griggs's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List

New York City detectives "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) hope to break a narcotics smuggling ring and ultimately uncover 'The French Connection'. But when one of the criminals tries to kill Doyle, he begins a deadly pursuit that takes him far outside the city limits.

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David Summer (Dustin Hoffman) is a quiet American mathematician who has moved with his wife Amy (Susan George) back to a remote Cornish farmhouse near the village where she grew up.

The couple have relocated to rural England in an attempt to flee the violence of America but their placid life is brutally interrupted when the savagery and violence they sought to escape engulfs them and threatens to destroy their lives.

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Stomping, whomping, stealing, singing, tap dancing, violating. Derby-topped hooligan Alex (Malcolm McDowell) has a good time - at the tragic expense of others.

His journey from amoral punk to brainwashed proper citizen and back again forms the dynamic arc of Stanley Kubrick's future-shock vision of Anthony Burgess' novel.

Ashby's film follows the burgeoning relationship between the gloomy, 20-year-old, suicide-staging Harold (Bud Cort), suffocated by his wealthy homestead, and the sprightly octogenarian Maude (Ruth Gordon), whose bohemian wiles and open-arms approach to living enable Harold's first gentle steps towards embracing existence.

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Harry Callahan is a tough, streetwise San Francisco cop whom they call Dirty Harry. In this action classic, you'll see why - and also why Clint Eastwood's reputation as a premier film star and movie maker is secure.

A rooftop sniper (Andy Robinson) calling himself Scorpio has killed twice and holds the city ransom with the threat of killing again. Harry will nail him... one way or the other - no matter what the 'system' prescribes. Filming on location, director Don Siegel made the City by the Bay a vital part of 'Dirty Harry', a practice continued in its four sequels. The original remains one of the most gripping police thrillers ever made.

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When Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) is sent on a mission to the Solaris Space Station, he is confronted with a skeleton crew who are psychologically unstable due to the presence of what they call "visitors". Kris soon begins to encounter his own visitor - his late wife.

Taunting him with illusory compassion, Kris must choose whether to cling to reality or submit to the planet's gift of a lost love regained.

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Cabaret brings 1931 Berlin to life inside and outside the Kit Kat Klub. There, starry eyed American Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) and an impish emee (Joel Grey) sound the call for decadent fun, while in the street the Nazi party is beginning to grow into a brutal political force.

Into this heady world arrives British language teacher Brian Robert (Michael York) who falls for Sally's charm and soon, the two of them find themselves embroiled in the turmoil and decadence of the era.

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Miklos Jancso is one of cinema's greatest visionaries and his Red Psalm is a formidable work of art from a master filmmaker at the peak of his powers. Depicting a series of peasant uprisings in Hungary in the late 19th century, the film celebrates the cause of revolutionary struggle.

Inspired by folklore and song, Jancso's camera travels amongst groups of moving figures in an elaborate cinematic ballet and his singular use of film form achieves a resonance and beauty that is extraordinary. Radical in execution and poetic in its achievement, Red Psalm reaches beyond political dogma to expose a more universal, and deeper, truth that remains relevant today.

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In late 1940's New York, Mafia 'Godfather' Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) gathers his three sons around him for daughter Connie (Talia Shire)'s wedding; the hot-headed Sonny (James Caan), ineffectual Fredo (John Cazale) and war hero Michael (Al Pacino), who chooses to distance himself from the

family 'business'. When Vito is shot and wounded for refusing to sanction a rival family's heroin sales on his territory, Sonny temporarily takes over and embarks on bloody gang warfare. This results in him being killed in an ambush, and Michael finds himself nominated to succeed the ailing Vito.

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When a pair of sociopaths (Mink Stole and David Lochary) with a habit of kidnapping women in order to impregnate them attempt to challenge her title, Divine resolves to show them and the world the true meaning of the word 'filth'.

Incest, cannibalism, shrimping, and film history's most legendary gross-out ending - Waters and his merry band of Dreamlanders leave no taboo unsmashed in this gleefully subversive ode to outsiderhood, in which camp spectacle and pitch-black satire are wielded in an all-out assault on respectability.

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With a screenplay adapted by Leonard Gardner from his own novel, John Huston's drama examines the meager hopes and resigned dreams of small-time boxers.

In limbo between retirement and his youthful prime, alcoholic farm laborer Tully (Stacy Keach) shacks up with fellow outcast Oma (Susan Tyrrell) and keeps trying to make a boxing comeback, but his personal demons repeatedly overpower his ambitions. Meanwhile, fellow Stockton, CA resident and budding fighter Ernie (Jeff Bridges) takes Tully's advice to join trainer Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto)'s gym and make something of himself. Learning the tough lesson that winning is not as easy as it sounds, Ernie is still determined to get what he can out of boxing and, unlike Tully, not let disappointments get the best of him.

In modern-day London, a sex criminal known as 'The Necktie Murderer' has the police on alert, and in typical Hitchcok fashion, the trail is leading to an innocent man, who must know now elude the law and prove his innocence by finding the real murderer.

This is the gritty, groundbreaking and truly legendary film that tells the story of Ivan Martin, an aspiring young singer-turned-outlaw, at war with Jamaica's music industry, police, and his rivals in the ganja trade. His dreams of stardom become reality as he rises to the top of the pop charts... and the most wanted list.

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Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen), with two marriages behind her and an absent daughter, is a successful fashion designer.

She lives with her secretary, the repressed and subservient Marlene (Irm Hermann), who will form the second point in a tragic ménage à trois when Petra meets and falls hopelessly in love with a confident young model named Karin (Hanna Schygulla).

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Four ordinary men in two canoes navigate a river they only know as a line on a map, taking on a wilderness they only think they understand.

Deliverance, written by James Dickey based on his novel, surges with the urgency of masterful storytelling, like Georgia's Chattooga River along which it was shot. Equally masterful is the portrayal of each man's change of character under stress, harrowingly enacted by award winners Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox. Director John Boorman sets us on the knife-edge of survival - and draws us in with the irresistible force of a raging current.