griggs's - Favourite 100 Films List
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Dazed and Confused (1993)Dazed & Confused
America, 1976. The last day of school. Bongs blaze, bell-bottoms ring, and rock and roll rocks. Among the best teen films ever made, 'Dazed and Confused' eavesdrops on a group of seniors-to-be and incoming freshmen. A launching pad for a number of future stars, the first studio effort by Richard Linklater also features endlessly quotable dialogue and a blasting, stadium-ready soundtrack. Sidestepping nostalgia, 'Dazed and Confused' is less about "the best years of our lives" than the boredom, angst, and excitement of teenagers waiting...for something to happen. - Director:
- Richard Linklater
- Cast:
- Jason London, Wiley Wiggins, Matthew McConaughey
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Seven Samurai (1954)Shichinin no Samurai
In 16th century Japan a poor village is raided every year by a group of bandits until, driven to the brink of starvation, the villagers decide to hire professional warriors to protect them. With only three meager meals a day to offer as payment, their request seems an impossible one. A simple plot, flawlessly executed - 'Seven Samurai' combines comedy, pathos, memorable characters, gripping tension and some of the finest action scenes ever filmed. - Director:
- Akira Kurosawa
- Cast:
- Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima
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Parasite (2019)Gisaengchung
Kim Ki Taek's (Song Kang Ho) family are all unemployed and living in a squalid basement. When his son, Ki Woo, gets a tutoring job at the lavish home of the Park family, the Kim family's luck changes. One by one they gradually infiltrate the wealthy Park's home, attempting to take over their affluent lifestyle, but as their deception unravels events begin to get increasingly out of hand in ways you simply cannot imagine. - Director:
- Joon-Ho Bong
- Cast:
- Kang-ho Song, Sun-kyun Lee, Yeo-jeong Jo
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Ikiru (1952)Living
Opening with a shot of an x-ray, showing the main character's stomach, 'Ikiru' tells the tale of a dedicated, downtrodden civil servant who, diagnosed with a fatal cancer, learns to change his dull, unfulfilled existence, and suddenly discovers a zest for life. Plunging first into self-pity, then a bout of hedonistic pleasure-seeking on the frenetic streets of post-war Tokyo, Watanable (Takashi Shimura) - the film's hero - finally finds satisfaction through building a children's playground. - Director:
- Akira Kurosawa
- Cast:
- Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Shin'ichi Himori
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Tokyo Story / Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1953)Tôkyô monogatari / Todake no kyôdai
A constant fixture in critics' polls, Yasujiro Ozu's most enduring masterpiece, 'Tokyo Story', is a beautifully nuanced exploration of filial duty, expectation and regret. From the simple tale of an elderly husband and wife's visit to Tokyo to see their grown-up children, Ozu draws a compelling contrast between the measured dignity of age and the hurried insensitivity of a younger generation. - Director:
- Yasujirô Ozu
- Cast:
- Chishû Ryû, Chieko Higashiyama, Sô Yamamura
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Out of nowhere, a gaunt man in a dark suit and a red baseball cap appears tn the burning heat of the desert between the US and Mexico. Travis (Harry Dean Stanton). He drinks the last sip from his water bottle, then he moves on, doggedly, into the inhospitable area that the locals call "The Devil's Playground". Travis might seem to be mute and amnesiac, but he's driven by the desire to reconnect with his family. - Director:
- Wim Wenders
- Cast:
- Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell
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Chantal Akerman Collection: Vol.1: 1967-1978 (1978)Examen d'entrée INSAS / Blow Up My Town / The Beloved Child, or I Play at Being a Married Woman / The Room / Hôtel Monterey / Hanging Out Yonkers / Le 15/8 / I, You, He, She / Meetings with Anna / New
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai de Commerce, 1080, Bruxelles- Director:
- Chantal Akerman
- Cast:
- Aurore Clément, Chantal Akerman, Helmut Griem
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Love Streams (1984)Torrentes de amor
