A Century Of Shame

THE 100TH Popcorn Double Feature entry blog – how the hell did that happen? It’s been about 18 months since the first one, with almost 400 films watched in that time. But it’s the nature of movie junkiedom to always focus on what to watch next, so here’s a list of 100 films I hope finally to get around to seeing in the coming year and a half. Many of them are shameful admissions (unreasonable personal prejudice has meant I’ve always avoided mawkish fare like ET, The Sound Of Music or Gone With The Wind), while the extreme length and harrowing nature of a film like Shoah has provided a built-in excuse not to watch it. I doubt if I’ll manage all 100 (with several titles I’ll have to rely on them showing up in cinema retrospectives or being released for the first time on DVD) - but in the words of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, the first film ever reviewed on here: ‘I have a competition in me.’ In no order whatsoever…

Gone With The Wind (Directed by Victor Fleming, USA, 1939)

Gertrud (Carl Dreyer, Denmark, 1964)

A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, France, 1956)

Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, France, 1985)

ET (Steven Spielberg, US, 1982)

To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1942)

The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, India, 1958)

The Travelling Players (Theo Angelopoulos, Greece, 1975)

Pandora's Box (GW Pabst, Germany, 1928)

Rocco And His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, Italy-France, 1960)

Money (Robert Bresson, France-Switzerland, 1983)

The Mother And The Whore (Jean Eustache, France, 1973)

The Tree Of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi, Italy, 1978)

The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, USA, 1937)

Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi, Italy, 1961)

Limelight (Charlie Chaplin, USA, 1952)

The Lonely Wife ((Satyajit Ray, India, 1956)

Meshes Of The Afternoon (Maya Deren, USA, 1943)

Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha, Brazil, 1964)

A Blonde In Love (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia, 1965)

They Were Expendable (John Ford, USA, 1945)

Wavelength (Michael Snow, Canada, 1967)

Providence (Alain Renais, France, 1977)

Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, UK, 1947)

The Sound Of Music (Robert Wise, USA, 1965)

In A Year With 13 Moons (RW Fassbinder, Germany, 1978)

Forbidden Games (Rene Clement, France, 1951)

Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray, USA, 1956)

Love Streams (John Cassavetes, USA, 1984)

Passion (Jean-Luc Godard, France-Switzerland, 1982)

A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, UK, 1944)

The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, Italy-France, 1952)

Out 1: Spectre (Jacques Rivette, France, 1972)

Lucien Lacombe (Louis Malle, France, 1974)

Detour (Edgar G Ulmer, US, 1945)

A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, Taiwan, 1991)

My Fair Lady (George Cukor, USA, 1964)

The Bank Dick (Eddie Cline, USA, 1940)

Demon Lover Diary (Joel DeMott, USA, 1980)

Dune (David Lynch, USA, 1984)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, UK, 1975)

Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher, USA, 1959)

Signs Of Life (Werner Herzog, Germany, 1968)

Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges, USA, 1948)

Blind Chance (Krszystof Kieslowski, Poland, 1981)

Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner, USA, 1990)

The Clowns (Federico Fellini, Italy, 1971)

Moonfleet (Fritz Lang, USA, 1955)

Grease (Randal Kleiser, USA, 1978)

The Spider's Stratagem (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy, 1970)

The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann, USA, 1953)

The Fortune (Mike Nichols, USA, 1974)

Shoeshine (Vittorio De Sica, Italy, 1946)

Fat City (John Huston, USA, 1972)

Vagabond (Agnes Varda, France, 1985)

We All Loved Each Other So Much (Ettore Scola, Italy, 1974)

The Godfather Part 3 (Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1990)

Rocky (John G Avildsen, USA, 1976)

The Quince Tree Sun (Victor Erice, Spain, 1991)

A One And A Two (Edward Yang, Taiwan, 2000)

Platform (Jia Zhangke, Hong Kong, 2000)

Gummo (Harmony Korine, USA, 1997)

Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, USA, 1969)

Landscape In The Mist (Theo Angelopoulos, Greece, 1988)

Angel Face (Otto Preminger, USA, 1952)

Gunga Din (George Stevens, USA, 1939)

Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen, USA, 1997)

Four Adventures Of Reinette And Mirabelle (Eric Rohmer, France, 1987)

OC And Stiggs (Robert Altman, USA, 1985)

All Or Nothing (Mike Leigh, UK, 2002)

Kundun (Martin Scorsese, USA, 1997)

Suicide Club (Shion Sono, Japan, 2001)

Grace Of My Heart (Allison Anders, USA, 1996)

Bird (Clint Eastwood, USA, 1988)

Outrage (Takeshi Kitano, Japan, 2010)

Ace In The Hole (Billy Wilder, USA, 1951)

Lost Highway (David Lynch, USA, 1997)

The Intruder (Claire Denis, France, 2004)

The Wrong Move (Wim Wenders, Germany, 2005)

Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston, Australia, 1978)

Road House (Rowdy Herrington, USA, 1989)

The King Of Marvin Gardens (Bob Rafelson, USA, 1972)

Harry And Tonto (Paul Mazursky, USA, 1974)

The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1960)

Sholay (Ramesh Sippy, India, 1975)

Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966, Russia)

Way Of The Dragon (Bruce Lee, Hong Kong, 1972)

The Goonies (Richard Donner, USA, 1985)

Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, USA, 1970)

The Warriors (Walter Hill, USA, 1979)

The Heiress (William Wyler, USA, 1949)

Whisky Galore! (Alexander Mackendrick, UK, 1949)

Iron Monkey (Woo-ping Yuen, Hong Kong, 1993)

Manderlay (Lars Von Trier, Denmark, 2005)

Central Station (Walter Salles, Brazil, 1998)

Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodovar, Spain, 1988)

Confidential Report (Orson Welles, France-Spain-Switzerland,1955)

The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, USA, 1954)

Tales From The Golden Age (Various, Romania, 2009)

The Navigator (Buster Keaton and Donald Crisp, USA, 1924)

FILM DIARY: What I’ve been watching in 2011...

Centurion (Neil Marshall, 2010) You wait ages for a sword and sandal epic about the Roman Ninth Legion and then they all come along at once. Splat Packer Marshall’s film beat the recently released The Eagle to cinemas by several months and it’s certainly his most mature film to date. Unfortunately, there are dull passages in the film that made me yearn for the schlocky, OTT Marshall of The Descent and Dog Soldiers. Perhaps his rumoured World War Two alien invasion movie will set pulses racing once again. (6/10)

COLIN HOULSON

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