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My buddy Cody saw my list of Movies to Watch During Quarantine and noticed some gaps in my viewing, mostly older movies. Here are his suggestions.
Dramas
- The Third Man
- Casablanca
- The Searchers
- Sullivan’s Travels
- The Bridge on the River Kwai
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
- Becket
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Midnight Cowboy
- Scenes from a Marriage
- Shame
- A Face in the Crowd
- 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (a kids’ movie, but one of my favorites)
- The Seventh Seal
- For a Few Dollars More
- Double Indemnity
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (this is perhaps the most sentimental on the list, but its sentimentality is paired with a knowing cynicism. The sentimentality will likely win you over in the end, though)
Thrillers/Horror
- Night of the Hunter
- Vertigo
- Targets
- The Stranger
- Rope
- Mad Love
- The Pit and the Pendulum
- Island of Lost Souls
- Wait Until Dark
- Ministry of Fear
- Cape Fear (1962)
- Possession, starring Sam Neill
Comedies
- Some Like It Hot
- Horse Feathers
- Take the Money and Run
- Bringing Up Baby
- Sabrina
- Stalag 17
- Sons of the Desert
- Sherlock, Jr. (silent)
- Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (musical)
Foreign
- Seven Samurai
- Kagemusha
- Lone Wolf and Cub – about a disgraced samurai who becomes an assassin for hire and travels with his baby in a cart. Beautifully shot and made (despite the first few being made in the same year!) with insane fight scenes
- I love the original Django movie, even though it’s a light rip off of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (as is A Fistful of Dollars).
- The Exterminating Angel (by Bunuel, not the softcore porn) is great.
- La Antena (silent)
- Blancanieves (silent)
- There’s a really fun Italian comedy called Big Deal on Madonna Street that Mel Brooks cites as one of his favorite comedies of all time.
- There’s a German filmmaker named Fassbinder who did some excellent films, but his miniseries World on a Wire is super cool and weird, and was ripped off by The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, and Existenz, among others.
- Metropolis (it’s a bit preachy, but a thing to behold) as well as
- M, the story of a manhunt for a child killer.
