Here is someone's list of must-see movies (via Kottke). If you see them all you can apparently call yourself "movie literate". I've seen some of them.
☑ 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick
☐ The 400 Blows (1959) Francois Truffaut
☐ 8 1/2 (1963) Federico Fellini
☐ Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) Werner Herzog
☑ Alien (1979) Ridley Scott
☐ All About Eve (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
☐ Annie Hall (1977) Woody Allen
☑ Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Coppola
☐ Bambi (1942) Disney
☐ The Battleship Potemkin (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
☐ The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) William Wyler
☐ The Big Red One (1980) Samuel Fuller
☐ The Bicycle Thief (1949) Vittorio De Sica
☑ The Big Sleep (1946) Howard Hawks
☑ Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott
☐ Blowup (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
☑ Blue Velvet (1986) David Lynch
☐ Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Arthur Penn
☐ Breathless (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
☐ Bringing Up Baby (1938) Howard Hawks
☐ Carrie (1975) Brian DePalma
☑ Casablanca (1942) Michael Curtiz
☐ Un Chien Andalou (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
☐ Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) Marcel Carne
☐ Chinatown (1974) Roman Polanski
☑ Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles
☑ A Clockwork Orange (1971) Stanley Kubrick
☑ The Crying Game (1992) Neil Jordan
☐ The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Robert Wise
☐ Days of Heaven (1978) Terence Malick
☑ Dirty Harry (1971) Don Siegel
☐ The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) Luis Bunuel
☑ Do the Right Thing (1989 Spike Lee
☐ La Dolce Vita (1960) Federico Fellini
☐ Double Indemnity (1944) Billy Wilder
☑ Dr. Strangelove (1964) Stanley Kubrick
☐ Duck Soup (1933) Leo McCarey
☑ E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Steven Spielberg
☑ Easy Rider (1969) Dennis Hopper
☑ The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Irvin Kershner
☑ The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin
☑ Fargo (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
☑ Fight Club (1999) David Fincher
☐ Frankenstein (1931) James Whale
☐ The General (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
☐ The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
☐ Gone With the Wind (1939) Victor Fleming
☑ GoodFellas (1990) Martin Scorsese
☑ The Graduate (1967) Mike Nichols
☐ Halloween (1978) John Carpenter
☐ A Hard Day's Night (1964) Richard Lester
☐ Intolerance (1916) D.W. Griffith
☐ It's a Gift (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
☐ It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Frank Capra
☑ Jaws (1975) Steven Spielberg
☐ The Lady Eve (1941) Preston Sturges
☑ Lawrence of Arabia (1962) David Lean
☐ M (1931) Fritz Lang
☑ Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior (1981) George Miller
☑ The Maltese Falcon (1941) John Huston
☐ The Manchurian Candidate (1962) John Frankenheimer
☐ Metropolis (1926) Fritz Lang
☐ Modern Times (1936) Charles Chaplin
☑ Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
☐ Nashville (1975) Robert Altman
☐ The Night of the Hunter (1955) Charles Laughton
☑ Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero
☑ North by Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
☐ Nosferatu (1922) F.W. Murnau
☐ On the Waterfront (1954) Elia Kazan
☐ Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Sergio Leone
☐ Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tournier
☐ Persona (1966) Ingmar Bergman
☐ Pink Flamingos (1972) John Waters
☑ Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
☑ Pulp Fiction (1994) Quentin Tarantino
☐ Rashomon (1950) Akira Kurosawa
☑ Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
☐ Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Nicholas Ray
☐ Red River (1948) Howard Hawks
☐ Repulsion (1965) Roman Polanski
☐ The Rules of the Game (1939) Jean Renoir
☐ Scarface (1932) Howard Hawks
☐ The Scarlet Empress (1934) Josef von Sternberg
☑ Schindler's List (1993) Steven Spielberg
☐ The Searchers (1956) John Ford
☐ The Seven Samurai (1954) Akira Kurosawa
☐ Singin' in the Rain (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
☐ Some Like It Hot (1959) Billy Wilder
☐ A Star Is Born (1954) George Cukor
☐ A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Elia Kazan
☐ Sunset Boulevard (1950) Billy Wilder
☑ Taxi Driver (1976) Martin Scorsese
☐ The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed
☐ Tokyo Story (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
☐ Touch of Evil (1958) Orson Welles
☐ The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) John Huston
☐ Trouble in Paradise (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
☑ Vertigo (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
☑ West Side Story (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
☐ The Wild Bunch (1969) Sam Peckinpah
☐ The Wizard of Oz (1939) Victor Fleming
This is a pretty good list, as lists go. There are a lot on that list that I have been meaning to see but (apparently) haven't. And there are quite a few that I don't give a rat's arse about. The author defends his choices here (and admits Apocalypse Now to the list, thank Dog).
Similarly, there's a lot of movies that I think should be on the list but aren't. That's fun too. Hello, no Lord of the Rings? No Bond flicks? (From Russia With Love is my favourite) The Matrix? No David Lynch movies? (either Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway, take your pick) L.A. Confidential? The Shining? A Pixar movie? (either Toy Story 2 or The Incredibles) And how could you overlook Police Academy 6?
What do you reckon? Are you "movie-literate"?
No David Lynch other than Blue Velvet, you mean :) But yeah, I’d rate Lost Highway above that (not sure I’d recommend Mulholland Drive to the average punter or the discerning connoisseur), but I believe Erasurehead or The Elephant Man are the definitive Lynches (ignoring the whole Twin Peaks thing).
As far as literacy, I’d say I come out about even: I’ve seen a handful you haven’t (The Wizard of Oz FTW!), but I haven’t seen some of the tripe you have :P
What I really want to know is what happened to Godfather III? Wasn’t it good enough for this list? And where’s The Dark Crystal? And where’s 1984/Brazil (they’re very similar for the most part, much to Terry Gilliam’s embarrassment, apparently)?
I’m also surprised Rashamon made the list but Yojimbo (the ‘inspiration’ for A Fistful of Dollars) didn’t.
Oh, and stay the hell away from Aguirre, the Wrath of God. That’s 3+ hours I’ll never see again. (Think about it: a german film about Conquistadors sailing up the Amazon in search of El Dorado, most of them dying and the rest going mad. On what level does that make compelling viewing?!)
Of course that’s Eraserhead, not Erasurehead. (a film about a bad UK band fan? It’ll be a blockbuster!)
(Blue Velvet) Whoops! Oh well I think of Blue Velvet more of a Denis Hopper vehicle than anything else…
(Tripe) About the only thing that I’ve seen on that list that would say is really crap is E.T..
(Gilliam) Well they have Holy Grail which is fair enough, although I probably would have chosen Life of Brian.