Watching the Top 100 Highest-Rated Movies: #1-5

#5. The Seven Samurai (Japanese: 七人の侍, Shichinin no Samurai) (1954)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima, Isao Kimura, Daisuke Katō, Seiji Miyaguchi, Yoshio Inaba, Minoru Chiaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Kokuten Kōdō, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Eijirō Tōno, Jun Tatara, Atsushi Watanabe, Yoshio Kosugi, Bokuzen Hidari, Yukiko Shimazaki

Did we like it? Evan: 👍 Sarah: 👎
Would we watch it again? Evan: 👍 Sarah: 👎

I think this is our second Kurosawa movie on The List (after #62: Yojimbo (1961)). The Seven Samurai is set in 1500s Japan, and tells the story of how a group of poor farmers that live in a remote area are plagued by malicious bandits, and hire a team of (seven) samurai to defend them and their harvest.

Overall, I thought The Seven Samurai was great (although Sarah felt differently). I'm such a sucker for this whole "assemble the team" trope (that this movie helped pioneer), and this is another example of how I've been so exposed to all the subsequent remakes and homages that it felt like déjà vu seeing the original.

This movie went 4x over budget during filming, and I can't help but be impressed with how Kurosawa handled the studio repeatedly shutting them down:

Each time, Kurosawa calmly went fishing, reasoning that the studio had already heavily invested in the production and would allow him to complete the picture.

I think there's a lesson in there, somewhere...

#4. Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D. M. Marshman Jr.
Starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, Jack Webb

Did we like it? 👍
Would we watch it again? 👎

Wow, this is our fourth Billy Wilder film on The List, after #23. Some Like It Hot (1959), #39. The Apartment (1960), and #48. Double Indemnity (1944), and off the top of my head, I think that puts him just behind Alfred Hitchcock (with six films on The List) and tied with Mr. Peter Jackson with The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Nice work, Billy.

Here's the gist: A long-forgotten silent film star named Norma lives in a mansion and is kept in a bubble of delusion by her adoring and cuckolded butler Max (even doing the whole writing-fake-fan-mail thing; classic). Norma meets a down-on-his-luck screenwriter named Joe, and various high jinks ensue mostly around Joe trying to secretly resuscitate his career while maintaining a delicate charade with Norma and others. It's dark, cynical, and impressively meta.

There are some interesting parallels between fiction and reality in this one: Gloria Swanson, who plays the former silent movie star Norma who failed to maintain popularity after the end of that era, was herself a huge silent film star and had her own major comeback as a result of starring in Sunset Boulevard (and won a Golden Globe Award for it, no less!). And Norma's butler Max von Mayerling, who we learn was also her former husband, was played by Erich von Stroheim, who was indeed a real director and also just so happened to direct one of Gloria Swanson's movies earlier in his career. Ok that's enough for now, I'm getting too excited.

This movie ended up being nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and winning three, which is pretty darn impressive for a movie that is a fairly scathing criticism of Hollywood in general.

Overall, we enjoyed it, but like many critically acclaimed movies on The List, we probably wouldn't watch it again.

#3. Rear Window (1954)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay by John Michael Hayes
Based on It Had to Be Murder by Cornell Woolrich
Starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr

Did we like it? Evan: 🤷👍 Sarah: 👍
Would we watch it again? Evan: 👎 Sarah: 👍

We've spent a lot of time with our old friend Alfred throughout The List – it looks like this is the sixth time we've danced with him, after #70: Notorious (1946), #56: Strangers on a Train (1951), #50: North by Northwest (1959), #21: Psycho (1960), and #14: Vertigo (1958). And same comment for our friend Jimmy Stewart, who also graces us with his presence for the sixth time! (And heck, bonus congratulations to me for now needing to use Google to search my own posts in this series to look up both of those facts).

Rear Window is about a photographer (Jimmy Stewart) who is laid up in his apartment with a broken leg, and gets involved in an increasingly complex debacle involving his girlfriend, his nurse, and his neighbors as a result of his new hobby involving casual window voyeurism.

I didn't really love it – it was fine, and I liked the constraints of the concept (i.e. shot pretty much exclusively from one location and set), but I didn't really feel the enthusiasm that so many others seem to have felt about this one. Sarah, on the other hand, enjoyed it.

As with many movies on The List, the real gems for me were hiding in the film's Wikipedia page which I delightfully pored over afterwards: The whole movie was one big set, built on a soundstage at Paramount Studios, and was one of the largest indoor sets ever constructed at the time. They had 31 different apartments with working lights, plumbing, and background actors living their little mini-storylines that you can glimpse throughout the movie. Hitchcock obsessively controlled every detail seen through those windows, which made the neighborhood feel unique and interesting. Over 1,000 set lights were used to simulate different times of day and environmental conditions, and apparently they had to solve some big plumbing challenges to handle the rainstorm scene.

This is our last time with Mr. Hitchcock and Mr. Stewart - farewell, and thanks for all of the entertainment!

