NUMBER 100
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Sanjuro
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Writers: Akira Kurosawa, Ryuzo Kikushima
Featuring: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Tatsuya Nakadai
Summary: A group of idealistic young men, determined to clean up the corruption in their town, are aided by a scruffy, cynical samurai who does not at all fit their concept of a noble warrior. This is the sequel to Yojimbo. Yojimbo was remade by Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood. However, Sanjuro and A Few Dollars More do not follow the same story.
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NUMBER 99
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High Noon
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Writer: Carl Foreman
Featuring: Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges
Summary: On the day he gets married and hangs up his badge, lawman Will Kane is told that a man he sent to prison years before, Frank Miller, is returning on the noon train to exact his revenge. Having initially decided to leave with his new spouse, Will decides he must go back and face Miller. However, when he seeks the help of the townspeople he has protected for so long, they turn their backs on him. It seems Kane may have to face Miller alone, as well as the rest of Miller’s gang, who are waiting for him at the station.
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NUMBER 98
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The Third Man
Director: Carol Reed
Writer: Graham Greene
Featuring: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles
Summary: An out of work American pulp fiction novelist, Holly Martins, arrives in a post war Vienna divided into sectors by the victorious allies, and where a shortage of supplies has lead to a flourishing black market. He arrives at the invitation of an ex-school friend, Harry Lime, who has offered him a job, only to discover that Lime has recently died in a peculiar traffic accident. From talking to Lime’s friends and associates Martins soon notices that some of the stories are inconsistent, and determines to discover what really happened to Harry Lime.
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NUMBER 97
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The Hill
Director: Sidney Lumet
Writer: Ray Rigby
Featuring: Sean Connery, Ossie Davis
Summary: At a British military prison in North Africa during World War II, convicted British soldiers face harsh conditions and an even harsher staff. For Trooper Joe Roberts – reduced in rank from Sergeant Major and imprisoned for striking an officer – the going is particularly difficult. Sharing a cell with four other men, they are under the command of Staff Sergeant Williams, a particularly cruel task master who takes pleasure in imposing harsh punishment. Can the prisoners maintain their human dignity, or will they be broken?
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NUMBER 96
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Dogville
Director: Lars von Trier
Writer: Lars von Trier
Featuring: Nicole Kidman, James Caan, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Paul Bettany, Patricia Clarkson, Jeremy Davies, Ben Gazzara, Philip Baker Hall
Summary: The beautiful fugitive, Grace, arrives in the isolated township of Dogville on the run from a team of gangsters in the early 1930s. With some encouragement from Tom, the self-appointed town spokesman, the little community agrees to hide her and in return, Grace agrees to work for them. However, when a search sets in, the people of Dogville demand a better deal in exchange for the risk of harboring poor Grace and she learns the hard way that in this town, goodness is relative. But Grace has a secret and it is a dangerous one. Dogville may regret it ever began to bare its teeth.
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NUMBER 95
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Manderlay
Director: Lars von Trier
Writer: Lars von Trier
Featuring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Willem Dafoe, Isaach De Bankolé, Danny Glover, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Jeremy Davies
Summary: In 1933, after leaving Dogville, Grace Margaret Mulligan heads to the southern part of the United States. She happens upon a property called Manderlay and discovers an African slave about to be whipped. Slavery had been abolished seventy years ago, and Grace is revolted at the attitude of the owners of Manderlay, keeping slaves in their cotton fields and following a rulebook called “Mam’s Law.” Grace decides to remain in Manderlay and impart notions of democracy to the slaves and to the white family. When harvest time comes, however, Grace discovers the truth about Manderlay and the reality of human nature.
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NUMBER 94
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Dodes’ka-den
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Writers: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni
Featuring: Yoshitaka Zushi, Kin Sugai, Tatsuo Matsumura
Summary: Episodes from the lives of a group of Tokyo slum-dwellers: Rokkuchan, a retarded boy who brings meaning and routine to his life by driving an imaginary streetcar; children who support their parents by scrounging or by tedious and ill-paying endeavours; schemers who plot or dream of escaping the shackles of poverty.
