Classic Films Watchlist
by michael-michaels | created - 23 Jul 2014 | updated - 28 Jul 2014 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Approved | 178 min | Adventure, Western
A bounty hunting scam joins two men in an uneasy alliance against a third in a race to find a fortune in gold buried in a remote cemetery.
Director: Sergio Leone | Stars: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo Giuffrè
Votes: 810,912 | Gross: $6.10M
2. The Dirty Dozen (1967)
Approved | 150 min | Action, Adventure, War
During World War II, a rebellious U.S. Army Major is assigned a dozen convicted murderers to train and lead them into a mass assassination mission of German officers.
Director: Robert Aldrich | Stars: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes
Votes: 79,073 | Gross: $45.30M
3. Chinatown (1974)
R | 130 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller
A private detective hired to expose an adulterer in 1930s Los Angeles finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.
Director: Roman Polanski | Stars: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez
Votes: 349,728
4. The Graduate (1967)
PG | 106 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.
Director: Mike Nichols | Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, William Daniels
Votes: 288,320 | Gross: $104.95M
5. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
PG | 105 min | Drama
After his wife leaves him, a work-obsessed Manhattan advertising executive is forced to learn long-neglected parenting skills, but a heated custody battle over the couple's young son deepens the wounds left by the separation.
Director: Robert Benton | Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Jane Alexander, Justin Henry
Votes: 154,649 | Gross: $106.26M
6. Network (1976)
R | 121 min | Drama
A television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor's ravings and revelations about the news media for its own profit, but finds that his message may be difficult to control.
Director: Sidney Lumet | Stars: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall
Votes: 170,562
7. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
R | 125 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
Three amateur bank robbers plan to hold up a bank. A nice simple robbery: Walk in, take the money, and run. Unfortunately, the supposedly uncomplicated heist suddenly becomes a bizarre nightmare as everything that could go wrong does.
Director: Sidney Lumet | Stars: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Penelope Allen, Sully Boyar
Votes: 272,987 | Gross: $50.00M
8. Alien (1979)
R | 117 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright
Votes: 950,053 | Gross: $78.90M
9. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
R | 136 min | Crime, Sci-Fi
In the future, a sadistic gang leader is imprisoned and volunteers for a conduct-aversion experiment, but it doesn't go as planned.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke
Votes: 881,060 | Gross: $6.21M
10. Seven Samurai (1954)
Not Rated | 207 min | Action, Drama
Farmers from a village exploited by bandits hire a veteran samurai for protection, who gathers six other samurai to join him.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima, Yukiko Shimazaki
Votes: 366,688 | Gross: $0.27M
11. 1900 (1976)
Unrated | 317 min | Drama, History
The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth-century Italy as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci | Stars: Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Francesca Bertini
Votes: 27,278
12. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
PG | 138 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
Roy Neary, an Indiana electric lineman, finds his quiet and ordinary daily life turned upside down after a close encounter with a UFO, spurring him to an obsessed cross-country quest for answers as a momentous event approaches.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon
Votes: 216,802 | Gross: $132.09M
13. American Graffiti (1973)
PG | 110 min | Comedy, Drama
A group of teenagers in California's central valley spend one final night after their 1962 high school graduation cruising the strip with their buddies before they pursue their varying goals.
Director: George Lucas | Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith
Votes: 98,123 | Gross: $115.00M
14. Annie Hall (1977)
PG | 93 min | Comedy, Romance
Alvy Singer, a divorced Jewish comedian, reflects on his relationship with ex-lover Annie Hall, an aspiring nightclub singer, which ended abruptly just like his previous marriages.
Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane
Votes: 278,327 | Gross: $39.20M
15. 12 Angry Men (1957)
Approved | 96 min | Crime, Drama
The jury in a New York City murder trial is frustrated by a single member whose skeptical caution forces them to more carefully consider the evidence before jumping to a hasty verdict.
Director: Sidney Lumet | Stars: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam, John Fiedler
Votes: 864,609 | Gross: $4.36M
16. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
PG-13 | 166 min | Western
A mysterious stranger with a harmonica joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful widow from a ruthless assassin working for the railroad.
Director: Sergio Leone | Stars: Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards
Votes: 349,007 | Gross: $5.32M
17. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
PG | 130 min | Drama, Family, Fantasy
An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell
Votes: 499,005
18. Rear Window (1954)
PG | 112 min | Mystery, Thriller
A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his Greenwich Village courtyard apartment window and, despite the skepticism of his fashion-model girlfriend, becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter
Votes: 521,905 | Gross: $36.76M
19. Psycho (1960)
R | 109 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin
Votes: 718,050 | Gross: $32.00M
20. North by Northwest (1959)
Approved | 136 min | Action, Adventure, Mystery
A New York City advertising executive goes on the run after being mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and falls for a woman whose loyalties he begins to doubt.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis
Votes: 346,032 | Gross: $13.28M
21. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
PG | 95 min | Comedy, War
An unhinged American general orders a bombing attack on the Soviet Union, triggering a path to nuclear holocaust that a war room full of politicians and generals frantically tries to stop.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn
Votes: 518,028 | Gross: $0.28M
22. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Passed | 110 min | Drama, Film-Noir
A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return.
Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson
Votes: 236,360
23. The Great Dictator (1940)
G | 125 min | Comedy, Drama, War
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner
Votes: 237,293 | Gross: $0.29M
24. Paths of Glory (1957)
Approved | 88 min | Drama, War
After a failed attack on a German position, a general orders three soldiers, chosen at random, court-martialed for cowardice and their commanding officer must defend them.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready
Votes: 212,190
25. Spartacus (1960)
PG-13 | 197 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
The slave Spartacus survives brutal training as a gladiator and leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman Republic, as the ambitious Crassus seeks to gain power by crushing the uprising.
Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Mann | Stars: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton
Votes: 143,138 | Gross: $30.00M
26. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
G | 149 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
After uncovering a mysterious artifact buried beneath the Lunar surface, a spacecraft is sent to Jupiter to find its origins: a spacecraft manned by two men and the supercomputer HAL 9000.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
Votes: 719,224 | Gross: $56.95M
27. Lolita (1962)
Not Rated | 153 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
A middle-aged college professor becomes infatuated with a 14-year-old girl.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon, Gary Cockrell
Votes: 108,759 | Gross: $9.25M
28. The French Connection (1971)
R | 104 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A pair of NYPD detectives in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a heroin smuggling ring based in Marseilles, but stopping them and capturing their leaders proves an elusive goal.
Director: William Friedkin | Stars: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco
Votes: 135,625 | Gross: $15.63M
29. Psych-Out (1968)
Not Rated | 101 min | Drama
A deaf runaway is taken in by a psychedelic band while searching for her missing brother in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury hippie district.
Director: Richard Rush | Stars: Susan Strasberg, Dean Stockwell, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern
Votes: 3,018
30. Vertigo (1958)
PG | 128 min | Mystery, Romance, Thriller
A former San Francisco police detective juggles wrestling with his personal demons and becoming obsessed with the hauntingly beautiful woman he has been hired to trail, who may be deeply disturbed.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore
Votes: 426,754 | Gross: $3.20M
31. Badlands (1973)
PG | 94 min | Action, Crime, Drama
An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town, and her older greaser boyfriend, embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota Badlands.
Director: Terrence Malick | Stars: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Ramon Bieri
Votes: 78,355
32. The Seventh Seal (1957)
Not Rated | 96 min | Drama, Fantasy
A knight returning to Sweden after the Crusades seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague.
Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe
Votes: 198,383
33. A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
R | 99 min | Action, Drama, Western
A wandering gunfighter plays two rival families against each other in a town torn apart by greed, pride, and revenge.
Director: Sergio Leone | Stars: Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volontè, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy
Votes: 232,580 | Gross: $14.50M
34. For a Few Dollars More (1965)
R | 132 min | Drama, Western
Two bounty hunters with the same intentions team up to track down a gang of outlaws led by a psychotic Mexican bandit, who is plotting an audacious bank robbery.
Director: Sergio Leone | Stars: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volontè, Mara Krupp
Votes: 274,562 | Gross: $15.00M
35. 8½ (1963)
Not Rated | 138 min | Drama
A harried movie director retreats into his memories and fantasies.
Director: Federico Fellini | Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Claudia Cardinale, Sandra Milo
Votes: 125,159 | Gross: $0.05M
36. La Dolce Vita (1960)
Not Rated | 174 min | Comedy, Drama
A series of stories following a week in the life of a philandering tabloid journalist living in Rome.
Director: Federico Fellini | Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux
Votes: 78,181 | Gross: $19.52M
37. The Sting (1973)
PG | 129 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
Two grifters team up to pull off the ultimate con.
Director: George Roy Hill | Stars: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, Charles Durning
Votes: 279,806 | Gross: $159.60M
38. The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Approved | 128 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
The story of the life and career of famed baseball player Lou Gehrig.
Director: Sam Wood | Stars: Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Babe Ruth, Walter Brennan
Votes: 11,993
39. The Hustler (1961)
Not Rated | 134 min | Drama, Sport
An up-and-coming pool player plays a long-time champion in a single high-stakes match.
Director: Robert Rossen | Stars: Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott
Votes: 86,774 | Gross: $8.28M
40. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Approved | 218 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
The story of T.E. Lawrence, the English officer who successfully united and led the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes during World War I in order to fight the Turks.
Director: David Lean | Stars: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins
Votes: 314,256 | Gross: $44.82M
41. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
R | 113 min | Drama
A naive hustler travels from Texas to New York City to seek personal fortune, finding a new friend in the process.
Director: John Schlesinger | Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver
Votes: 120,706 | Gross: $44.79M
42. Ben-Hur (1959)
G | 212 min | Adventure, Drama
After a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend in 1st-century Jerusalem, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd, Haya Harareet
Votes: 253,584 | Gross: $74.70M
43. Ikiru (1952)
Not Rated | 143 min | Drama
A bureaucrat tries to find meaning in his life after he discovers he has terminal cancer.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Shin'ichi Himori, Haruo Tanaka
Votes: 87,513 | Gross: $0.06M
44. Citizen Kane (1941)
PG | 119 min | Drama, Mystery
Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance: 'Rosebud.'
Director: Orson Welles | Stars: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead
Votes: 465,856 | Gross: $1.59M
45. Wild Strawberries (1957)
Not Rated | 91 min | Drama, Romance
After living a life marked by coldness, an aging professor is forced to confront the emptiness of his existence.
Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Victor Sjöström, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand
Votes: 114,936
46. Metropolis (1927)
Not Rated | 153 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Votes: 185,465 | Gross: $1.24M
47. Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
Not Rated | 95 min | Drama
The story of a mistreated donkey and the people around him. A study on saintliness and a sister piece to Bresson's Mouchette.
Director: Robert Bresson | Stars: Anne Wiazemsky, Walter Green, François Lafarge, Jean-Claude Guilbert
Votes: 22,811 | Gross: $0.04M
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