10 films your kids MUST see

[rockmeister]

I'm starting a film club at school and want to 'educate' the kids into the classics of cinema history. Below are my first top ten, but what else MUST they see to complete their cinematic education?

Battleship Potemkin

Dr Caligari's cabinet

Citizen Kane

The Godfather

Cassablanca

resevoir dogs

Clockwork Orange

Psycho

Gone with the wind

Schlinder's list

 

[Guest]

the iron giant.

 

[JamPal]

I hope they are not primary school kids:shock:

 

[meninblack]

Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal

Something by Tarkovsky - maybe Solaris with a showing of the Hollywood/Clooney version for comparison.

Once Upon a Time in the West - the original and best spaghetti western.

The Wicker Man and/or Straw Dogs

The Vietnam War classics, Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter

Get Carter and/or The Long Good Friday - Brit gangster class.

Something by David Lynch - probably Blue Velvet.

 

[JamPal]

Cohen Brothers need some airing. Of course my favourite, The Big Lebowski, is not only hilarious but shows how a tight script with breathtakingly sharp dialogue can make a top ten movie out of even the most ridiculous plot.

Oh Brother Where Art Thou is a corker, and is analagous of Homers Oddessy so plenty to chew on there.

Another important film is Apocolypse now. Again, amazing dialogue wins the day.

Grosse Pointe Blank is another great example of strong dialgue, sharp whit and actually a great action movie / love story and fantastic acting from the master John Cussack and Minnie Driver.

I think yoy may be getting a picture of what i like in a film.

 

[rockmeister]

excellent...thank you chaps...I've since included METROPOLIS too as an early classic. Wondered about High Noon, A town like alice, Life of brian, (need some light relief...funny how the greats are all very serious stuff) maybe some buster keaton or Marx bros?

Kepp em coming please!

Rudi...I don't know the iron giant...whats the plot?

Meninb...def 7th seal...I thought of wickerman, but I think straw dogs maybe better...that 'rape' scene tho? I think the kids will have to be 18 for that? (ditto r dogs and c orange tho)

Wiggers old chap...grosse point blank...great shout and ap now too.

Christ this is going to run and run!

 

[kennyk]

Battlefield Earth. that way absolutely anything else they watch will be better.

 

[meninblack]

How could I have forgotten Kurosawa's Seven Samurai? Maybe throw in The Magnificent Seven as well. And if you're having westerns, Shane.

Something by David Lean to show that the Brits could do blockbusters too, once upon a time. Dr Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge on the River Kwai would all do nicely. While we're on Brit classics, Schlesinger's Far from the Madding Crowd is worth a showing - so much better than Hardy's turgid book!

Other directors worth considering include:

Lindsay Anderson - If...., or O Lucky Man

Luchino Visconti - Death in Veniceor The Damned (older kids only!!)

Nicholas Roeg - Don't Look Now or The Man Who Fell to Earth

William Friedkin - The Exorcist or The French Connection

Stanley Kubrick - The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey are both better than Clockwork Orange, IMO.

And a modern classic - The Shawshank Redemption.

 

[AdamK]

Films for kids eh ?..............

Any Dirty Harry movie so they can see how policemen should behave

Predator so they can laugh at the future President of the USA

Pulp Fiction so they learn to swear properly and don't OD

The Exorcist so they don't dabble with old nick

and of course....Jungle Book

 

[griffo104]

For gangster heist flicks you need either Rififi or The Asphalt Jungle - both classics.

Tarkovsky - sorry but it HAS to Andrei Rublev, awe-inspiring cinema.

War films, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Thin Red Line

Requiem For A Dream - teach them that the drugs really don't work

Silent cinema/very old- Pandora's Box, Un chien Andalou

Jules et Jim, Breathless (french version not hollywood),Bande A Part - find out where QT steals his ideas from

Dekalog, A Short Film About Killing

Mean Streets, Raging Bull

Bergman - Persona, through a glass Darkly, Wild Strawberries

Fellini - 8.5, La Dolce Vita

Kurosawa - seven samurai, yojimbo (and get fistful of dollars to go with this)

Kar Wai Wong - Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love

Haneke - Funny Games

I'm sure I can think of a lot more - I wish I'd seen films like this as a teenager and at school instead of the crap I had to watch.

