Dave Tompkins :: DVD Library :: Other Lists :: Time Magazine's Top 100


(text-only version)

Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972)

In in 16th century, the ruthless and insane Aguirre leads a Spanish expedition in search of El Dorado.

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Pather Panchali (1955)

Sometime in the early years of the century, a boy, Apu, is born to a poor Brahmin family in a village in Bengal...

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The Awful Truth (1937)

Unfounded suspicions lead a married couple to begin divorce proceedings, whereupon they start undermining each other's attempts to find new romance.

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Baby Face (1933)

A young woman uses her body and her sexuality to help her climb the social ladder, but soon begins to wonder if her new status will ever bring her happiness.

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Band of Outsiders (1964)

Two crooks with a fondness for old Hollywood B-movies convince a languages student to help them commit a robbery.

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Barry Lyndon (1975)

An Irish rogue wins the heart of a rich widow and assumes her dead husband's position in 18th Century aristocracy.

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Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)

This film, which is basically the longest narrative film ever made, is a 15-1/2 hour episodic exploration of the character of Franz Biberkopf...

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Blade Runner (1982)

Deckard, a blade runner, has to track down and terminate 4 replicants who hijacked a ship in space and have returned to earth seeking their maker.

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Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

A somewhat romantized account of the career of the notoriously violent bank robbing couple and their gang.

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Brazil (1985)

A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state.

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Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Mary Shelley reveals the main characters of her novel survived: Dr. Frankenstein (goaded by an even madder scientist) builds his monster a mate.

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Camille (1936)

A Parisian courtesan must choose between the young man who loves her and the callous baron who wants her, even as her own health begins to fail.

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Casablanca (1942)

Set in unoccupied Africa during the early days of World War II: An American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

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Charade (1963)

Romance and suspense in Paris, as a woman is pursued by several men who want a fortune her murdered husband had stolen. Who can she trust?

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Children of Paradise (1945)

This tragic tale centers around the ill-fated love between Baptiste, a theater mime, and Claire Reine...

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Chinatown (1974)

A private detective investigating an adultery case stumbles on to a scheme of murder that has something to do with water.

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Chungking Express (1994)

Wong Kar-Wai's movie about two love-struck cops is filmed in impressionistic splashes of motion and color...

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Citizen Kane (1941)

Following the death of a publishing tycoon, news reporters scramble to discover the meaning of his final utterance.

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City Lights (1931)

The Tramp struggles to help a blind flower girl he has fallen in love with.

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City of God (2002)

Two boys growing up in a violent neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer.

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Closely Watched Trains (1966)

An apprentice train dispatcher at a village station seeks his first sexual encounter and becomes despondent when he is unable to perform.

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The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936)
The Crowd (1928)
Day for Night (1973)

A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.

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The Decalogue (1989)

Ten television drama films, each one based on one of the Ten Commandments.

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Detour (1945)

Chance events trap hitch-hiker Al Roberts in a tightening net of film noir trouble.

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The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

A surreal, virtually plotless series of dreams centered around six middle-class people and their consistently interrupted attempts to have a meal together.

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Dodsworth (1936)

A bittersweet tale of the increasing estrangement of a retired automobile tycoon and his wife. Increasingly obsessed with maintaining an appearance of youth...

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Double Indemnity (1944)

An insurance rep lets himself be talked into a murder/insurance fraud scheme that arouses an insurance investigator's suspicions.

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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

An insane general starts a process to nuclear holocaust that a war room of politicians and generals frantically try to stop.

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The Legend of the Drunken Master (1994)

Returning home with his father after a shopping expedition, Wong Fei-Hong is unwittingly caught up in...

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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

A group of Earth children help a stranded alien botanist return home.

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8 1/2 (1963)

A harried movie director retreats into his memories and fantasies.

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Farewell My Concubine (1993)

The story of two men, who met as apprentices in the Peking Opera, and stayed friends for over 50 years.

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Finding Nemo (2003)

A father-son underwater adventure featuring Nemo, a boy clownfish, stolen from his coral reef home. His timid father must then travel to Sydney, and search Sydney Harbour find Nemo.

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The Fly (1986)

A brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong.

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The 400 Blows (1959)

Intensley touching story of a misunderstood young adolescent who left without attention, delves into a life of petty crime.

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The Godfather (1972)

The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

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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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Goodfellas (1990)

Henry Hill and his friends work their way up through the mob hierarchy.

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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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His Girl Friday (1940)

A newspaper editor uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife from remarrying.

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Ikiru (1952)

Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing...

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In a Lonely Place (1950)

A potentially violent screenwriter is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. But she begins to have doubts...

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.

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It's a Gift (1934)

A henpecked New Jersey grocer makes plans to move to California to grow oranges, despite the resistance of his overbearing wife.

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It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

An angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman by showing what life would had been like if he never existed.

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Kandahar (2001)

After an Afghanistan-born woman who lives in Canada receives a letter from her suicidal sister, she takes a perilous journey through Afghanistan to try to find her.

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Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

A distant poor relative of the Duke of D'Ascoyne plots to inherit the title by murdering the eight other heirs who stand ahead of him in the line of succession.

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King Kong (1933)

A film crew goes to a tropical island for an exotic location shoot and discovers a colossal giant gorilla who takes a shine to their female blonde star.

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The Lady Eve (1941)

Returning from a year up the Amazon studying snakes, the rich but unsophisticated Charles Pike meets con-artist Jean Harrington on a ship...

