Eighty-Two films I haven't seen.

I recently stumbled on the list of one hundred movies that Yahoo! reckons you should see before you die. Of these one hundred films I've seen eighteen. I feel so pathetic.

Admittedly I've seen the films like The Usual Suspects, Toy Story, The Silence Of The Lambs, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and The Matrix but there are a few on the list I've never even heard of. Such as
- The 400 Blows
- The African Queen
- The Battle Of Algiers
- The Bicycle Thief
- Do The Right Thing
- Grand Illusion
- In The Mood For Love
- It Happened One Night
- The Lady Eve
- Nosferatu
- On The Waterfront
- Princess Mononoke
- Raise The Red Lantern
- Rashomon
- Wild Strawberries
- Wings Of Desire
- Women On the Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
- The World Of Apu

I've never seen Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, Casablanca, The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II, Singin' In the Rain, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Some Like It Hot, The Sound Of Music or The Wizard Of Oz either. Does this make me an uncultured slob?

Maybe I should get a hold of some of these movies and watch them. The trouble is that I tend not to trust lists like this. I once saw a similar list and it was called something like The Top 100 Albums Of All Time and Radiohead's OK Computer was at number one. Now, I'm not for a second saying that OK Computer is a bad album (on the contrary; it's a smash) but I wouldn't call it the greatest album of all time. That said, the list was compiled by Q Magazine or something of that ilk, I think Oasis might have had the number two slot.

My point is this; I don't think if I do go and buy these eighty-two films that I haven't seen (I would probably buy them over a number of years, mind) would they change my life? Why should I see them before I die? If they are epic or beautiful or heart wrenching or all of the above then that's fine, but I can think of more films to add if that's the case.

Films are subjective. Some people think that Meet The Parents is comedy gold, I personally can't watch it. On the other hand I'm a big fan of Blazing Saddles but I can understand why people would be incredibly offended by it ("He said 'The sheriff is near!'"). My other worry is - if I see all these films - that I'll only enjoy maybe a third or half of them. Going by the title alone I don't see In The Mood For Love being a film I would watch more than once.

I doubt that I'll really do that much about seeing all these films. There are certainly films on the list I want to see but not all of them. Which does render this blog completely pointless. So it can just join the ranks of my other pointless blogs...

Oh yeah, this has nothing to do with anything, but my birthday's soon-ish (translate as six weeks) and I'm sure I could make room for this.