frankie's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List

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Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) are newlyweds, but Rosemary has no idea that her wedded bliss is about to come to a horrific end. Her husband's ambition as a struggling actor is about to plunge her into an abyss of terror like she has never known.

In exchange for a taste of fame, Guy makes a deal with the devil that puts his wife and soul in jeopardy. When Rosemary becomes pregnant, her husband becomes odd, her neighbours (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon) border on obsessive, and her normal life turns into a surreal nightmare. Slowly, she begins to realise that a seed of evil has been planted... and she is its host.

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This incredible film takes a look at British boarding school and three unruly seniors who fail to conform. If.... is an amazing blend of fact and fantasy which features a young Malcolm McDowell in his first film.

The students at College House are kept in line by tradition, strict discipline and prefects. Director Lindsay Anderson is careful to document the repressive conditions and the painfulness of rebellion as he builds to his surreal and violent ending when the students have their day.

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"Memories of Underdevelopment" follows Sergio (Sergio Corrieri), through his life following the departure of his wife, parents and friends in the wake of the Bay of Pigs incident.

Alone in a brave new world, Sergio observes the constant threat of foreign invasion while chasing young women all over Havana before finally meeting Elena (Daisy Granados), a young virgin girl he seeks to mould into the image of his ex-wife, but at what cost to himself? Even though director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea was a staunch and devoted supporter of the revolution, 'Memories of Underdevelopment' makes a raw and uncompromising analysis of the newly formed system of government. Through a moving blend of narrative fiction, still photography and rare documentary footage, Alea catalogues the intricacies of the early days of the Castro regime; producing a stirring and enigmatic work that feeds from the culture of the very subject it is studying; Cuba.

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Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) is a washed up Broadway producer forced to romance old ladies to finance his plays.

When timid accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) is brought in to do his books, he inadvertently reveals to Bialystock that under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than a hit. Bialystock cajoles Bloom into helping him achieve this end and together they come up with what they consider to be a sure-fire disaster waiting to happen - a musical version of Adolf and Eva's love story entitled 'Springtime for Hitler'. But is it possible that they might actually have the most unlikely hit of all time on their hands?

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Shot in 1967, 'David Holzman's Diary' is a milestone in contemporary film history. Brilliantly conceived and executed, it manages to simultaneously be very much of its time and very many years ahead of its time.

The film tells the story of David Holzman, a young man infatuated with film and filmmaking. Newly unemployed and beset with doubts and worries, Holzman thinks that filming his everyday existence will 'bring life into focus'. Staged to seem like a documentary of a real person's life, Holzman's filming of his life starts to take over his life. Arguably the first 'mockumentary', it has been little seen but hugely influential on filmmakers over the years. The film is also enormously prescient about our current times, when seemingly everyone records everything to do with their lives for the camera.

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On a remote island far removed from a raging civil war, Jan (Max von Sydow) and Eva (Liv Ullmann) retreat to their apolitical fortress: a small vegetable farm. But their serene existence is shattered when soldiers violently invade their home.

Now caught in the crosshairs of a brutal and inhuman conflict, Jan and Eva become survivors with only one concern - to endure.

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"2001: A Space Odyssey" is a countdown to tomorrow, a road map to human destiny, a quest for the infinite. It is a dazzling, Academy Award-winning visual achievement, a compelling drama of man vs. machine, a stunning meld of music and motion.

It may be the masterwork of director Stanley Kubrick (who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke) and it will likely excite, inspire and enthrall for generations. To begin his voyage into the future, Kubrick visits our prehistoric ape-ancestry past, then leaps millennia (via one of the most mind-blowing jump cuts ever conceived) into colonized space, and ultimately whisks astronaut Bowman (Keir Dullea) into uncharted realms of space, perhaps even into immortality.

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Haunted by demons past and present, artist Johan Borg (Max Von Sydow) fights a losing battle to retain his sanity and maintain his artistic prowess. His wife Alma (Liv Ullmann), desperate to help him, finds herself starting to share his hallucinations.

But as Johan's mind continues to unravel, Alma is forced to choose between her love... and her life.

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Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff) is a retiring horror-star bidding farewell to the limelight. Bobby Thompson (Tim O'Kelly) is an unassuming but disturbed Vietnam veteran who suddenly embarks on a murderous shooting rampage.

As Byron makes one final public appearance, their worlds collide as Bobby brings carnage to a suburban Los Angeles drive-in cinema.

Over thirty years ago in the quiet Pennsylvania countryside, the dead began to walk. Gripped by an insatiable hunger for human flesh, the ghouls' ghastly quest inadvertently brought together six strangers whose inability to unite would ultimately lead to their tragic downfall.

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The film that propelled Rohmer to international acclaim remains one of the finest achievements of his career.

The fourth in the 'Moral Tales' series, it tells the story of a chaste and conservative thirty-something (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who sees a woman that he believes will be his perfect match whilst attending church. But when he unwittingly spends the night at the apartment of the worldly and spirited divorcee Maud (Francoise Fabian), he finds the moral certainties of his life are suddenly thrown into question.

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The film follows the fate of three different women with the same name of Lucia during key moments in Cuban History.

The Cuban War of Independance, the 1930's and lastly the 1960'slt tells the stories of three Lucias, one in 1895, when the Cubans fought for independence from the Spaniards (a situation that resolved with U.S. intervention and purchase of Cuba from Spain); in 1933, when Cuban popular resistance against the dictator Geraldo Machado resulted in failure; and 196-, in the aftermath of the victory of the revolution led by Fidel Castro. They are women from three different classes: The first is upper class, the second is from the middle class, the third working class. They have three different ranges of potential action, and responses.
Each story is hung on a love drama. In the first, the woman has an affair with a Spanish soldier, in which she must betray her own family. In the second, a young woman abandons her family and class to go underground with her soon-to-be-slain husband; in the third, a young wife learns how to read and write and work in collective agriculture, in spite of a traditionally macho husband who tries to keep her in the house.
The battles sequences have been compared to the great ferocity of Orson Welles "Chimes at Midnight". The use of extreme close ups and long shots anticipates the works of Sergio Leone.

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An unambitious painter named Gu (Shihjun) lives with his mother in the vicinity of an abandoned mansion rumoured to be haunted.

In actuality, the mansion has become a hiding place for the warrior Yang (Hsu Feng) and her own mother, both taking refuge following the assassination of their loyal minister father by the wicked eunuch Wei of East Chamber. After the eunuch sends an army to pursue the escapees, the group fortify the mansion with traps and false intimations of the terrifying ghosts within. But even after, things take yet more unsettling turns...

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One of the most popular screen Western ever made, this Academy Award-winning classic blends adventur, romance and comedy to tell the true story of the West's most likeable outlaws.

No-one is quicker then Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) when it comes to get rich quick schemes, and his sidekick Sundance (Robert Redford) is a wizard with a gun. When these two bungling bank and train robbers tire of running from the law, they set out for Bolivia with Sundance's girlfriend (Katherine Ross). Though they can barely speak enough Spanish to communicate: "This is a stick-up!", that's only a minor detail to the two nicest "bad-guys" who ever rode the West.

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Dustin Hoffman gives an unforgettable performance as Ratso Rizzo, a scrounging, sleazy small-time con man with big dreams. Jon Voight is magnificent as Joe Buck, the good-looking, naively charming Texan 'cowboy' who is convinced that he is the salvation of many lonely, love starved New York Women.

These two characters are drawn together in this powerful and compassionate film.