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Top 10 memorable films

The Abyss - the overall film I don't remember so well. But the emotional intensity of the scene where they have to choose who dies, who swims the other one back, and the resuscitation was almost too much for me to handle when I saw it. So intense. Resuscitation scenes are a dime a dozen--but not this one. Wow.

Someone mentioned Down By Law, which I loved when it came out. Night on Earth (also by Jarmusch) has two chapters that I have not forgotten: the one with cab driver Helmut and characters played by Rosie Perez and Giancarlo Esposito; and the one with the Finnish cab driver telling story to some drunks of losing a child. I need to track that one down again.
 
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The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
Jacob's Ladder
Vanilla Sky
Brazil
Amadeus
The 400 Blows
The Dark Knight
Dancer in the Dark
Fitzcarraldo
On Golden Pond
 
Hi

Kudos to Dirtgrain for mentioning Terry Gilliam's masterpiece Brazil - a funny rollercoaster and cinematic journey on par with Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. In my opinion.

Cherrs, DoFuzz
 
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It turns out to be really hard to cut the list down to 10. There are really many memorable movies:

Amadeus

Casablanca (definitely in my top 10, too: timelessly melancholic)

The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Andern: leaves a great impression on life in communist Germany)

Thesis (Tésis, the low budget mind fuck movie that put Amenábar on the map)

Life is beautiful (La vita e bella: never forget)

The Matrix (fantastic mix of fiction and philosophy)

Memento (what's in a name?)

Lost in Translation (strangely poetic)

Fargo (also a poetic movie)

Life of Brian (if I would forget all movies, the Latin grammar punishment will still stay with me)

Some films that dropped out of the top 10: Delicatessen, Groundhog Day, Galaxy Quest, Chicken Run, My Neighbour Totoro, The Death of Stalin, LOTR, Die Hard (it may not be great, but it is memorable), District 9, Abre los Ojos, Shawshank Redemption, Soldier of Orange, etc.
 
Schindler's List
The Green Mile
Platoon
Juno
Forest Gump
Dead Poets Society
Love Actually
Fried Green Tomatoes
Apocalypse Now
Alien
 
Thin Red Line
Prometheus
Aliens
Contact
Withnail and I
The Right Stuff
Europa Report
Fly Away Home
Jaws
Zero Dark Thirty
 
The Quest of the Holy Grail
Life of Brian
2001 a Space Odissey
The Blues Brothers
Back to the future
Brazil
Idiocracy
The good the bad and the ugly
LOTR I
12 Monkeys
District 9
Frankenstein Junior
The big dictator
School of Rock
SpaceBalls (yeah, I know...)

In no particular order, it's more then 10, and probably I'm missing some big ones....
 
1) Alien /Aliens
2) Godfather (any & all of them)
3) The Legend of 1900
4) Casino
5) The Exorcist (The only film that truly scared me)
6) Beaty & The Beast (Animated version - Disney at their very peak)
7) Jaws
8) Margin Call
9) The Thing (1983)
10) Contact

There's so many more. But these are films I really like. There are so many worthy films that I respect and value, like a lot of Nolan's work, but I don't actually 'like' them, if you know what I mean.

I saw Aliens in 70mm back in '86 at the Odeon Marble Arch in London - It blew me a
 
Asuming that we're only talking about fiction feature films...

These are in no particular order, except for Fanny and Alexander, which I think is a really special film. It was Bergman's last, unlike anything that he had done before and clearly a labour of love. Watch it over Christmas.

Fanny och Alexander/Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman)
Soy Cuba/I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov)
Les quatre cents coups/The 400 Blows (François Truffaut)
Dr. Srangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
La Jetée (Chris Marker) [actually a short film, 28 minutes]
Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
La battaglia di Algeri/The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo)
Babettes Gaestebud/Babette's Feast (Gabriel Axel)
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
8 1/2 (Frederico Fellini)
Thank you for this wonderful list...
 
Dersu Uzala
Solaris (Tarkovsky)
12 Monkeys
Barton Fink
Hail, Caeser!
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Throne of Blood
Smiles of a Summer night
The seventh seal
Wake in Fright

I could go on for many many more, these are just the ones coming to mind now without getting stuck on a single director although I did a bit with the Coens
 
I decided to go for "ten of my favs" vs "most memorable," which as someone else said, wouldn't be the exact same list...and even this list might change if I think of it more, hard to narrow down, but off the top and in no order (I'm surprised some of these weren't mentioned yet):

Forrest Gump
Amadeus
Coming to America
Patton
City Slickers
When Harry Met Sally
Tequila Sunrise
Groundhog Day
Mr Holland's Opus
Outlaw Josey Wales
 
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