deseret (1995) / James Benning
Babe (1995) / Chris Noonan
Toy Story (1995) / John Lasseter
Strange Days (1995) / Kathryn Bigelow
Braveheart (1995) / Mel Gibson
Safe (1995) / Todd Haynes
Clueless (1995) / Amy Heckerling

Heat (1995) / Michael Mann - My favorite film of all time. Although it is technically a remake of Mann's own L.A. Takedown (I tend to look down on remakes) and clocks in at just under three hours, I watch this film at least once every three months and never get tired of it. Furthermore, despite its duration, this is one film that I would not cut a single part of. Just...awesome.

Zero Kelvin (1995) / Hans Petter Moland
Seven (1995) / David Fincher
Smoke (1995) / Wayne Wang
The White Balloon (1995) / Jafar Panahi
Cyclo (1995) / Anh Hung Tran
Underground (1995) / Emir Kusturica
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) / Aditya Chopra
Dead Man (1995) / Jim Jarmusch
The Usual Suspects (1995) / Bryan Singer
The Pillow Book (1996) / Peter Greenaway
Three Lives and Only One Death (1996) / Raoul Ruiz

Fargo (1996) / Joel Coen - It seems that the majority of WZ forum members that post in this section love the Coen Brothers. And, I will dare to venture that this is what they would call their greatest film (apologies if I am wrong). However, this has to be one of the most pointless and contrived films I have ever seen. What exactly is so good about this film? Its quaint mid-western setting? Its accurately singsongy accents? I don't want to rant here, so I will just stop.

Independence Day (1996) / Roland Emmerich
Secrets and Lies (1996) / Mike Leigh
Breaking the Waves (1996) / Lars von Trier
The English Patient (1996) / Anthony Minghella
Gabbeh (1996) / Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Lone Star (1996) / John Sayles

Trainspotting (1996) / Danny Boyle - I am always hesitant to watch adaptations as, as a rule, they prove inferior to the source material. However, this film, in my opinion, proves to be an exception to the rule. Despite the structure of Irvine Welsh's book about heroin addicts in Edinburgh (i.e., a collection of loosely-connected vignettes), John Hodge (the film's screenwriter) was able to glean from it a more coherent, funnier, and poignant script that, nonetheless, remained very faithful to said book.

Scream (1996) / Wes Craven
Deconstructing Harry (1997) / Woody Allen
L.A. Confidential (1997) / Curtis Hanson

Happy Together (1997) / Wong Kar Wai - A film about two homosexual Chinese lovers, Ho Po-Wing and Lai Yiu-Fai (respectively played by Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung) who travel to Argentina together and subsequently break up and leave each other while there. Following their break-up, Lai Yiu-Fai must work to save enough money to pay for a ticket back to Hong Kong. While earning money, Lai Yiu-Fai continues an on-again, off-again relationship with Ho Po-Wing while he strikes up an ambiguous yet platonic friendship with a Taiwanese man named Chang at the Chinese restaurant he works at. While the plot of this film might turn off some viewers, there is no film that I have seen that better shows one's emotional vulnerability (this isn't necessarily bad; let's just say it is an awkwardly worded way of saying that your guard is down) to anybody with even the slightest commonality when one is in an almost wholly alien environment. Yes, it is even better than the thematically similar Lost In Translation.

Princess Mononoke (1997) / Hayao Miyazaki
Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (1997) / Errol Morris
The Butcher Boy (1997) / Neil Jordan
The Ice Storm (1997) / Ang Lee
Boogie Nights (1997) / P.T. Anderson
Kundun (1997) / Martin Scorsese
The Sweet Hereafter (1997) / Atom Egoyan
Funny Games (1997) / Michael Haneke
Taste of Cherry (1997) / Abbas Kiarostami
Open Your Eyes (1997) / Alejandro Amenábar
Mother and Son (1997) / Aleksandr Sokurov
Titanic (1997) / James Cameron
The Celebration (1998) / Thomas Vinterberg
Saving Private Ryan (1998) / Steven Spielberg
Buffalo 66 (1998) / Vincent Gallo
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) / Guy Ritchie
Run Lola Run (1998) / Tom Tykwer
Rushmore (1998) / Wes Anderson
Pi (1998) / Darren Aronofsky
Happiness (1998) / Todd Solondz
The Thin Red Line (1998) / Terrence Malick
The Idiots (1998) / Lars von Trier
Sombre (1998) / Philippe Grandrieux
Ringu (1998) / Hideo Nakata
There's Something About Mary (1998) / Bobby and Peter Farrelly
Magnolia (1999) / P.T. Anderson
Beau Travail (1999) / Claire Denis
The Blair Witch Project (1999) / Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
Taboo (1999) / Nagisa Oshima
Rosetta (1999) / Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
All About My Mother (1999) / Pedro Almodóvar
Three Kings (1999) / David Russell
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) / Abbas Kiarostami
Audition (1999) / Takashi Miike
Time Regained (1999) / Raoul Ruiz
Fight Club (1999) / David Fincher
Being John Malkovich (1999) / Spike Jonze
American Beauty (1999) / Sam Mendes
Attack the Gas Station! (1999) / Kim Sang-Jin
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) / Stanley Kubrick
The Sixth Sense (1999) / M. Night Shyamalan
The Matrix (1999) / Andy and Larry Wachowski