 

[meninblack]

Zhang Yimou is very good as well. Forget the later martial arts nonsense and watch Raise the Red Lantern and Ju Dou.

If you want a martial arts film, Enter the Dragon is the only one the world ever needed.

Peter Greenaway - The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover, or The Belly of an Architect.

If you're after the contemporary cutting edge of US cinema, try Tod Solondz's Palindromes, or pretty much anything written or directed by Harmony Korine esp. Kids and Gummo.

 

[meninblack]

griffo104 wrote:

For gangster heist flicks you need either Rififi or The Asphalt Jungle - both classics.Tarkovsky - sorry but it HAS to Andrei Rublev, awe-inspiring cinema.

War films, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Thin Red Line

Requiem For A Dream - teach them that the drugs really don't work

Silent cinema/very old- Pandora's Box, Un chien Andalou

Jules et Jim, Breathless (french version not hollywood),Bande A Part - find out where QT steals his ideas from

Dekalog, A Short Film About Killing

Mean Streets, Raging Bull

Bergman - Persona, through a glass Darkly, Wild Strawberries

Fellini - 8.5, La Dolce Vita

Kurosawa - seven samurai, yojimbo (and get fistful of dollars to go with this)

Kar Wai Wong - Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love

Haneke - Funny Games

I'm sure I can think of a lot more - I wish I'd seen films like this as a teenager and at school instead of the crap I had to watch.

Some great stuff there Griffo. The kidsmight need therapy after Through a Glass Darkly. In the same vein, what about The Virgin Spring?

My favourite Tarkovsky is Nostalgia, but it's not his most accessible work!

 

[griffo104]

MIB,

I don't think any of Tarkovsky's films are accessible. All require some effort byt the viewer - which is the beauty of them, imo.

Nostalgia is a great film but also Mirror and they way it is done is mind-blowing considering some of the simplistic stuff the West was doing at the time.

My personal favourite is still Stalker but Andrei Rublev is just such a stunning achievement - it has be watched.

Virgin Spring is also a great fim - in fact it is hard not to recommend watch all of Bergman's films - Through A Glass Darkly sticks with me the most as it was the first Bergman film I watched.

After moving from watching so much of the dross coming out of Hollywood - European/Asian cinema was a bit of a shock to me - and yet so much more rewarding

 

[rockmeister]

very interested to see all this...some tres controversial choices IMO... are we taliking great story, great acting, great cinematography, directing, lighting, soundtrack???

I was thinking along Grifos lines...it's a bit of education but with waht reason from the above list. I think I put story first (so two films from the same director, same cast, the better storyline makes a better film IMO)...director is like conducting or producing...it adds cinematic style, which is interesting to consider, but these are 16.17 year old kids, bought up on simple plots and big soundtracked fast action stuff, so you need to feed in the refinements slowly! Greenaway? Roeg? Friedkin? Lean? Hmmm

but many thanks for the ideas. I certainly don't want to turn this into an arguement, so keep em coming!

 

[griffo104]

rockmeister wrote:

very interested to see all this...some tres controversial choices IMO... are we taliking great story, great acting, great cinematography, directing, lighting, soundtrack???I was thinking along Grifos lines...it's a bit of education but with waht reason from the above list. I think I put story first (so two films from the same director, same cast, the better storyline makes a better film IMO)...director is like conducting or producing...it adds cinematic style, which is interesting to consider, but these are 16.17 year old kids, bought up on simple plots and big soundtracked fast action stuff, so you need to feed in the refinements slowly! Greenaway? Roeg? Friedkin? Lean? Hmmm

but many thanks for the ideas. I certainly don't want to turn this into an arguement, so keep em coming!

