Required Watch List
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1.
Apocalypse Now
(1979)
During the Vietnam War, Captain Willard is sent on a dangerous mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade colonel who has set himself up as a god among a local tribe. (153 mins.)
Director: Francis Coppola
2.
Brazil
(1985)
A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state. (132 mins.)
Director: Terry Gilliam
3.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(2004)
When their relationship turns sour, a couple undergoes a procedure to have each other erased from their memories. But it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with. (108 mins.)
Director: Michel Gondry
4.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(1998)
An oddball journalist and his psychopathic lawyer travel to Las Vegas for a series of psychedelic escapades. (118 mins.)
Director: Terry Gilliam
5.
Fargo
(1996)
Jerry Lundegaard's inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen's bungling and the persistent police work of the quite pregnant Marge Gunderson. (98 mins.)
Director: Joel Coen
6.
Fight Club
(1999)
An insomniac office worker, looking for a way to change his life, crosses paths with a devil-may-care soap maker, forming an underground fight club that evolves into something much, much more. (139 mins.)
Director: David Fincher
7.
Bringing Out the Dead
(1999)
Haunted by the patients he failed to save, an extremely burned-out Manhattan ambulance paramedic fights to maintain his sanity over three fraught and turbulent nights. (121 mins.)
Director: Martin Scorsese
8.
Léon: The Professional
(1994)
Mathilda, a 12-year-old girl, is reluctantly taken in by Léon, a professional assassin, after her family is murdered. Léon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship, as she becomes his protégée and learns the assassin's trade. (110 mins.)
Director: Luc Besson
9.
District 9
(2009)
An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly finds a kindred spirit in a government agent who is exposed to their biotechnology. (112 mins.)
Director: Neill Blomkamp
10.
Eraserhead
(1977)
Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child. (89 mins.)
Director: David Lynch
11.
Rumble Fish
(1983)
Rusty James, an absent-minded street thug struggles to live up to his legendary older brother's reputation, and longs for the days when gang warfare was going on. (94 mins.)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
12.
Factotum
(2005)
This drama centers on Hank Chinaski, the fictional alter-ego of "Factotum" author Charles Bukowski, who wanders around Los Angeles, CA trying to live off jobs which don't interfere with his primary interest, which is writing. Along the way, he fends off the distractions offered by women, drinking and gambling. (94 mins.)
Director: Bent Hamer
13.
Good Will Hunting
(1997)
Will Hunting, a janitor at M.I.T., has a gift for mathematics, but needs help from a psychologist to find direction in his life. (126 mins.)
Director: Gus Van Sant
14.
Naked Lunch
(1991)
After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally murders his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in a port town in North Africa. (115 mins.)
Director: David Cronenberg
15.
Wall Street
(1987)
A young and impatient stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider who takes the youth under his wing. (126 mins.)
Director: Oliver Stone
16.
Contact
(1997)
Dr. Ellie Arroway, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of intelligent aliens, who send plans for a mysterious machine. (150 mins.)
Director: Robert Zemeckis
17.
The Silence of the Lambs
(1991)
A young F.B.I. cadet must confide in an incarcerated and manipulative killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims. (118 mins.)
Director: Jonathan Demme
18.
Fearless
(1993)
A man's personality is dramatically changed after surviving a major airline crash. (122 mins.)
Director: Peter Weir
19.
Trainspotting
(1996)
Renton, deeply immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene, tries to clean up and get out, despite the allure of the drugs and influence of friends. (94 mins.)
Director: Danny Boyle
20.
A Scanner Darkly
(2006)
An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result. (100 mins.)
Director: Richard Linklater
21.
TRON
(1982)
A computer hacker is abducted into the digital world and forced to participate in gladiatorial games where his only chance of escape is with the help of a heroic security program. (96 mins.)
Director: Steven Lisberger
22.
Donnie Brasco
(1997)
An FBI undercover agent infiltrates the mob and finds himself identifying more with the mafia life, at the expense of his regular one. (127 mins.)
Director: Mike Newell
23.
The Matrix
(1999)
A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against its controllers. (136 mins.)
Director: The Wachowski Brothers, The Wachowski Brothers
24.
The Lawnmower Man
(1992)
A simple man is turned into a genius through the application of computer science. (108 mins.)
Director: Brett Leonard
25.
