The 100 most entertaining movies of all time
(Especially if you were born in 1942, play piano, live in the woods, and like risotto)
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casts or movies yending with a “where are they now?” segment all touch an agreeable starting point for you? If so, you might watch this flick once a year the rest of your life. Or more often. It’s a nonsensical tale that nonetheless reeks verisimilitude, from the band's launch to its inevitable implosion. As Jimmy tells his recruits: “Do you not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud!” You’ll laugh your ass off, you tosser. Elvis was a Cajun? Piss off! Back to the hotel, Mr. Pickett? Bollocks!
3. A Face in the Crowd (1957)—New generations invariably go into shock when they see a bravura dramatic performance by Andy Griffith. Somebody give them smelling salts so they’ll wake up in time to see that halfway through the 20th Century, Hollywood (yes, that place) made a movie demonstrating what 21st Century demagoguery would look like—Aristotelian tragedy’s first best depiction of the broadcast era. Grab some popcorn and be ready to cheer when Patricia Neal pulls the plug on Lonesome Rhodes.
4. Lonely Are the Brave (1962)—The best of the “last cowboy” movies. Keep your eye on the truckload of toilets headed west and you’ll gain perhaps the best metaphorical sense of what has happened to America, be it urban or farmland rural or open spaces. With “A Face in the Crowd,” that’s two top flicks in a row in which Walter Matthau waltzes through a character role with the utmost craft and ease.
5. Slap Shot (1977)—Funny, funny, funny, as everyone knows. Great comedic moments pile up like practice pucks bouncing out of the goal crease. Anybody who never finds occasion, punch-drunk and bloody, to shout “Old-time hockey, coach!” simply never gets his ass kicked in this life. Speaking of character actors, “Slap Shot” is the first of at least three appearances each on this list by Strother Martin, Melinda Dillon, and M. Emmet Walsh.
6. Dr. Strangelove (1964)—It’s on most everyone’s list, often very high. For my generation, the dark humor gets darker as decades pass and you still have to wonder about fighting in the war room and about, say, Pakistan. Do you suppose this film’s humor would play well in Lahore? More important, would an Islamist Slim Pickens be a little less amusing as he rode a nuke downward toward Peoria?
7. Big Night (1996)—Immigrant brothers Primo and Secondo reach the Jersey Shore with a dream of succeeding in the New World, circa 1958, by offering fiercely authentic, world-class Italian cuisine at their 30-seat gourmet restaurant. Trouble is, the few customers who show up lean more toward spaghetti and meatballs. The core cast—two brothers, three girlfriends, one waiter, and a scheming competitor named Pascal—is spectacularly well matched to a wonderful script. Tragicomedy as a second language. Unlike Wilson Pickett in “The Commitments,” Louis Prima never does show up. Not even too late. Bravissimo! Mangia!
8. The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984)—For my money, Mickey Rourke’s best role. The same goes for Eric Roberts. You will find yourself cheering madly for Paulie the airhead who gets de-thumbed for his stupidity and greed, then retaliates by loading a mobster’s espresso with an equine-strength version of what Louis Armstrong called “a good physic.” One of Hollywood’s best horse betting scenes led me later to research, for the record, that someone—no doubt hoping to get lucky despite himself, like Paulie did—registered a thoroughbred with the name Starry Hope. That one is, as they say, still running. “Starry Hope! Starry Hope! Starry Hope!”
9, 10, 11. Sunset Boulevard (1950) . . . Ace in the Hole (The Big Carnival) (1951) . . . Stalag 17 (1953)—All three would have gotten onto my list if the credits were a secret and the director unknown. But in fact these are consecutive Billy Wilder gems. That’s the biggest cinema trifecta ever cashed, by my reckoning. If Wilder were around to survey today’s Cineplex menu he could fairly say: “I’m still big; it’s the pictures that got small.” The middle flick in the triple-feature is classic journalist-as-evil-opportunist noir, played with cynical flourish by Kirk Douglas. The intermissions are flanked by William Holden leading two large casts in which teutonic film legends (Eric von Stroheim in “Boulevard” and Otto Preminger in “Stalag”) play outstanding bit parts. Consider this: How often does a director do three movies in a row that are so unalike, let alone so seamlessly excellent?
12. Cool Hand Luke (1967)—What we have here is a movie everybody still likes, even though at this writing it’s 43 years old. I imagine as long as well-acted, iconoclastic, rebellious, non-conformist roles drive good movies, this one will remain liked. Have fun rediscovering how many notable actors appeared in and around this particular chain gang. (That’s Harry Dean Stanton, for instance, singing “A Closer Walk with Thee.”) Call Luke a Christ figure if you like. I figure he was just a good old boy who could swallow a lot of eggs. But he did suffer so a lot of other people would feel better. Paul Newman at his best.
