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

Priest (Ron O'Neal) is a prince of the streets, a charismatic businessman who wants out of cocaine-dealing. But a mysterious kingpin doesn't want Priest to change his ways. And that triggers murder, revenge and double-crosses that push Priest into a corner - and heat the neighborhood to flashpoint.

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The Ambassador of the small South American country of Miranda is trafficking in drugs with some French bourgeois friends of his. But every time they want to have dinner together, their plans are put off due to unexpected events.

In their quest of a lavish feast, the dividing-line between reality and dreams becomes unclear for each guest, leading to complete and utter ridicule.

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He (Brando) is a 45 year old American living in Paris, haunted by his wife's suicide. She (Maria Schneider) is a 20-year-old Parisian beauty engaged to a young filmmaker.

Though nameless to each other, these tortured souls come together to satisfy their sexual cravings in an apartment as bare as their dark, tragic lives. Caught up in the frenzied beat of a carnal dance they cannot seem to stop, these unlikely lovers take their passion to erotic heights - and depths - beyond anything they could ever have imagined.

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Wealthy mystery novelist Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier) invites lower-class hairdresser Milo Tindle (Michael Caine) to his elegant English mansion to discuss Milo's affair with Wyke's wife.

But when Andrew proposes that Milo participate in a robbery scheme to benefit them all, the two rivals find themselves locked in an increasingly devious duel of wits and deceptions. Who is the player? Who is the pawn? And in the shocking and wicked final twist, who will win the deadliest game of all?

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Three days into his Miami honeymoon, New York Jewish Lenny (Charles Grodin) meets tall, blonde Kelly (Cybill Shepherd). This confirms him in his opinion that he has made a serious mistake and he decides he wants Kelly instead.

Her rich father is less than keen and lets everyone - including Lenny - know that he hates everything about him and the way he is going on.

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In rural Sweden around the turn of the century, three sisters reside in a vast manor house with their housekeeper. Agnes (Harriet Andersson) lives out the last days of her life in pain, hoping for companionship and affection.

Surrounded by her sisters, Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and Maria (Liv Ullmann), Agnes takes comfort in the fact that her remaining time can be spent with those close to her. However, dissatisfaction in their day-to-day-lives, and the estrangement that they feel from one another, causes the sisters to become increasingly self-absorbed.

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A band of Spanish conquistadors, led by Aquirre (Klaus Kinski), self-styled 'Wrath of God' go up the Amazon in search of gold, but Aquirre's megalomania turns the expedition into a death trip.

Eleven hundred men, two women, horses, Ilamas, pigs and rifles descend from the Andes highlands down into the steaming primeval forest where the waters of the Amazon begin, in quest of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold. Aquirre has with him his beautiful 14-year old daughter who he intends to marry and found a new 'pure' race to rule over a golden empire.

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Carfree artist Erik Vonk lives a life of excess. Existing according to his own rules, he pursues women with an almost predatory glee. But everything changes when he meets the beautiful and sexually voracious Olga. Caught in a whirlwind of intense erotic pleasure, the couple decide to marry.

Soon, however, events take an unforeseen and tragic turn, and Erik is left facing the most difficult choice of his life.

When private eye Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is visited by an old friend, this sets in train a series of events in which he's hired to search for a missing novelist (Sterling Hayden) and finds himself on the wrong side of vicious gangsters.

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High Plains Drifter returns Clint Eastwood to his familiar scene of the Old West and his familiar role of "The Man With No Name." Eastwood portrays a mysterious stranger who emerges out of the heat waves of the desert and rides into the guilt-ridden town of Lago.

After committing three murders and one rape in the first 20 minutes, The Stranger is hired by the town to protect it from three gunmen just out of jail. The Stranger then paints the entire town bright red, renames it "Hell", and supplies Divine retribution in a fiery climax.

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After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and the upheavals of May 1968 came the near religiously revered magnum opus by Jean Eustache.

In his long-unavailable body of work, ranging from documentaries about his native village to closely autobiographical narrative films, Eustache pioneered a forthright and fearless brand of realism. The pinnacle of this innovative style, 'The Mother and the Whore' follows Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Leaud), a Parisian pseudo-intellectual who lives with his tempestuous girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), even as he begins a dalliance with the sexually liberated Veronika (Frangoise Lebrun), leading the three into an emotionally turbulent love triangle. Through daringly sustained long takes and confessional dialogue, Eustache captures a generation navigating the disillusionment of the 1970s, and in the process achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.

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Fantastic Planet tells the story of "Oms", human-like creatures, kept as domesticated pets by an alien race of blue giants called "Draags". The story takes place on the Draags' planet Ygam, where we follow our narrator, an Om called Terr, from infancy to adulthood.

He manages to escape enslavement from a Draag learning device used to educate the savage Oms - and begins to organise an Om revolt.

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At the Victorine Studios in Nice, a French movie-maker, Ferrand (Francois Truffaut) starts shooting his latest film: "Meet Pamela". As ever, this proves eventful from the outset: ups and downs on the shoot, actors whims, complicated love-lives and the producer putting on the pressure...

Ferrand wonders whether his film will ever get made. In 'Day for Night', Truffaut provides the answer to the question asked by all film lovers "what goes on behind the cameras?". He films the shoot as it really is, straightforwardly, without artefacts, with honesty and accuracy, making it seem like a documentary. Often funny, sometimes tragic, 'Day for Night' is one of Truffaut's most autobiographical films and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1973.

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They are fast friends and worse foes. One is Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson), a law unto himself. The other is the law: Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn), who once rode with Billy.

Set to a bristling score by Bob Dylan (who also plays Billy's sidekick Alias) and with a Who's Who of iconic Western players, Sam Peckinpah's saga of one of the West's great legends is now restored to its intended glory. For the first time since it left the cutting room, the film has the balance of action and character development Peckinpah wanted, a mix of fury and elegy based on the director's notes and the insights of colleagues. The difference is profound, as different as an untouched target and a bull's-eye.

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Thirty years following his untimely death, Bruce Lee remains the movies' supreme martial-arts star. His masterful final film 'Enter the Dragon' stands the test of time as the most beloved martial-arts epic in film history.

For its 30th anniversary, this heart-pounding adventure returns to deluxe double-disc edition featuring several mesmerizing documentary extras that examine Lee's family life and incredible achievements, including Dragon producer Fred Weintraub's new retrospective on the making of this benchmark action movie, with newly discovered unseen vault footage of Lee in action. What a kick!