Search for movies in Rick's Flicks

Enter search text.

You may search for any string in any field (case-insensitive).

For you programmers, the string may be a Perl-compatible regular expression.
(For a refresher on regular expressions, here's a reference page.)

So Many Movies, So Little Time

Here are some movies that one would enjoy seeing if one wanted to be more aware of the scope of movies, what movies can be at their best and worst.

What are those old-timers ranting about when they say that "They don't make 'em like they used to?" Not all of these are old, of course. There are future classics being made today, movies that are really breakthroughs or the peak of their genre, movies that changed the scope of moviedom from that point forward. Flicks like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars. They're here, too. But many of the breakthroughs -- inventing a new type of movie or setting a new standard for epic scope, vision, violence, ordering, symbolism, evil, humor, slapstick, parody, dystopia, and such -- many breakthroughs happen early in the life of a medium. Sure, new ones are happening now, especially with respect to computer graphics and "photographing" scenes that can't really be seen. But, well, for example, even the new style of action flicks, where everything goes fast and then blows up, started decades ago with films like Bullitt, which I think invented the insane city car chase, and the early James Bond films that blew up everything.

And there are a number of cases where the same plot gets recycled into another movie a decade or two later. And we won't even mention the remakes of older movies, very few of which come near the standard of the originals.

Please remember that this is not intended as a "best of" list, but as a list of, well, hard to say, sort of milestones, cultural shared experiences, cinemahhhhh vocabulary. Like Joe Bob's list but with a bigger scope. And I'm sure I have erred in not including a couple of his choices in there, because he really was going for the milestone-breakthrough-things-can-never-be-the-same-again-who-let-the-nitrate-genie-out-of-the-bottle high spots. Saturday reaction: "Jesus H! How could they do that? In public!" Monday reaction: "But, C. B., our next project has to leap over that new bar!"

Your help is requested in editing it into a saner format, with perhaps more clear distinction between cinema history and "cultural literacy." Currently, they are divided into three categories:

Must see These really are the essentials, the classics, the ones that many modern movies refer to, or worse, remake poorly.
Should see These include movies that are so much a part of our culture that references to them abound in other movies or in conversation, or movies that I haven't seen in years and don't remember all that well except that I loved them, or movies that are typical of a genre but I don't know which one of the genre is the best.
Fun to see And then there are the movies that I think you might enjoy seeing because they are fun or riveting or otherwise worth the time.
Do not see Sometimes movies are made that are so pointless, awful, vapid, plotless that they should be shunned, actively.

Happy viewing!