Film Roundup Roundup

I watch a lot of movies and I post my reviews on my weblog as a series called "Film Roundup". This page distills my hundreds of reviews into a simple table of recommendations. I don't give numeric ratings to my reviews, because I don't think the quality of a film can be measured precisely as a single number, but I am comfortable giving operational advice: should you see this movie?

Every movie on this list is one I recommend you see. Some movies I've marked with ★, and that means I highly recommend it. I think you should give a ★ movie a chance even if you wouldn't normally watch a silent movie or a horror flick or an art film or whatever. Movies marked with ★★ are among my all-time favorites. Some of them changed the way I look at life, some have been big inspirations for my own work, and some are just incredibly entertaining, well-executed movies. Movies marked with ↔ are shorts.

I prefer genre fiction and comedy. I watch mainline dramas, but they don't generally make this list. There are a lot of "difficult" and artsy movies in here, but there's usually also something weird or funny about them. The exceptions tend to be really special, movies like Ikiru (1952).

Every film is linked to a blog post where I wrote about it. Sometimes my review doesn't match my current opinion of the film! Whatever, things change. Some films won't let you forget them, and some forget easier than you thought. I've included a few movies that I wrote about in the pre-Film Roundup era, as far back as 2004, mainly movies that I've seen again since then. (I almost never re-watch a movie, so if I saw it twice, that's a very good sign.)

There are a lot of movies I have seen and would recommend if you asked me about them, but I haven't written a review of them, so they're not on the list. This is for the sake of my own sanity, so I don't feel the need to try to remember every movie I've ever seen and decide whether it's good enough for this list.

Okay, enough chatter, here's the list:


