Rank: 55
Release Year: 1975
Genre: Music/Drama
Plot
Summary: An ensemble drama telling the stories of various people associated
with the music business in Nashville in the days leading up to a big political convention/concert.
What
Makes It Special: Nashville is a standout film for its music alone,
which captures the glory days of country and western music. However, what makes
it a classic is its ability to display such a range of characters, each feeling
developed and whole. The film speaks to a feeling or attitude in America at the
time, a mixture of hope for the future and apathy that nothing really changes. It
is at the same time honest and a satire.
Rank: 54
Release Year: 1945
Genre: Drama
Plot
Summary: Claire Reine, who goes
by Garance, is loved by many men, but she only loves a theater mime named
Baptiste. However, after she is falsely accused of stealing a man’s watch, she
flees Paris under the protection of another man. Both Garance and Baptiste toil
in loveless relationships until one day, she finally returns to Paris.
What
Makes It Special: Children of Paradise is a French epic that features
almost everything cinema has to offer as a medium. It blends visuals, music,
and emotion fluidly. Each aspect of the film seems to meld together creating
almost a dream-like experience of wonder. The film is often referred to an
allegory for the French Resistance against German occupation (Garance the
purity of France’s soul), as it was made during the occupation. It is a grand
film, achieving artistry unlike any film before or since (something that can
also be said about Barrault’s performance).
Rank: 53
Release Year: 1990
Genre: Gangster
Plot
Summary: This is the story of Henry Hill, an outsider who worked his way
up through the mob only to rat them all out, and his friends – their rise and
fall.
What
Makes It Special: With
Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese made a gangster film that feels both classic structurally
and modern stylistically. It is hyper-violent, yet hip and cool. It takes
terrible, bad men and makes them extremely likable and engaging, only to slowly
warp that perception. In many ways it is not just a gangster film, but also a
look at the cultural change that America underwent from the 1950s through the
late 1970s. Goodfellas defines the gangster genre, while irreparably altering
it forever.
Rank: 52
Release Year: 1927
Genre: Dystopian
Sci-Fi/Drama
Plot
Summary: A futuristic city is divided between the controlling city
planners and the anguished working class. However, salvation might finally be
at hand for the working masses when the son of the city’s mastermind falls in
love with the working class’s prophet – a young woman, who predicts that such a
savior will arise.
What
Makes It Special: At the time of its release, Metropolis was maybe the
most visually ambitious film ever made (rising to the heights of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance) –
its production design is still a marvel even today. It is also one of the most influential
films in cinema history, setting the baseline for sci-fi in popular culture
going forward. The film is ripe with social, religious, and philosophical ideas
and overtones. It is a film that simply cannot be missed for those intrigued by
the genre and film’s history.
Rank: 51
Release Year: 1957
Genre: Drama
Plot
Summary: During the black plague, a knight seeking the meaning of life
and answers about the existence of God plays a game of chess against the Grim Reaper.
What
Makes It Special: The Seventh Seal is a visual poem, shouting in the
darkness, grasping for anything of substance and meaning. It expresses man’s
fear that his life has no meaning, that death is inevitable and final, and that
faith may have no validity. This is all beautifully played through the story of
Antonius Block, a knight returning from the Crusades (a Holy War waged in the
name of God) to find his homeland plunged into despair and death with the onset
of the Black Plague. Ingmar Bergman’s mortal struggle is breathtakingly visualized
and stunningly ambitious in regards to its intellectual engagement with the
viewer.
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