Dr. Clifton Snider
English 100
California State University, Long Beach

Selected Film Titles


French poster for the 1972 Academy Award-
winning film, Cabaret, based on stories by
Christopher Isherwood and starring
Liza Minnelli, Michael York, and Joel Grey.

These titles are not in any special order.  Some of these movies are very good, others not so good.  You as a critic need to be the judge of that, just as you need to decide whether you can review the film in terms of the moral and/or spiritual issues it portrays.  If you can't, choose a different movie.  Also, if I happen to show the film to the class, please DO NOT choose it to review.  You'll be writing about that film anyway in class.  As always, you need to back up your thesis with specifics from the movie itself.  You may, if you give credit, use a secondary source as well.  Also, you're not necessarily limited to these titles.  However, you must see me if you wish to review a movie not listed here.  Remember, one strategy is to compare the film version to the book version if the film is based on a book.  Don't forget to cite the movie MLA style at the end of your paper.

    1. A League of their Own, Who's That Girl?, Desperately Seeking Susan, Truth or Dare, Evita (all films with Madonna)
    2. Lady Sings The Blues (Diana Ross's Academy Award-nominated performance as Billie Holiday)
    3. De-Lovely (great performances by Kevin Kline, as the gay composer, Cole Porter, and Ashley Judd, as his wife)
    4. Proteus (a South African film set in the 17-century about the doomed--because of deadly homophobia--love affair between a black man and a white man in prison)
    5. Prick Up Your Ears (the life of the British playwright, Joe Orton, who is killed by his lover who then kills himself)
    6. The Color Purple (the film version of Alice Walker's novel)
    7. Ray (the story of Ray Charles)
    8. The Doors (an Oliver Stone picture)
    9. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, The Hunger, The Man Who Fell To Earth (movies with David Bowie)
  10. Clockwork Orange (film version of the novel)
  11. Sophie's Choice (a young woman is forced to make an impossible choice in the Holocaust)
  12. Cabaret (see the poster above)
  13. Gandhi (on India's great peacemaker and holy man)
  14. Fame (young people want to become entertainment stars)
  15. Hair (film version of the 60s musical about a young man drafted into the army)
  16. Harold and Maude (a teenaged young man falls in love with a near 80-year-old woman)
  17. Ordinary People (a family in the Midwest deals with the death of one son and the attempted suicide of another, based on the novel by Judith Guest)
  18. The World According To Garp (the film version of the novel by John Irving)
  19. Personal Best (women athletes and a love affair between two of them)
  20. Torch Song Trilogy (a pre-AIDS play by Harvey Fierstein)
  21. Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, The Empire Strikes Back or Star Wars: The First Episode
  22. Close Encounters of the Third Kind or E.T.
  23. Death in Venice or The Damned (two films by the Italian director Visconti)
  24. Romeo and Juliet or Brother Sun, Sister Moon (about St. Francis of Assisi; both films by the Italian director Zeffirelli)
  25. The French Lieutenant's Woman (based on John Fowles' novel)
  26. Being There (based on Jerzy Kosinski's novel)
  27. Ray (the life of Ray Charles, played by Jamie Foxx)
  28. Silver City (a rather dull-headed, English-challenged son of a Colorado right-wing political dynasty, backed by corrupt big money, runs for governor; the satire applies to today's political scene)
  29. The Elephant Man, Dune, or Blue Velvet (films by David Lynch)
  30. My Fair Lady
  31. The Sound of Music
  32. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean; Witches of Eastwick; Silkwood; Mask; Moonstruck; Mermaids; or Tea with Mussolini (all films with Cher)
  33. A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, The Night of the Iguana,  The Rose Tattoo, or Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (films based on plays by Tennessee Williams)
  34. The Godfather, The Godfather II, or The Godfather III
  35. Apocalypse Now (Coppola's film about Vietnam, based loosely on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness)
