Part 2: 50 Films You Should See, Maybe, If You Want To

[You can view the rest of this list by choosing a section at the bottom of this page.]

40. The Manchurian Candidate
First, forget the remake. This is a film not to be reasonably redone or imitated in content or style, in whole or in part. It has been tried, with varying results, but they all have been inadequate. It remains true: the Manchurian Candidate is the best political thriller ever made.

I read the novel my first year in high school, years before I ever saw the movie, and this, children, is a clear case of a film adaptation being beyond the source material. Let your literature professors know this. Now, this is not a knock against the book, but in its transference to a different medium, it has gained something. Or, rather, everything. The script is amazing, and paced so well as to be a lesson in the editing and the structure of the effective suspense film. And visually, images from the movie have been planted into my brain, in a way not dissimilar to the characters’ words and actions in the film. For me, the strongest is the image of the soldiers being alternatively present in a stark, plain military station, and a flower garden managed by old women. In turn, we are being allowed into and out of the characters’ minds in quick succession.

The film also still retains a valuable vision of a dystopian future; in particular it approximates or mimics today’s political climate.  So if you’re at all like me, you like to watch this film on any election night. It is a parable of the plasticity of government and politics, and highly entertaining when compared to the media’s election season output.
- Jesse Balzer

39. Oldboy
Oldboy is many things, but there’s a strong possibility that you aren’t familiar with any of them. It’s a twisted story of revenge, lust and mystery that is interlaced intricately and intelligently throughout the film’s two hours. Oldboy follows Dae-su, who is mysteriously kidnapped from a police station and confined in a small room. Many questions are left unanswered and when Dae-su is cryptically released he begins to investigate who is responsible for his containment. During this time he meets Mi-do who immediately shows empathy for Dae-su, they fall in love during the investigation as Dae-su is forced to recollect past events in order to solve the puzzle of his former captor, Woo-jin.

I won’t reveal anymore because that’s entirely what makes Oldboy so appealing and compelling. It’s forcefully sinister and dark. During his stay in confinement Dae-su attempts to take his life several times as he remembers the life he once had with his daughter and wife. The action injected in the film is almost beyond over the top and is a combination of the Matrix and Kung Fu Hustle. The ending is fitfully controversial and if you’re watching it with another person, you won’t have to think of an appropriate conversation starter.
- Daniel Frohlich

38. Boyz n’ the Hood
Boyz n’ the Hood may be one of the most important films, at the very least sociologically, to have ever been released. It was a new type of realism, and it was new not because of how it was written or shot, but because the subject matter was almost entirely unexplored up until that point. When a film can bring to light an entire subculture and to do it so artfully without hesitation or second thought, that is what some sentimentalists call a milestone. I call it important.

The film could have very easily become the message film I will only begrudgingly watch. But Boyz n’ the Hood did not. It does not fall into any well-travelled Hollywood grooves; instead, it carves out a path and narrative structure of its own. Throughout, it remains faithful to its subject matter and its characters. This is due to the excellent script and direction. There is an eerie inevitability to the action, something you hope could change but you know never will.
- Jesse Balzer

37. Jaws
Perhaps one of the most recognizable introductions to a horror film comes from Jaws and what do we have to thank for this? A robot shark that wasn’t ready in time for shooting. It’s odd how one of the film’s best scenes came out of troubled circumstances. Jaws is a different type of horror film since the villain isn’t the person, or in this case animal, doing the killing. Outlined within Jaws is an overwhelming amount of greed. Even after being warned of the shark, Mayor Vaughn decides it’s better to keep his town’s beach open since the 4th of July weekend is one of their major sources of income. What we may not realize is that we are less scared of the shark than we are with how the mayor’s ignorance recalls events in our own world, like Hurricane Katrina for example. Jaws psychologically takes its toll on us in ways unforeseen on the surface, but definitely swimming beneath.
- Daniel Frohlich

Blame this one for the summer blockbusters. It’s only too sad that all the followers (including some films by Spielberg himself) struggle to replicate the success of Jaws. Sure, we’ve had Jurassic Park and even the recent Dark Knight, but we’ve also had Spider-Man 3 and others. The event film began here, and I don’t think it has ever been done as well.

This is a film most memorable for its suspense. However, unlike most modern suspense films, it does not need to rely upon gimmicks or tricks to put us on edge. It only shows us the shark near the end of the film, and that is what is truly scary: what we cannot see. Jaws is a model film of suspense and atmosphere, and also how to use music to create tension and despair.
- Jesse Balzer

36. Raging Bull
I’m not what you would call a sports fan. I hate ESPN and the NFL and everything about it. I can’t imagine being one of those guys who watches ESPNEWS for an extended period of time. Furthermore, I hate sports films as a general rule. They are the most formulaic and facile of any genre or type. The underdog who overcomes the odds, wins the girl, whatever. I’m not impressed. However, in the hands of a talented and capable director, and used in the context of a strong script to support it, the sports film can be an effective avenue to explore character and change. Unfortunately, this almost never occurs. The sports film becomes an exercise in the director’s complete focus on the sport, and not driven by a convincing or artistic narrative. This is most certainly the case with Raging Bull, which I think is quite easily the best movie dealing directly with sports ever made.

