Movies to Watch

So very, very many movies to watch with my son, and perhaps we only have 8 months left if he indeed heads off to Ottawa for university.

I've listed the really early comedies here.

Some of the other stone-cold classics left to see are
Citizen Kane
The Apartment
Bringing Up Baby ✓
His Girl Friday ✓ (I like The Front Page too, but hard to top Cary Grant)

In terms of film noir (and/or Bogart pictures), the most important remaining are:
Gilda
Touch of Evil
Double Indemnity
Anatomy of a Murder
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Dark Passage 

Kurosawa!  There are so many great films, but these are probably the most important as a general starting point:
Ikiru ✓
The Seven Samurai
Ran
Rashomon
High and Low
The Bad Sleep Well (after I take him to see Hamlet at Stratford!) 

In terms of other Japanese films, it's hard to say. Probably Ozu's Good Morning and Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs.  Perhaps Mizoguchi's Ugetsu and Street of Shame.  Most likely I will catch up on the other Mizoguchi and Ozu on my own after he leaves the nest.

Not much more Fellini, as I don't think he'd have the patience to sit through La Dolce Vita. Probably just Juliet of the Spirits and Amarcord.

Hitchcock!

I don't think he's really seen many of these at all.  There are a few I don't care for at all.  But if I was to narrow it down to the truly essential it would be:
Strangers on a Train
Rear Window
Vertigo
North by Northwest
Charade (Cary Grant sort of spoofing his own image)
High Anxiety (probably won't get to this Mel Brooks spoof but you never know)

I don't even known where to start with French film, even if only restricting myself to the French New Wave.  We did get through all the Tati films, the Etaix box set and a couple of Truffaut films, but I don't think he'd really like much of Godard, and I'm not sure he's ready for Rohmer.  Maybe just:
Renoir Rules of the Game
Clair Le Million
Godard Breathless
Clouzot The Wages of Fear
Clouzot Diabolique
Demy The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Varda Cleo from 5 to 7*

Random comedies:
The Horse's Mouth  ✓
Manhattan
Annie Hall
Sleeper
Blazing Saddles
Young Frankenstein
Spaceballs ?
The Breakfast Club
High Fidelity
After Hours
After Life ✓
The Truman Show
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown ✓

Random Sci-fi:
Blade Runner
Blade Runner 2049
The Shape of Water
Delicatessen 
The Fifth Element ✓
ET
Close Encounters of the Third Kind ✓
Men in Black
Twelve Monkeys**
Solaris ✓

I'm not at all sure of watching more Satyajit Ray, though he did like The Hero.  I'm tempted to see if we can squeeze in the Calcutta Trilogy:
Pratidwandi (The Adversary) 
Seemabaddha (Company Limited) 
Jana Aranya (The Middleman) 

But I expect ultimately I'll watch these films on my own.

I don't think we'll get through every single film here, and I'll be hard pressed not to add more as I think of them, but this is a good starting point in world cinema, leaving aside some of the darker directors like Fassbinder, Strindberg and even Herzog.  If we had all the time in the world, I would probably add Kieślowski's The Dekalogue and the Three Colors Trilogy.  And for sentimental reasons (i.e. he's leaving the nest soon) I'd watch Boyhood with him.

The reality is that on many weekends, he watches a bit too much sports, and then doesn't have time for a movie.  We've actually reached the end of The IT Crowd with just the "Season 5" special left.  We're at the halfway mark with Sling & Arrows, but those episodes are longer and harder to fit in.  We'll have to find something shorter for most evenings, most likely Red Dwarf, but it could be Futurama as well.

 

* It's been surprisingly hard for me to watch Cleo in a proper theatre.  I was just a day off from being able to watch this in Pittsburgh, but it was not to be.  C'est dommage!

** Maybe just a bit too on the nose for the immediate future.