Help me make my movie syllabus
November 14, 2015 1:17 PM   Subscribe

I've been listening to Karina Longworth's Hollywood-history podcast You Must Remember This, and it's made me realize that I'm a little culturally illiterate when it comes to movies. Can anyone help me find resources to make a list of movies that I should watch so that I can be the movie-watching version of a well-read person? I aim to watch particularly notable, excellent and/or influential movies and to have a sense of how the medium has developed over time.

I've found a couple of "100 movies to see before you die" lists, but none of them are exactly what I'm looking for. Ideally, I would like a list (or series of lists) that was not just focused on Hollywood or English-language movies but covered a variety of genres, time periods, countries, and languages. Any ideas? Also, if anyone has suggestions for things I should read to make me more movie-literate, that would be great, too.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious to Media & Arts (18 answers total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
This doesn't narrow it down a whole lot, but perhaps the Criterion Collection?

Additionally, a lot of the Criterion movies are available through Hulu Plus, if that's something you have/would be interested in.
posted by papayaninja at 1:26 PM on November 14, 2015


Best answer: The AFI Top 100 is a good place to start.
posted by fiercekitten at 1:27 PM on November 14, 2015 [4 favorites]


Also, IMDB has a ton of these sorts if things, like this one for Japanese movies.
posted by fiercekitten at 1:29 PM on November 14, 2015


Best answer: Mark Cousins' series The Story of Film: An Odyssey sounds like the sort of thing you're looking for, and it's available on Netflix streaming in the US right now.

It covers, in rough chronological order, the history and evolution of cinema, and not just from a US or Hollywood perspective. So that can give you both some background and context, as well as a list of movies to watch. (Wikipedia has listings of the movies from each episode.)

Also, in addition to the lists already suggested, Sight and Sound polls are usually a good source of critical favorites.
posted by ernielundquist at 1:33 PM on November 14, 2015 [3 favorites]


AFI is good, but a little American Centric, of course.
Criterion is also good, but sometimes they throw movies in there that, for the life of me, I cannot figure out WHY.

Here's Rotten Tomatoes Top 100 Art House and International films.

If you click on the Genre box you can find the Top 100 in any genre, which is kind of neat.

I tend to like Rotten Tomatoes rankings because they seem to be an aggregate between the critics and the viewers, and it makes for a nice even blend.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 1:34 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


Seconding the Criterion Collection but adding that you might consider following along in the Fanfare Criterion on Hulu club.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 1:38 PM on November 14, 2015


Seconding Mark Cousin's series. It is incredible and far-reaching in its scope.
posted by kariebookish at 1:45 PM on November 14, 2015


It helps to have a learned guide or two. Reading books and blogs by knowledgeable people has been very helpful to me in becoming more discerning about film. And it's made me much more confident in my own ability to evaluate and criticize a film.

There are so many good writers and thinkers in this field. You might want to start with two: David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. Bordwell, who is a noted professor of film studies, was a major influence on Roger Ebert's evolution as a film critic. Their blog lives here.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 1:48 PM on November 14, 2015


Oh, there was also this neat FPP with lists of recurring themes in the works of particular directors compiled by a guy who provides his picks for Best Films of All Time, Outstanding American Feature Films, Favorite Films by Year, and a bunch of links to similar resources.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 1:52 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


Roger Ebert's "Great Movies".
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:59 PM on November 14, 2015 [3 favorites]


I'm a fan of the Sight and Sound polls mentioned above. You can start at the top 10 (or 20) and work your way down. Sight and Sound past historical lists are interesting and worth a look if you're curious. (I could make a personal recommendation for 'Bicycle Thieves' which doesn't have the traction today that it used to, and I personally preferred 'The Grand Illusion' to 'The Rules of The Game', but they're all Classics, and all worth watching;)
posted by ovvl at 2:39 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


Thanks to my recent obsession with Mads Mikkelsen (courtesy of my obsession with Hannibal), I've recently taken a dive into Danish cinema. A couple of things I picked up:

One particularly influential movement to come out of Danish cinema was the Dogme 95 movement. It originated with a manifesto penned by two Danish fillmmakers, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. The details of the manifesto are listed in the wiki page I linked, but the gist of it is that they were stripping things down. No special effects, everything on location, no artificial lighting, etc.

