griggs's - Favourite Films of the 20th Century List
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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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Ran (1985)Revolt
Akira Kurosawa's acclaimed study of power, revenge and retribution is set against the magnificent backdrop of feudal warfare in sixteenth century Japan. Transposing the events of Shakespeare's King Lear to the blood-thirsty 'Period of Warring States', 'Ran' tells the story of a bitter power struggle within the family of Warlord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai). After fifty years of ruthless slaughter Hidetora divides his kingdom among his sons, seeking peaceful retirement. However, as his life descends into chaos, he is unable to escape the corruption within his family and the torment within his soul. - Director:
- Akira Kurosawa
- Cast:
- Tatsuya Nakadai, Seizô Katô, Akira Terao
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The Cranes Are Flying (1957)Letyat Zhuravli
This landmark film by the virtuosic Mikhail Kalatozov was heralded as a revelation in the post-Stalin Soviet Union and the international cinema community alike. It tells the story of Veronica (Tatiana Samoilova) and Boris (Alexei Batalov), a couple who are blissfully in love until World War II tears them apart. With Boris at the front, Veronica must try to ward off spiritual numbness and defend herself from the increasingly forceful advances of her beau's draft-dodging cousin. - Director:
- Mikhail Kalatozov
- Cast:
- Tatyana Samoylova, Aleksey Batalov, Vasiliy Merkurev
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The Wages of Fear (1953)Le Salaire de la peur
Part road movie, part suspense thriller, the plot is high-tension simplicity itself. In the South American jungle, supplies of nitro-glycerine are urgently needed at a remote oil field. The unscrupulous American oil company pays four out-of-work men (Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Folco Lulli and Peter Van Eyck) to deliver the supplies in two sets of drivers: a tension magnified thousand fold by the unforgiving heat, the lure of filthy lucre and the rough and rocky roads where the slightest jolt can result in agonising death. Which of the disparate, desperate desperadoes will survive the white-knuckle journey and claim the loot and the glory? - Director:
- Henri-Georges Clouzot
- Cast:
- Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter Van Eyck
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Yojimbo (1961)Yôjinbô / Bodyguard
The enigmatic samurai in Yojimbo is played by the great Toshiro Mifune as a scruffy, scratching, itinerant warrior who wanders into a strange town and right into the middle of two warring clans. Showing his skills with the samurai sword within minutes of his arrival, he soon has the town's rival factions competing for his services.Kurosawa's genius for storytelling combines with thrilling swordplay, a healthy dose of black humour, a soundtrack every bit as atmospheric and amusing as Ennio Morricone's, and a towering performance from Mifune, to make 'Yojimbo' an irresistible widescreen action movie. - Director:
- Akira Kurosawa
- Cast:
- Toshirô Mifune, Eijirô Tôno, Tatsuya Nakadai
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