Dave Tompkins :: DVD Library :: Other Lists :: Filmsite.org :: Third 100


(text-only version)

Airplane! (1980)

An airplane crew takes ill. Surely the only person capable of landing the plane is an ex-pilot afraid to fly. But don't call him Shirley.

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All the King's Men (1949)

The rise and fall of a corrupt politician, who makes his friends richer and retains power by dint of a populist appeal.

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Amadeus (1984)

The incredible story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, told in flashback mode by Antonio Salieri - now confined to an insane asylum.

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American Beauty (1999)

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation for his daughter's attractive friend.

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Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family.

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Atlantic City (1980)

Lou is a small time gangster, who thinks he used to be something big. He meets up with a younger girl...

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Babe (1995)

Babe, a pig raised by sheepdogs, learns to herd sheep with a little help from Farmer Hoggett.

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Baby Doll (1956)
Bambi (1942)

Animated film about a young deer, Bambi, growing up in the wild after his mother is shot by hunters.

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Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Belle, whose father Maurice is imprisoned by the Beast (really an enchanted Prince), offers herself instead and finds the prince inside the Beast.

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Being There (1979)

Chance, a simple gardener, has never left the estate until his employer dies. His simple TV-informed utterances are mistaken for profundity.

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The Birds (1963)

A wealthy San Francisco playgirl pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people there in increasing numbers and with increasing viciousness.

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Blow-Up (1966)

A mod London photographer believes that he has photographed a murder.

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Bull Durham (1988)

A fan who has an affair with one minor-league baseball player each season meets an up-and-coming pitcher and the experienced catcher assigned to him.

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Bus Stop (1956)

A naive but stubborn cowboy falls in love with a saloon singer and tries to take her away against her will to get married and live on his ranch in Montana.

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Cabin in the Sky (1943)

A compulsive gambler dies during a shooting, but he'll receive a second chance to reform himself and to make up with his worried wife.

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Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

An opthamologist's mistress threatens to reveal their affair to his wife, while a married documentary filmmaker is infatuated by another woman.

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The Crying Game (1992)

A British soldier is kidnaped by IRA terrorists. He befriends one of his captors, who is drawn into the soldier's world.

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Dark Victory (1939)

A young socialite is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour, and must decide whether she'll meet her final days with dignity.

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The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

An alien lands and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.

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Deliverance (1972)

Intent on seeing the Cahulawassee River before it's turned into one huge lake, outdoor fanatic Lewis Medlock takes his friends on a river-rafting trip they'll never forget into the dangerous American back-country.

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Dinner at Eight (1933)

Social climbing Millicent and Oliver Jordan throw a dinner for a bunch of New York society types, each of whom has much to reveal.

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Do the Right Thing (1989)

On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.

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East of Eden (1955)

In the Salinas Valley, in and around World War I, Cal Trask feels he must compete against overwhelming odds with his brother Aron for the love of their father Adam...

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Enter the Dragon (1973)

A martial artist agrees to spy on a reclusive crime lord using his invitation to a tournament there as cover.

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Field of Dreams (1989)

An Iowa corn farmer, hearing voices, interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond in his fields; he does, and the Chicago Black Sox come.

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A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

In London, four very different people team up to commit armed robbery, then try to doublecross each other for the loot.

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Footlight Parade (1933)
Freaks (1932)

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

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The Freshman (1925)

Nerdy college student will do anything to become popular on campus.

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Full Metal Jacket (1987)

A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War has on his fellow Marine recruits from their brutal basic training to the bloody street fighting set in 1968 Hue, Vietnam.

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Gaslight (1944)

Years after her aunt was murdered in her home, a young woman moves back into the house with her new husband. However, he has a secret which he will do anything to protect, even if that means driving his wife insane.

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Glory (1989)

Robert Gould Shaw leads the US Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates.

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

A bounty hunting scam joins two men in an uneasy alliance against a third in a race to find a fortune in gold buried in a remote cemetery.

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The Great Dictator (1940)

In Chaplin's satire on Nazi Germany, dictator Adenoid Hynkel has a double... a poor Jewish barber... who one day is mistaken for Hynkel.

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Groundhog Day (1993)

A weatherman finds himself living the same day over and over again.

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Halloween (1978)

A psychotic murderer institutionalized since childhood escapes on a mindless rampage while his doctor chases him through the streets.

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Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.

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A Hard Day's Night (1964)

A 'typical' day in the life of the Beatles, including many of their famous songs.

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Henry V (1944)

In the inspired Olivier concept, Shakespeare's play begins as a performance in the Globe Theatre, shifting in broad cinematic terms to an epic narrative of Henry V...

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Henry V (1989)

The gritty adaption of William Shakespeare's play about the English King's bloody conquest of France.

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The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)

An African American detective is asked to investigate a murder in a racist southern town.

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Inherit the Wind (1960)

Based on a real-life case in 1925, two great lawyers argue the case for and against a science teacher accused of the crime of teaching evolution.

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Jailhouse Rock (1957)
JFK (1991)

A New Orleans DA discovers there's more to the Kennedy assassination than the official story.

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Key Largo (1948)

A man visits his old friend's hotel and finds a gangster running things. As a hurricane approaches, the two end up confronting each other.

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The Kid (1921)

The Tramp cares for an abandoned child, but events put that relationship in jeopardy.

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The Killing (1956)

Crooks plan and execute a daring racetrack robbery.

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The King of Comedy (1983)

Aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin wants to achieve success in showbiz, by resorting to stalking his idol, a late night talk show host who craves his own privacy.

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Kings Row (1942)

The dark side and hypocrisy of provincial American life is seen through the eyes of five children as they grow to adulthood at the turn-of-the-century.