The first Dogme film was Thomas Vinterberg's Festen (Translation: The Celebration). Unfortunately, it's not so easy to track down. (For example, it's not available through Netflix's DVD rentals.) However, if you have Netflix streaming, you can watch Vinterberg's recent and also very critically acclaimed film, The Hunt (Original title: Jagten). I haven't seen the Celebration, but I have seen The Hunt, and it blew me away. It's not a strictly Dogme film, but you can definitely see how it has its roots in the minimalism of that movement. Um, and Mads Mikkelsen is great in it, btw. Here's a pretty interesting interview with Mads and Vinterberg about the Hunt.

I haven't seen any of Lars von Trier's films, but you might want to start with his Golden Heart Trilogy: Breaking the Waves, Idiots, and Dancer in the Dark. "Idiots" is the second film in the Dogme movement. (It used to be that you had to have your film "verified" before you could be considered part of the Dogme movement, but they ditched that in the early 2000s.)

Another influential Danish filmmaker is Nicolas Winding Refn. He was definitely not part of the Dogme movement. His first film, Pusher, was quite successful in both Denmark and elsewhere. He went on to make Pusher II and Pusher III. (I've only seen the second one.) Yeah, Mads Mikkelsen is in this one too. Even though it's not as minimalist as the Dogme films, it's definitely not a super glossy Hollywood production. It's very much trying to show a grittier side of life in Copenhagen.

More recently, Winding Refn did an American-made movie called Drive which got a lot of critical acclaim. A couple years before that he did a sort of experimental film called Valhalla Rising. I haven't seen it yet, but apparently it stars Mads Mikkelsen in a role where he has one eye and doesn't speak.

Another influential Danish filmmaker is Susanne Bier. Her film, Open Hearts, is film 28 in the Dogme list. Another film that she did, After the Wedding, was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. After the Wedding isn't strictly a Dogme film, but as with "The Hunt" you can definitely see how it has its roots in the movement.

A couple more wildcards:

A Royal Affair is another Danish Academy Award Nominated film that came out in 2012. It tells the mostly historically accurate story of the love triangle between a German doctor, Johann Strunsee, who comes to Copenhagen to be the doctor to the King of Denmark, Christian VII. He then goes on to have an affair with the King's wife, Catherine Matilda, while trying to bring Enlightenment ideals to Denmark. Fair warning: It's a gorgeous, incredibly well acted film, but also utterly heartbreaking.

If you want to get a sense of just how small the filmmaking world is in Denmark, you can watch Prag, directed by Ole Christian Madsen and starring Mads and Stine Stengade. And then you can watch Flame and Citron, also directed by Madsen and starring Mads and Stine Stengade. Mads's brother, Lars Mikkelsen, is in this film as well. There's also a pretty interesting contrast in the styles of both of the films. Flame and Citron is also based on a true story of Danish resistance movement during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.

If I wanted to approach this in a movie syllabus type of way, I would probably pair the movies up like this (categorized by director):

Thomas Vinterberg
Festen (Dogme film)
The Hunt (Dogme influenced)

Lars von Trier
Golden Heart Trilogy

Susanne Bier
Open Hearts (Dogme film)
After the Wedding (Dogme influenced)

Nicholas Winding Refn
Pusher Trilogy (Danish)
Drive (American)

Ole Christian Madsen
Prag (Danish cinema is a small world)
Flame and Citron (Danish cinema is a small world/Danish history)

Nikolaj Arcel
A Royal Affair (Danish history)

I hope this isn't too narrowly focused, but there were a lot of interesting things going on in Danish film during the last 20 years or so. And yes, Mads Mikkelsen is in almost all of these films, but to be fair, he is a really, really big deal in Denmark. Also, he's an amazing actor who has tremendous range. And he's pretty easy on the eyes.*

On preview: I guess I went a bit overboard, but I've been binge watching Mads films the last few weeks, and I've been reading up on a lot of this stuff as I go, so it's all pretty fresh in my mind.