Note: The names of each film are presented as they would be on the cover of its English-language VHS/DVD release.

 

[Cena's Little Helper]

If you have any interest in this thread, you know the drill by now.

Ordinary People (1980) / Robert Redford - I will never understand how this film won the Best Picture Oscar over Raging Bull and how Robert Redofrd won the Best Director Oscar over Martin Scorsese. This film, to me, is nothing but mawkish tripe that wouldn't be above Lifetime Originals and After-School Specials if it wasn't for the fact that it probably had no small part in inspiring programs like the ones just mentioned.

Atlantic City (1980) / Louis Malle - What do you get when you have Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon in a film about the seedier side of Atlantic City, NJ (which is also directed by the legendary Louis Malle)? A film that, in my opinion, should have and could have been much better than it was.

The Last Metro (1980) / François Truffaut
The Shining (1980) / Stanley Kubrick
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) / Irvin Kershner
The Elephant Man (1980) / David Lynch
The Big Red One (1980) / Samuel Fuller

Loulou (1980) / Maurice Pialat - Nothing much to this film...about a sedate housewife (married to an intellectual) who falls for a Parisian thug. I really only recommend it because I still can't get over the fact that Isabelle Huppert used to be a breathtaking sight for sore eyes.

Airplane! (1980) / Jim Abrahams and David Zucker

Raging Bull (1980) / Martin Scorsese - The biopic about middleweight boxing legend Jake LaMotta (played masterfully by Robert DeNiro). While DeNiro's performance is what truly makes this film, he is nonetheless significantly aided by Scorsese's visceral direction.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) / Steven Spielberg
The Boat (1981) / Wolfgang Petersen
Gallipoli (1981) / Peter Weir
Chariots of Fire (1981) / Hugh Hudson

Body Heat (1981) / Lawrence Kasdan - Conventional "jaded private investigator seduced and framed by femme fatale" storyline. Some people love to call this a shining example of film noir, but I say they should go read some Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler instead (as can be inferred from this, I think film noir pales in comparison to its source material: hardboiled detective fiction).

Reds (1981) / Warren Beatty

An American Werewolf in London (1981) / John Landis - I just recently saw this film, and I though it was nowhere no as witty and clever as people made it out to be. Sure, Rick Baker's prosthetics were awesome, but what does this film really have going for it?

Three Brothers (1981) / Francesco Rosi
Man of Iron (1981) / Andrzej Wajda
Too Early, Too Late (1981) / Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1981) / Amy Heckerling
E.T.: The Extra-Terestrial (1982) / Steven Spielberg
The Thing (1982) / John Carpenter
Poltergeist (1982) / Tobe Hooper
Blade Runner (1982) / Ridley Scott

The Evil Dead (1982) / Sam Raimi - I think I can safely assume that many of us here have seen this film about Bruce Campbell and company finding The Book of The Dead in a secluded cabin and all the chaos that ensues. While I cannot deny that its sequels were quite funny and clever, I always thought that Sam Raimi was at his best here, terrifying and grossing out audiences more than any other American film since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Tootsie (1982) / Sydney Pollack - WORST. MOVIE. EVER. About a down on his luck actor (Dustin Hoffman) who cross-dresses an elderly lady to earn a role on a soap opera. This film is in the AFI's 100 Greatest, and I have no clue why. This movie is trite, unfunny, and affectedly sentimental. Please, someone try to explain to me why this film hasn't been burned, destroyed, and buried

Yol (1982) / Serif Gören and Yilmaz Güney
Diner (1982) / Barry Levinson
Fitzcaraldo (1982) / Werner Herzog
Gandhi (1982) / Richard Attenborough
The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982) / Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
A Question of Silence (1982) / Marleen Gorris
Fanny and Alexander (1982) / Ingmar Bergman
A Christmas Story (1983) / Bob Clark
El Norte (1983) / Gregory Nava

Videodrome (1983) / David Cronenberg - I'm usually not one to sing praises for Cronenberg (I hated A History of Violence, which many consider to be his best film), but he really knocked one out of the park with this film, which is about a president of a sleazy television Canadian station (played by James Woods) who becomes obsessed with finding more information on Videodrome, a pornographic program that borders on snuff that one of his technicians finds on a pirated satellite signal. Bizarre can't even begin to explain this film...and I mean this in a good way.

Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) / Richard Marquand
The Big Chill (1983) / Lawrence Kasdan
Sans Soleil (1983) / Chris Marker
The Last Combat (1983) / Luc Besson

L’Argent (1983) / Robert Bresson - Never really got the love for Bresson, who is considered to be one of the greatest auteurs in the history of cinema. However, this film, about the corrupting influence money has on those obsessed with it and also (unfortunately) on those who worry about it only as a means to live, is much more fast-paced and gripping than his earlier work. Furthermore, although I refuse to allow myself to join those who idolize him, this film definitely forced me to admit that he was an excellent director.

Utu (1983) / Geoff Murphy

Terms of Endearment (1983) / James L. Brooks - Given my hate for Ordinary People, some people may call me a hypocrite after I tell them how much I love this film. Admittedly, it is very akin to what you would find on Lifetime and Oxygen. Unlike Ordinary People, however, this film is much more ambitious in its scope (detailing the live of a Houston, Texas, matron and her daughter) and the performances don't border on hammy. Plus, I am huge Jack Nicholson fan.

The Fourth Man (1983) / Paul Verhoeven
The King of Comedy (1983) / Martin Scorsese
The Right Stuff (1983) / Philip Kaufman
Koyaanisqatsi (1983) / Godfrey Reggio
Once Upon a Time in America (1983) / Sergio Leone

Scarface (1983) / Brian De Palma - The saga about Tony Montana, a determined and ambitious Marielito who becomes one of Miami's cocaine lords. This, like Evil Dead, is probably another film everyone on here has seen. Violent, filthy, exploitative, and offensive in just about every possible way, almost nothing else satisfies my mood for a crime-drama like Scarface does.

The Ballad of Narayama (1983) / Shohei Imamura

Amadeus (1984) / Milos Forman - In my opinion, tied with Come and See as the greatest movie of the 1980s. Simply put, the story about one Austrian court composer's (Antonio Salieri, played by, in perhaps the greatest performance of all time, by F. Murray Abraham) jealousy and envy of another, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (played by Tom Hulce). No other film's message will ever touch me as much as Amadeus' did; namely, the tragedy of being conscious of one's own mediocrity in the vocation one loves while simultaneously being able to identify the greatness in others that one can never achieve.

The Terminator (1984) / James Cameron

Paris, Texas (1984) / Wim Wenders - A story about Travis, a man (Harry Dean Stanton) who left his (much younger) wife and son one day, only to be found four years later roaming the deserts of Texas. After identified and claimed by his younger brother (Dean Stockwell), Travis comes back to his brother's Los Angeles home to find that his brother and his brother's wife have adopted his son and that Travis' wife now lives in Houston. Consequently, in order to redeem himself, Travis attempts to reunite his son with his mother. What makes me love this film, more than anything else, is that, like The Searchers and Taxi Driver, it reveals some individuals' desires to atone for their past actions by trying to rectify situations that they perceive to be dysfunctional, when, in fact, the people in these situations may not view them as such.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) / Wes Craven

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) / Rob Reiner

Beverly Hills Cop (1984) / Martin Brest - Eddie Murphy at his best, as Axel Foley, a Detroit cop looking to find the killers of his friend in Beverly Hills. No one in the 80s did action-comedies better than Murphy.

Ghostbusters (1984) / Ivan Reitman
A Passage to India (1984) / David Lean
Stranger Than Paradise (1984) / Jim Jarmusch
The Killing Fields (1984) / Roland Joffé
The Natural (1984) / Barry Levinson
The Breakfast Club (1985) / John Hughes
Ran (1985) / Akira Kurosawa

Come and See (1985) / Elem Kilmov - Best war movie ever made (and, Terrence Malick most definitely took inspiration from this in making the superb The Thin Red Line). Essentially, this film is about the travels of an adolescent boy through Belarus during its Nazi occupation. However, unlike most war films, this one doesn't try to augment its depiction of the devastation of war with sappy dialogue; all this film needs is its visuals to get its point across. No other film will make you feel as if you are watching what it is like to walk through Hell.