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Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

A movie with no conventional plot: merely a collection of expertly photographed scenes. Subject matter has a highly environmental theme.

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L.A. Confidential (1997)

A shooting at an all night diner is investigated by three LA policemen in their own unique ways.

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The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Fascinated by gorgeous Mrs. Bannister, seaman Michael O'Hara joins a bizarre yachting cruise, and ends up mired in a complex murder plot.

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The Last Emperor (1987)

The story of the final Emperor of China.

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Last Tango in Paris (1972)

A young Parisian woman begins a sordid affair with a middled-aged American businessman whom lays out ground rules that their clandestine relationship will be based only on sex.

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The Letter (1940)
The Lion in Winter (1968)

1183 AD: King Henry II's three sons all want to inherit the throne, but he won't commit to a choice. They and his wife variously plot to force him.

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M*A*S*H (1970)

The staff of a Korean War field hospital use humor and hijinks to keep their sanity in the face of the horror of war.

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A Man for All Seasons (1966)

The story of Thomas More, who stood up to King Henry VIII when the King rejected the Roman Catholic Church to obtain a divorce and remarriage.

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The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

Two British soldiers in India decide to resign from the Army and set themselves up as deities in Kafiristan--a land where no white man has set foot since Alexander.

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Marty (1955)

A touching story about two lonely people who have almost resigned themselves to never being truly loved.

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The Matrix (1999)

A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against the controllers of it.

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Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

When a nice old man who claims to be Santa Claus is institutionalized as insane, a young lawyer decides to defend him by arguing in court that he is the real thing.

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Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

King Arthur and his knights embark on a low-budget search for the Grail, encountering many very silly obstacles.

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Night of the Living Dead (1968)

A group of people hide from bloodthirsty zombies in a farmhouse.

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The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Jack Skellington, king of Halloweentown, discovers Christmas Town, but doesn't quite understand the concept.

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The Palm Beach Story (1942)

An inventor needs cash to develop his big idea. His wife, who loves him, decides to raise it for him by divorcing him and marrying a millionaire.

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Patton (1970)

The World War II phase of the controversial American general's career is depicted.

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The Piano (1993)

A mute woman along with her young daughter, and her prized piano, are sent to 1850s New Zealand for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner, and she's soon lusted after by a local worker on the plantation.

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Planet of the Apes (1968)

An astronaut crew crash lands on a planet in the distant future where intelligent talking apes are the dominant species, and humans are the oppressed and enslaved.

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Poltergeist (1982)

A family's home is haunted by a host of ghosts.

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The Producers (1968)

Producers Max Bialystock (Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Wilder) make money by producing a sure-fire flop.

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Pygmalion (1938)

Shaw's play in which a Victorian dialect expert bets that he can teach a lower-class girl to speak proper English and thus be taken for a lady.

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Repulsion (1965)

Left alone when her sister goes on vacation, a sexually repressed young beauty goes insane with surreal fantasies of seduction and rape.

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Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

In the post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland, a cynical drifter agrees to help a small, gasoline rich, community escape a band of bandits.

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Rocky (1976)

A small time boxer gets a once in a lifetime chance to fight the heavyweight champ in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect.

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Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

A newly engaged couple have a breakdown in an isolated area and must pay a call to the bizarre residence of Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

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Saturday Night Fever (1977)

A Brooklyn youth feels his only chance to get somewhere is as the king of the disco floor.

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Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Following the Normandy Landings, a group of US soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.

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The Scarlet Empress (1934)

Young Princess Sophia of Germany is taken to Russia to marry the half-wit Grand Duke Peter, son of the Empress...

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Sherlock Jr. (1924)

A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meagre skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend's father's pocketwatch.

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The Shining (1980)

A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future.

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Sleeper (1973)

A nerdish store owner is revived out of cryostasis into a future world to fight an oppressive government.

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Spartacus (1960)

The slave Spartacus leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman empire.

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Stairway to Heaven (1946)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

The cyborg who once tried to kill Sarah Connor must now protect her teenager son, John Connor, from an even more powerful and advanced cyborg.

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Thelma & Louise (1991)

An Arkansas waitress and a housewife shoot a rapist and take off in a '66 Thunderbird.

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The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
The Thing from Another World! (1951)

Scientists and American Air Force officials fend off a blood-thirsty alien organism while at a remote arctic outpost.

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This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Spinal Tap, the world's loudest band, is chronicled by hack documentarian Marti DeBergi on what proves to be a fateful tour.

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Titanic (1997)

Fictional romantic tale of a rich girl and poor boy who meet on the ill-fated voyage of the 'unsinkable' ship.

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Toy Story (1995)

A cowboy toy is profoundly threatened and jealous when a fancy spaceman toy supplants him as top toy in a boy's room.

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Toy Story 2 (1999)

When Woody is stolen by a toy collector, Buzz and his friends vow to rescue him, but Woody finds the idea of immortality in a museum tempting.

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The Usual Suspects (1995)

A boat has been destroyed, criminals are dead, and the key to this mystery lies with the only survivor and his twisted, convoluted story beginning with five career crooks in a seemingly random police lineup.

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Way Out West (1937)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

In a decaying Hollywood mansion, Jane Hudson, a former child star, and her sister Blanche, a movie queen forced into retirement after a crippling accident, live in virtual isolation.

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When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Harry and Sally have known each other for years, and are very good friends, but they fear sex would ruin the friendship.

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Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

A toon hating detective is a cartoon rabbit's only hope to prove his innocence when he is accused of murder.

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The Wind (1928)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Agatha Christie tale of a man on trial for murder: a trial featuring surprise after surprise.

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Young Frankenstein (1974)

Dr. Frankenstein's grandson, after years of living down the family reputation, inherits granddad's castle and repeats the experiments.

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Count: 93 / 102