  36. American Graffiti (teenagers in the 50's)
  37. All The President's Men (about the Watergate scandal)
  38. JFK (director Oliver Stone's take on the assassination of John F. Kennedy)
  39. Fanny and Alexander (Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's epic about growing up in Sweden)
  40. The Killing Fields (on Cambodia during the Pol Pot genocide)
  41. Paris Is Burning (drag queens in New York)
  42. My Own Private Idaho (River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves play prostitutes)
  43. The River Wild (a family in peril)
  44. The Silence of the Lambs (How well does this movie portray serial killers?)
  45. Thelma and Louise (women faced with important moral choices)
  46. The White Rose (students try to fight the Nazis in WWII); Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (tells the same story, basically, only it is based on more recently available documents)
  47. The Cotton Club (the famous Harlem night club)
  48. Cocoon or Cocoon II (science fiction movies on elderly people extending their lives beyond their human limits)
  49. Cold Mountain (a story about love set amidst the atrocities of the Civil War)
  50. Desperate Living, Pink Flamingos, Polyester, Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker, or Cecil B. Demented (all movies by John Waters)
  51. Midnight Express (a young American is given an especially harsh sentence for drugs in Turkey)
  52. La Bamba (the short life of Ritchie Valens, Latino rock star of the late 50's)
  53. Women in Love, The Fox, or The Virgin and the Gipsy (from the fiction of D. H. Lawrence)
  54. The Power of One (takes place in South Africa during the apartheid era)
  55. The Sheltering Sky (white people in North Africa)
  56. Coming Home (a U.S. soldier comes home paralyzed from Vietnam)
  57. A Passage To India,  A Room With A View, Maurice, or Howard's End (all adaptations from novels by E. M. Forster)
  58. Dances With Wolves (a white soldier joins an Indian tribe shortly after the Civil War)
  59. Little Big Man (the film version of the novel by Thomas Berger)
  60. Fried Green Tomatoes (the special relationship between two Southern women)
  61. Amadeus (film version of one playwright's view of Mozart and his nemesis)
  62. Belle Epoque (a Spanish comedy)
  63. The Object of My Affection (a gay man and a straight woman searching for love)
  64. Four Weddings and a Funeral
  65. Bent (the Nazi persecution of gays in the Holocaust)
  66. Europa Europa (a true story about a Jewish boy who joins the Hitler Youth to survive in Nazi Germany)
  67. Mean Creek (a moral dilemma faces some teenagers who had sought revenge against a middle school bully)
  68. Cookie's Fortune (two Southern women try to cover up the suicide of a relative, humorous and serious)
  69. The Beach (Can paradise be found on a remote island in Thailand?)
  70. Quiz Show (Robert Redford's examination of a quiz show scandal in the 50's)
  71. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee's examination of interracial relations in the inner city)
  72. 13 Days (the 1962 Cuban missile crisis)
  73. Shadow of the Vampire (an actual vampire is hired to play the vampire in the famous silent movie, Nosferatu)
  74. Before Night Falls (the true story of the Cuban writer, Reinaldo Arenas, persecuted by the Castro regime)
  75. Anatomy of a Hate Crime (the true story of the murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay college student)
  76. Traffic (an excellent examination of the so-called "War on Drugs")
  77. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (the Coen brothers' comic take on the Odyssey in the Depression-Era South)
  78. Hotel Rwanda (true story of the genocide in 1994 Rwanda)
  79. Gentleman's Agreement (a 1947 film starring Gregory Peck about anti-Semitism; won Best Picture Academy Award)
  80. Moulin Rouge (an over-the-top musical extravaganza; to find a serious moral and/or spiritual issue, however, is possible;  you'll have to think hard)
  81. The Deep End (a mother is faced with a difficult situation; a very good movie to discuss the effect of one wrong moral choice)
  82. Come Undone (Presque Rien) (a fine French film about emotional trauma in a family and about first love)
  83. Our Lady of the Assassins (La Virgen de los Sicarios) (set in Columbia, this movie about a writer returning to Medellín after 30 years makes a dynamic and moving statement about modern violence and the need for love and spiritual fulfillment)
