some of these are cryptic to avoid ruining the surprise. if you see the movie you’d know.
cinema only. no tv, no shorts.
first tier - ranked-ish ratatouille - Ego’s review
Wolf children snow
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure - bar
Speed Racer Royalton’s speech - “Are you ready to put away your toys and grow up? Are you ready to make more money in one year than your father made in his whole life?
Nightcrawler shows without telling. A two hour movie that flies by, it has one of the sleaziest characters I’ve ever seen. We see what it takes for a man to rise through the ranks of TV news and become a business owner. The music and cinematography, the bulk of which happens at night, contribute to a dreamy aesthetic. Not just the main character but the whole cast are incredibly believable.
Sneakers (1992) would never be made today.
No movie made today could ever be pro-union, even in an offhand prop. Even though Hollywood is one of the only American bastions of unions.
I am also struck by the attitude toward hacking in this era. Around the 80s-00s, we have: TRON
WarGames
Sneakers
Hackers
The Matrix
All of them look to the computer age with wonder and hope, in their own way.
As a companion to my writeup on the film canon, I made this list of 32 unique movies worth trying. I’m (mostly) not gonna waste my finger-breath on stuff already in the canon. If you actually want to use this as a film guide, I’d go through TSPDT in order, and for every 2 films on TSPDT, watch one of these. And if it sucks… hit da bricks!. David Sims at The Atlantic watches thousands more films than me, and he had a similar idea.
I recently came across the popular book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Something like this book would have been useful when I was starting to get into movies, just as IMDB and later, TSPDT have been. Rather than a point-by-point rebuke of the book itself, it’s a useful jumping-off point for the pitfalls associated with creating a film canon - a list of movies intended to represent the medium as a whole.