I've seen 80. I wish my number was 69. I just do.

Bah, only 38. I suck.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick
"Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott
"Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen
"Apocalypse Now" (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
"Bambi" (1942) Disney
"The Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
"Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott
"Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch
"Carrie" (1975) Brian DePalma
"Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles
"A Clockwork Orange" (1971) Stanley Kubrick
"The Crying Game" (1992) Neil Jordan
"Do the Right Thing" (1989 Spike Lee
"La Dolce Vita" (1960) Federico Fellini
"Dr. Strangelove" (1964) Stanley Kubrick
"Duck Soup" (1933) Leo McCarey
"E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) Steven Spielberg
"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) Irvin Kershner
"Fargo" (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
"Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher
"The Godfather,"
"GoodFellas" (1990) Martin Scorsese
"The Graduate" (1967) Mike Nichols
"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) Frank Capra
"Jaws" (1975) Steven Spielberg
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) David Lean
"Mad Max 2" / "The Road Warrior" (1981) George Miller
"Metropolis" (1926) Fritz Lang
"Modern Times" (1936) Charles Chaplin
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero
"North by Northwest" (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan
"Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino
"Singin' in the Rain" (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
"Taxi Driver" (1976) Martin Scorsese
"West Side Story" (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939) Victor Fleming

maybe I've seen 32. I think this list is very important.

Very important. I don't link to things that aren't.

53, 54 if you count metropolis, which i turned off out of boredom part way through, and i'm actually interested in quite a lot of the ones i didn't see. Unless you disagree the following 15, that means there's a lot of movies I've seen that you don't want to see. Huh.

"8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini
"The Bicycle Thief" (1949) Vittorio De Sica
"Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
"Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) Arthur Penn
"Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick
"Dirty Harry" (1971) Don Siegel
"Easy Rider" (1969) Dennis Hopper
"The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin*
"Halloween" (1978) John Carpenter
"Nashville" (1975) Robert Altman
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero
"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan
"Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) Sergio Leone
"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa
"Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks +

* I may have seen this, but it was way too long ago
+ Actually I'd rather see Scorcese's version.

also, i hope this is a trivia question tonight.

Jon, I've seen all 15 of those (that's what happens when you go to film school). All very good, though Blow Up is a bit of a chore. See Depalma's Blow Out instead. That movie is great. Speaking of that, Scorcese didn't direct Scarface, Depalma did. And it is very dated (but fun).

Also, Patrick Stewart was not Sexiest Man Alive.

Of the 15 you listed, Jon, I've seen 8. Of the remaining, I'd like to see Days of Heaven, Night of the Living Dead, and Once Upon a Time in the West. On the Waterfront, not pressing but maybe one day. Blow Up is very interesting and weird, but I can see what you mean, Anthony. I still want to see Zabriskie Point.

Also, Jon, have you seen the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeousie? That's one of my favorite classics that I've recently caught up with.

as far as i'm concerned, everything deniro or pacino (but not both) is in is directed by scorcese. This is what happens when you don't go to film school.

My shame. Patrick Stewart was tv guide's sexiest man on television in 1992.

i have not seen discreet charm. i know nothing about it and the title didn't seem so interesting. guess i should take a closer look.

everybody get your free cone today!

I realize this isn't really Ebert's fault, but the ratio of male to female directors on that list is shameful. If he's gonna have something as wierd as Chien Andalou on there, though, he might have done well to include Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon as well.

I'd have to argue that the gender of the director is pretty much non-relevent to the quality of the movie.

That being said, he didn't include Intolerance by DW Griffin, so maybe he's a racist/sexist bastard.

The ratio of male to female directors on any movie list will be shameful (unless it is 100 best movies by women). As will the ratio of white to blacks or other minorites. The history of film is roughly 100 years old, and though it is changing a bit (and only a bit) these days, most those years white men directed films. And if you haven't noticed, that is pretty much the same these days as well. Same for TV directing. Same for writing. Look at the Daily Show staff. Entertainment is a hard business to break into and it's even harder if you are female or a minority.

Sorry, it was just kind of a knee-jerk response. I find it depressing nevertheless.

By the way, the list wasn't put together by Ebert, but by Jim Emerson, who I think is his editor.

This reminds me of the time on Friends when Joey was supposed to be a serial rapist. I wish they did that.

i saw this list when it was just 101 movies. i looked at the list and then 10 minutes later realized that apocolypse now wasn't there. just based on movies that are culturally relevant, apocolypse now is more important than half the movies on the list.

now i see the list is at 102.