*Incidentally, I'm not well versed in cinema enough to say if this is a Danish film thing or an international film thing or just a Mads film thing, but he gets naked/has sex in so, so many of his films. I'm certainly not complaining, though.
posted by litera scripta manet at 3:52 PM on November 14, 2015 [3 favorites]


I'm a fan of the Wittertainment Podcast from Fivelive (aka BBC Radio 5), a Friday afternoon show featuring film critic Mark Kermode, and the show's ostensible host, Simon Mayo (which came to the partnership as a general drive-time radio host). It's the most cine-literate show I know of.

Kermode is a critic's critic; he loves the artsy stuff, the inventive, the well-written, the well-acted. He's not a snob as much as having high standards while still embracing the concept of film genre: comedies have to be funny, not high art. Dramas have to be engaging, not funny. Erotic thrillers have to have thrilling and erotic moments. It doesn't seem like so much to ask of genre movies, and yet he finds that so many movies fall short.

Simon Mayo, on the other hand, does most of the interviews and keeps the show, and Mark, on the rails. It's a great listen, usually funny, and has a terrific community of listeners (and a hundred inside jokes, for which there's a wiki).

Kermode is my replacement for the late great Roger Ebert when it comes to finding out about great films of the past and present, and so I recommend both of them. Kermode blogs, and has top ten lists, and a book or two.
posted by Sunburnt at 4:40 PM on November 14, 2015 [3 favorites]


I would say the Sight & Sound poll + the AFI top 100 list is probably a pretty good place to start! The Sight & Sound/BFI one has a pretty good range of international greats through the history of cinema and is a pretty good basic syllabus, the AFI list is a pretty good overview of American popular film. Watching my way through the AFI list as a teenager is what got me interested in film. This isn't everything cinema has to offer but it's a good basic overview, and from there you can dig further into directors and genres that interest you...

The Ebert great movies pieces are, as I recall, pretty great, both smart and approachable.

The other thing you can do is, if you access to it, just watch a lot of Turner Classic Movies. They show a lot of actual classics but also will run weird curiosities that you'd otherwise never get a chance to see.
posted by SoftRain at 5:28 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


The U.S. National Film Registry -- Learn more at the Wikipedia entry.
posted by maurreen at 10:26 PM on November 14, 2015


Best answer: I am a big fan of the BFI Film Classics series. If you want to be more film-literate, you could do worse than to watch the films covered therein and read each book as an accompaniment.
posted by thetortoise at 10:29 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Here is the online list version of the book 1001 Movies to See Before You Die.
The list is broad, rather than deep. I had the hardcover edition from, say, 2003 or so.
Not all the older films are easy to see, but there is a variety of styles, genres, nations of origin, and quality. It's not strictly a list of great movies, as much as it's a list of significant movies, for various reasons. If a middling or even crappy movie got super popular, or captured the zeitgeist, that can be pretty historically important, and there were a few examples like that in the book.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 2:10 AM on November 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: You guys are the best! I'm going to go with the AFI and Sight and Sound lists, but I've also found the 1001 Movies to See Before You Die list to be useful. And I'm definitely going to watch the Story of Film.
Not all the older films are easy to see
I work for a university, and it turns out that we actually have a really good collection of early movies. Out of the first 40, there are only two that I can't get my hands on, plus one that I would have to watch in the library, which is a bit of a pain in the neck.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:11 PM on November 16, 2015


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