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New Year’s Resolution: Watch More Movies!

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You can take screenwriting courses. You can read screenwriting books. You can visit screenwriting blogs. But the three best things you can do to increase your understanding of the craft of screenwriting are: (1) Write daily. (2) Read scripts. (3) Watch movies.

Per the last point, in 1998 American Film Institute put out its top 100 movie list. While you can quibble with some that are included and others that aren’t, it’s still represents a great group of movies.

Here’s the list. Go through it. Have you seen all of these movies? If you haven’t, here’s an excellent New Year’s resolution: Make a list of the movies you have not seen and make sure you watch them in 2009.

1 Citizen Kane 1941
2 Casablanca 1942
3 The Godfather 1972
4 Gone with the Wind 1939
5 Lawrence of Arabia 1962
6 The Wizard of Oz 1939
7 The Graduate 1967
8 On the Waterfront 1954
9 Schindler’s List 1993
10 Singin’ in the Rain 1952
11 It’s a Wonderful Life 1946
12 Sunset Boulevard 1950
13 The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957
14 Some Like It Hot 1959
15 Star Wars 1977
16 All About Eve 1950
17 The African Queen 1951
18 Psycho 1960
19 Chinatown 1974
20 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 1975
21 The Grapes of Wrath 1940
22 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
23 The Maltese Falcon 1941
24 Raging Bull 1980
25 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982
26 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964
27 Bonnie and Clyde 1967
28 Apocalypse Now 1979
29 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1939
30 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948
31 Annie Hall 1977
32 The Godfather Part II 1974
33 High Noon 1952
34 To Kill a Mockingbird 1962
35 It Happened One Night 1934
36 Midnight Cowboy 1969
37 The Best Years of Our Lives 1946
38 Double Indemnity 1944
39 Doctor Zhivago 1965
40 North by Northwest 1959
41 West Side Story 1961
42 Rear Window 1954
43 King Kong 1933
44 The Birth of a Nation 1915
45 A Streetcar Named Desire 1951
46 A Clockwork Orange 1971
47 Taxi Driver 1976
48 Jaws 1975
49 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937
50 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969
51 The Philadelphia Story 1940
52 From Here to Eternity 1953
53 Amadeus 1984
54 All Quiet on the Western Front 1930
55 The Sound of Music 1965
56 M*A*S*H 1970
57 The Third Man 1949
58 Fantasia 1940
59 Rebel Without a Cause 1955
60 Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981
61 Vertigo 1958
62 Tootsie 1982
63 Stagecoach 1939
64 Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977
65 The Silence of the Lambs 1991
66 Network 1976
67 The Manchurian Candidate 1962
68 An American in Paris 1951
69 Shane 1953
70 The French Connection 1971
71 Forrest Gump 1994
72 Ben-Hur 1959
73 Wuthering Heights 1939
74 The Gold Rush 1925
75 Dances with Wolves 1990
76 City Lights 1931
77 American Graffiti 1973
78 Rocky 1976
79 The Deer Hunter 1978
80 The Wild Bunch 1969
81 Modern Times 1936
82 Giant 1956
83 Platoon 1986
84 Fargo 1996
85 Duck Soup 1933
86 Mutiny on the Bounty 1935
87 Frankenstein 1931
88 Easy Rider 1969
89 Patton 1970
90 The Jazz Singer 1927
91 My Fair Lady 1964
92 A Place in the Sun 1951
93 The Apartment 1960
94 Goodfellas 1990
95 Pulp Fiction 1994
96 The Searchers 1956
97 Bringing Up Baby 1938
98 Unforgiven 1992
99 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner 1967
100 Yankee Doodle Dandy 1948

7 thoughts on “New Year’s Resolution: Watch More Movies!”

  1. I went through IMDB’s top 250 movies last spring. It was an awesome journey. So many movies that I thought I wouldn’t like, I ended up loving. Not to mention almost all of the movies showed me different ways to craft a story.

    -Ben Sahle

  3. I think it’s a great idea to deliberately watch movies you don’t think you’d like-that sounds like a resolution I’m gonna make. So often you get disappointed by movies you expect to like, the converse has got to be true and more rewarding.

  4. Get a jump start. King Kong is on TCM tonight! Great movie, I’m gonna’ watch it with my 8 year old daughter, get her education started in the right direction!

  5. John, I'll join you in the resolution this year. I've been DVRing and transferring to DVD a ton of movies this year, many of them movies not on my Want To See list, but Must See (because they're important). I'll move some of the latter group to the top of the watch list.

    Speaking of DVRing movies, Jeff, I just recorded King Kong off TCM tonight. Haven't seen that in years. Hope you and your daughter enjoy it. What's her reaction to B&W movies?

  6. The DVR is a wonderful thing–two weeks ago I switched from Time Warner to DirecTV and I can now search by keyword for anything including writers…How awesome is that?

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