griggs's - Letterboxd Official Top 250 Narrative Feature Films List

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Based on the best-selling novel by Lilian Lee, "Farewell My Concubine" is an epic exploration of art, friendship and betrayal.

Set against the tumultuous backdrop of more than fifty years of Chinese history, the film charts the relationship between Cheng (Leslie Cheung) and Duan (Zhang Fengyi), two stars in the Peking Opera troupe, and the woman who comes between them. Chen Kaige's sumptuous and moving epic holds an important place in the history of Chinese-language cinema.

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Horror-master John Carpenter teams Kurt Russell's outstanding performance with incredible visuals to build this chilling version of the classic 'The Thing'.

In the winter of 1982, a twelve-man research team at a remote Antarctic research station discovers an alien buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Soon unfrozen, the shape-shifting alien wreaks havoc, creates terror and becomes one of them.

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'Apur Sansar', the adult Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) hopes to become a writer, but his lack of finances force him to abandon his university studies. He meets an old friend Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee) and together they travel to the wedding of Pulu's cousin, Aparna (Sharmila Tagore).

When the bridegroom turns out to be insane and the wedding is cancelled, Apu agrees to marry Aparna to save her from ridicule. They return to his Calcutta apartment to start a new life and Apu comes to love his wife, but his happiness is soon shattered by a tragic turn of events.

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Melville's most personal film, rooted in his wartime experiences in the French Resistance, Army Of Shadows is a hard, tense drama, depicting man's capacity for both bravery and evil. In the winter of 1942-1943, as France exist s under German occupation, an underground cell operates in the shadows.

In the clandestine world of the Resistance, the freedom fighters work against their enemies under the constant risk of betrayal, ordinary men and women in an extraordinary situation. Suffused throughout with a mood of foreboding, the suspense, heightened with directorial mastery, reaches its peak as the Resistance attempt to free a prisoner from the Gestapo headquarters, in one of Melville's trademark set-pieces of iconic action.

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"Inglourious Basterds" begins in German-occupied France, Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand the Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz).

Shoshanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. Known to their enemy as "The Basterds", Raine's squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquee, where Shoshanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own...

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Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Pride. Lust. Envy. Wrath. Two cops (Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) track a brilliant and elusive killer who orchestrates a string of horrific murders, each kill targeting a practitioner of one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Gwyneth Paltrow also stars in this acclaimed thriller set in a dour, drizzly city sick with pain and blight. David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) guides the action - physical mental and spiritual - with a sure understanding of what terrifies us, right up to a stunning denouement that will rip the scar tissue off the most hardened soul.

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The most brilliant mind at America's top university isn't a professor...he's the guy who cleans its floors, Will Hunting (Matt Damon). But Will is also a headstrong, penniless guy failing the lessons of life and love with his wealthy girlfriend.

Facing a jail sentence after one too many run-ins with the law, Will's fate lies in the hands of his therapist ( Robin Williams), who might be the only man able to help him see his true potential.

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A tale of miraculous resurrection brought about by human love, Ordet is an extraordinary expression of spiritual optimism without being either sentimental or pious.

Religious intolerance and family tensions lie at the heart of the film, which explores the clash between orthodox religions and true faith. Dreyer achieves its powerful effects in deceptively simple ways, and has produced, in its closing moments, one of the most extraordinary scenes in all cinema.

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Based on the true story of Resistance fighter Andre Devigny, who was imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Nazis during the Second World War, the film reconstructs his actual cell at the Lyons fortress of Montluc, and follows his meticulous plans for escape.

This totally involving and thrilling tale of courage and faith is all the more authentic for its use of non-professional actors and Bresson's spare style.

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Sophies life is thrown into turmoil when she is literally swept off her feet by a handsome-yet-mysterious wizard named Howl.

Subsequently transformed into a 90-year-old woman by the wicked Witch of the Waste, she embarks on an incredible odyssey to lift the curse, and finds refuge in Howl's magical moving castle.

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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?

Silent movies are giving way to talking pictures - and a hoofer-turned-matinee idol (Gene Kelly) is caught in that bumpy transition, as are his buddy (Donald O'Connor), prospective ladylove (Debbie Reynolds) and shrewish costar (Jean Hagen).

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The third and final part of Kieslowski's trilogy has been acclaimed as his masterpiece. Immaculately played by an extraordinary cast, "Red" masterfully plays on Kieslowski's interpretation of brotherhood and destiny.

Irene Jacob is stunning as a young model who meets a retired judge by chance when she rescues his dog from a car accident. Jean-Louis Trintignant is utterly compelling as the embittered judge who spends his days eavesdropping on his neighbours' phone conversations. Their initially fiery relationship mellows into a close friendship that ultimately liberates them both. A final twist of fate reveals the destinies of the characters from all three parts of the trilogy.

A man quits work to care for his dying grandmother, motivated by her fortune. He schemes to win her favor before she passes.

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"Amadeus" triumphs as gripping human drama, sumptuous period epic, glorious celebration of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It's 1781 and Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) is the competent court composer to Emperor Joseph II.

When Mozart (Tom Hulce) arrives at court, Salieri is horrified to discover that the godlike musical gifts he desires for himself have been bestowed on a bawdy, impish jokester. Mad with envy, he plots to destroy Mozart by any means. Perhaps, even murder.