That's weird Nacho, because I think that Emerson explains that it's Fight Club that was added to the list. On a different note, I was wondering why he thought Fight Club was such an important movie. I looked back to Ebert's review and discovered that Ebert really did not like it (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19991015/REVIE...)... I seem to recall that I liked it until the ending, and then realized that the writers had no better solution to end the movie than making it a reality bender... I'll have to see it again sometime though to see the merits and drawbacks it has though. Does Emerson write reviews too? Probably not if he's Ebert's editor.

I don't want to make Fight Club out to be too significant, but I think the end had a bit more going on than that. Also, since it's based on a book which I haven't read, I can't say whether the ending was faithful or not. I have a feeling that it's included because it set certain precedents that seemed to have a general impact on hollywood style for at least a little while. I think it's like the Matrix in that way. Not to say that these films didn't also follow on precedents, but each epitomized something of the moment. That said, I'm surprised Fight Club is on there and the Matrix isn't. Better acting, I guess.

I'm actually a pretty harsh critic of films, so take whatever I say you should take with a grain of salt. I thought the Matrix's themes and ideas seemed like something a high schooler would have come up with. I probably am one of the very few people who liked the second Matrix movie far better than the first. As for Fight Club, maybe there was more going on than I originally realized, so I probably should see it again before I judge it. BTW, why isn't Peewee's Big Adventure on that list?

Peewee indeed.
Yeah, I'm not trying to say that either of those movies is like intellectually stimulating on some super profound level (although to a younger me they were both pretty cool movies), I just mean more in terms of aesthetic/stylistic and subject matter trends in the industry, which these two movies seemed to be leaders on. Well, actually, I really do think Fight Club is a very good movie, I could definitely still get into it. But didn't the Matrix only get more high school after the first one? I saw a fragment of one of the other two, but mainly avoided them 'cause I figured it could only be downhill from there.

I've read the book Fight Club and 1) it's not very good; 2) the movie's ending wasn't faithful to the book. (In the book, he shoots himself. Also, I don't think credit card companies are involved.)

As for The Matrix, I have the feeling that its cultural significance is on the decline, but one thing I could never say is that the second one is better than the first. Matrix: Reloaded is an abysmal film, philosophically naive and low on entertainment value.

It is possible that I was susceptible to a philosophically naive and low entertainment value film at that time in my life... I admit it. I was going through a tough phase after being led along a disheartening path by a woman. So, as I said, I'm probably one of the few people who liked it better than the first. But when given to the contrast of seeing Terminator 3 and Pirates of the Carribean that summer (I think those were the only other movies I saw), the Matrix 2 was an oasis of philosophy- whether it was bad or good philosophy-- that I do not know.

*sigh*

and of course, joe versus the volcano is nowhere to be found on that list.

ps i don't like being told what to do before i die. just to spite this list, i'm going to unsee many of those movies and watch some rob schneider pics to replace them.

pps T-3 was not a very good movie (and i hate hate hate claire crapping danes) -- but it did present an interesting film-philosophical quandary, in that the hero fails to prevent the horrible he thing he knows is going to happen. it was like an anti-action-film in that sense, and i somewhat appreciated it.

He shoots himself in the movie too.

T3 had a little bit of charm precisely because of the inevitability of the ending.

Still wasn't great.

Yes, but it would be more dramatic if the hero failed in a non-apocalyptic type of movie. For instance, a Karate Kid-esque movie, where there are training montages and such, a father figure character, and then the hero does not even get past the first round. That would be cool.

Yes, but in the book, he dies.

kingpin. bill murray beats woody harrelson in the end.

That movie's a comedy though... and Woody Harrelson's in the finals...

The book of Fight Club was pretty awful. I don't remember if you told me this, or if I noticed it on my own, but it's like the screenwriter went through the book and pulled out every third line and that was the movie. The other 2/3rds of the book were not especially good.

It felt a lot like one of my finals. There's a hell a lot of stuff jammed in there if you're willing to dig through a lot of garbage to find it.

Slater, "Fight Club" was his 101st movie added (between 1999, the date of his first list, and 4/20/06, when the linked to article was posted), "Apocolypse Now" was his 102nd added (between 4/20/06 and when CM posted the link).

I was going to say that Matrix had more cultural relevance, even if it had arguably worse acting or was a worse movie, than Fight Club, and thus should have been put on the list, but I think CM has a point. Still, I think people talk more about Matrix than Fight Club.

Chuck Palahniuk is a pretty bad writer. And on top of that his stuff is pretty sick and vile. It's rare that things I read disgust me, but his stuff does. I do wonder where his popularity comes from.