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The Last Command (1928)

A former Imperial Russian general and cousin of the Czar ends up in Hollywood as an extra in a movie directed by a former revolutionary.

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Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Epic rumination on a flamboyant and controversial British military figure and his conflicted loyalties during wartime service.

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Leolo (1992)

Young Leo Lauzon is torn between two worlds - the squalid Montreal tenement that he inhabits with his severely dysfunctional (and largely insane) family...

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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

In a small village in the Shire a young Hobbit named Frodo has been entrusted with an ancient Ring. Now he must embark on an Epic quest to the Cracks of Doom in order to destroy it.

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Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

A cameraman travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

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The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

A former Korean War POW is brainwashed by Communists into becoming a political assassin. But another former prisoner may know how to save him.

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Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

In the year before the 1904 St Louis World's Fair, the four Smith daughters learn lessons of life and love, even as they prepare for a reluctant move to New York.

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Metropolis (1927)

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

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Miller's Crossing (1990)

Tom Regan, an advisor to a Prohibition-era crime boss, tries to keep the peace between warring mobs but gets caught in divided loyalties.

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Mon oncle d'Amérique (1980)
Mouchette (1967)

Mouchette is a young teenager living in the tough country. Her mother is going to die, and her father does not take care of her...

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Nayakan (1987)
Ninotchka (1939)

A stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.

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Notorious (1946)

A woman is asked to spy on a group of Nazi friends in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them?

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Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

The document of the 1936 Olympics at Berlin.

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On the Waterfront (1954)

An ex-prize fighter turned longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses.

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Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Epic story of a mysterious stranger with a harmonica who joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful widow from a ruthless assassin working for the railroad.

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Out of the Past (1947)

Jeff Bailey, small-town gas pumper, has his mysterious past catch up with him one day when he's ordered to meet with gambler Whit Sterling...

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Persona (1966)

A nurse is put in charge of an actress who can't talk and finds that the actress's persona is melding with hers.

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Pinocchio (1940)

A living puppet, with the help of a cricket as his conscience, must prove himself worthy to become a real boy.

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Psycho (1960)

A young woman steals $40,000 from her employer's client, and subsequently encounters a young motel proprietor too long under the domination of his mother.

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Pulp Fiction (1994)

The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster's wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

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The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

In 1930s New Jersey, a movie character walks off the screen and into the real world.

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Thirst (Pyaasa) (1957)

Unemployed Vijay is the youngest in his family consisting of his widowed mom, and two brothers. His passion is poetry...

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Raging Bull (1980)

An emotionally self-destructive boxer's journey through life, as the violence and temper that leads him to the top in the ring, destroys his life outside it.

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Schindler's List (1993)

Oskar Schindler uses Jews to start a factory in Poland during the war. He witnesses the horrors endured by the Jews, and starts to save them.

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The Searchers (1956)

As a Civil War veteran spends years searching for a young niece captured by Indians, his motivation becomes increasingly questionable.

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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 Shop Around the Corner (1940)

Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realizing that they're falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal.

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Singin' in the Rain (1952)

A silent film production company and cast make a difficult transition to sound.

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The Singing Detective (1986)

Tormented and bedridden by a debilitating disease, a mystery writer relives his detective stories through his imagination and hallucinations.

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Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)

A small town at the turn of the century. Lawer Fredrik EGerman has an ingenue-wife, Anne, and a grown-up son...

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Some Like It Hot (1959)

When two musicians witness a mob hit, they flee the state in an all female band disguised as women, but further complications set in.

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Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)

Luke Skywalker leaves his home planet, teams up with other rebels, and tries to save Princess Leia from the evil clutches of Darth Vader.

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A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Disturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her.

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Sunrise (1927)

A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.

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Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

A biting look at the ruthless world of a powerful and evil New York columnist.

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Swing Time (1936)

A performer and gambler travels to New York City to raise the $25,000 he needs to marry his fiancée, only to become entangled with a beautiful aspiring dancer.

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Talk to Her (2002)

Two men share an odd friendship while they care for their girlfriends who are both in deep comas.

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Taxi Driver (1976)

A mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran works as nighttime taxi driver in a city whose perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge to violently lash out, attempting to save a teenage prostitute in the process.

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Tokyo Story (1953)

An old couple visit their children and grandchildren in the city; but the children have little time for them.

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A Touch of Zen (1971)

An artist, Ku, lives with his mother near an abandoned fort, reputed to be haunted. One night, investigating strange noises...

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Ugetsu (1953)

In the beginning of the springtime in the period of the Japanese Civil Wars of the Sixteenth Century in Lake Biwa in the Province of Omi...

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Ulysses' Gaze (1995)

''A,'' a Greek filmmaker living in exile in the United States, returns to his native Ptolemas to attend a special screening of one of his extremely controversial films...

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Umberto D. (1952)

Umberto Ferrari, aged government-pensioner, attends a street demonstration held by his fellow pensioners...

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Unforgiven (1992)

Retired Old West gunslinger William Munny reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner and a young man.

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White Heat (1949)

A psychopathic criminal with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist. Shortly after the plan takes place, events take a crazy turn

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Wings of Desire (1987)

An angel tires of overseeing human activity and wishes to become human when he falls in love with a mortal.

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Yojimbo (1961)

A crafty ronin comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to play them against each other to free the town.

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Count: 96 / 100