  84. Boyz N the Hood (John Singleton's classic about African Americans growing up amidst the violence of L.A.)
  85. In the Bedroom (a middle-class couple in Maine deal with the murder of their only child and with the strains in their marriage)
  86. Circuit (a serious examination of gay circuit parties)
  87. The Road to Perdition (another morality tale based on mobsters; well done)
  88. Alexander (Oliver Stone's version of the life of Alexander the Great)
  89. Sebastian (a Norwegian film about the coming out of a teenager to his family and friends; very illuminating from the cultural standpoint)
  90. The Business of Fancy Dancing (a famous American Indian poet, who happens to be gay, returns to his reservation after 10 years to an equivocal welcome from his friends; written and directed by Sherman Alexie, who also wrote Smoke Signals)
  91. Bad Education (La Mala Educación), Pablo Almondóvar's multi-layered film noir set in his native Spain)
  92. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (a wonderful comedy that nevertheless deals with serious cultural, moral, and spiritual issues)
  93. Far from Heaven (racism and homophobia affect an affluent family of the late 1950s in Hartford, Conn.; a visually stunning film)
  94. The Laramie Project (on the murder of Matthew Shepard, based on the play of the same title)
  95. El Crimen del Padre Amaro (this melodramatic movie set in Mexico and based on an 1875 novel has many moral and spiritual issues in it)
  96. Ararat (about the 1915 Turkish genocide of its Armenian people;  it is also a tangle of other moral and spiritual issues)
  97. Windtalkers (about the Navajo code talkers of World War II, the film focuses on two such men and two other Marines assigned to "protect" them)
  98. Gangs of New York (brutal ethic and racial violence in mid-19th-century New York)
  99. Catch Me If You Can (based on actual events, a comedy with important moral and spiritual concerns)
100. Life As A House (a father builds a house with his rebellious teenaged son)
101. Frida (a fine biographical film about Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter)
102. The Hours (an excellent adaptation of the Michael Cunningham novel about Virginia Woolf and two other women, one from the 1950's and one from now, whose lives parallel, in some ways, the life of Woolf's character, Mrs. Dalloway)
103. Nicholas Nickleby (the latest, and very-well-done, adaptation of the Dickens novel)
104. Plata Quemada/Burnt Money (an Argentine movie about two male lovers and a heterosexual partner who get into big trouble after a robbery goes terribly wrong)
105. Blood Diamond (so-called "conflict" diamonds in Africa gotten by viciously vile means)
106. The Legend of Bagger Vance (a Southern golfer (played by Matt Damon) loses his "authentic swing" after traumatic experiences in World War I; he regains it with the help of a spiritual advisor (played by Will Smith))
107. Behind the Sun (a Brazilian movie about a young man caught between out-dated concepts of family honor and escape from his constricting environment)
108. The Pianist (a well-known Jewish pianist survives the Holocaust in Poland)
109. Talk to Her/Hable con Ella (Pablo Almodóvar's sensitive film about the friendship of two men caring for two women they love who are in comas)
110. Bend It Like Beckham (an East Indian teenager in England wants to play soccer; a great comedy that touches on a number of serious contemporary ethnic, gender, and sexual issues)
111. Get Real (coming out of an upper middle class English school boy)
112. X2: The X Men (shows what it feels like to be different from the majority) or X-Men 3
113. Finding Neverland (J. M. Barrie creates Peter Pan through the inspiration of his friendship with a widow and her four young sons)
114. Kinsey (the story of the famous pioneer sex researcher, Alfred Kinsey)
115. Saved (a light-hearted comedy about Christian fundamentalists set in a Christian high school)
116. Million Dollar Baby (a young woman becomes a champion boxer only to face tragedy)
117. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (an adaptation of Roald Dahl's book)
118. War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg's adaptation of H. G. Wells's famous sci-fi novel)
119. The Squid and the Whale (cleverly comical story of the two literary parents who divorce and their two boys)
120. Capote (the famous writer investigates a multiple murder in Kansas and writes his "nonfiction novel," In Cold Blood)
121. Beautiful Thing (two troubled working-class British teenagers find love)
122. Good Night and Good Luck (the legendary newsman, Edward R. Murrow, takes on the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy)
123. Marvin's Room (a family deals with a terminally ill patriarch)
124. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis's famous children's story)
125. Transamerica (a male to female transsexual discovers she fathered a son who needs her help; very well done road trip type of movie)
