griggs's - Favourite 100 Films List

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George Bailey (James Stewart) has spent his entire life in the small town of Bedford Falls.

Despite his yearning to see the world, George has always sacrificed his personal ambitions for the sake of his family and the local community, settling down to marry his childhood sweetheart, Mary (Donna Reed), and raise a family. However, when a huge amount of money goes missing from the savings and loans company he panics and finds himself preparing to commit suicide. However, he is shown the error of this idea by Clarence (Henry Travers), an angel who has been sent to Earth in order to earn his wings. To this end, Clarence shows George just how badly Bedford Falls and its residents would have turned out had he never been born.

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Opening with a shot of an x-ray, showing the main character's stomach, 'Ikiru' tells the tale of a dedicated, downtrodden civil servant who, diagnosed with a fatal cancer, learns to change his dull, unfulfilled existence, and suddenly discovers a zest for life.

Plunging first into self-pity, then a bout of hedonistic pleasure-seeking on the frenetic streets of post-war Tokyo, Watanable (Takashi Shimura) - the film's hero - finally finds satisfaction through building a children's playground.

Silent movies are giving way to talking pictures - and a hoofer-turned-matinee idol (Gene Kelly) is caught in that bumpy transition, as are his buddy (Donald O'Connor), prospective ladylove (Debbie Reynolds) and shrewish costar (Jean Hagen).

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In this outstanding psychological and political thriller, we get a fascinating insight into the lengths and depths that the East European government went to in order to keep tabs on the lives of its population in 80's.

When cold and brutal official Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is given the task of spying on acclaimed playwright Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his actress girlfriend, he relishes the task, knowing that if he uncovers subversive behaviour he will gain favor with his boss. But the longer he listens in on the couple, their friendships, passions and ideas, the more he realises that his own life and the harsh political regime are lacking in color and joy in many respects. Slowly he begins to doubt morality of is job and politics. As the lines between orders and compassion become blurred, Wiesler becomes more involved with his subject, walking a dangerous path between his duty and his new found reality.

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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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When kooky, spooky college profs Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) lose their university jobs, they decide to go freelance, de-haunting New York City with a new ghost removal service.

As soon as they open their doors, their first order of business becomes saving beautiful cellist Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) and nerdy Louis Tully (Rick Moranis), who've inadvertently opened the gates of hell...right in their own apartment building!

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Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is not a spy. And he's certainly no murderer. Nevertheless, Thornhill's a wanted man: enemy agents want him dead, the police want him arrested, and a cool, mysterious blonde (Eva Marie Saint) just plain wants him.

A victim of mistaken identity, Thornhill can't afford to make any mistakes of his own - so he embarks on a death-defying run for his life. Relentlessly pursued by plane, train and automobile, Thornhill's cross-country chase finally ends atop Mt. Rushmore where, if he doesn't watch his step, he could be in for a terrible fall.

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"Raging Bull" is arguably the finest work from the Scorsese and De Niro partnership. De Niro gives and amazing portrayal of a man whose animal side lurks just beneath the surface, ever ready to erupt.

Vivid and unremitting in its uncompromising brutality and honesty, the fight sequences are famed for their realism. Violent throughout, this film is a testament to Scorsese's and De Niro's skills, creating a thoroughly absorbing film about such an unlikable character. Renowned for throwing himself into the roles of his character, De Niro went on a diet to gain fifty pounds during production for the role of the faded star.

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It's 1987 and Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is living the American dream. He has a great job, he's handsome, he's athletic and has the attention of many beautiful women. However, Patrick has a dark secret that he keeps hidden from those around him; Patrick is a psychopath.

Dissatisfied with this charmed life, Patrick spends his evenings prowling the streets looking for victims; whether they are his business associates or strangers he meets in passing, he makes no distinction. Cultivating his serial killer persona as much as his yuppie lifestyle, the two sides of Patrick's life soon begin to merge and he begins to wonder where one side of his life ends and the other begins.

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A woodcutter experiences a horrific series of events - an ambush, rape and murder.

In the telling of the tale however, each of the four participants give different views of what actually happened - is any of them telling the truth? Kurosawa's masterful film plays on the subjective nature of truth while unfurling a riveting tale of violence and greed.

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Yasujiro Ozu's elegiac final film, 'An Autumn Afternoon', charts the inevitable eclipse of older generations by irreverent youth. Revisiting the story of his earlier masterpiece Late Spring (1949), Ozu once again casts Chishu Ryu in the role of Hirayama, the concerned father to unmarried Michiko.

Harangued on all sides to marry off Michiko, Hirayama reluctantly prepares to bid his old life farewell. A cast of tragi-comic characters weaves seamlessly through this gently satirical portrayal of life's inevitable, endless cycle.

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Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) leads a group of Anglican nuns to a remote Himalayan range of mountains, there to set up a mission in an abandoned harem.

This is her first position of authority and she finds both her physical and her spiritual limits being taxed as she has to maintain order and discipline in a claustrophobically hostile environment. Slowly but surely, however, the privations and hardship they must endure, the extremes of climate and the peculiar amorality of the local natives all combine to slowly corrupt the women's faith, pushing them further into jealousy, anger and madness...

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Mark (Carl Boehm), a focus puller at the local film studio, supplements his wages by taking glamour photographs in a seedy studio above a newsagent.

By night he is a sadistic killer, stalking his victims with his camera forever in his hand trying to capture the look of genuine, unadulterated fear - an obsession that stems from his disturbing and terrifying childhood at the hands of his scientist father. Mark slowly becomes enamoured with Helen (Anna Massey), who lives with her blind mother (Maxine Audley) in the flat downstairs, but how long before he turns the deadly gaze of his camera towards her?

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A National Emergency grips the US as the zombie population grows at an alarming rate. Two S.W.A.T. officers, a helicopter pilot and his girlfriend escape the city and take refuge in an abandoned shopping mall after securing it following a series of flesh-shredding confrontations with the undead.

Their survival is threatened when a band of looters leave a door open allowing the zombies access to the mall once more and a final stand-off for survival must play out.

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Made in 1954, 'Godzilla' was Japan's first foray into big budget sci fi - costing ten times the budget of the average Japanese feature and twice as much as Seven Samurai - released the same year.

The film created a monster that would enter the lexicon of popular culture, spawn fifty years of sequels and inspire a new genre: the kaiju eiga or Japanese monster movie. Directed by Ishiro Honda, a friend and collaborator of Akira Kurosawa, and starring Takashi Shimura as the revered paleontologist who uncovers the horrible secret at the heart of the monster (Godzilla is a long dormant Jurassic beast awoken by the atom bomb), the original Godzilla is a fierce indictment of the atomic age. Sold to an American distributor, the film was cut, dubbed into English, re-titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters! and new scenes were added starring Raymond Burr as an American reporter observing the monsters rampage from the sidelines. All trace of the anti-nuclear message was excised in the American version. Now regarded as one of the great classics of cinema and still rated amongst the top twenty Japanese movies of all time, the original Godzilla is perhaps the definitive monster movie - both a bold metaphor for the atomic age and a thrilling tour de force of pioneering special effects.