The Godfather

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Screenplay by Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola
Based on The Godfather by Mario Puzo

#2. The Godfather (1972)

Starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, Diane Keaton

Did we like it? Evan: 👍👍 Sarah: 👍
Would we watch it again? Evan: 👍 Sarah: 🤷‍♀️👍

I've seen The Godfather several times, and before that I read (and also really enjoyed) the book. I'm a big fan of this movie, and even though it's nearly three hours long, it always feels much shorter. Well, at least to me – when I asked Sarah about this one recently, her first recollection was that it was very long. 😄

The Godfather was the highest-grossing film of 1972 and held that position until #37: Jaws (1975) (also on The List!). It launched the careers of Coppola, Pacino, and several others featured in the movie who are now household names, plus helped revitalize Brando's career after several of his prior films performed poorly. The Godfather ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, Brando won Best Actor, and author Mario Puzo and Coppola both won for Best Adapted Screenplay. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a banger.

I think I'm now able to fully confirm a trend after writing reviews of 98 movies: When I like the movie, I think I spend less energy afterwards learning about its backstory because I'm not trying to fill in a personal satisfaction gap, and when I don't enjoy a movie as much, I spend a ton of time learning every little thing about its production. Regardless, The Godfather does have a very interesting backstory (They almost didn't hire Brando! Brando auditioned with cotton balls in his mouth and darkened his hair with shoe polish! Apparently the cat from the beginning of the movie was just some random cat they found wandering around the studio and it purred so loudly that they had to redub the audio afterwards! Coppola was almost fired several times because the studio wasn't happy with his progress! Robert De Niro originally auditioned for the role of Sonny! Coppola cast a bunch of his family members in the movie, including his infant daughter, who is herself now a successful movie director!)

Ok, I'll stop now. This is a great movie; end review.

#15. The Godfather Part II (1974)

Starring Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, Talia Shire, Morgana King, John Cazale, Mariana Hill, Lee Strasberg

Did we like it? 🤷👍
Would we watch it again? 🤷👍

Thanks again to the foresight of the Ground Rules, we delayed The Godfather Part II from its proper spot at #15 in the list so that we could watch it back-to-back with the original.

Overall, we didn't enjoy this one as much as its predecessor. The intertwined storylines of prequel/sequel were an interesting approach (although it kinda feels like Coppola should have just picked a lane and focused on one or the other), and I was mostly positive about the movie until the ending which just didn't land with me for some reason.

But hey, this movie did teach me how to say "banana daiquiri" in Spanish, so I'm calling this a net win.

Alright, time for some interesting facts to mollify my lack of complete satisfaction with this film:

• The Godfather Part II was the first major US movie to use "Part II" in its title, so we can thank it for all of the Part Twos (and beyond) we've been subjected to ever since.
• It was the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (and, along with The Godfather, it's the only original/sequel combination to both win Best Picture).
• Along with our old friends #59, 62, 95: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, all of the movies in The Godfather Trilogy were nominated for Best Picture. And #59: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) was the second (and only) other sequel to win Best Picture.
• (Wait... is The Lord of the Rings Trilogy somehow a spiritual successor to The Godfather Trilogy?)

I always assumed we would watch The Godfather Part III by leveraging the provision in the Ground Rules that allows us to add sequels to The List even if they weren't actually on The List, like we did with Star Wars – Episode V: The Return of the Jedi (1983). But given the overall middling feedback I've heard about Part III, and the fact that I didn't leave Part II very excited for more, I think we're going to stop here for now.

#1. 12 Angry Men (1957)

Directed by Sidney Lumet
Written by Reginald Rose
Based on Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
Starring Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E.G. Marshall, Jack Warden

Did we like it? 👍
Would we watch it again? 👍

Ah, here we are, at the end of The List! I won't wax poetic just yet – I'll save that for a forthcoming wrap-up post.

12 Angry Men: The highest-rated film on our list of highest-rated films. I've seen it at least once before – my recollection is that it was either in a high school Social Studies class (or perhaps it was that one Cultural Geography class I took in college...) – anyway, kudos to whichever teacher showed this to us, because I liked it a lot then, and I liked it a lot again on rewatch.

The premise is that 12 jurors are stuck in a room until they can come to a unanimous decision about whether they should declare a young man guilty of murder, thus sending him to "the chair". It's a simple, constrained movie, but it works so well and is absolutely riveting.

This was 33-year-old Sidney Lumet's feature directorial debut, but I think there were some advantages that helped give him a head start: writer Reginald Rose originally created it in 1954 as a live television show which was well-received, then in 1955 it was adapted as a play, and then the movie landed in 1957. I think this gives further credence to James Gunn's non-negotiable rule about movies needing to have finished scripts before filming.

Here's something interesting I learned during my inevitable deep dive into this movie's Wikipedia page: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was inspired to pursue a career in law after she saw 12 Angry Men in college, but later as a lower court judge, she instructed juries not to follow the film's example as the jurors relied so much on speculation and not fact. Some contemporary analysis has concluded that this rampant speculation would have most likely led to a mistrial, and that the jurors likely came to the wrong conclusion given the preponderance of circumstantial evidence. But hey, storytelling.

Oh and similar to #22. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), 12 Angry Men was initially a box office disappointment and didn't find widespread popularity until it was later aired on TV.

One thing I regret not noticing was that at the start of the film, Lumet and cinematographer Boris Kaufman used wide-angle lenses placed above eye level to accentuate the emotional distance between jurors, and throughout the course of the film, they progressively increased the focal length and lowered the angle of the cameras to make everything more claustrophobic, matching both the increasing tensions and literal increase in temperature in the room.

You've reached the end of The List! You can go back and check out the rest of our journey to watch the top 100 highest-rated movies of all time, and if you'd like to see whatever we come up with next, you can sign up for my newsletter.