YearFilmComment
1925Seven Chances
1926The General ★★
1927It
1929Man With A Movie Camera ★★
1931What Price Pants
1932Horse Feathers
1933Dinner at Eight
1933Queen Christina
1934It Happened One Night
1938The Awful Truth
1939Stagecoach
1939The Grapes of Wrath
1939The Women
1940Remember The Night
1940The Great Dictator
1941Ball of Fire
1941Citizen Kane
1941Sullivan's Travels
1941The Devil And Miss Jones
1942To Be Or Not To Be
1943Shadow of a Doubt
1943The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
1944Double Indemnity ★★
1946The Big Sleep
1947Monsieur Verdoux
1947Nightmare Alley
1947The Bishop’s Wife
1948Red River
1948Unfaithfully Yours
1949I Was A Male War Bride
1949My Love Has Been Burning
1949Passport to Pimlico
1950All About Eve
1950Sunset Boulevard
1950The Breaking Point
1950Wagon Master
1951The Man in the White Suit
1952Ikiru ★★
1953Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
1953How To Marry A Millionaire
1953Stalag 17
1953The Earings of Madame De...
1953The Whole Town's Talking
1954Godzilla ★★
1954S-73 Sofa Compact
1954Sabrina
1955Bob le Flambeur
1955Diabolique
1955The Court Jester ★★
1955The Ladykillers
1956Invasion of the Body Snatchers
1957Desk Set
1957Sweet Smell of Success
1957Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
1958Invention For Destruction
1958The Defiant Ones
1959Some Like it Hot ★★
1959The Best of Everything
1959The Crimson Kimono
1960Psycho
1960The Apartment ★★
1961One, Two, Three ★★
1962The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
1962The Music Man
1964Kiss Me, Stupid
1965Alphaville
1965The Americanization of Emily
1966A Man For All Seasons
1967Playtime
19682001: A Space Odyssey
1968Inquiring Nuns
1968The Lion in Winter
1969Sweet Charity
1970Cotton Comes to Harlem
1970Norman Mailer v Fun City, USA
1971A New Leaf
1971McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1971Taking Off
1971The Burglars
1971Trafic
1972Avanti!
1972Buck and the Preacher
1972Silent Running ★★
1972Solaris
1972The Godfather ★★
1972The Heartbreak Kid
1973Charlie Varrick
1973Cops and Robbers
1973F For Fake
1973Paper Moon
1973The Laughing Policeman
1973The Sting
1974Celine and Julie Go Boating ★★The first hour is slow, but give it time!
1974Italianamerican
1974The Conversation
1974The Godfather, Part II
1974The Parallax View
1974The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
1975Dog Day Afternoon
1975Jaws
1975Nashville
1975Three Days of the CondorSee review for potential deal-breaker
1976Daguerréotypes
1976Emma Mae
1976Marathon Man
1976The Man Who Fell to Earth
1977Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1977Smokey and the Bandit
1978Heaven Can Wait
1978The Brink's Job
1978The Cheap Detective
1979Alien
1979That Sinking Feeling
1979The Jerk
1979The Muppet Movie
1980Gregory’s Girl
1980Nine to Five
1980Private Benjamin
1981Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
1981My Dinner with Andre
1981Short Working Day
1981The Incredible Shrinking Woman
1982My Favorite Year
1982Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
1982The King of Comedy ★★
1983Local Hero
1983Trading Places
1983WarGames
1984All of Me
1984Blood Simple
1984Comfort and Joy
1984Footloose
1984Ghostbusters
1984This Is Spinal Tap ★★
1985Brazil
1985Calculated Movements ★ ↔
1985Desperately Seeking Susan
1985Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
1985Puppy Love
1985Tampopo ★★
1986Aliens
1986Big Trouble in Little China
1986Down By Law
1986No No Nooky TV ★ ↔
1986Ruthless People
1986Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ★★
1986The Color of Money
1987IshtarYes, seriously.
1987Matewan
1987Moonstruck
1987Outrageous Fortune
1987Raising Arizona
1987Roxanne
1987Wings of Desire ★★
1988A Short Film about Killing
1988Big Business
1988Coming to America
1988Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
1988Miracle Mile ★★Recommend you see without knowing anything about it
1988My Neighbor Totoro
1988Working Girl
1989Bill & Ted’s Excellent adventure
1989Breaking In
1989Dekalog 1
1989Dekalog 10 ★★
1989Do the Right Thing
1989Kiki's Delivery Service
1990Gremlins 2: The New Batch
1990Mo’ Better Blues
1991Barton Fink
1991L.A. Story
1991Point Break
1991Thelma and Louise
1993Jurassic Park
1993Three Colors: Blue
1993Three Colors: Red
1993Three Colors: White
1994Cabin Boy
1994Ed Wood
1994Pom Poko ★★
1994Speed
1994The Hudsucker Proxy
1995Apollo 13
1995Clueless
1996Fargo ★★
1996Kansas City
1996Set It Off
1997Face/Off
1998Pleasantville
1998Run Lola Run
1998The Big Lebowski ★★
1999Three Kings
2000Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
2000J.S.A.: Joint Security Area
2000O Brother, Where Art Thou?
2000The Target Shoots First
2001The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the RingI like them all but this one's my favorite.
2001The Man Who Wasn’t There
2003Good Bye, Lenin! ★★
2004Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed
2004Shaun of the Dead
2004Shrek 2
2004University of Laughs
2006Brick
2006Inside Man
2006Paprika
2006Synecdoche, New York
2006The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
2006The Lives of Others
2007Children of Men
2007Hot Fuzz
2007Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
2009A Town Called PanicThe short films are also highly recommended.
2009Fantastic Mr. Fox
2009Moon
2009The Informant!
2011Attack the Block
2011Cat Scratch Fever
2011Fast Five
2011Wu xia
2012No
2012Tai Chi Zero
2012The Hobbit: An Unexpected JourneyI don't like the other ones. The 4-hour cut that spans the entire trilogy is great.
2012The Lebanese Rocket Society
2012Wreck-it Ralph
2013Caucus
2013Frozen
2013Gravity
2013Queen
2013The World's End
2014Approaching the Elephant
2014Guardians of the Galaxy
2014I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story
2014Kundo: Age of the Rampant
2014Pride
2015Inside Out
2015Love and Taxes
2015Mad Max: Fury Road
2015Star Wars: The Force Awakens
2015World of Tomorrow
2016Deadpool
2016Ghostbusters
2016Hail, Ceasar!
2016La La Land
2016Moana
2016The Cinema Travelers
2016The Peacemaker
2016The Teacher
2016your name.
2017Coco
2017Get Out ★★
2017Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
2017Hidden Figures
2017Logan Lucky
2017Lots of Kids, a Monkey, and a Castle
2017Newton
2017Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
2017The Death of Stalin
2018Born Bone Born
2018Sorry to Bother You
2018Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
2019Apollo 11
2019Booksmart
2019Dolemite Is My Name
2019Knives Out
2019Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
2019The Irishman
2021The AfterlightRecommended for the experience of watching it, rather than the content.
2022Everything Everywhere All at Once
2022Glass Onion
2022The Lost City


This document is part of Crummy, the webspace of Leonard Richardson (contact information). It was last modified on Wednesday, January 11 2023, 16:29:30 Nowhere Standard Time and last built on Sunday, June 04 2023, 06:00:16 Nowhere Standard Time.

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