Recommended Movies

Posted by Elliot

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Sure, there are lots of movie review sites. And if you’re looking up something particular, they’re a great help. But if you don’t know what to watch, you need trustworthy advice to heighten the signal/noise ratio. Welcome to etg Design’s database of worthwhile movies.

The few hundred films included focus mostly on classic movies, which today probably need a little extra help getting the attention of younger viewers. These recommendations are brought to you by Elliot and Steve Grant, longtime movie buffs who are relatively open-minded about what constitutes a good movie.

To get second opinions, you can choose to display only movies that made the AFI’s 400 nominations for Top 100 movies (62K PDF) or FilmSite.org’s 200 Greatest Films. NB: Both these lists exclude foreign films; the AFI 400 was finalized in 1996.

Steve’s list includes roughly 100 movies and also excludes foreign films. To continue the pattern of 50% greater exclusivity, Elliot’s list attempts to capture the approximately 50 most important films. Within those 50, I’ve tried to cover as many genres, cultures, eras, and themes as possible. Don’t write to me complaining about the choices—it’s subjective, it’s an impossible task, and it’ll probably change over time. Finally, the intersection of all four lists is approximately 30 movies.

(If you want a larger list, take a look at the New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.)

To display films, simply select the appropriate search criteria below. You can filter the search by genre, rating, or inclusion on the various lists mentioned above.

Movie Ratings

Movies are rated on a system devised by my movie-watching cabal based on the simple question: How much worth your time and/or money is seeing this film?

There are six levels of ratings. They’re easy to remember, and they even proceed in alphabetical order:

  1. A (Advance Showing): Some films are such must-sees that they’re worth paying extra and going out of your way to catch—as you might do for an advance (a.k.a. special sneak preview) showing.
  2. F (Full Price): A film rated Full is worth seeing on its intital run in the theaters, even though you’ll have to pay the full ticket price. It’ll be worth it.
  3. M (Matinee): Matinee movies are worth seeing in the theaters, but only if you can get a discount on the ticket price. They’re good—usually a lot of fun—but probably not worth seeing more than once.
  4. R (Rental): Rental flicks have redeeming qualities, but they’re ones you definitely won’t mind catching on video. The screen may be small, but you don’t want to pay even a matinee ticket price for this kind of film.
  5. TV: A movie that gets a TV rating isn’t worth spending any money on. If it comes on TV, you probably wouldn’t mind spending a few hours to catch it, but otherwise you can avoid it with a clear conscience.
  6. W (Worthless): This bottom category is exactly what it says. A Worthless film is one that you should skip even if it comes on TV and you have nothing better to do.

Recommended Movies

Movie Genre Rating Lists
My Favorite Wife

Cary Grant and Irene Dunne at the top of their form in the second of their classic films about love and marriage. This time, Dunne is shipwrecked long enough to be declared dead and have Grant remarry. Not quite up to the standard set by The Awful Truth (which had been directed by Favorite Wife…

Comedy
M
SAG100
Movie Genre Rating Lists
My Life as a Dog

Wonderful film of a young Swedish boy coming to terms with tragedy while finding the joy in life with help from the country relatives who take him in.
Drama
A
AFI400
Movie Genre Rating Lists
My Man Godfrey

Carole Lombard finds forgotten man William Powell in a scavenger hunt and brings him home to butle for the high-society Bullocks.
Comedy
A
ETG50
Movie Genre Rating Lists
Mystery Train

Offbeat Jim Jarmusch narrative weaves together three stories set in Memphis, Tenn., over the course of a single day.
Comedy
F
AFI400
Movie Genre Rating Lists
Nasty Girl, The

Brilliant exploration of guilt and secrecy in the new postwar Germany. Humorous and disturbing. (subtitled)
Drama
F
AFI400
Movie Genre Rating Lists
Night at the Opera, A

Another Marx Bros. classic. That’s just the sanity clause—that’s in every contract. You can’t fool me—there ain’t no Santy Clause. The stateroom sequence has a woman asking for her Aunt Minnie, possibly a reference to the boys’ mother, Minnie Schoenberg Marx. Would rate an A except for some dull romance interludes.
Comedy
F
SAG100
Movie Genre Rating Lists
Ninotchka

Deft Ernst Lubitsch story of the clash between a coldly efficient Soviet inspector and Gay Paris in the 1930s. Garbo laughs!
Comedy
A
SAG100
Movie Genre Rating Lists
No Way Out

Kevin Costner is a Pentagon official who becomes the subject of a manhunt when his lover is murdered.
Mystery
F
AFI400
Movie Genre Rating Lists
North by Northwest

Another Hitchcock take on the innocent man on the run, this time with the charm of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Sainte.
Mystery
F
SAG100
Movie Genre Rating Lists
Notorious

Cary Grant seeks Ingrid Bergman’s help to infiltrate a Nazi cell in South America. But how far will he push the woman he is beginning to love?
Mystery
A
SAG100