13. Prince of the City (1981)—For starters, if there were no “Prince of the City,” there never would have been a Lennie Briscoe on “Law and Order”—or at least we would not have had the great pleasure of watching Jerry Orbach play the role. Here Treat Williams leads a special police unit inexorably charging one step forward and sliding two steps backward into the tar pit of corruption. For the best-ever street-cop-trashes-Internal Affairs scene, watch Orbach’s character roust James Tolkan.
14. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)—One finds oneself wishing to knock this one further down the list. It’s not merely a predictable choice but, after so many years of this society’s racial steps and missteps and non-steps, it is also . . . not irrelevant, but . . . what? A hoary civics lesson . . . a simplistic view of the most complex fact about American society? All of that. But also truthful. And spiritual even for atheists. And, for those who like them, a great story that requires no effects at all, except to make sure it’s dark when Scout makes her way home. A toast: When you need him, may Atticus Finch take your case, and may all your Boo Radleys be so good-hearted.
15. Casablanca (1942)—It gave us more memorable lines . . . certainly more remembered lines . . . than any other movie. This from a script whose writers barely kept pace with the filming. These days, as engaging as these characters and their desperate circumstances may be, you could watch just to summon a sense of what it was like to go to a nightclub instead of to your home entertainment center. That’s not as trivial, or as disconnected, a fact as that may seem at first glance. Play it, Sam. First you’ll have to retrieve your little push-around piano from its current owners in Japan.
16. The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)—Michelle Pfeiffer makin’ whoopee atop a grand piano is fine enough, but there's more. Now many remember what lounge music was; hence, one assumes, the Wikipedia entry asserting the Baker Boys played jazz. The movie, on the other hand, is loaded front to back with detail that rings true. The Bridges brothers didn’t need to play piano to carry off their piano-playing roles, but Pfeiffer did need to sing. Her pipes, it turns out, are outasight. Unless, of course, you are too young to understand standards and lounge performers. Plus, you get Jennifer Tilly auditioning for the gig by singing “The Candy Man.”
17. The Caine Mutiny (1954)—When Captain Queeg, on the witness stand, reaches in his pocket for those steelies and rolls them around like disconnected worry beads as he testifies: “I tried to run the ship properly by the book but they fought me at every turn”—then you know beyond doubt that Queeg is two screws short of all ahead full. But you also know the crew’s novelist wannabe is a coward and the college boy on the bridge needs a little life experience—and that from christening to Davey Jones’s Locker, we all walk a deck defined by ambivalence and not much that is fair.
18. Red Rock West (1993)—Frontier noir, if an Eldorado (the Cadillac kind) in Wyoming counts as “frontier.” Nicholas Cage drifts into town broke and without prospects, gets mistaken for “Lyle from Dallas,” gets handed a down payment on a murder contract, and then the movie gets started. The studio didn’t even like this one well enough to distribute it. Dolts.
19, 20. North by Northwest (1959) . . . Rear Window (1954)—My two favorite Hitchcocks. Others may be more artful, but these are stylish and entertaining and good cinema. The first film takes the audience along on a chase ranging from D.C. to South Dakota; the second film never leaves the window of a garden apartment. One doesn’t often encounter the word “suspense” these days. For a reminder of what that meant without a chainsaw or a goalie’s mask or a sci-fi creature, but with mere human beings doing ordinary things in ordinary places, there will always be Hitchcock.
21. Thriller in Manila (2008)—It’s an HBO documentary, but it delivers all the punch of a great feature drama. It’s about boxing, but then “Moby Dick” was about a fish. This version is told from the fish’s viewpoint. Everybody, me included, loves Ali, even those who detest boxing. But watching this film is like watching "Rashomon" set in a gym. It is arresting, about personalities, about race, about the human condition, and about the rabbit-punch inflicted upon reality by Ali’s hype and charisma during his three gargantuan fights with Smokin' Joe Frasier. A stunner for those who don’t know the full story.
22. The French Connection (1971)—One of the great stakeout scenes and one of the great chase scenes—how’s that for a static-to-manic toggle? To say nothing of a nightclub scene in which the Three Degrees perform a Jim Webb song featuring the worst lyrics ever written. Then there’s the tearing-apart-the-Mark III in the police garage scene. And lots of ground-breaking cop-flick realism. Don Ellis’s jazzy score makes a suitably mysterious accompaniment to a fast-paced tale about the futility and ambiguity of the narc’s lot in life.
23. Things Change (1988)—For me, this is the movie that should have won an Oscar for Don Ameche during his late-in-life star turn. It’s David Mamet and Joe Mantegna, so it’s dark; but Ameche’s elderly shoe-shiner is so guileless he becomes the light at the end of a mobster tunnel. Kinda “It’s a Wonderful Life” in a town of made men. If you like Vegas movies and mob movies and Frank Capra, this is heaven.
24. Hearts of the West (1975)—A “great minor film” is somewhat like “jumbo shrimp.” Jeff Bridges’s many cinematic accolades usually overlook his portrayal of Lewis Tater, an Iowa farmboy with a yen to be Zane Grey. That’s a mistake. It’s an engaging, charming, often funny film. With Alan Arkin as a neurotic producer/director of silent westerns, and—yes, him again—Andy Griffith skirting the edge of the dark side for some crucial counterpoint.
