Sunday, December 30, 2007

BIG PROJECT

As I reflect on this past year and look forward to the next, I've noticed that my love and passion for watching movies is growing and expanding at a huge rate.  I love watching, discussing, and sharing them with friends, family, and strangers.  I have a number of big projects coming up for 2008, one of them being a piece I will begin working on in the next few weeks; it's called 50 MOVIES TO SEE BEFORE YOU'RE 30.  Below you will find the 50 movies I have chosen to write about; if you think there's one I have missed that demands to be seen, please let me know as I will be researching and preparing for a little bit before I commence writing this particular article.  It will be a lengthy and time consuming endeavor, but it's something I want to hold up as a calling card for myself and anyone who loves, appreciates, and devours movies...like me.

Here's my preliminary list...let me know what you think:

  1. Casablanca
  2. Citizen Kane
  3. Black Hawk Down
  4. Fight Club
  5. Double Indemnity
  6. Braveheart
  7. 2001
  8. No Country for Old Men
  9. Fargo
  10. Some Like it Hot
  11. The Searchers
  12. Goodfellas
  13. Pulp Fiction
  14. Back to the Future
  15. Airplane
  16. The Magnificent Ambersons
  17. Rushmore
  18. Traffic
  19. Top Gun
  20. Heat
  21. Taxi Driver
  22. A Clockwork Orange
  23. Midnight Run
  24. The Big Sleep
  25. Bladerunner
  26. Rashomon
  27. Raging Bull
  28. Leon
  29. The Big Lebowski
  30. Seven
  31. The Passenger
  32. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  33. The Thin Red Line
  34. Superman: The Motion Picture
  35. The Godfather Part 1
  36. The Godfather Part 2
  37. Irreversible
  38. My Left Foot
  39. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
  40. Blow Up
  41. All The President’s Men
  42. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
  43. The Deer Hunter
  44. The New World
  45. The Lost Weekend
  46. Jaws
  47. Raiders of the Lost Ark
  48. Amacord
  49. The Insider
  50. Major League

6 comments:

audreyitsdaddy said...

what about Ferris Bueller, he Breakfast Club, or Donnie Darko?

Actionman said...

Love your name!

Ts is a very tough list to narrow down and almost impossible to be satisfied with.

Ferris Bueller is a great idea.

The Breakfast Club, while a classic, was never one of my personal favorites.

Donnie Darko could certainly be included.

Here are a few more I came up with on my plane ride: The French Connection, Dumb & Dumber, The Sting, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, When Harry Met Sally, Witness, Reservoir Dogs, Sin City, 300, Witness, The Fugitive, and 12 Angry Men.

Breedlove said...

Cool list. Sounds like a fun project. As far as Soderbergh I'd go Erin Brockovich or Out of Sight over Traffic. And I prefer La Femme Nikita to Leon. Just off the top of my head, how about some Cameron Crowe, Curtis Hanson, James Cameron, Charlie Kaufman, Wong Kar Wai, David Gordon Greene, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Pedro Almodovar...or The Piano, The Remains of the Day, The Age of Innocence, JFK, The Natural, The Third Man, Chinatown, Barry Lyndon, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Monster's Ball, Open Range, The Matrix Reloaded, Dazed and Confused, Meet The Parents, The Lives of Others, Real Genius, Minority Report, Buffalo 66, The Winslow Boy, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Last of the Mohicans, Annie Hall, The Empire Strikes Back or Star Wars...and on and on...

Actionman said...

Yes...as you can see, this is a hard project to undertake. Thanks for the suggestions...my final list will appear soon.

uncle fred said...

Who is Audreyitsdaddy kidding? Is he an idiot? Breakfast Club was a movie for simpletons. Where is Chaplin? Where is Furie? Where is Ishtar? I think you only have 30 films on that list worth a damn. Chinatown - breedlove is right - last of the Mohicans absolutely. Where is the new wave - where are the Italian greats. What is your point of view about being Under 30

Actionman said...

Ferris Bueller, The Breakfast Club, and Donnie Darko are absolute classics in their genre. So arguing against that statement will be pointless around here.

This list is NOT about the best films ever made, or the best films "of all time." There are films that have made an impact on ME, first and foremost, and that also serve as prime examples of their genre, and of their time and place in the history of the medium.

I have made many new additions to this list, and am trimming it down even further.

The idea of this list is to look back at the films that have blown me away. I am approaching 30 years of age, and there are so many films that I have loved over the years.

I am interested and open to any suggestions that you have. But I am also interested in smart, knowledgeable conversation. So, by you suggesting that AUDREYITSDADDY is an "idiot," it shows me that you either didn't know what I was after with this list, or that you're not paying attention.