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

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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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Yasujiro Ozu's hugely influential award-winning masterpiece, 'Late Spring', is a tender meditation on family politics, sacrifice and the status quo.

Noriko (Setsuko Hara) and her father, Professor Somiya (Chishu Ryu), live together in perfect harmony but old certainties are put at risk when an interfering aunt raises the question of marriage. Introducing Ozu's popular Noriko character, 'Late Spring' poignantly examines the gradual compromise between modernity and tradition.

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‘City Lights’ begins with an uproarious skewering of pomp and formality, ends with one of the most famous last shots in movie history and, from start to finish, so completely touches the heart and tickles the funny bone that in 1998 it was named one of the American Film Institute’s Top-100 American

Films. Talkies were well entrenched when Charles Chaplin swam against the filmmaking tide with this forever classic that’s silent except for music and sound effects. The story, involving the Tramp’s attempts to get money for an operation that will restore sight to a blind flower girl, provides a star with an ideal framework for sentiment and laughs. The tramp is variously a street sweeper, a boxer, a rich 0poseur, and a rescuer of a suicidal millionaire. His message is unspoken, but universally understood: love is blind.

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"All That Jazz" is actually a semi-autobiographical account of the life of its celebrated writer/director/choreographer, Bob Fosse. The multi-talented performer was an Oscar, Tony and Emmy Award winner who brought home a combined total of eight trophies.

Part tragic, part comic, this outrageous look at life in the fast lane is the Academy Award - winning musical about Bob Fosse's excessive life in show business, played by Roy Schneider. Dazzlingly presented, this electrifying story about the perils of pushing yourself too hard is filled with Fosse's legendary song-and-dance choreography.

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As the Black Death continues to wipe out the population of Europe, knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) returns from the Crusades, disillusioned and worn. When suddenly Death (Bengt Ekerot) appears before him, he asks for the chance to live, proposing a game of chess to decide his fate.

The knight takes his squire, a troupe of traveling players and a deaf and dumb girl under his protection as the game is played out. One by one Death exacts his toll, and it is up to Block to stall his opponent for as long as possible if he is to help save the lives of those he is trying to protect. All the while, the villages and towns about them fall further into ruin and religion takes a stranglehold on those desperate for a means of survival.

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In a northern Greek city in the 1960's, a leading opposition politician is attacked on the street while his party is holding a rally and later dies in hospital.

The dead man's left of center party was against any type of foreign intervention in national affairs and was seen by the right wing party in power as a threat to national security. The cover-up begins almost immediately with the police claiming that the dead man was struck by a drunk driver. A prosecutor is assigned to the case and he meticulously interviews everyone involved, slowly gathering evidence that shows the extent to which the assassination was potted by senior policemen and right-wing extremists. Getting appropriate actions from the State proves to be something else entirely.

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Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom) travels with his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) to receive an honorary doctorate for his lifelong contribution to medicine.

Soon his journey becomes one of introspection, as the people he meets - from a hitch-hiking girl to a quarrelling married couple - remind him of past relationships and cause him to contemplate his own failings. Victor Sjostrom, a celebrated film director in his own right, best know for his silent work including the Hollywood masterpiece The Wind, gives a remarkably moving performance as the aged academic. Bergman's smiles and tears on a summer's day make for his most overtly symbolic work, shifting skillfully between the past and the present, dream and reality. Filled with richly observed characters and a real feeling for the joys of nature and youth, 'Wild Strawberries' is one of Bergman's warmest and finest films.

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In this gently probing family drama, 40-year-old Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) arrives with his wife and stepson at the home of his elderly parents to commemorate his older brother, who drowned some years earlier.

Hirokazu Koreeda's most Ozu-influenced film is a subtle, moving account of family tensions that delves deep into the differing assumptions and value systems of its generations. This was the director's first film to feature veteran actress Kirin Kiki, who would become a regular collaborator.

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Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) is a lonely and cynical older woman who spends her days unhappily writing letters for illiterate customers at Rio de Janeiro's Central Station. But things begin to change when she reluctantly befriends a homeless orphan, Josue (Vinícius de Oliveira).

When she agrees to help Josue search for the father he's never known, Dora also rediscovers something she'd thought was lost forever: her heart.

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From the celebrated Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky comes his most autobiographical work and one that is regarded by many as his magnum opus.

Reflecting upon his own childhood and the destiny of the Russian people, 'Mirror' is a sublime expression of memory, imagination, thoughts and dreams intertwined with real life and family relationships. A transcendent, inspired and multilayered masterpiece that continues to grow in stature, 'Mirror' has an exceptional resonance and rewards countless viewings.

Brazil, 1971. Brazil faces the tightening grip of a military dictatorship. Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), a mother of five children, is forced to reinvent herself after her family suffers a violent and arbitrary act by the government.

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Is there someone who lingers in your memory - someone who makes you wonder what might have been? Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy make magic again, reprising their 'Before Sunrise' roles of Jesse and Celine and reuniting with director Richard Linklater (School of Rock) in this engaging tale of love and

renewal. When Jesse and Celine first met in the mid 90's, their few hours together in Vienna were spontaneous and life-altering. Nine years later, lightning strikes twice. They unexpectedly meet in Paris...and have only one fading afternoon to decide if they should share their tomorrows. Smart, witty, real and unfolding largely in real time to heighten its immediacy, 'Before Sunset' glows with the moments that are every heart's greatest adventure.

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Noel Coward's sensitive portrayal of what happens when two happily married strangers, played by Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, meet and their acquaintance deepens into affection and eventually into love.

It is the story of two people, thrown together by the chance meeting of the title, helpless in the face of their emotions but redeemed by their moral courage. Over the years few films have equalled the compassion and the realism of Brief Encounter.

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A Jewish barber returns home after twenty-years within hospital walls to find his old shop not only dilapidated but marked with hateful graffiti. The source of this hatred is the regime of a tyrannical dictator which is persecuting the barber along with the rest of the Jewish community.

In one of his most ingenious strokes of artistry ever, Chaplin subverted the fears of the time with a visionary and undeniably moving satire of fascism and discrimination.

Songlian (Gong Li) is the fourth and newest wife to a master who already supports three wives. Each has her own house within the closed world of the family compound, where every evening a red lantern is lit in front of the door of the wife with whom the master chooses to sleep. Let the rivalries begin!