I can see where you're coming from. I was brought up believing films/novels had to have a start, middle and end. If this was the case so many great works of literature and film would be unseen by the masses.

I was 18 when I bought Stalker and Seven Samurai on video for something different. that was it, going back and watching simple films from Hollywood was a big no-no.

Films, like most art, comes in the form of simple entertainment on the one hand and on the other, have ability to open your eyes and look at what else is out there, something with a bit of depth.

Watch a film like Rififi for instance - basically been used as a blueprint for most heist films since, it contains a scene about 25 minutes when you watch the heist in action - there isn't a word of dialogue, it's all about the heist.

Kids at 16/17 are at that stage in their life where they can be very open to new things and also be able to appreciate something new and have their eyes opened.

Slap Amores Perros on your list (forgot it first time). It has everything, great story, great acting, depth, great photography. It makes you have a feel for the characters so that you can understand them and have a feel for what they are going through - something more than just a good storyline.

IMO, this is what a great film should do

 

[Leonard Smalls]

Kids and Tarkovsky?

Y'all are having a bleedin giraffe!

One film that's well worth showing to kids is Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" - I showed it to my neice and nephew (aged12 and 8) and they loved it (though the 12 year old was scared...)

Carry On Up the Khyber is also a great favourite, and teaches them all about Colonialism (or is that Colonism)

 

[meninblack]

It's an interesting challenge you've set yourself there RM. For my money, if a film is to be considered "art" then the film-maker needs to make his audience think about something; to stimulate the imagination instead of just trying to replace it.

The great failing of most contemporary and recent Hollywood offerings is that they don't try: plodding expository plots are underlined by explicit special effects until the whole thing becomes little more than an accompaniment to popcorn.

The great thing about film is that the film-maker has a whole set of tools he can use to make his point - script, performances, visuals and soundtrack can all be very effective. Maybe one way to teach youngsters to appreciate films is to explore how these different elements have been used in different eras, different cultures and by different film-makers.

Of course you have to pick films which actually are trying to say something!

Examples of the kind of thing I'm thinking about:

Bergman and Tarkovsky are both very strong on visuals, especially visual symbolism. Tarkovsky is more extreme, and likes to use minimalist scripts with no lines wasted; some of Berman's films by contrast are very "talky". (Albeit in Swedish!)

Soundtrack can be very effective - look at Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns for examples. Not terribly "deep" films, but great use of musical themes. At an extreme, Derek Jarman's Blue was all soundtrack, the only visual being a plain blue screen.

I'm sure lots more examples can be easily found. Once you start thinking along these lines it becomes remarkably easy to distinguish between a good film and a bad one, which is always a useful skill.

 

[griffo104]

MIB - Spot on, couldn't agree more.

 

[Hit Mouse]

There isn’tsuch thing as a bad Kubrick film (IMHO!) but 2001 is an absolute must see for any budding students of cinema – minimal dialogue, an epic story told through it’s visuals – surely cinema in its purest form…

A few more rambling suggestions…

In addition to the Kurosawa’s mentioned, I’d add – Rashomon. Well I’d also add Throne of Blood and Red Beard, but you’ve got plenty to be getting on with!

No Jim Jarmusch? How about - Down by Law, Mystery Train, Night on Earth or the recent Broken Flowers?

And if your going to have some Keaton, you’ve got to include some Chaplin i.e. The Kid, Easy Street, The Gold Rush, Modern Times, The Great Dictator etc

And still in light-hearted mode – Woody Allen – Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig etc

And no Ealing comedies? The Lavender Hill Mob, The LadyKillers, Kind Hearts and Coronets….

Oh and only one animated film? You’ve got to have some classic Disney i.e. Snow White, Pinocchio, and how about some more contemporary animation from Miyazaki i.e. Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and the recently released Howl’s Moving Castle….