Do you know where the title is from? If you said anything other than "Casablanca," then off to the chair for you!
But seriously, folks, it's from Casablanca, which, according to Yahoo's 100 Movies to See Before You Die list, is one of the 100 movies you have to watch before you meet your (hopefully neither untimely nor unpleasant) demise. Have you seen it?
I have! Seeing it for the first time stands out as one of those nice little bright spots in my short life. Too bad I didn't even know what it was at the time! (I, obviously, figured it out eventually.) Despite that, I wholeheartedly agree with its inclusion on movie "bests" list.
Looking through the list, I found that these were the movies I had seen:
- 12 Angry Men
- Annie Hall
- Casablanca
- Citizen Kane
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
- Do the Right Thing
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
- Goldfinger
- The Graduate
- A Hard Day's Night
- It's a Wonderful Life
- The Matrix
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- National Lampoon's Animal House
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Princess Mononoke
- Psycho
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Rebel Without a Cause
- The Silence of the Lambs
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
- The Sound of Music
- Star Wars
- This is Spinal Tap
- Titanic
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Toy Story
- When Harry Met Sally...
- The Wizard of Oz
Dang, I'm only 16 and I'm already more than a quarter of the way through that list. But at the same time, there are tons of movies on the list that I've wanted to see for awhile and still haven't. I should get on that.
How many have YOU seen? ...Oh really? That's nice...Yes, yes...Okay. Okay! Stop talking now. This is my blog. You wanna talk, you go make your own.
Sorry about that! Yahoo also has a "Modern Classics" list, which has movies from the 90s on. You know what this means, right? Brace yourself for another list of which ones I've seen (not including the ones that overlap, though)!:
- Beauty and the Beast
- Dazed and Confused
- Ed Wood
- Forrest Gump
- Four Weddings and a Funeral
- Babe
- Clueless
- Fargo
- Being John Malkovich
- Election
- Fight Club
- The Sixth Sense
- Best in Show
- Donnie Darko
- The Royal Tennenbaums
- Elephant
- Finding Nemo
- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- The 40-Year-Old Virgin
- Brokeback Mountain
- Borat: Cultural Learnings blah blah blah
- Pan's Labyrinth
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
- No Country for Old Men
- The Dark Knight
- Slumdog Millionaire
- WALL-E
Hey! I've seen almost the exact same amount of "modern classics" as I have ones from the other list! Of course, this isn't including the ones that overlap, which means I've actually seen more modern classics than, well, classic classics. But can you blame me? I'm actually surprised that I saw that many of the classic classics, anyway, because I perhaps am not the most cinematically literate when it comes to movies made before...I don't know, the 60s or 70s? It's quite sad. That's why I recommend that we all keep this list as a little guideline of what we need to see.
I don't personally believe that this list is the most comprehensive, though; Yahoo is not what I'd call a reputable cinema source. However, it's not that hard to tell what a truly great movie is, especially if you're looking with nostalgia-tinted glasses, as most film critics are...Not that old movies are bad by any means, but I feel like a lot of reviewers/people in general are pretty elitist when it comes to them. People say, "Oh, well, I don't watch movies made after 1975 because they're all horrible!" Well, how would you know that? Based off their trailers? Based off hearsay? It's not very fair.
I will admit that I can be a film elitist, too. When I read through that modern classics list, I rolled my eyes several times. Even before I read it, the article from which I found it phrased it so that it sounded like having a list of modern classics was a negative thing. The list isn't the best, but not because it exists, but because it's missing several things and there are some movie choices that I completely disagree with. But having a list of modern classics in theory isn't bad. Oh, but I think it should be limited to everything before, say, 2008; the inclusion of things such as Avatar and The Hurt Locker read very strangely to me. I don't think a classic movie necessarily has to be an old one, but c'mon, Avatar's not even on DVD yet.
Although personally I don't think it should even be on the list at all. I'm kinda just an Avatar-hater. But what do they say about haters?
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