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Comment by gh-throw | Hacker News Reader

> Film has such a huge library of "great movies", I have over 700 films logged on letterboxd, with a pretty decent spread of years/countries and I would say I still know basically nothing about film.

Film is so full of great stuff that there exists a reasonably-curated meta best-of-list of 1,000 great ones... with an overflow list of the next 1,000 that's also almost all excellent, and those still aren't a comprehensive list of all the films worth watching.

https://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm

(Possibly NSFW because of screen-caps from movies)

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Yea, I started with the "AFI Top 100 Films" and went through all of those (spoiler, you've likely already seen many of them if you are even slightly into movies). Definitely focuses on American films (surprise!).

After that I have begun the "1001 Films To See Before You Die." I suspect I'll be finishing that up in about 3 years (need to hang on that much longer!). Most if not all of the AFI Top 100 Films are in the 1001. Also, again, some of the 901 remaining films you may also have seen already. But the 1001 have a lot more French New Wave, Italian Neorealist, and generally a more cosmopolitan mix. To be sure though the list skews Western.

I'm happy to have another list of films. The set of Kurosawa's favorite films, of course, intersects with the above two lists but appears to add, unsurprisingly, a lot more Japanese films.

Somehow I had to smile just imagining Kurosawa watching "One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest". Does that film even make sense for someone growing up within Japanese culture?

> Does that film even make sense for someone growing up within Japanese culture?

Oh yeah! F*ck yeah! This movie was remade into a 1986 Malayalam movie by a really good actor/director pair and I'll bet almost everyone who watched it came away shaken.

Institutionalizing someone who is not crazy is something every culture can identify with. You can also pretty easily draw parallels in any culture to even the supporting cast (Nurse Ratched). Probably because of the stigma associated with mental illness and how institutions across the world took advantage of it.

Even now when I think about the (original) movie ending.. tears. I grew up in India. I don't know what I don't know, but after having lived in the US for over 20 years, I don't think folks missed much in translation. There might be a subtext there with a Native American winning some semblance of a freedom that most other cultures miss.

In the book McMurphy is trying to get admitted into the mental ward to get out of prison — it wasn't really a case of the state institutionalizing him against his will.

I guess I was thinking more that he is the protagonist for challenging the establishment, breaking the rules, questioning authority. That seems like something someone in Japanese society would not enthusiastically cheer on.

> In the book McMurphy is trying to get admitted into the mental ward to get out of prison — it wasn't really a case of the state institutionalizing him against his will.

I know. But he can't get out when he wants to right?

Yeah that's a good point about questioning authority. I don't know.

As I recall the AFI list is a good "mid-brow" list which probably describes me pretty well. I like these films more than most of the blockbusters but I also tend to clock out a lot of the time when you get into real art house fare.

Yeah, I suppose if you sprinkle in 5% art-house fare then I am okay. There are occasional surprises in the new wave, avant garde, independent films.

"1001 Films" does pull in a bit of the high-brow flicks. The harder to watch stuff from the "AFI Top 100" are some of the very early silent films (or over the top propaganda films like "Yankee Doodle Dandy").

I've seen the vast bulk of the films. Intolerance you definitely need to watch as a period piece. It's a pretty good example although something like Safety Last or The General would be easier to watch examples.Don't really disagree on "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Isn't a lot on the list I seriously disagree with although there are period favorites I'd probably skip and different films I'd include.

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