As an aspiring film buff, and new cinema major at the University of Iowa, I have a plethera of movies that I have been told that I need to watch.
Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.!
My question is whether you really want a rehash of everyones 100 greatest films (ones that set the bar for lasting art in the pantheon of great films), or if you want to know what films shoud/would teach you what works and what doesn't (and, here you have to define "works" as
money or
art.)
I would have any film class I was teaching watch
Heaven's Gate (all the way through with no potty or cig stops), and then tell me in detail what they think would fix it at the box office.
I would have you watch
King Kong and then outline or storyboard the script for the remake. However, you only get graded once Sir Peter releases his, and we compare yours with the "right way."
I would have you look at the IMDB top 250 list and tell me which films will still be on it by the end of the term and grade you according to your accuracy.
I would have you look at the top three box office winners for each of the past 5 decades and tell me what will be in the next decade's, and, more importantly, whether your soul could stand being involved with making it.
You can learn a lot from watching
Three Kings and pinpointing what gave it such good
buzz and then what made it fall off the IMDB top 250 within two years. But the two paragraph essay you'd have to write, for me, would be whether you would rather have the
buzz and the box office that went with it, or if you'd rather be on the IMDB top 250 forever? Seriously now, food or fame, pick. Quick, pick.
Discuss, after watching the top 10 films on the list, whether being on IMDB's top 250 means squat.
You want to know the best films you've never seen? Watch every Kurosawa, and explain why either
Red Beard or
Ikura are the greatest films he isn't known for. Watch Renior. Just, watch any Renior. Then watch all Ozu, Lean, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Wilder, Wells, Bergman, Altman, Almodóvar and all Kaufman scripted films and decide where you would like to fit in. (note: isn't it a blessing that one person on this list is a writer rather than a director?)
Then figure out how you are going to make a living. Because each of these indivduals did just that within a very special context, none of which can be recreated by watching their films.
Watch Kasi Lemmon's totally brilliant
Eve's Bayou and figure out if you have anything like that in you, and then decide if you could then stand to be eased out of the industry because you are black and female. Can you live with being good, really really good, but not what's selling now, and survive?
So, again, which are you asking for? Which films should you watch because they define art (but won't feed you) or what, if you imitate it, will make you Spielberg with a
Schindler's List to live with? Which I would make a 1,000
Batteries Not Included to be associated with.
So, what do you want to learn by watching old-dead-film? What works? What's good? What sells? What you would eat your own living heart to create? Each is likely to be a slightly different list.