25, 26. Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) . . . Bill (1981)—A Mickey Rooney double-feature . . . without a single song and dance. What a professional! The first is a gritty boxing movie with a fine turn by Jackie Gleason. “Bill” is a made-for-TV film in which Rooney is front and center as a mentally challenged man entering the real world after 40 years of institutionalization. I’ve only seen it once, when it was broadcast three decades ago. I said then I’d never forget it. I haven’t. I doubt anyone could. Sample Rooney’s film career, including obscure stuff like “Pulp,” and be surprised. A select short subject like no other.
27. The Man Who Would Be King (1975)—Did Huston and Connery and Caine and Plummer have fun shooting this thing? Can the Geico gecko get you to laugh aloud more than 15 percent of the time? Did Huston, at a dinner party after filming had begun, cast Caine’s wife as the princess? (Yes, a fact.) Did Connery practice Danny’s operatic death plunge in a booming baritone over a good martini or three, and then—after shooting—reprise it over another good martini or three? (Absolutely, a guess.)
28. Citizen Kane (1941)—Charles Foster Kane was another man who would be king, and maybe his story is the best movie ever made. I wouldn’t quarrel with that common assertion (the way I would with “Raging Bull,” a critically sainted film that doesn’t even make my list). But on this particular day at least, I’d rather watch any of the above films. Welles did very big things like “Kane” and very small things like those card tricks on the Carson show. Somehow, both contribute to the fact that he was a genius, a label that should not lightly be applied to an entertainer.
29. Blazing Saddles (1974)—I first saw this in a suburban Detroit theater. Full house. When the peon dives behind a water trough at the sight of Alex Karras and crosses himself while fearfully observing: “Mongo! Santamaria!” I laughed uproariously and no one else even smiled. Mel Brooks is like that. Good thing I only smiled earlier in the film when Brooks hired the entire Count Basie band and put them on a hay cart to serenade Cleavon Little with “April in Paris” as he rides off—sporting Gucci saddlebags—to report for duty as the territory’s first black sheriff.
30. The Wild Bunch (1969) —Lee Marvin pulled out of this film’s lead as Pike Bishop when offered more money to do “Paint Your Wagon.” The role had been considered for and/or offered to a long list ranging from Jimmy Stewart to Gregory Peck. Winding up with William Holden in the role might have been the single greatest element raising “The Wild Bunch” from porno violence to art movie. Holden’s Bishop seems to have a decent IQ, and he looks weary and as if he were born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. If anyone not possessing those qualities led his pals into this shootout, we simply wouldn’t give a damn—no matter how wonderfully the carnage is photographed.
31, 32, 33, 34, 35. The Natural (1984). . . The Longest Yard (1974) . . . Mystery, Alaska (1999) . . . Hoosiers (1986) . . . Let It Ride (1989)—We need one film for each of what American media consider the four major sports, plus the one sport that media used to consider huge but now consider an annoyance. I love all five films, but if the local cineplex shows ’em all this afternoon, I’ll go watch the aforesaid annoyance.
A FEW critics said Redford didn’t look like a baseball player. Redford, meanwhile, played on the same high-school team as Don Drysdale and got a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado. Maybe the critics just
couldn’t handle two of the greatest over-the-top scenes of all time, when Roy Hobbs knocks the lights out and when he knocks the cover off the ball.
THE REAL “Longest Yard,” the
one with Ray Nitschke Joe Kapp and Sonny Sixkiller, has all the genuine swagger you used to see in pro sports before athletes made obscene amounts of money and began preening for 24/7
cameras. Anyone locked in a room with“Green Acres” had no idea what a great villain Eddie Albert could be.
IF YOU grew up in a small town, and are old enough to have seen a barnstorming team of big-leaguers play the locals (or if you saw players from your state’s NFL team get a little exercise and an excuse to get drunk by driving north to play basketball against local heroes dumb enough to try guarding them), you will love “Mystery, Alaska.” You'd probably love it anyway.
THE THING about “Hoosiers,” if you’re not enough of a sports fan to already know, is that until recently in Indiana the smallest rural schools in the state really did enter the same basketball tournament as the biggest urban schools. Knowing that fact lifts this perfectly cast heart-warmer another notch.
THE FIRST time I saw “Let It Ride” it greatly offended my horseplaying self, because Trotter doesn’t just hit the cover off the ball at Hialeah’s betting windows—he knocks it to Mars. In the real world Robby Coltrane would not be punching all those tickets to handle Trotter’s big bet, and no parlay would last that long let alone win its final leg (“inning” for those are not blessed by exposure to the horseplaying arts). On my second viewing, and many since, I realized that the spirit of playing the ponies is captured as accurately and brilliantly and hilariously as the reality of it is ignored.