126. Munich (Steven Spielberg's version of the terrorists who killed 11 Israelis during the 1972 Olympics and the Israeli effort to revenge their deaths)
127. Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki's film about the effects of childhood molestation)
128. Undertow (two country boys flee their uncle who has just murdered their father)
129. Thank You For Smoking (satiric comedy about the smoking industry)
130. The Devil Wears Prada (satiric comedy about the fashion industry)
131. Peaceful Warrior (a mysterious wise old man teaches a young gymnast about life, based on the novel, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman)
132. An Inconvenient Truth (excellent documentary film about global warming, featuring Al Gore)
133. The History Boys (the film version of the Tony award winner for best drama about a group of students whose school is giving them special help in 1983 England to help them get into Oxford or Cambridge Universities)
134. Sophie Scholl (the Nazis execute college students for handing out leaflets that criticize the Nazi regime, a true story)
135. Mrs. Henderson Presents (a rich widow is allowed to have nude women on her theater stage during World War II)
136. Little Miss Sunshine (a little girl from Albuquerque, NM, participates in a beauty contest in California; the movie is this and much more)
137. Flags of Our Fathers (the story of the American troops who raised the flag on Iwo Jima during WWII and survived to serve as propaganda agents for the U.S. war effort, directed by Clint Eastwood)
138. Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood's companion film to Flags of Our Fathers tells the story from the Japanese point of view; he has said that, taken together, they are anti-war movies;  I agree--both are excellent.)
139. The Queen (Queen Elizabeth II and the death of Princess Diana)
140. Apocalypto (Mel Gibson's vision of Maya culture at the time just before the Spanish conquest)
141. Dreamgirls (the film version of the musical inspired by the saga of the Supremes)
142. The Good Shepherd (the CIA, both before and after its founding up to the mid-60's)
143. A Love to Hide (Un amour à taire) (a movie about how gays, as well as Jews, were persecuted during the Holocaust)
144. The Chumscrubber (trouble in suburban Southern California)
145. Touch of Pink (a romantic comedy about an English couple, one of them of East Indian ancestry and whose mother objects to their relationship;  her son is guided by the "spirit of Cary Grant," in the tradition of Bend It Like Beckham)
Dr. Clifton Snider

Additional Film Titles

BrokebackMt.Poster   

    1. Brokeback Mountain (the highly-acclaimed, Academy Award-winning film version of Annie Proulx's moving and ultimately tragic story about two young men who fall in love in Wyoming in 1963)
    2. The Birdcage (an American remake of the classic French film, La Cage aux Folles)
    3. Mrs. Henderson Presents (a wealthy widow includes nude women in the shows at London's Windmill Theatre even while the city is bombed by the Germans in WWII)
    4. Topsy Turvy (the Victorian composer and lyricist team, Gilbert and Sullivan)
    5. Stand by Me (Stephen King's story of youngsters looking for the body of a kid their own age)
    6. The Insider (fighting Big Tobacco)
    7. Pan's Labyrinth (excellent foreign film)
    8. Clan of the Cave Bear (a Cro-Magnon woman is raised by Neandertals in southern Europe)
    9. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood's Academy Award-winning film about retired gunfighters who try one last job)
  10. Bully (with the help of his girlfriend and others, a teenaged young man kills his "best" friend, who has bullied him for years)
  11. The People Vs. Larry Flynt
  12. The Loved One (a humorous satire about the funeral industry in Southern California, based on the Evelyn Waugh novel)
  13. Niagara, The Seven Year Itch, How to Marry a Millionaire, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The River of No Return,  Some Like It Hot, or The Misfits (all films with Marilyn Monroe)
  14. Bram Stoker's Dracula
  15. Interview with the Vampire (the film version of Anne Rice's novel about vampires with human issues)
  16. Billy Elliot (deals with, among other issues, the relationship between a father and his artistically gifted son)
  17. Reds (Warren Beatty's film about the life of an American communist in Russia)
  18. Portrait of a Lady (film version of the Henry James novel)
  19. The Importance of Being Earnest (the original film version of Oscar Wilde's masterpiece, a comical satire about the late Victorian upper class, much better than the recent film from 2000)
  20. Bowling for Columbine (winner of the Academy Award for best documentary of 2002, an examination of America's culture of violence and guns)
  21. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring or The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers or The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (what moral/spiritual concerns/values does this epic movie deal with?)