The Official Story (1985) / Luis Puenzo
Out of Africa (1985) / Sydney Pollack
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) / Woody Allen
Back to the Future (1985) / Robert Zemeckis
The Time to Live and the Time to Die (1985) / Hou Hsiao-hsien
Brazil (1985) / Terry Gilliam
Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) / Hector Babenco
The Quiet Earth (1985) / Geoff Murphy
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) / Paul Schrader
Prizzi's Honor (1985) / John Huston
Vagabond (1985) / Agnès Varda
Shoah (1985) / Claude Lanzmann
The Color Purple (1985) / Steven Spielberg
Manhunter (1986) / Michael Mann
Stand By Me (1986) / Rob Reiner
Blue Velvet (1986) / Davud Lynch
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) / Woody Allen
She's Gotta Have It (1986) / spike Lee
The Decline of the American Empire (1986) / Denys Arcand
The Fly (1986) / David Cronenberg
Aliens (1986) / James Cameron
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) / John Hughes
Down by Law (1986) / Jim Jarmusch
A Room with a View (1986) / James Ivory
Children of a Lesser God (1986) / Randa Haines
Platoon (1986) / Oliver Stone
Caravaggio (1986) / Derek Jarman
Tampopo (1986) / Juzo Itami
Peking Opera Blues (1986) / Tsui Hark
Salvador (1986) / Oliver Stone
Top Gun (1986) / Tony Scott
Sherman's March (1986) / Ross McElwee
The Horse Thief (1986) / Tian Zhuangzhuang
Yeelen (1987) / Souleymane Cissé
Wings of Desire (1987) / Wim Wenders
Project A, Part II (1987) / Jackie Chan
Babette's Feast (1987) / Gabriel Axel
Raising Arizona (1987) / Joel Coen
Full Metal Jacket (1987) / Stanley Kubrick
Withnail and I (1987) / Bruce Robinson
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) / Barry Levinson
Au Revoir Les Enfants / Louis Malle
Broadcast News (1987) / James L. Brooks
Housekeeping (1987) / Bill Forsyth
The Princess Bride (1987) / Rob Reiner
Moonstruck (1987) / Norman Jewison
The Untouchables (1987) / Brian De Palma
Red Sorghum (1987) / Zhang Yimou
The Dead (1987) / John Huston
Fatal Attraction (1987) / Adrian Lyne
A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) / Ching Siu-Tung
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) / Pedro Almodóvar
The Vanishing (1988) / George Sluizer
Bull Durham (1988) / Ron Shelton
Ariel (1988) / Aki Kaurismäki
The Thin Blue Line (1988) / Errol Morris
Akira (1988) / Katsuhiro Ôtomo
Cinema Paradiso (1988) / Giuseppe Tornatore
Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988) / Marcel Ophüls
A Fish Called Wanda (1988) / Charles Crichton
The Naked Gun (1988) / Davud Zucker
Big (1988) / Penny Marshall
Dangerous Liaisons (1988) / Stephen Frears
Grave of the Fireflies (1988) / Isao Takahata
Landscape in the Mist (1988) / Theodorus Angelopoulos
The Decalogue (1988) / Krzysztof Kieslowski
Die Hard (1988) / John McTiernan
A Tale of the Wind (1988) / Joris Ivens
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) / Robert Zemeckis
Rain Man (1988) / Barry Levinson
The Story of Women (1988) / Claude Chabrol
The Accidental Tourist (1988) / Lawrence Kasdan
Alice (1988) / Jan Svankmajer
Batman (1989) / Tim Burton
When Harry Met Sally (1989) / Rob Reiner
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) / Woody Allen
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) / Peter Greenaway
Drugstore Cowboy (1989) / Gus Van Sant
My Left Foot (1989) / Jim Sheridan
The Killer (1989) / John Woo
Do the Right Thing (1989) / Spike Lee
Roger & Me (1989) / Michael Moore
Glory (1989) / Edward Zwick
The Asthenic Syndrome (1989) / Kira Muratova
Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) / Steven Soderbergh
Say Anything (1989) / Cameron Crowe
The Unbelievable Truth (1989) / Hartley
A City of Sadness (1989) / Hou Hsiao-hsien
Tetsuo (1998) / Shinya Tsukamoto

 

[jmt225]

You're missing Dazed and Confused from the early nineties. I just looked at the list of films from 1993, and Dazed and Confused is by far my favorite from that year. But much props for including:

Happiness (1998) / Todd Solondz

That film was fantastic. Definitely Solondz's best work (Welcome to the Dollhouse was good too, but it's nothing compared to Happiness).

So, yeah.. those of you who are into dark comedy, Happiness is a must see.