36, 37, 38. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) . . . The Parallax View (1974) . . . Three Days of the Condor (1975)—If you watch this triple feature with anyone, don’t take your eye off what they’re doing. Eat only food and drink you cook yourself. Tell the mailman to leave your bills and fliers outside the door. Stay off catwalks. Don’t hire Henry Silva as your personal trainer. If your mother drops by, don’t play cards with her. Trust but verify . . . everything.
39. Get Shorty (1995)—Take all those chain letters and rip-and-read broadcast yuks about really stupid criminals, pile them up, and the heap won’t reach nearly as high as just one good Elmore Leonard dysfunctional perp, or would-be perp. We are not talking dysfunctional like leaving your driver’s license on the counter along with your holdup note. You’ve got to break some noses to make real caper mayonnaise. This is the place.
40. A Christmas Story (1983)—Admit it. Go ahead. You like this one better than “It’s a Wonderful Life.” If not, insert that one here on your own list instead. Anything you eventually are going to watch 70 or more times, according to actuarial tables, has to be on your list. Especially if you enjoy it every time you see it. As I do this one. Which is why you can go online at this moment and order a most unusual lamp.
41. Touch of Evil (1958)—How much evil? Even the oil wells are crooked. Has any other film this good been produced with such eccentric casting? Check out the dramatis personae and name a less likely bunch who showed up in the same room while a camera was running for a real movie.
42. Shane (1953)—For half a century or so, “High Noon” has generally been rated as the top western produced after I was born but before blood and guts were sold by the barrel. I’ve always liked “Shane” better than “High Noon.” Unlike nameless mysterious strangers in later scorched-earth westerns, Shane’s handle is not only a stand-alone title but the final words of the script. When Shane rides off into the sunset he is not leaving retribution and despair in his wake, but rather—what a liberal idea—progress. Katrina vanden Heuvel packing heat. I liked the spaghetti oaters. But ideals set against the high plains are OK, too.
43. The Cotton Club (1984)—The Harlem nightclub itself is, of course, a major character. But there are plenty of others, including James Remar’s notably lunatic Dutch Schultz and Richard Gere’s Beiderbeckish Dixie Dwyer (playing his own cornet solos, no less) and Gregory Hines doing, of course, his own taps (along with his brother, a neat subtext). The big-band charts re-creating the sound of Duke Ellington’s house orchestra are terrific, and the floor show is even better. Coppola's film deserves more respect.
44. Beyond the Sea (2004)—Music plays a big role in many of my favorite movies, and a lot about this movie’s story line is silly (though it runs at least as near to factuality as do the Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and Gene Krupa biopics from the’50s). But the reason I include this “Bobby Darin Story” has nothing to do with plot. No actor, in my opinion, has ever sung a singing role so well (let alone danced, directed, and written the film) as Kevin Spacey does here. Watch it one time paying attention to nothing but Spacey’s singing. Even better than Meryl Streep’s. One might say even better than Bobby Darin’s.
45, 46. Deadline U.S.A. (1952) ... Absence of Malice (1981)—Another double-header, two newspaper movies, a black-and-white from 1952 and a color from 1982, one from the world of big headlines and breaking news and one from the world of investigative reporting and journalists with college degrees. Not surprisingly, the one in which you get ink on your sleeves is the one you feel least dirty after watching. When Bogey holds the telephone outward so the mob boss on the line can hear the press room rumble to life, you are watching a fine old-time cinema sauce melding myth and truth. In “Malice,” when Wilfred Brimley, as a senior Justice Department lawyer, comes to town to repair a mess perpetrated by a scheming prosecutor and a naïve reporter, you are watching what happens when a society gets so much education that everybody thinks too much..
47. The Third Man (1949)—Imagine casting Matt Damon as Harry Lime and then spreading the franchise across four or five movies while he tries to figure out who he is. Right, Welles’s one little speech about the Swiss contribution to world history, delivered when he and Joseph Cotten come down off the big ferris wheel, is worth as much as most other intrigue flicks combined.
48. The Counterfeit Traitor (1962)—A WWII spy tale (based on a non-fiction book) with characters who could sustain a much duller story. An American businessman with interests in Scandinavia (William Holden) is recruited to cozy up with the worst Berlin has to offer and bring back vital data. His faux Nazification costs him his personal life back home. His Berlin contact is, naturally, a beautiful German socialite (and she is stunning, in the person of Lili Palmer). Sounds like a dull post-war Hollywood assembly line product? Not so. Better in fact than some higher-profile spy flicks of any era.
49. The Fighter (2010)—Gotta put a very recent film in the top 50 just to see if I agree with myself a few years from now. I think I will, if on Christian Bale’s performance alone. But there is more, some humorous and some tragic, in this saga of lower-class urban white scuffling culture. The Greek-chorus sisters didn’t bother me. I liked ’em. Mark Wahlberg is more than OK in the lead role of a film he put a whole lot into. But between Bale and Melissa Leo (as his mother), and Amy Adams (his girlfriend), there just wasn’t much left for Wahlberg to conquer outside the ring.
50. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)—Hollywood used to be more proud of its “epics” than anything else, but this seems to be the only epic on my list. Great photography meets great weirdness. If you demand lessons from your historical dramas, when you finally—deep into Act II—find Lawrence trying to will Arab tribes at least enough unity to keep utilities turned on in Damascus, think of Baghdad following “liberation” in 2003.
51, 52. Dog Day Afternoon (1975) . . . Wag the Dog (1997)—A barking double-feature. ONCE UPON a time when asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton said: “Because that’s where the money is.” That was the unrealistic ’50s of Ike and Beaver Cleaver. In a more realistic era, Sonny Wortzik robs banks because that’s the only way to pay for his lover’s sex-change operation. “Attica! Attica!” AND TO THINK “Wag the Dog” was produced before smart phones and Twitter—and really advanced Paintshop—got their mojo fine-tuned. The DeNiro/Hoffman spinmeisters’ rearranging of reality is so real that the “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry” focus-group mantra reaches new heights (spoiler: you laugh). Woody Harrelson has made a career playing nutcases. This minor, less-featured nutcase is his best. Proof? Willie Nelson sings about him. You'll want to go toss your sneakers up on some utility wires. It’s the patriotic thing to do, you know.
53. Five Easy Pieces (1970)—I’ve known several musicians by night who were construction workers by day. Maybe that helps vault Jack Nicholson’s hard-hatted Rachmninoff high on my list. Or maybe it’s because both Merle Haggard and Duke Ellington are among my musical heroes. At any rate, hearing “Stand by Your Man” and Chopin featured prominently was an attention-getter. That’s even without: “Now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules.”
54. The Producers (1968)—I haven’t seen the musical derived from this movie about a musical. Why bother? Nazi-schmatzi. Zero Mostel. Gene Wilder. Dick Shawn. The dumbstruck audience. Mostel and Wilder in an intermission saloon toasting their failure only to be dismayed as success comes racing through the doors for a quick snort. Only Mel Brooks could make the Broadway maxim “You gotta have a song they’ll remember and go home singing” work with a ditty this offensive. Altogether: “Springtime.... ”
55. Do the Right Thing (1989)—The recipe ingredients combined in this kettle are so incredibly well melded and seasoned as to produce five-star cinema stew. Really. And more. I mean, the film really does capture a boiling point—and onward to whatever physics makes a boiler explode—as well that can possibly be done. Spike Lee is said to have written the script in two weeks. One doesn’t write this kind of thing in two weeks. It had to have been marinating for years, and then plucked like . . . low-hanging stew? Whatever. A great film that also entertains. Superbly cast.
56. Twelve Angry Men (1957)—If reasonable doubt, the cornerstone concept of the American justice system, emerged from real jury rooms the way it does in this film, we would instantly solve prison overcrowding. It’s a stageplay for a dozen guys stuck in one room, so of course it’s a feast for Hollywood character actors. Fonda’s lonely first-ballot “innocent” vote makes this a neat double feature with his title role in “The Wrong Man.”
57. Bullit (1968)—One is tempted to say this film achieved nothing but to set the bar for chase scenes, once and for all time (unless muscle cars make a comeback). Isn’t that enough? Besides, the safehouse double-cross as the film opens sets the bar for that piece of business as well. Both have been mimicked countless times.
58. Bronco Billy (1980)—Is this my highest-ranked Eastwood film? Hard to believe. What was I thinking? I probably enjoy more Eastwood films, as actor and as director, than films from anyone else. So, why do so few of his films make my list, why aren’t they higher, and why does this one come first? I’m not sure. Bronco Billy, the failed shoe salesman who buys a wild-west show and populates it with fellow misfits, certainly brings a town less blood and more laughs than your typical Eastwood visitor. And—despite the bigtop and Billy’s troupe of outliers—there is no orangutan and no Harleys. I knew a guy and his wife who owned and operated a wild-west show. But I’ve got crows in the backyard and didn’t put “The Birds” ahead of “Rear Window.” I must simply like this thing.
59. A Simple Plan (1998)—When common people allow a common quota of greed to step up and take full charge during a unique moment, you get, well, a ton of plot-drivers through centuries of print and stage and cinema. This one is a fine example. These are not the brightest folks in town, a camera-loving fact that helps ratchet up the humor quotient—which slowly dissolves to irony.
60. Songwriter (1984)—Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson and Rip Torn having fun with a few clichés, Leslie Ann Warren, Melinda Dillon, a plaid suit, and a vacuum cleaner. I could watch it again, right now, and still laugh my way to the closing credits. Lest you misunderstand, Pauline Kael liked it.
61. Postcards from the Edge (1990)—The first time I saw this, Meryl Streep’s singing (singing at all, let alone this well) caught me unawares, like discovering Secretariat could win the Belmont by 32 lengths, then stroll back to the barn and cook a mean beef Wellington. A mere footnote, of course. But both her songs here (a country classic by Cindy Walker and a an obscure, perfect-fit gem by Shel Silverstein) enhance the story as well as any song ever enhanced any story, and the story is fine. The second vocal, by the way, puts “Postcards” in the running for a “Most and Best Action During Closing Credits” Oscar.