Life of Pi
(2012)
A young man who survives a disaster at sea is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While cast away, he forms an unexpected connection with another survivor: a fearsome Bengal tiger. (127 mins.)
Director: Ang Lee
26.
Her
(2013)
A lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with an operating system designed to meet his every need. (126 mins.)
Director: Spike Jonze
27.
Garden State
(2004)
A quietly troubled young man returns home for his mother's funeral after being estranged from his family for a decade. (102 mins.)
Director: Zach Braff
28.
Bottle Rocket
(1996)
Three friends plan to pull off a simple robbery and go on the run. (91 mins.)
Director: Wes Anderson
29.
One Eight Seven
(1997)
After surviving a brutal attack (Instrument used was a board with nails in it) by a student, teacher Trevor Garfield moves from New York to Los Angeles. (119 mins.)
Director: Kevin Reynolds
30.
The Zero Theorem
(2013)
A hugely talented but socially isolated computer operator is tasked by Management to prove the Zero Theorem: that the universe ends as nothing, rendering life meaningless. But meaning is what he already craves. (107 mins.)
Director: Terry Gilliam
31.
Akira
(1988)
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop. (124 mins.)
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
32.
Se7en
(1995)
Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his modus operandi. (127 mins.)
Director: David Fincher
33.
24 Hour Party People
(2002)
In 1976, Tony Wilson sets up Factory Records and brings Manchester's music to the world. (117 mins.)
Director: Michael Winterbottom
34.
eXistenZ
(1999)
A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged. (97 mins.)
Director: David Cronenberg
35.
Dark City
(1998)
A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun. (100 mins.)
Director: Alex Proyas
36.
Donnie Darko
(2001)
A troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes, after he narrowly escapes a bizarre accident. (113 mins.)
Director: Richard Kelly
37.
What Dreams May Come
(1998)
After he dies in a car crash, a man searches heaven and hell for his beloved wife. (113 mins.)
Director: Vincent Ward
38.
Awakenings
(1990)
The victims of an encephalitis epidemic many years ago have been catatonic ever since, but now a new drug offers the prospect of reviving them. (121 mins.)
Director: Penny Marshall
39.
Barton Fink
(1991)
A renowned New York playwright is enticed to California to write for the movies and discovers the hellish truth of Hollywood. (116 mins.)
Director: Joel Coen
40.
Kafka
(1991)
Writer Franz Kafka works during the day at an insurance company where events lead him to discover a mysterious underground society with strange suppressive goals. (98 mins.)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
41.
Pirates of Silicon Valley
(1999 TV Movie)
History of Apple and Microsoft. (95 mins.)
Director: Martyn Burke
42.
Waking Life
(2001)
A man shuffles through a dream meeting various people and discussing the meanings and purposes of the universe. (99 mins.)
Director: Richard Linklater
43.
True Romance
(1993)
In Detroit, a lonely pop culture geek marries a call girl, steals cocaine from her pimp, and tries to sell it in Hollywood. Meanwhile, the owners of the cocaine - the Mob - track them down in an attempt to reclaim it. (120 mins.)
Director: Tony Scott
44.
Dead Man's Shoes
(2004)
A disaffected soldier returns to his hometown to get even with the thugs who brutalized his mentally-challenged brother years ago. (90 mins.)
Director: Shane Meadows
45.
The Deer Hunter
(1978)
An in-depth examination of the ways in which the U.S. Vietnam War impacts and disrupts the lives of people in a small industrial town in Pennsylvania. (183 mins.)
Director: Michael Cimino
46.
The Aviator
(2004)
A biopic depicting the early years of legendary director and aviator Howard Hughes' career from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s. (170 mins.)
Director: Martin Scorsese
47.
Natural Born Killers
(1994)
Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and psychopathic serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media. (118 mins.)
Director: Oliver Stone
48.
Scum
(1979)
Uncompromising story of life in a Borstal prison, a British juvenile offender institution in the 70's (98 mins.)
Director: Alan Clarke
49.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
(2014)
Illustrated upon the progress of his latest Broadway play, a former popular actor's struggle to cope with his current life as a wasted actor is shown. (119 mins.)
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
50.
A Clockwork Orange
(1971)
In future Britain, Alex DeLarge, a charismatic and psycopath delinquent, who likes to practice crimes and ultra-violence with his gang, is jailed and volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society's crime problem - but not all goes according to plan. (136 mins.)
Director: Stanley Kubrick