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NUMBER 93
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Do the Right Thing
Director: Spike Lee
Writer: Spike Lee
Featuring: Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, John Turturro, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, Giancarlo Esposito, Martin Lawrence, Rosie Perez
Summary: Director Spike Lee dives head-first into a maelstrom of racial and social ills, using as his springboard the hottest day of the year on one block in Brooklyn, NY. Three businesses dominate the block: a storefront radio station, where a smooth-talkin’ deejay spins the platters that matter; a convenience store owned by a Korean couple; and Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, the only white-operated business in the neighborhood. Sal serves up slices with his two sons, genial Vito and angry, racist Pino. Sal has one black employee, Mookie, who wants to “get paid” but lacks ambition. His sister Jade, who has a greater sense of purpose and a “real” job, wants Mookie to start dealing with his responsibilities, most notably his son with girlfriend Tina. Two of Mookie’s best friends are Radio Raheem, a monolith of a man who rarely speaks, preferring to blast Public Enemy’s rap song “Fight The Power” on his massive boom box; and Buggin’ Out, nicknamed for his coke-bottle glasses and habit of losing his cool. When Buggin’ Out notes that Sal’s “Wall of Fame,” a photo gallery of famous Italian-Americans, includes no people of color, he eventually demands a neighborhood boycott, on a day when tensions are already running high.
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NUMBER 92
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The End of Violence
Director: Wim Wenders
Writers: Wim Wenders, Nicholas Klein
Featuring: Bill Pullman, Andie MacDowell, Gabriel Byrne, Sam Fuller, Marshall Bell, Frederic Forrest, Loren Dean, Udo Kier
Summary: Mike Max is a Hollywood producer who became powerful and rich thanks to brutal and bloody action films. His ignored wife Paige is close to leaving him. Suddenly Mike is kidnapped by two bandits, but escapes and hides out with his Mexican gardener’s family for a while. At the same time, surveillance expert Ray Bering is looking for what happens in the city, but it is not clear what he wants. The police investigation for Max’s disappearance is led by detective Doc Block, who falls in love with actress Cat who is playing an ongoing role in one of Max’s productions.
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NUMBER 91
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Edward Scissorhands
Director: Tim Burton
Writers: Tim Burton, Caroline Thompson
Featuring: Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Alan Arkin, Vincent Price, Anthony Michael Hall, Kathy Baker
Summary: In a mansion atop a hill just outside the suburbs there lives an inventor’s greatest creation—Edward, a near-complete person. The creator died before he could finish Edward’s hands; instead, Edward is left with scissors for hands. Edward had always lived alone, until a kind lady called Peg discovers Edward and welcomes him into her home. At first, Edward is treated as a celebrity in the sleepy, gossipy suburban community, but a monster lurks beneath the surface.
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NUMBER 90
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Strictly Ballroom
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Writer: Baz Luhrmann
Featuring: Paul Mercurio, Tara Morice, Bill Hunter, Barry Otto
Summary: Scott Hastings is a champion caliber ballroom dancer, but much to the chagrin of the Australian ballroom dance community, Scott believes in dancing his own steps. Fran is a novice dancer and a bit of an ugly duckling who has the audacity to ask to be Scott’s partner after his unorthodox style causes his regular partner to dance out of his life. Together, these two misfits try to win the Australian Pan Pacific Championships and show the Ballroom Confederation that they are wrong when they say, “There are no new steps!”
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NUMBER 89
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The Way of the Gun
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Writer: Christopher McQuarrie
Featuring: Benicio Del Toro, Ryan Phillippe, James Caan, Juliette Lewis, Taye Diggs, Nicky Katt
Summary: From the writer of The Usual Suspects. Two vagabond criminals kidnap a girl being paid one million dollars to be a surrogate mother for a powerful businessman. But the ransom will be more than they bargained for. Gunmen on both sides follow a code of honor that promises a day of reckoning.
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NUMBER 88
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Match Point
Director: Woody Allen
Writer: Woody Allen
Featuring: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Emily Mortimer, Scarlett Johansson, Brian Cox
Summary: Former tennis pro Chris Wilton takes a job as a tennis instructor and hits it off immediately with one of his students, wealthy young Tom Hewitt. Tom introduces Chris to his family and Chris falls quickly into a romance with Tom’s sister Chloe. But despite the growing certainty that Chris and Chloe will marry, and the enormous professional and financial advantages that come Chris’s way through his relationship with the delighted Hewitt family, Chris becomes increasingly intrigued and eventually romantically involved with Tom’s fiancée, Nola Rice, a struggling American actress. Their passionate trysts leave Chris in danger of losing the wealth and position he has now come to enjoy. The only solution to the dilemma seems unthinkable.