62. Broadway Danny Rose (1984)—Maybe the smallest among Woody Allen’s little films. A minor-league entertainment agent has just one viable client, an Italian lounge singer who splits at first chance, leaving Danny with nothing but his stable of one-legged dancers and singing parrots. And to think Danny taught this ingrate how to toss a microphone from hand to hand!
63. The Shootist (1976)—Thanks to all the fawning yelps over the Coen Brothers’ remake of “True Grit,” everybody knows about the original filmic Rooster Cogburn—even if what they think they know about that film’s virtues is revisionist hokum. So I’ll ignore both versions here and instead list the not nearly so well known “The Shootist,” a much quieter movie about an old man with a gun, and cancer. Ether movie is, of course, as a good helping of Duke in Winter.
64. Hopscotch (1980)—It’s “The Odd Couple” with Ned Beatty and most of the CIA in Jack Lemmon’s role. Walter Matthau’s rumpled CIA operative gets pulled in from the cold against his wishes, setting up a film-length retribution against the next-generation dimwit who retired him. Matthau writes a tell-all memoir and
sprinkles chapters around the globe,
always just a step ahead of the bastard
he sets out to annoy. If you try this
at home, be sure you also have Glenda Jackson along to help.
65, 66. High Plains Drifter (1973) . . . Mystic River (2003)—Two more Eastwoods on the list will be enough, I suppose. “THE RED western,” as I like to call it, is an original screenplay by a Clevelander who quit the newspaper business to write the Shaft novels, “The French Connection” screenplay, and a bunch of other stuff before dying at 56. I don’t know if Ernie Tidyman read any 17th Century revenge tragedies, but those audiences would have loved watching this one. “MYSTIC River” is a revenge tragedy of a much different sort, full of transient ambiguities and doubts until the very end, when the need for factual and moral clarity before thinking about revenge gets one of its most tragic, engaging advertisements. The cowboy who painted Lago red and set it afire did so with factual and moral clarity. It was easier to see back then.
67. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)—How weird is this film? So weird that when Peter Weir found the perfect music to set its not merely mysterious but supernatural mood, the world was introduced to Gheorghe Zamfir. Leave it to a movie director to discover the pan flute. Anyway, this tale of upper-class schoolgirls afoot to no good end in the Oz bush invites far more audience speculation than even the most well-oiled dinner theater production. It is also one of the most beautifully filmed movies I’ve seen.
68. Waking Ned Devine (1998)—Why are the Brits so much better with this sort of thing (see “Calendar Girls”)? Close readers may be figuring out that I love stories told with ensemble casts. Humor is good. Irish helps. Plots that begin with a big lottery winner dropping dead at the sight of the winning numbers always get me, as well.
69. The Last Waltz (1978)—Get rid of Scorsese’s silly and thankfully brief bookend set-piece scenes, just let the camera roll at the Winterland for The Band’s last show, and you have a terrific piece of film that should be, as is recommended onscreen, PLAYED LOUD. The host group was a unique and legendary one-guitar-two-keyboards rockabilly band with great writing, great instrumentals, three viable lead vocalists, and—despite being four-fifths Canadian—genuine American roots credentials. The guest list for this last show was spectacular, right down to the tuba player. Enjoy.
70. House of Games (1987)—It’s only one degree of separation from “Life with Father” to this dark, dark con movie, given that Lindsay Crouse’s father wrote “Life with Father” and her husband, David Mamet, wrote and directed “House of Games.” Crouse plays a shrink drawn into a con to help a patient, only to be conned in the con. And a fine job she does of it.
71. Bite the Bullet (1975)—Saturday matinee fare, no doubt, and a western besides. But this one raises the “and then, and then, and then” page-turner esthetic to respectable heights. Besides, we all know that whenever a horse race and money are on the table at the same time, then chicanery must be involved. Even if it’s a 700-mile horse race. Especially if it’s a 700-mile horse race. With a newspaper involved, no less.
72. The Ref (1994)— “Home Alone” for adults. Can an endlessly bickering, neurotic married couple remain unafraid of Virginia Woolf while held at gunpoint by a home invader? You bet, when it’s Denis Leary invading the upper-middle-class domicile of Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis . . . at Christmas-time . . . with relatives knocking on the door. Every member of the extended family has his or her place in the jolly pudding whipped up by the circumstances.
73. Little Big Man (1970)—The tall tale might have been the most prevalent, and best developed, art form of 19th Century frontier America. Strange that we didn’t see more of that in movie westerns. This one tries to close the gap all by itself, and does quite a decent job of it. At times Dustin Hoffman must have felt like Tim Conway telling the elephant story to Carol Burnett.
74. Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)—Noir and the Wild West meet when the train stops at Black Rock for the first time in four years and a mysterious disabled WWII vet steps off, eventually producing a tie for best one-armed bar fight—along with the one in “Lonely are the Brave”—and that’s only a footnote. Great cast accounts for Black Rock’s entire minuscule population. Vies for best “there are secrets in this town!” flick, in the contemporary realism division.
75. The Day of the Jackal (1973)—Cold killers abound in cinema, many of them professionally meticulous assassins. Few films trace such an assignment from beginning to end along its deadly path so meticulously as the Jackal is followed in the novel’s first screen incarnation. The hunter, and the hunter of the hunter, are given first-rate portrayals.
76. Inside Moves (1980)—“The Time of Your Life” meets “General Hospital, Rehab Unit” meets the NBA. The pairing of soap and substance in a unique neighborhood bar works better than you might imagine. No doubt that’s partly because of the Valerie Curtin/Barry Levinson script. But John Savage’s portrayal of Roary (sic)—who leaves rehab after a spectacularly bungled suicide attempt only to discover salvation among the misfits populating Max’s Bar—is spectacular. Diana Scarwid—who has worked mostly in TV ever since—is merely terrific. David Morse is just outstanding. And on like that. It’s available on DVD. It wasn’t for many years, for whatever reason.
77. Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)—A movie producer job is easy. Put Paul Mazursky together with Bette Midler, Nick Nolte, and Richard Dreyfuss. Put Midler and Dreyfuss in a mansion, put Nolte in the alley smelling worse than his shopping cart looks. Wait for a tsunami of box office receipts. Or maybe that didn’t as well as hoped. No matter, it’s funny, funny stuff.
78. Be Kind, Rewind (2008)—Figure out a new Oscar category and give it to Fats Waller (let Louis Prima present it on Hollywood’s big night). Or give a more traditional Oscar to Mos Def. Not that Jack Black, Danny Glover and Mia Farrow aren’t pretty good here also. They are. This movie, though, is much better if you get the Sweded version. I can rent you a copy for 20 clams.
79. Serpico (1973)—Ever see an actor routinely summon both beatific serenity and Don Knotts “which-direction-is-the-next-bullet-coming-from” spasms and make them not only believable but just right? As drama? As a cop? I thought of putting “Report to the Commissioner” on the list, but “Serpico” is much better. Gets better with age, despite all the ’70s trappings.
80. Power (1986)—This one covers the same ground as “The Candidate” and does a better job of it. Richard Gere is more than believable as the post-print political consultant (as is Gene Hackman’s competing operative from an earlier era). Better yet, Gere remains believable when he sees the light and steps away from the dark side.
81. A Fish Called Wanda (1988)—A lot of people say this is the funniest movie they ever have seen. All such superlatives are impossible to fulfill. But this is a really, really funny movie.
82. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)—Ah, the days when a big, big movie could drive an old military march, “Colonel Bogey,” onto the pop music charts—even though the Brit on the street had for years been singing the ditty as . . .
“Bullshit
“That’s all the band can play
“Bullshit
“They play it night and day.”
In 1958, in high schools across the USA, scores of thousands of students imitated Sessue Hayakawa several times a day, lisping: “Be happy in your work.” Nonetheless, it was and is one hell of a movie.
83. 48 Hours (1982)—It opens with not one but two violent scenes that feature not just blood but also plot. An odd way to get off and running in what is essentially a buddy movie, but there you go. If you really don’t like cop movies, and your really don’t like buddy movies, just watch the scene where Eddie Murphy, a felon on most unusual work release, rousts Torchy’s, a redneck bar, to gather intel for his new drunken cop Pal, Nick Nolte.
84. Babette’s Feast (1987)—If Louis Prima had showed up in this Jutland fishing village, with its fundamentalist and self-denying Christian sect (awaiting, like Shakers, the extinction of their kind), it would have been a theological disaster. On the other hand, as with “Big Night,” the film concludes with a visit to table the likes of which you only wish you could experience in this life. The feast of course presents a profound liturgical/gustatorial conflict for the sect members, who live on salted fish and common bread.
85, 86. Hud (1963) . . . The Front (1976)—Martin Ritt often said he directed movies so he could afford to buy racehorses. “Hud” developed into a stakes winner for all concerned, Patricia Neal no less so than Hud himself, Paul Newman. There was a rural time and a place where “going to town” was the whole thing in life. Offhand I can’t think of a serious film that captures that bathtub-Saturday-night esthetic as well, let alone as darkly, as “Hud.” Ritt, by the way, was a blacklist victim who got the last laugh by directing “The Front,” which employed a subpoena-length list of similarly demonized actors. Ritt directed Newman in the entire “H Trifecta”—“Hud,” “Hombre,” and the “Hustler”—as well as in “The Outrage,” a neat remake of “Rashomon.” Any of those are good enough for somebody’s List of 100.
