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| Mr. Bright's Suggested Films for the COLLEGE BOUND |
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| I will add more titles periodically. Suggested additions welcome. |
| Updated 7/5/08 |
| Little Big Man ("You're not worth the reversal of a Custer decision!") |
| Citizen Kane (We can only hope this will be Murdoch's fate.) |
| An Inconvenient Truth (Mmmmmmmm...Oil!) |
| Powwow Highway (What? Martinez isn't Indian?) |
| Rear Window (It's not always about point of view.) |
| Rocky I (The rest are just sequels.) |
| Dances With Wolves (Cool movie unless you're Pawnee.) |
| The Searchers ("John Wayne's teeth...") |
| Hamlet with Laurence Olivier |
| Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh |
| To Kill A Mockingbird (Gregory Peck IS Atticus Finch.) |
| Othello with Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Fishburne |
| Star Wars (Both trilogies, but watch IV-VI first, then I-III for the true experience.) |
| The Cruise (I'll never look at terracotta the same.) |
| Amadeus (This film is not for the lactose intolerant.) |
| Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin was a prophet.) |
| Wings of Desire (With Peter Falk and without Nicholas Cage.) |
| Chariots of Fire ("Jenny, you've got to understand....") |
| Hard Days Night (No plot, no sequence, the songs are incongruous with the scenes...it's still the Beatles, and it's still brilliant.) |
| The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin: Black-listed way ahead of his time.) |
| Edward Scissorhands (He should have kept one scissorhand for the pirate movies.) |
| Star Trek (Every film in order) |
| A Fish Called Wanda ("Oh, No! It's k-k-k-Ken coming to k-k-k-kill me!") |
| Monty Python and the Holy Grail (So many quotes...) |
| Monty Python's Life of Brian ("Always look on the bright side of life...") |
| Imagine: John Lennon (More should do that more often.) |
| Crazy People ("Volvo: Boxy, but good.") |
| Braveheart ("Frdddddeedom!" is how a true Scot would say it.) |
| The Patriot (American Braveheart, but the real guy was no hero.) |
| The Green Berets (Fun with American propoganda.) |
| Annie Hall ("I just happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here!") |
| Sleeper (1984 with a sense of humor.) |
| Crimes and Misdemeanors (He is an urban Grendel.) |
| Smoke Signals ("Hey, Victor!") |
| A Perfect Candidate ("Don't you know it's your fault?") |
| The Red Badge of Courage (Audie Murphy as Henry Fleming) |
| Arsenic and Old Lace (Beware old aunties with unfinished basements.) |
| Casablanca ("Say it again, Plam.") |
| Unforgiven ("Deserve's got nothin' to do with it.") |
| JFK (It was a lone gunman. Seriously. Look at all the evidence! Oh, wait...) |
| Nixon (What a potty mouth.) |
| Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Great fantasy about a politician with a conscience.) |
| Dead Again (Creepy...so very creepy in so many ways.) |
| An Affair to Remember (The most memorable tryst that never happened.) |
| The Wizard of Oz (Are there really people out there who haven't seen this?) |
| The Golden Compass (It must be good if they want it banned.) |
| The Birds (Recent science suggests THIS was the 1st Jurassic Park.) |
| Conspiracy Theory (Truth, fiction...I just can't tell anymore.) |
| Bowling for Columbine (It's not the guns, but then what is it?) |
| The Shining (The original with Jack Nicholson) |
| It's a Wonderful Life (It's not just for Christmas...) |
| Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (She's just cold...) |
| One Soldier (Steven Wright's friend really does ride a horse.) |
| The Pink Panther (The first 6 films in the series; don't bother going past 1978.) |
| Pulp Fiction (Actually, wait until college for this one. It will make more sense.) |
| Caddyshack (My first R film. It would be G today.) |
| The Green Mile ("Dead man walkin'....") |
| Shawshank Redemption ("...Do you want your sons to go to Harvard or Yale?" |
| Deliverance (What's perfect pitch with a banjo? Ask Billy Redden.) |
| Saving Private Ryan ("Because the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many." |
| Godfather (All of them.) |
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (That's you and me in there. Oh, man...) |
| Philadelphia (Neil Young's song is WAY better than Springsteen's.) |
| Bridge over River Kwai (Just blow up the bridge already!) |
| E.T. (Let's meet aliens and dissect them. Now that's more like it.) |
| Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Let's meet Aliens and play jingles to each other.) |
| What about Bob? ("It's called death therapy, Bob! It's guaranteed to work!") |
| Jaws (It's a megalodon.) |
| Sparticus (We're due for another slave rebellion.) |
| Gladiator (If you don't mind un-history.) |
| Rambo: First Blood (It's the first and last one.) |
| Walk the Line (He had more in common with Woody Guthrie than Bob Dylan ever did.) |
| Groundhog Day (Not as fictional as you think.) |
| Hotel Rwanda (He makes Schindler look like a Nazi.) |
| Fahrenheit 451 (Of course, in the book it's an evil robot dog, not a spooky fire pole.) |
| Fahrenheit 9/11 (No, YOU can't handle the truth.) |
| Whale Rider ("Anything you can do, I can do better....") |
| Dead Man Walking ("Government can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats...or fill a pothole much less decide which of its citizens to kill.") |
| Fight Club (This is why we get Spike, and women get Lifetime.) |
| Planet of the Apes (The original, you damn, dirty ape!) |
| Sound of Music ("You'll never be one of them.") |
| Dead Poet's Society ("Not artists...free thinkers.") |
| Stand By Me (When Wesley Crusher was cool.) |
| Jurassic Park (Frankenstein with Dinosaurs.) |
| Giant (James Dean finds oil. Mmmmmmm...oil.) |
| My Left Foot (You think you have problems? This is a true story.) |
| Born on the 4th of July (A true story, and Tom Cruise can act.) |
| 2001: A Space Odyssey (Our ancestors were already upright, but you'll get the idea.) |
| The Good Sheperd (Fiction. Pure fiction. There are no secret overlords.) |
| American Splendor (Take that, David Letterman.) |
| Henry Fool ("He's a great American poet, you f-ing idiot!") |
| Chocolat (Read the book first.) |
| Rebel Without a Cause (Classic James Dean.) |
| East of Eden (The original with James Dean..) |
| Monty Python's Meaning of Life ("...God get's quite annoyed.") |
| Last Temptation of Christ (Aside from the blonde hair, it's believable.) |
| The Reagans (I know it's a TV mini-series, but anything this censored has to be seen.) |
| Year of the Horse (It doesn't get much better than Neil in the 90's.) |
| Being There ("I like to watch.") |
| Comfort and Joy ("Thrifty Pops, Thrifty Pops....".) |
| Raising Arizona (A role for Nicholas Cage that actually works.) |
| Disturbia (An interesting Rear Window remake.) |
| Clockwise (If you've seen all the Python movies and need more, watch this.) |
| Papillon ("No ghosts in that one...") |
| Platoon (Willem Dafoe's first role as Jesus.) |
| Nineteen Eighty-Four (Not the 80's you see on VH-1, but familiar somehow...) |
| V for Vendetta (Fill in the blanks: "Remember, Remember the ____ of ________.") |
| Momento (and don't cheat with "scene selection.") |
| Batman (Just for Jack as the Joker.) |
| Apocolypse Now ("The horror....") |
| My Life as a Dog ("Woof.") |
| Full Metal Jacket ("What is your major malfunction?") |
| The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Top Spaghetti western with a mean soundtrack.) |
| Gone with the Wind ("Frankly, my dear, I don't know nothin's about birthin' babies.") |