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

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Based on the true life best seller 'Wiseguy' by Nicolas Pileggi and backed by a dynamic pop/rock oldies soundtrack, critics and filmgoers alike declared 'GoodFellas' great.

It was named the best film of the '90s by the New York, Los Angeles and National Society of film critics, and it earned 6 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Hal Hartley's 'Trust' tells the dark comic tale of an unlikely relationship between Maria (Adrienne Shelly), a well-meaning yet thoughtless pregnant teenager, and Matthew (Martin Donovan) an educated yet frustrated high school graduate.

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As World War II splits Europe, sixteen-year-old German Jew Salomon (Marco Hofschneider) is separated from his family after fleeing with them to Poland, and finds himself reluctantly assuming various ideological identities in order to hide the deadly secret of his Jewishness.

He is bounced from a Soviet orphanage, where he plays a dutiful Stalinist, to the Russian front, where he hides in plain sight as an interpreter for the German army, and back to his home country, where he takes on his most dangerous role: a member of the Hitler Youth. Based on the real-life experiences of Salomon Perel, Agnieszka Holland's wartime tour de force 'Europa Europa' is a breathless survival story told with the verve of a comic adventure, an ironic refutation of the Nazi idea of racial purity, and a complex portrait of a young man caught up in shifting historical calamities and struggling to stay alive.

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Once upon a time in a castle high on a hull lived an inventor whose greatest creation was named Edward (Johnny Depp). Although Edward had an irresistible charm, he wasn't quite perfect. The inventor's sudden death left him unfinished, with sharp shears of metal for hands.

Edward lived alone in the darkness until one day a kind of Avon lady took him home to live with her family. Ando began Edward's fantastical adventures in a pastel paradise known as Suburbia.

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A psychopath known only as Buffalo Bill is kidnapping and murdering young women across the midwest. Believing it takes ones to know one, the FBI sends in Agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to interview an insane prisoner who may provide psychological insights and clues to the killer's actions.

The prisoner is psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). Brilliant yet psychotic, with a taste for cannibalism, Lecter will only help Starling in exchange for details and secrets about her own complicated life. This twisted relationship forces Starling not only to face her own demons, but leads her face-to-face with a demented killer, an incarnation of evil so overwhelming, she may not have the courage or strength to stop him. Horrific, disturbing, spellbinding. This thriller set the standard by which all others are measured.

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Surreal character study focusing on the friendship between two male hustlers, Mike and Scott, in Portland, Oregon. They live on the streets, do drugs, and sell themselves to men and women. Mike (River Phoenix) is quite, gay and suffers from narcolepsy.

Abandoned as a child, he is obsessed with finding his long-lost mother. Scott (Keanu Reeves) is the rebellious son of a high-ranking family, who lives this life mostly to embarrass his father. Mike is in love with Scott, who still maintains he is straight and insists that his wild lifestyle on the streets is only temporary. Together, they embark on a quest to find Mike's mother, traveling from Portland to Idaho to Italy, whit Scott picking up a beautiful girl along the way.

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This smash hit futuristic comedy is a fresh and sublimely entertaining tale from French filmmakers, Jeunet (Amelie) and Caro. In a starving, post-holocaust France, a butcher keeps his customers supplied by his cannibalistic tendencies.

But when his daughter falls in love with a circus performer, only an underground band of vegetarian freedom fighters can save her beloved from the meat cleaver.

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In the late seventies celebrated director Francis Ford Coppola and his cast and crew ventured into the dense jungles of the Philippines to begin work on what would eventually become his masterpiece, "Apocalypse Now".

But the journey from page to screen soon spiralled into a hellish, life-threatening nightmare that echoed the film's narrative. Plagued with adversity, one of the most influential films ever made had one of the most notorious shoots in cinema history that few survived unscathed. Compiled from rare on set footage filmed by Coppola's wife Eleanor and interviews with the cast, "Hearts of Darkness" is the ultimate feature-length documentary, capturing the explosive events that lead to "Apocalypse Now" becoming an acknowledged classic.

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"Boyz N the Hood" is the critically acclaimed story about three friends growing up in a South Central Los Angeles neighborhood, and of street life where friendship, pain, danger and love combine to form reality. "The Hood" is a place where drive-by shootings and unemployment are rampant.

But it is also a place where harmony co-exists with adversity, especially for the three young men growing up there: Doughboy (Ice Cube), an unambitious drug dealer; his brother Ricky (Morris Chestnut), a college-bound teenage father; and Ricky's best friend, Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.), who aspires to a brighter future beyond the "The Hood". In a world where a trip to the store can end in death, the friends have diverse reactions to their bleak surroundings. Tre's resolve is strengthened by a strong father (Larry Fishburne) who keeps him on the right track. But the lessons Tre learns are put to the ultimate test when tragedy strikes close to home, and violence seems like the only recourse.

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Jacques Rivette's award-winning, critically acclaimed film stars Michel Piccoli in one of his finest performances as an artist who, ten years previously, abandoned his masterpiece entitled 'La Belle Noiseuse' (The Beautiful Troublemaker), a painting of his wife (Jane Birkin).

When he encounters the beautiful and fascinating Marianne (Emmanuelle Beart), he is inspired to return to the unfinished canvas, using her as his new model. But disturbing tensions develop as the work progresses and the reasons for the painting's original rejection begin to surface.

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Irene Jacob is utterly captivating in the twin roles of Veronique and Weronika, two young women leading totally separate lives in France and in Poland, yet each strangely aware of the other's presence.

Despite their different backgrounds, the two share not only many of the same likes, foibles and prodigious musical talents, but also the same wisdom, inspiring one to unconsciously avoid making the same mistakes in life as the other.

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Susan Sarandon (Louise) and Geena Davis (Thelma) star as accidental outlaws on a desperate flight across the Southwest after a tragic incident at a roadside bar.

With a determined detective (Harvey Keitel) on their trail, a sweet-talking hitchhiker (Brad Pitt) in their path and a string of crimes in their wake, their journey alternates between hilarious, high-speed thrill-ride and empowering personal odyssey...even as the law closes in.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger is back as the cyborg from the future in the most successful sequel of all time. Almost ten years have passed since Sarah Connor's ordeal began, and her son John, the future leader of the resistance, is now a healthy young boy.

However, the nightmare begins again when a new, more deadly Terminator is sent back in time, its orders - to strike at John Connor while he is still a child. Sarah and John, however, don't face this terrifying Terminator alone. The human resistance has sent back another warrior from the future, its orders - to protect John Connor at any cost - the battle for tomorrow has begun...

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Rogers gives the performance of a lifetime as Sharon, a bored, beautiful telephone operator who seeks excitement in orgiastic sex with strangers. Later, tormented by feelings of emptiness, she attempts suicide.

Comforted by members of a cult-like religion who are preparing for the second coming of Christ - "The rapture" - Sharon undergoes a religious conversion that is hallucinatory, frightening and ultimately tragic. Praised for its power and originality, The Rapture is "unnerving and outrageously uncompromising...you haven't seen anything like it."

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Among the most highly praised titles in all contemporary film, this singular masterpiece of Taiwanese cinema, directed by Edward Yang, was unavailable for years and much sought after. Set in the early 1960s, 'A Brighter Summer Day' is based on the true story of a crime that rocked Taiwan.

A film of both sprawling scope and tender intimacy, this novelistic, patiently observed epic centers on the gradual but inexorable fall of a young teenager (Chang Chen, in his first role) from innocence to delinquency, and is set against a simmering backdrop of restless youth, rock and roll, and political turmoil.