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NUMBER 87
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How to Get Ahead in Advertising
Director: Bruce Robinson
Writer: Bruce Robinson
Featuring: Richard E. Grant, Rachel Ward
Summary: Dennis Dimbleby Bagley is a brilliant young advertising executive who can’t come up with a slogan to sell a revolutionary new pimple cream. His obsessive worrying affects not only his relationship with his wife, his friends and his boss, but also his own body—graphically demonstrated when he grows a large stress-related boil on his shoulder. But when the boil grows eyes and a mouth and starts talking, Bagley really begins to think he’s lost his mind. Or has he gained another?
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NUMBER 86
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The Decalogue
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Writer: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Summary: This is a series of ten shorts created for Polish Television, with plots loosely based upon the Ten Commandments. They deal with the emotional turmoil suffered by humanity, when instinctual acts and societal morality conflict.
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NUMBER 85
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Bamboozled
Director: Spike Lee
Writer: Spike Lee
Featuring: Damon Wayans, Jada Pinkett Smith, Savion Glover, Michael Rappaport, Mos Def
Summary: Dark, biting satire of the television industry, focusing on an Ivy-League educated black writer at a major network. Frustrated that his ideas for a “Cosby Show”-esque take on the black family has been rejected by network brass, he devises an outlandish scheme: reviving the minstrel show. The hook: instead of white actors in black face, the show stars black actors in even blacker face. The show becomes an instant smash, but with the success also comes repercussions for all involved.
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NUMBER 84
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Big Night
Directors: Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci
Writers: Stanley Tucci, Joseph Tropiano
Featuring: Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, Marc Anthony, Minnie Driver, Isabella Rossellini, Liev Schreiber, Ian Holm, Allison Janney, Campbell Scott
Summary: Primo and Secondo are two brothers who have emigrated from Italy to open an Italian restaurant in America. Primo is the irascible and gifted chef, brilliant in his culinary genius, but determined not to squander his talent on making the routine dishes that customers expect. Secondo is the smooth front-man, trying to keep the restaurant financially afloat, despite few patrons other than a poor artist who pays with his paintings. The owner of the nearby Pascal’s restaurant, enormously successful (despite its mediocre fare), offers a solution—he will call his friend, a big-time jazz musician, to play a special benefit at their restaurant. Primo begins to prepare his masterpiece, a feast of a lifetime, for the brothers’ big night.
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NUMBER 83
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Heist
Director: David Mamet
Writer: David Mamet
Featuring: Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pidgeon
Summary: David Mamet takes this story of thieves along many twists and turns. Gene Hackman plays the brilliant leader of a gang (Delroy Lindo, Ricky Jay and Rebecca Pigeon as Hackman’s younger wife), which pulls off complex heists for a despicable fence (Danny DeVito). After stiffing the gang on a jewelry robbery, DeVito forces the gang to go after a Swiss gold shipment and to use his nephew (Sam Rockwell) in the crime. No one trusts anyone and every step is shaded with the unexpected.
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NUMBER 82
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Redbelt
Director: David Mamet
Writer: David Mamet
Featuring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Emily Mortimer, Tim Allen, Rebecca Pidgeon, Joe Mantegna, David Paymer, Ed O’Neill
Summary: Is there room for principle in Los Angeles? Mike Terry teaches jujitsu and barely makes ends meet. His Brazilian wife, whose family promotes fights, wants to see Mike in the ring making money, but to him competition is degrading. A woman sideswipes Mike’s car and then, after an odd sequence of events, shoots out the studio’s window. Later that evening, Mike rescues an action movie star in a fistfight at a bar. In return, the actor befriends Mike, gives him a gift, offers him work on his newest film, and introduces Mike’s wife to his own—the women initiate business dealings. Then, things go sour all at once, Mike’s debts mount, and going into the ring may be his only option.