  22. Sling Blade
  23. Shine (like Billy Elliot, this film deals with, among other issues, the relationship between a father and his artistically gifted son)
  24. Selena (the life of the slain Tejano star)
  25. No Country for Old Men (film version of the novel by Cormac McCarthy)
  26. Sweeney Todd (Tim Burton's version of the Stephen Sondheim musical with Johnny Depp)
  28. Dead Man Walking (deals with capital punishment)
  29. Flirting With Disaster (a comedy about one adopted man's search for his biological parents)
  30. Love! Valour! Compassion! (film version of the play)
  31. House of Sand and Fog (an alcoholic-addict loses her house because of non-payment of taxes; an Iranian immigrant, seeking to rebuild his family finances, buys the house at a quarter of the market price; the film portrays many moral and spiritual issues)
  32. Amores Perros (dogs play an important role in this often violence but powerful Spanish-language film)
  33. Farewell My Concubine (love in Communist China)
  34. Old Gringo (based on the Carlos Fuentes novel)
  35. The Lion King (Disney's take on the animal kingdom)
  36. There Will Be Blood (loosely based on an Upton Sinclair novel)
  37. My Best Friend's Wedding (a comedy that involves moral/spiritual issues but don't take it too seriously!)
  38. Ulee's Gold (a father's choices)
  39. Shall We Dance? (highly praised film from Japan)
  40. Fatal Attraction (a thriller about an adulterous affair)
  42. About Schmidt (a retired insurance executive tries to find meaning in his life)
  43. The Puppet Masters (science fiction)
  44. William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet
  45. The First Wives Club (a feminist movie)
  46. A Time to Kill (Is it morally right to kill when you believe you won't receive justice through the courts?)
  47. L'America (Albanians fleeing to Italy)
  48. Il Postino (an Italian movie featuring the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda)
  49. Jane Eyre (any of the versions)
  50. Fargo (a staged kidnapping gone terribly wrong)
  51. Wilde (the life of Britain's great wit and playwright of the late 19th century)
  52. Stonewall (the beginning of the modern gay liberation movement)
  53. Basketball Diaries (a would-be writer becomes seriously addicted to drugs)
  54. It's My Party (a man dying of AIDS throws a last party for himself)
  55. The Sum of Us (Russell Crowe plays a young gay man whose father tries to find him a mate, an Australian movie)
  56. Leaving Las Vegas (Nicolas Cage in his Academy-Award winning performance as an alcoholic who wants to die)
  57. Sense and Sensibility (film version of the Jane Austen novel)
  58. White Squal (a ship-board high school in the 60's on a perilous voyage)
  59. Mi Familia/My Family (saga of a Mexican family in Los Angeles)
  60. Like Water For Chocolate (film version of the Laura Esquivel novel)
  61. Happy Endings (a multi-layered comedy with a varied cast of characters)
  62. Schindler's List (Spielberg's Academy Award-winning movie about the Holocaust)
  63. Black Robe (French Jesuits and First Nation peoples in 17th-century French Quebec--far better than Dances with Wolves)
  64. Total Eclipse (the story of the French poets, Rimbaud and Verlaine, starring Leonardo di Caprio)
