Gregory Howard said:Here is his list of 1,000 essential films:
I’ve been spending some time thinking about how we actually experience movies—not just watching them, but really living through them. It’s easy to get caught up in technicalities or plot points, but the real magic happens when a film manages to bridge that gap between the screen and our own lives. When you look at the giants of cinema, you start to see patterns in how they manipulate emotion. Take someone like Steven Spielberg; he has this incredible knack for making the spectacle feel deeply personal. Even when the scale is massive, the heart of the story remains grounded in human connection. On the other hand, you have directors who lean into the surreal or the psychological, using visual language to pull us into a headspace that feels almost dreamlike. I often find myself comparing different eras of filmmaking. There was something special about the Golden Age of Hollywood—a certain sense of craftsmanship and narrative clarity that felt effortless. But then you have the modern era, where the tools are more advanced, yet sometimes that raw, visceral punch gets lost in the digital polish. It makes me wonder if we’re losing the ability to sit with a slow-burn movie. We live in such a fast-paced culture now that the patience required for a masterpiece by someone like Abbas Kiarostami can feel like a challenge. Yet, those are exactly the films that stay with you. They don't give you all the answers immediately; they force you to sit in the silence and reflect. Ultimately, whether it’s a high-octane thriller or a quiet character study, the best films act as mirrors. They reflect our own fears, joys, and complexities back at us. When a director succeeds, it isn't just because they made a "good movie," but because they created an experience that changes how you see the world once the lights come up in the theater.
This is a solid list of genuine masterpieces. You can tell we're dealing with a true cinephile here. That being said, I do have a few reservations:
Most of these were more or less well done, but it really sticks in my craw that there isn't a single Victor Sjöström in the mix.
Back in the 1930s, you had guys like Marcel Carné or Julien Duvivier making their mark on poetic realism. Even if you count eight different Jean Renoirs in that mix, he wasn't the only heavy hitter—there was only one true Jean.
It’s wild to think back to that specific window in the mid-forties—first you have Visconti dropping "Ossessione" in 1943, and then just two years later, Rossellini gives us "Rome, Open City."😕It was added later, but at the end of the day, the foundations are what matter most.
In the 1940s, you only really see one John Huston, and then in the 1950s, he’s nowhere to be found.
It feels like a real injustice to leave out Henri-Georges Cluzet. Is it seriously possible that there’s no room for masterpieces like *The Raven* or *Les Diaboliques*? It’s common knowledge that Cluzet is the only one who could truly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Alfred Hitchcock, earning him that "master of suspense" title. He only included *The Wages of Fear*, but he dated it back to 1954.😕
Another massive injustice was done to the great Jules Dassin—there’s simply no room for "Goal City," no space for "Night and City," and absolutely no room for the absolute masterpiece "Rififi."😕
None of those Jacques Becker titles I mentioned the other day—whether it was "Casque d'or," "Touchez pas au grisbi," or "Le trou"—really hit the mark for me.
When you look back at the 1950s, it feels like there was really only one Akira Kurosawa who truly mattered. You don't see "Rashomon" in 1950—instead, you get the massive impact of "Seven Samurai" in 1954.😕 The way the Golden Age of Japanese cinema was preserved really comes down to how they carefully curated directors like Kenji Mizoguchi and Ozaku here and there. But honestly, if we didn't have the mastery of Akira Kurosawa, things would look very different. It also wouldn't hurt to give some credit to Masaki Kinoshita—his film *Nijushi no hitomi* is absolutely masterful.
It feels like people completely overlook Fellini's work from the 50s. You can't even talk about his legacy without mentioning *I Vitelloni*, *La Strada*, or *Il Bidone*. Even a fellow Pacifist and I were just chatting about how wild it is that so many people tend to ignore early Fellini.
I honestly can't wrap my head around why there isn't any room left for Fred Zinnemann's *High Noon*, Billy Wilder's *Stalag 17*, or even Ingmar Bergman's *The Seventh Seal* and *Wild Strawberries*.
I wouldn't say Ealing Comedies were all that great, to be honest.
Instead of leaning on the big hits like *All About Eve* or *The Barefoot Contessa*, he really could have gone with two much better picks from Mankiewicz—like *No Way Out*, featuring that unforgettable Richard Widmark and Jean Poiret's debut, or even that fantastic spy thriller *Fingers* starring James Mason.
I just didn't feel like pushing myself any further.
I'm saying it once more—
Kudos to the author.But personally, I wouldn't be myself if I didn't push things just a little bit.😛
Gregory Howard said:Whether you agree with a particular choice or not—forget about the various
Titanic movies, Let, or even Tarantino and Spielberg, it doesn't matter.
It's hard for me to forget "Let," but honestly, I forgot Titanic five minutes after watching it. Tarantino had his big flash in the 90s, and I won't forget that, but as for Spielberg, I just couldn't care less.
The likes of King Vidor, Frank Capra, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock (from the Golden Age of Hollywood), Orson Welles, John Huston, Kazan, Otto Preminger, Vincente Minnelli, William Wyler, Anthony Mann, and then the New Hollywood crowd like Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, Hal Ashby, Robert Altman, and others—I won't easily forget them either... yeah, that's just how things are in America. And I think I missed a few more...
Gregory Howard said:The real heavyweights are names like Kenji Mizoguchi, Orson Welles, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard,
Krzysztof Kieslowski, and Andrei Tarkovsky..
MIZOGUCHI—who always pointed out he was heavily influenced by John Ford and William Wyler.
GODARD AND THE NEW WAVE—do I even need to mention their gods, like Hawks, Welles, Ford, Hitchcock, or Wilder?
Welles is an American.
By the way, I’ve noticed two types of snobs popping up in the film world lately:
1. The video store regulars who refused to watch anything that wasn't American.
2. And more recently, these anti-American clowns who try to tear down American cinema. They don't just go after today's films, which, let's be honest, are mostly mediocre; they attack the entire history of filmmaking. They think it's "cool" to praise Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, or Godard while acting like Ford, Huston, or Kazan are just tacky.
Fuck you, I like them all.