87, 88. Little Miss Sunshine (2006) . . . Sunshine Cleaning (2008)—Maybe it takes a Flyover Country viewer to realize that Hollywood, despite itself, really did make a fine movie that deserved its Lilttle Miss Oscar. Watch this list’s #40 in December and #87 in June, and you’ll have the solstices well-done. There’s just something humorous about a dysfunctional family! . . . The other ray of sunshine probes the humor of remaking one's life by cleaning up the gore left behind by armed felons. A fine double-feature themed by wisely casting Alan Arkin as the hypereccentric grumpy old man in both films.
89. Capote (2005)—Philip Seymour Hoffman, who apparently can play any role well, needs to be on this list somewhere. What could be more tour de force than this role? Catherine Keener’s contribution to Hoffman’s role apparently mimes Harper Lee’s contribution to the real Capote’s role in his Kansas research and in popularizing the “non-fiction novel.”
90. Experiment in Terror (1962)—Want to see what a good crimer looked like in 1962? Here ya go. Lee Remick, Glenn Ford, Ross Martin’s first notable role (which at first is only an asthmatic voice on the phone), Stefanie Powers as Remick’s kid sister, the only movie ever made with Harvey Kuenn playing outfield in the climactic scene. Ahead of its time in all but the attributes that earn an “R” these days.
91. (Miss) Lonelyhearts (1958)—Nathanael West’s 1930s career as a surrealistic satirical American novelist was cut short when he ran a red light, killing both him and his wife, the prototype of “My Sister Eileen.” His compete works have appeared in one slim volume. One nonetheless might not have enough time in this life to fully parse West’s prose. The strange life and death of Miss Lonelyhearts could not have been better cast than Montgomery Clift. His newspaper editor boss, Shrike, could not have been better cast than Robert Ryan.
92. Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)—A day at the track with Myrna Loy? What time is the first race? Besides, you could have your pantry stocked with four cases of bourbon, three cases of gin, a little bubbly, and a Marriott-sized icemaker . . . and as long as you are watching these two at work you will never have to worry about drinking more alcohol than you see poured onscreen. And so cultured. Asta, bring me a perfect Manhattan!
93. In the Heat of the Night (1967)—Remember, when this film was made, Martin Luther King Jr. was alive ... the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida were 100 percent Democratic in Congress ... and the Red Sox were beginning just their eighth season since signing their first black player. Steiger: “What do they call you up in Philadelphia, Virgil?” Poitier: “They call me Mister Tibbs.” It remains a powerful, engaging movie.
94. Being There (1979)—Peter Sellers in Washington again, this time not as a president with B52s in the air headed toward Moscow, but as a gardener with air between his rabbit ears. Or is he an idiot savant? Or merely an example of what happens if someone never leaves the house but leaves the TV on? Oops—is that the point? Who cares ... he likes to watch, and he’s funny.
95. Breaker Morant (1980)—The absolute, inflexible, and inevitable ruthless idiocy of a military bureaucracywith capital punishment at its disposal has had some telling screen renditions. “Breaker Morant” is my favorite. It’s one reason Americans know about Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown, and Jack Thompson.
96, 97. The Apostle (1997) . . . Elmer Gantry (1960)—If you attend the morning service, you might as well come back for the evening show. ROBERT DUVALL has earned the right to go do whatever he wants. I think I saw an interview once where he said he especially liked doing this one. Works for me. Boo Radley turned out well, didn’t he? AS FOR Burt Lancaster smiling sinners away from the fiery path: “I have here in my pocket—and thank heaven you can't see them—lewd, dirty, obscene, and I'm ashamed to say this: French postcards. They were sold to me in front of your own innocent high school by a man with a black beard ... a foreigner.” Where’s my wallet? Where’s the offertory?
98. Blue Collar (1978)—A caper goes bad and straight down a hole of union corruption, corporate corruption, racism, paranoia, and murder . . . played out by a fine cast and filmed on the now-defunct assembly line where all those Checker cabs were built. Apparently it wasn’t dark enough for Paul Schrader (some sources say the writer/director has disowned it). But then, Louis Armstrong’s favorite sax section was Guy Lombardo’s.
99. Johnny Got His Gun (1971) OR Gallipoli (1981)—Take your choice . . . like choosing between noose or firing squad. Two exceedingly different approaches to portraying the horrors of war. You will be moved.
100. The Aristocrats (2005)—You will never confess to any civil person that you watched this movie, and won’t admit to yourself that you laughed. Should you ever compile a “100 favorites” list, and this one appears anywhere on it, you will claim you meant to cut and paste to a “100 worst” list. This film is the dirtiest joke ever told—over and over again by scores of people you know, many of whom you respect. If nightclubs ever return to the American scene, and the emcee comes onstage and says, “Ladies and gentlemen . . . the Aristocrats!” . . . you will spray your beef Wellington on Table 27 and Table 29, and be glad Dr. Heimlecher had a good publicist.
Music dominates only four of my 50 favorite movies—ncluding #1 and #2. Altogether, seven films with musical themes made my list of 100. Neither "The Sound of Music" nor "Eight Mile" is on the list, in case you're guessing. Hint: the seven films include two great audition sequences.