  65. Wild Reeds (young love in the south of France)
  66. Powder (a young man is a scapegoat because he is different from everybody else)
  67. Titanic (the famous disaster story framed by a heterosexual love story between a working-class young man and an upper-class young woman)
  68. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
  69. Flawless (a homophobic heterosexual, played by Robert de Niro, is forced to ask for help from a homosexual transvestite, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman)
  70. Threesome (a menage à trois in a college dorm)
  72. Pan's Labyrinth (a young girl in 1944 Fascist Spain and her parallel fantasy world)
  73. In and Out (a high school teacher is "outed" by a former student accepting an Academy Award)
  74. The Sixth Sense (a boy who sees dead people)
  75. American Beauty (a middle-class heterosexual man goes through a mid-life crisis)
  76. Ma Vie En Rose (an excellent film, warm and amusing, about a boy who believes he's really a girl)
  77. Magnolia (several stories going on at once that involve moral/spiritual issues)
  78. 54 (the famous disco of the late 70's)
  79. Cruel Intentions (a black comedy based on Dangerous Liasons)
  80. Little Boy Blue (a young man suffers the affects from his Vietnam veteran father's psychic wounds)
  81. Saving Private Ryan (soldiers search for another soldier to return him to the U.S. after all his brothers have been killed in WWII)
  82. The Talented Mr. Ripley (a complex young American commits murder in the Italy of the 50's and assumes the identity of his victim)
  83. Good Will Hunting (the movie whose script won Ben Affleck and Matt Damon an Academy Award)
  84. Shakespeare in Love (a fantasy about how Romeo and Juliet was created)
  85. A Simple Plan (What would you do if you found thousands of dollars in a crashed plane?)
  86. Smoke Signals (an excellent film about Native Americans by Native Americans)
  87. Apt Pupil (a Stephen King story about a teenager who discovers a former Nazi leaving incognito in his neighborhood)
  88. Gods and Monsters (the story of the man who directed the original Frankenstein movie)
  89. The Shawkshank Redemption (one of Stephen King's better film adaptations)
  90. Mississippi Masala (interracial love in modern Mississippi)
  91. Pleasantville (parodic comedy about Middle America in the 50's)
  92. Boys Don't Cry (Hilary Swank won the Academy Award for her performance as the real life transsexual, Brandon Teena)
  93. Happy, Texas (a comedy about two heterosexual criminals forced to impersonate two gay men in a small town in Texas)
  94. Little Voice (excellent British comedy about a young woman who has a genius for impersonating famous singers)
  95. Santitos (excellent Mexican movie, funny and serious)
  96. Like It Is (an English bare-fist boxer tries to come to terms with his feelings for another man)
  97. King of the Gypsies (a rare glimpse at a persecuted people)
  98. Secrets and Lies (an adopted woman seeks her biological mother)
  99. Trick (a comedy about a potential one-night stand that turns into something more)
100. Gladiator (Can moral and/or spiritual values play a part in a blockbuster movie about violence in the Roman Empire?)