In this emotional roller coaster ride, Robert Harmon (John Cassavetes) is a street-wise, sometimes obnoxious writer currently working on a book about the seamier side of buying/selling love, and Sarah Lawson (Gena Rowlands) is an emotive wife and mother struggling through a divorce and custody battle. When Sarah lands on Robert's doorstep with her suitcases, it seems at first that she has returned to her husband. Robert has several women staying at his place (research sources!), but when his real ex-wife arrives with their young son, he sends the women packing. Sarah, it turns out, is Robert's sister. As the two work out their own live's hurdles - Robert, the unaccustomed father with his 8-year-old son, and Sarah, trying to cope with her custody battle and its results - their way of handling adversity and personal burdens becomes the real subtext of the film. - Director:
- John Cassavetes
- Cast:
- Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, Diahnne Abbott
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The Godfather (1972)Mario Puzo's The Godfather
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. - Director:
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Cast:
- Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan
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"2001: A Space Odyssey" is a countdown to tomorrow, a road map to human destiny, a quest for the infinite. It is a dazzling, Academy Award-winning visual achievement, a compelling drama of man vs. machine, a stunning meld of music and motion. It may be the masterwork of director Stanley Kubrick (who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke) and it will likely excite, inspire and enthrall for generations. To begin his voyage into the future, Kubrick visits our prehistoric ape-ancestry past, then leaps millennia (via one of the most mind-blowing jump cuts ever conceived) into colonized space, and ultimately whisks astronaut Bowman (Keir Dullea) into uncharted realms of space, perhaps even into immortality. - Director:
- Stanley Kubrick
- Cast:
- Keir Dullea, Douglas Rain, Gary Lockwood
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Writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a former alcoholic, accepts a job as the winter caretaker for a hotel high in the Rocky Mountains, isolating him, his wife (Shelley Duvall) and their psychic young son until spring. But when the first blizzard blocks the only road out, the hotel's stored energy from evil past deeds begins to drive Jack insane...a and there may be no escape for his family in this haunting story of madness, memory and violence. - Director:
- Stanley Kubrick
- Cast:
- Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd
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Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) leads a group of Anglican nuns to a remote Himalayan range of mountains, there to set up a mission in an abandoned harem. This is her first position of authority and she finds both her physical and her spiritual limits being taxed as she has to maintain order and discipline in a claustrophobically hostile environment. Slowly but surely, however, the privations and hardship they must endure, the extremes of climate and the peculiar amorality of the local natives all combine to slowly corrupt the women's faith, pushing them further into jealousy, anger and madness... - Director:
- Michael Powell
- Cast:
- Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Flora Robson
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Knox Oil and Gas of Houston is far removed from the North Sea oil it desires - and the sleepy Scottish seaside village it wants to buy and replace with a refinery. So Knox sends it ace dealmaker (Peter Riegart) to negotiate. He finds cheerful future millionaires, awesome northern lights, a lusty innkeeper, a stubborn beachcomber and a mermaid with webbed toes. Forsyth's touch is perfect: whether showing us a tycoon (Burt Lancaster) with his head in the stars or bridging generations at an all-night ceilidh dance. - Director:
- Bill Forsyth
- Cast:
- Burt Lancaster, Peter Riegert, Fulton MacKay
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Quentin Tarantino rocked the film world with this powerful and controversial debut movie. Set mainly in a warehouse in the aftermath of a bungled robbery the story gradually unfolds to introduce the colour-coded gangsters and the planning of the crime step by step, through Tarantino's trademark flashbacks. Four have survived after a police ambush - betrayed. What went wrong and who is the betrayer? - Director:
- Quentin Tarantino
- Cast:
- Harvey Keitel, Steven Wright, Tim Roth
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Harakiri (1962)Seppuku
In a magnificent performance. Tatsuya Nakadai stars as Hanshiro Tsugumo. a masterless down-and-out samurai who enters the manor of Lord lyi. requesting to commit ritual suicide on his property. Suspected of simply fishing for charity, Hanshiro is told the gruesome tale of the last samurai who made the same request - but Hanshiro will not be moved... - Director:
- Masaki Kobayashi
- Cast:
- Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Ishihama, Shima Iwashita
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