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NUMBER 81
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The Wrestler
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Writer: Robert D. Siegel
Featuring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood
Summary: Twenty years ago, Randy “The Ram” Robinson was a successful wrestler. Now he is a decadent, broken down oldtimer, living alone in a trailer, working part time in a supermarket and wrestling on the weekends. After a match, Randy has a heart attack in the dressing room resulting in by-pass surgery. His doctor forbids him from steroids and wrestling. Randy decides to retire and proposes that his favorite stripper, “Cassidy,” move in with him. She suggests that he approach his daughter Stephanie to resolve their differences. Randy gets a full-time job in the supermarket and attempts to collect the fragments of the life he missed, but life outside the arena isn’t predetermined.
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NUMBER 80
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Red Beard
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Writers: Masato Ide, Hideo Oguni
Featuring: Toshiro Mifune, Yuzo Kayama
Summary: The tale of young Dr. Yasumoto, a recent medical graduate assigned to a rural clinic for his post-graduate medical training. Yasumoto is condescending and arrogant—he is livid that he, who aspires to join the team of physicians caring for the Japanese Shogunate, should have to train in Dr. Niide’s spartan clinic serving the impoverished local population. He finds Dr. Niide, known as “Red Beard,” a demanding taskmaster with a brusque manner and a too-intense devotion to his patients. Niide requires nothing less than a monastic lifestyle of his interns. However, gradually Yasumoto is changed by his exposure to Red Beard. He learns the true meaning of being a doctor, seeing patients as real people who are suffering and as individuals whose lives he can improve and heal with his care. A parable of the value of tradition in a modern world.
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NUMBER 79
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Rear Window
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writer: John Michael Hayes, from a story by Cornell Woolrich
Featuring: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr
Summary: Photagrapher L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries is confined to his small apartment with a broken leg. To pass the time,he watches the goings-on of his motley assortment of neighbors—a frustrated yet fun-loving composer, a middle-aged couple with a small dog, a dancer who seems to enjoy practicing her routines while scantily clad, a pair of reclusive newlyweds, a lonely woman who seems to live in a fantasy world, and a salesman and his invalid wife. One day the invalid wife inexplicably disappears, and the salesman starts doing things that lead Jeff to suspect that he may have murdered her. Unfortunately, he has no proof, cannot go anywhere, and no one seems to believe him, with the exception of his adventure-loving girlfriend.
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NUMBER 78
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Gosford Park
Director: Robert Altman
Writers: Robert Altman, Bob Balaban, Julian Fellowes
Featuring: Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Ryan Phillippe, Jeremy Northam, Kristin Scott Thomas, Stephen Fry, Kelly Macdonald, Emily Watson, Derek Jacobi
Summary: Set in the 1930’s the story takes place in an old fashioned English country house where a family has invited many of their friends up for a weekend shooting party. The story centers around the McCordle family, particularly the man of the house, William McCordle. Getting on in years William has become benefactor to many of his relatives and friends. As the weekend goes on and secrets are revealed, it seems everyone, above stairs and below, wants a piece of William and his money, but how far will they go to get it?
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NUMBER 77
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Sweet and Lowdown
Director: Woody Allen
Writer: Woody Allen
Featuring: Sean Penn, Uma Thurman, Gretchen Mol, Samantha Morton, Anthony LaPaglia, Woody Allen
Summary: A comedic biopic focused on the life of fictional jazz guitarist Emmett Ray. Ray was an irresponsible, free-spending, arrogant, obnoxious, alcohol-abusing, miserable human being, who was also arguably the best guitarist in the world, except for this gypsy in France. We follow Ray’s life: bouts of getting drunk, his bizzare hobbies of shooting rats and watching passing trains, his dreams of fame and fortune, his strange obsession with the better-known guitarist Django Reinhardt, and of course, playing his beautiful music.
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NUMBER 76
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The Mission
Director: Roland Joffé
Writer: Robert Bolt
Featuring: Robert DeNiro, Jeremy Irons, Aidan Quinn, Liam Neeson, Daniel Berrigan
Summary: Father Gabriel ascends the mountains of Brazil to bring christianity to the natives. Mendoza, a slaver, kills his brother in a fit of rage, and only Fr. Gabriel’s guidance prevents his suicide. Gabriel brings Mendoza to work at his mission with the natives, and Mendoza finds peace and asks to become a priest. The church, under pressure, cedes the land to the Portuguese which will allow slavers in again. How far will the priests go to protect the people of their mission? A devastating exposition of the tension between peace and justice in a capitalist world that favors neither.
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