Scorsese brings everything together here, all his talents, a fantastic cast and a script strong in universal application and emotion. More focus is put on the character played by Robert De Niro than on the action in the ring. Instead of doing what most sports movies do, emphasizing the character’s personal life as it affects his in-ring performance, how he can change through the sport and ultimately become a better, more moral person, Raging Bull examines how the violent world of boxing changes the boxer’s relationships with the people he loves and the people he does not.
- Jesse Balzer

35. Halloween
In my humble opinion Halloween stands atop many of the great horror films of our time. I think the creators of the sequels have made it hard for us to see how great the first film really was. Where the series really fell apart is in the development of Michael Myers. They lost his haunting patience that was so evident in the first film. Without that a movie like this just becomes another 2bit horror show with cheap scares. John Carpenter’s Halloween is much less violent as well, it plays out a lot like Hitchcock’s Psycho and this is no more evident than in the opening sequence of Halloween. All you see is a blade and your mind fills in the rest without actually being able to see the stabbing.

The cinematography only adds to the immense stranglehold of fear the movie grips you with. Even while Michael isn’t on screen the camera isn’t merely capturing the events transpiring, it’s lurking as Michael does in the dark background. The shots tend to have a limited angle of view of the characters on screen. When they walk from room to room you get the sense that they could be ambushed at any moment. What modern day horror films forget is that the wait preceding the kill makes the murder much more horrifying than the actual killing. In the end, Halloween is similar to its opening credits. A jack-o-lantern appears; almost painfully the camera zooms in before the screen fades to black.
- Daniel Frohlich

34. The Godfather Part II
Without question or elaborate consideration, The Godfather Part II is the best sequel ever made. It’s always a miracle of no small status when a sequel is simply good, let alone a classic like this film. Arguments could be made, and I have heard many, for Part II’s superiority over the original. While I do not agree with this assessment, because I think the Godfather is as close to perfect as movies will ever come, I can understand without too much quarrel how someone could consider Part II to be a better film.

It is certainly more ambitious. The extra half hour or so in length takes it from the noticeable length of the original and makes it a bit more like an epic, and perhaps that is what Coppola was trying for. I think this is also evident in his choice to run two parallel stories, one of a young Vito Corleone coming to America and rising to power, and the similar (yet more complicated and modern) rise of Michael. It works, but it just doesn’t connect as well as it maybe should, or as well as the narrative of the original Godfather. Now, that’s not to say Part II isn’t at the least very, very good. Some of the images are just as memorable, such as the ending. Placed together it’s fairly obvious which is the better film, but place Godfather Part II next to virtually any other film, and it holds itself upright quite well.
- Jesse Balzer

33. If…
You do not need to look too closely at If…. to see what led Stanley Kubrick to choose Malcolm McDowell for the starring role in A Clockwork Orange. It’s all here. That’s not to discredit the merit of this film. If…. is an anarchic masterpiece, although it may be a bit too strange and surreal to be accurately labeled as anything. I’d like to just call it a wonderful piece of rebellious cinema, but it defies easy categorization. Strange things happen to Mick, our protagonist, the film changes randomly from color, to black and white, and meanwhile the main strain of the film is never lost – the constant insurrection of the individualistic students to their oppressors, senior students who have come to love the same positions they once despised as younger men.

Lindsay Anderson is an amazing director, and he manages to portray youthful events and attitudes both shocking in the film’s own time and yet still shocking today, perhaps even more so. If…. lets out a guttural yell at the audience, and like many yells, it may not be completely understood the first time.
- Jesse Balzer

32. Pi: Faith in Chaos
If only mathematics was always this exciting. It never was in my school; I hated it, so to make a great movie dealing with math and make me love it is no small feat. Yet Aronofsky has done just that. Pi is a strikingly visual film, the strange, grainy black and white look, the rough and unusual camera work. It has all the feeling of a psychotic and obsessive nightmare. It shares a sense of spiraling despair and madness and obsession with Aronofsky’s other classic, Requiem for a Dream. The character of Max Cohen is alone, he has a cramped apartment, and he talks only a few people. The whole film has the same cramped and controlled interiority to it as we can only imagine his mind to be like.
- Jesse Balzer

The thing you’ll remember most about any Darren Aronofsky film is his stylized, straightforward approach to filmmaking. Those might seem like two words that normally offset but with Aronofsky they both happen simultaneously. Watching Pi you are left feeling completely unnerved, rattled, and paranoid. It’s in this way that the film recalls directors like David Lynch circa 1980 and Roman Polanski. Filmed with a high contrast black and white appearance, Pi continually exceeds the viewer’s expectations for such a low-budget film. The score by Clint Mansell is fast paced and growingly chaotic; a perfect complement to how the story leads you to believe Max is starting to confuse reality with his abstractly architected state of mind.
- Daniel Frohlich

31. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I used to have the completely wrong impression of westerns before I saw The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I pictured a film with a righteous sheriff and a big bad criminal whose only goal in life was to rob bank after bank. If that’s exactly what a normal western is then I suppose The Good, the Bad and the Ugly completely flips that formula on its head. Even though the title of the film clearly states that there is certainly someone bad and ugly, it’s arguable whether you believe Clint Eastwood is good in the way the title suggests. After watching the film I learned that “good,” in this case, doesn’t mean well-behaved or righteous, instead it signifies someone who is competent and skillful.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the third film of Sergio Leone’s man with no name series that changed the face of westerns as we commonly see them today. Without question The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the best of the three, not that A Fistful of Dollars or For a Few Dollars More is anything to laugh at, though. Beyond anything else, Clint Eastwood is easily the best actor for the role of the no name gunslinger. Originally the production team wanted a few better known actors like Richard Harrison who later expressed his opinion on turning it down, “Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing Fistful of Dollars, and recommending Clint for the part.” I respectfully agree.
- Daniel Frohlich

Further reading: 50 - 41 | 40 - 31 | 30 - 21 | 20 - 11 | 10 - 01