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

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1902: John McCabe (Warren Beatty) turns up in a northwest mining town called Presbyterian Church, starts gambling and sets up a successful brothel with his girlfriend Constance Miller (Julie Christie), an opium-addicted madam.

They refuse an offer from the mine operators to buy them out, but the mine bosses refuse to take no for an answer.

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As the title suggests, Walkabout is a journey not only in distance, but also in the transition for one Australian aborigine, from adolescence to manhood. While on a family picnic a beautiful teenager and her brother suddenly find themselves very much alone after the tragic death of their father.

As they wander through the outback they meet the young aborigine. The film unfolds and tells the tale of survival, resourcefulness and sexual awareness, as the travellers become lost in the Australian wilderness.

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With her Oscar-winning turn in 'Klute', Jane Fonda reinvented herself as a new kind of movie star.

Bringing nervy audacity and counterculture style to the role of Bree Daniels - a call girl and aspiring actor who becomes the focal point of a missing-person investigation when detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) turns up at her door - Fonda made the film her own, putting an independent woman and escort on-screen with a frankness that had not yet been attempted in Hollywood. Suffused with paranoia by the conspiracy-thriller specialist Alan J. Pakula, and lensed by master cinematographer Gordon Willis, 'Klute' is a character study thick with dread, capturing the mood of early-1970's New York and the predicament of a woman trying to find her own way on the fringes of society.

Ashby's film follows the burgeoning relationship between the gloomy, 20-year-old, suicide-staging Harold (Bud Cort), suffocated by his wealthy homestead, and the sprightly octogenarian Maude (Ruth Gordon), whose bohemian wiles and open-arms approach to living enable Harold's first gentle steps towards embracing existence.

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Miklos Jancso is one of cinema's greatest visionaries and his Red Psalm is a formidable work of art from a master filmmaker at the peak of his powers. Depicting a series of peasant uprisings in Hungary in the late 19th century, the film celebrates the cause of revolutionary struggle.

Inspired by folklore and song, Jancso's camera travels amongst groups of moving figures in an elaborate cinematic ballet and his singular use of film form achieves a resonance and beauty that is extraordinary. Radical in execution and poetic in its achievement, Red Psalm reaches beyond political dogma to expose a more universal, and deeper, truth that remains relevant today.

Jack Carter (Michael Caine) has rarely looked cooler as the well dressed heavy, attempting to uncover the facts behind the death of his brother. The film tracks Caine as he becomes embroiled in the sinister underworld of crime and pornography.

New York City detectives "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) hope to break a narcotics smuggling ring and ultimately uncover 'The French Connection'. But when one of the criminals tries to kill Doyle, he begins a deadly pursuit that takes him far outside the city limits.

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Hotter than Bond. Cooler than Bullitt, movie posters proclaimed. John Shaft was indeed a shut-your-mouth detective to reckon with, a fact emphasized from the film's start by Isaac Hayes Academy Award-winning Best Original Song and Oscar-nominated score.

Richard Roundtree plays the smart, tough confident lead, a private investigator whose hunt for a kidnapped woman puts him in the middle of feuding syndicates. Gordon Parks directs from a screenplay that Ernest Tidyman co-scripted from his own novel. John Shaft is an icon of change from an era of change. Today, Shaft still tells it like it is.

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Harry Callahan is a tough, streetwise San Francisco cop whom they call Dirty Harry. In this action classic, you'll see why - and also why Clint Eastwood's reputation as a premier film star and movie maker is secure.

A rooftop sniper (Andy Robinson) calling himself Scorpio has killed twice and holds the city ransom with the threat of killing again. Harry will nail him... one way or the other - no matter what the 'system' prescribes. Filming on location, director Don Siegel made the City by the Bay a vital part of 'Dirty Harry', a practice continued in its four sequels. The original remains one of the most gripping police thrillers ever made.

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Highly controversial on its release for its frank and non-judgmental portrayal of taboo subjects, Le Souffle de Couer is a touchingly honest coming-of-age comedy following 14 year old Laurent (Benort Ferreux) as he experiences the turbulent trials of adolescence and tries his best to lose his

virginity. Malle's satire of post-war French bourgeois family life is acknowledged by many as the director's most enjoyable film and features a mesmerising performance from Italian actress Lea Massari as Laurent's frustrated mother.

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Having learned the ways of the world being brought up in a brothel, street hustler Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) has earned his name through his legendary sexual prowess, cementing his reputation night after night to an audience of hopheads and hipsters hungry for spectacle.

One night on a routine cover-up job with two crooked cops, Sweetback watches a young black man get beaten within an inch of his life and decides to fight back. His action set in motion a journey through the dark heart of 1970s urban America still writhing in the flames of the race riots, encountering motorcycle gangs, back power militants, fascist public officials and a torrent of insatiable women every step of the way.

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Released in 1971 to critical acclaim and public controversy, Peter Bogdanovich's 'The Last Picture Show' garnered eight Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and was hailed by many as the most important work by a young American director since Citizen Kane.

A surprisingly frank, bittersweet drama of social and sexual mores in small-town Texas, the film features a talented cast led by Jeff Bridges, Cybill Sheperd and Timothy Bottoms.

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David Summer (Dustin Hoffman) is a quiet American mathematician who has moved with his wife Amy (Susan George) back to a remote Cornish farmhouse near the village where she grew up.

The couple have relocated to rural England in an attempt to flee the violence of America but their placid life is brutally interrupted when the savagery and violence they sought to escape engulfs them and threatens to destroy their lives.

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The Driver spins out of Los Angeles with The Mechanic after winning a late night drag race. The two young men head south east on the freeway, stopping only for food, gas or a delicate adjustment on their primer grey '55 Chevrolet. Outside of Flagstaff, they take time out for lunch at a diner.

When they return to their car, there is a new passenger in the back - a girl with a tear stained face. No questions are asked: No explanation is offered. They move off. When they hit Santa Fe, they cruise up and down the streets, looking for an unsuspecting country boy to challenge their beaten up Sedan. They find him sooner than expected in a '32 Ford Roadster, follow him to the outskirts of town, race him and beat him. That night the girl shares a hotel room with The Mechanic, while The Driver prowls the bars.

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Three days into his Miami honeymoon, New York Jewish Lenny (Charles Grodin) meets tall, blonde Kelly (Cybill Shepherd). This confirms him in his opinion that he has made a serious mistake and he decides he wants Kelly instead.

Her rich father is less than keen and lets everyone - including Lenny - know that he hates everything about him and the way he is going on.