Jim Emerson's "101 102 Movies You Must See Before You Die"

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This isn’t like Roger Ebert’s "Great Movies" series. It’s not my idea of The Best Movies Ever Made (that would be a different list, though there’s some overlap here), or that they were my favorites or the most important or influential films, but that they were the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat "movie-literate."
-Jim Emerson

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  1. 1.
    2001 - A Space Odyssey
    by Stanley Kubrick

    Drag me to re-order


  2. 2.

  3. 3.
    8 1/2 - Criterion Collection

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  4. 4.
    Aguirre, the Wrath of God
    by Werner Herzog

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  5. 5.
    Alien
    by Ridley Scott

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  6. 6.
    All About Eve
    by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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  7. 7.
    Annie Hall

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  8. 8.
    Apocalypse Now

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  9. 9.
    Bambi (Two-Disc Special Edition)
    by David Hand

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  10. 10.
    Battleship Potemkin
    by Grigori Aleksandrov

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  11. 11.
    The Best Years of Our Lives
    by William Wyler

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  12. 13.
    The Bicycle Thief
    by Vittorio De Sica

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  13. 14.
    The Big Sleep (Snap case)
    by Howard Hawks

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  14. 15.
    Blade Runner (The Director's Cut)
    by Ridley Scott

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  15. 16.
    Blow Up
    by Michelangelo Antonioni

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  16. 17.
    Blue Velvet (Special Edition)
    by David Lynch

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  17. 18.
    Bonnie and Clyde
    by Arthur Penn

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  18. 19.
    Breathless

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  19. 20.
    Bringing Up Baby (Two-Disc Special Edition)
    by Howard Hawks

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  20. 21.
    Carrie (Special Edition)
    by Brian De Palma

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  21. 22.
    Casablanca
    by Michael Curtiz

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  22. 23.
    Un Chien Andalou

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  23. 24.
    Children of Paradise - Criterion Collection
    by Marcel Carné

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  24. 25.
    Chinatown

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  25. 26.
    Citizen Kane
    by Orson Welles

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  26. 27.
    A Clockwork Orange
    by Stanley Kubrick

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  27. 28.
    The Crying Game (Collector's Edition)
    by Neil Jordan

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  28. 29.
    The Day the Earth Stood Still

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  29. 30.
    Days of Heaven
    by Terrence Malick

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  30. 31.
    Dirty Harry

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  31. 32.

  32. 34.
    La Dolce Vita (2-Disc Collector's Edition)
    by Federico Fellini

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  33. 35.
    Double Indemnity
    by Billy Wilder

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  34. 37.
    Duck Soup
    by Leo McCarey

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  35. 39.
    Easy Rider

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  36. 40.

  37. 41.
    The Exorcist (The Version You've Never Seen)
    by William Friedkin

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  38. 42.
    Fargo
    by Joel Coen

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  39. 43.
    Fight Club (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
    by David Fincher

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  40. 44.
    Frankenstein
    by James Whale

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  41. 45.
    The General
    by Clyde Bruckman

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  42. 46.
    The Godfather DVD Collection

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  43. 47.
    Gone with the Wind
    by Victor Fleming

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  44. 48.
    Goodfellas
    by Martin Scorsese

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  45. 49.
    The Graduate (Special Edition)
    by Mike Nichols

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Created by motorway on Apr 22, 2006.
 

Comments

john wayne — 23 weeks ago

Apocalypse Now wasn’t on the list when it was added later (thats why 101 is slashed). It seemed this mistake was made b/c he counted the godfather parts 1 and 2 as one film and you had it as two separate films. So I just put the whole trilogy on and added Apocalypse.


allisoncm
Los Angeles

A Star is Born! — 1 year ago

The original with Janet Gaynor is much better :) I Promise.


Untitled — 2 years ago

memento?
american history x?
just wondering :-)


Jordan
San Francisco

Untitled — 2 years ago

where’s the jerk?


motorway
Melbourne

Untitled — 2 years ago

Okay, so there’s actually 102 films on this list – I think Emerson counts The Godfather Part I and Part II as one film.