102. Almost Famous (excellent movie about a 15-year-old music reporter assigned by Rolling Stone to cover an emerging rock band in the 70's)
103. The Mission (Catholic missionaries in colonial South America)
104. The Milagro Beanfield War (a small New Mexican town fights to retain its land rights)
105. Twin Falls, Idaho (conjoined twins deal with love, life, and death)
106. Erin Brockovich (a young mother fights corporate America for safe water)
107. Two Hands (an Australian movie about a young man who gets into trouble trying to do a job for some local mobsters)
108. An Ideal Husband (loosely based on the play by Oscar Wilde)
109. All The Pretty Horses (a coming-of-age story set in Texas and Mexico)
110. Cast Away (a workaholic is forced to survive over four years alone on a tropical island after a plane wreck)
111. The Shipping News (the film version of Annie Proulx's novel)
112. The Talented Mr. Ripley (one man changes identity with another through violence; a complicated character study and a good tale as well)
113. Remember the Titans (integrating a high school football team in the South of about three decades ago)
114. The Truman Show (raises questions about free will and exploitation for profit)
115. La Vie En Rose (the life of the great French singer, Edith Piaf)
116. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (mainly spiritual issues about loyalty, love, and being true to oneself--with a lot of martial arts action too!)
117. Cider House Rules (excellent movie that concerns such issues as abortion, incest, unwed motherhood, and love, both paternal and romantic)
118. The Motorcycle Diaries (the young "Che" Guevara tours South America with a friend)
119. The Man Who Wasn't There (the Coen brothers' comical, existential film noir, starring Billy Bob Thornton, set in Santa Rosa, CA, after WWII)
120. Monster's Ball (another film starring Billy Bob Thornton, as well as Halle Berry; deals with a number of important issues, such as the death penalty, racism, poverty, and parent-child relationships)
121. Y Tu Mamá También (an hilarious coming-of-age tale of two young Mexicans)
122. Insomnia (either the original Norwegian film or the American remake;  an aging detective is faced with serious moral decisions)
123. Taboo (a Japanese movie about the 19th-century samurai and an attractive but fierce 18-year-old recruit whose sexual magnetism disturbs the militia he has joined)
124. Lagaan (an Indian epic "Bollywood" film about colonial injustice in 19th-century India)
125. Adaptation (a complicated but highly entertaining film about a screenwriter attempting to write a script from a book called The Orchid Thief; the real-life screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, who wrote the script for the movie, has created a fictional twin brother, and both brothers are played by Nicholas Cage)
126. Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War (various experts look at the specious reasons given by Bush and his foreign policy team for the Iraq War)
127. The Matrix Reloaded (sequel to The Matrix, with a lot more action and philosophic speculation)
128. Raising Victor Vargas (a Dominican grandmother, two grandsons, and a granddaughter, and the children's struggles to grow up, particularly the title character, in urban America)
129. Luther (the story of Martin Luther, probably the most important leader of the Reformation)
130. Fahrenheit 9/11 (starting with the Republican theft of the 2000 presidential election, the movie shows how George W. Bush and his foreign policy war-makers lied to the American public to justify going to war with Iraq)
131. Outfoxed (exposes the far-right bias and lack of professional journalism on the Fox News Network)
132. Breaking the Silence (more on the lies from both Bush and Tony Blair on the Iraq war)
133. Cold Mountain (moral and spiritual issues of the Civil War, deals particularly with poor Southern whites who volunteer to fight)
134. The Story of the Weeping Camel (Mongolians try to save a white sheep whose mother rejects it)
135. Control Room (documentary on Al-Jazeera, the Arab news network)
136. The Manchurian Candidate (remake of the Cold War movie that applies to today)
137. House of Sand and Fog (conflict over a house near San Francisco between a young American woman and Iranian immigrants)
138. Monster (examines the sad and violent life of a woman serial killer in Florida, based on a true story)
139. Ladies in Lavender (two elderly English sisters discover a shipwrecked teenager on the beach and one of them falls in love with him.  He has aspirations to go to America as a violinist)
140. Notes on a Scandal (another great performance by Judy Dench)
141. Letters from Iwo Jima (the battle from the Japanese point of view)
142. Sicko (the shame of the U.S. health care system)
143. Hairspray (the musical based on the John Waters movie)
144. Paris, Je t'aime (cinematic vignettes by various directors)
145. The History Boys (the film version of the Tony-award-winning play)
146. Rendition (the U.S. practice of sending people secretly and without due process of law to other countries where they can be tortured)

Last updated:  21 January 2008


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