Mario Villalobos

101 Films

  • Notes

Today was my last day at work before the holiday break, giving me five days to rest and recuperate, and for some reason, I had a strong urge to watch films this week. In the spring of 2004, I was accepted to the USC School of Cinema-Television (now known as the USC School of Cinematic Arts), and I majored in Writing for Screen and Television. As part of my acceptance package, my advisor in the writing program sent us this list of 101 films. I don’t remember the context for the list, but I was very excited for school to start that I spent most of the summer watching as many of these movies as I could.

At the time, our family had a Netflix subscription, but back then, it was a subscription to rent DVDs as Netflix didn’t have their streaming service setup yet (that was around 2007). We had the 3-DVD plan, and remarkably, they had most of the movies on this list. I didn’t quite watch every movie, but I was close. I would watch a movie and immediately seal it in that big red envelope and go on to the next movie. I remember spending an afternoon adding as many of these movies to our Netflix queue, and oh man, the nostalgia.

I thought again about these films, and thankfully, I had a scanned copy of it in my files. Scanning this list again brings back so many great memories from that summer. I still remember that excitement I felt, of watching these movies, of getting to go to the best film school in the world, of meeting fellow film nerds, of going to Los Angeles and living on my own, of starting my life. There are some amazing films here, and I am eager to check them all out on all the streaming services I now subscribe to. Man, to be my eighteen year old self again in this day and age…

Without further ado, here is the list of movies my writing advisor sent us all those years ago. I warn you, this is a pretty banger list:

  • African Queen
  • All About Eve
  • Amadeus
  • American Grafitti
  • Andrei Rublev
  • Annie Hall
  • The Apu Trilogy
  • Babette’s Feast
  • Battle of Algiers
  • The Bicycle Thief
  • Black Orpheus
  • Blue
  • Burnt by the Sun
  • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
  • Casablanca
  • Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis)
  • Chinatown
  • Cinema Paradiso
  • Citizen Kane
  • Cool Hand Luke
  • Crimes and Misdemeanors
  • Cyrano de Bergerac
  • Dekalog
  • Dersu Uzala
  • Diner
  • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
  • Dog Day Afternoon
  • Eat, Drink, Man, Woman
  • 8 1/2
  • The Exorcist
  • Fantasia
  • Farewell, My Concubine
  • A Fish Called Wanda
  • Five Easy Pieces
  • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
  • The General
  • The Godfather I & II
  • The Gold Rush
  • Gone With the Wind
  • Grand Illusion
  • Harlan County, U.S.A.
  • High Noon
  • It Happened One Night
  • Ju Dou
  • Juliet of the Spirits
  • Kramer vs. Kramer
  • La Dolce Vita
  • The Last Emperor
  • La Strada
  • Lawrence of Arabia
  • Like Water for Chocolate
  • A Man for All Seasons
  • Manhattan
  • MASH
  • Midnight Cowboy
  • Murmur of the Heart
  • Nashville
  • Network
  • Ninotchka
  • Notorious
  • On the Waterfront
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
  • Out of Africa
  • Paths of Glory
  • Patton
  • The Producers
  • Psycho
  • Raise the Red Lantern
  • Raging Bull
  • Ran
  • Rashomon
  • Rear Window
  • The Red Balloon
  • Remains of the Day
  • The River
  • Roman Holiday
  • The Searchers
  • The Seventh Seal
  • Shane
  • Shoeshine
  • The Sorrow and the Pity
  • Spellbound
  • Stagecoach
  • A Star is Born (1937)
  • Star Wars
  • Sunset Boulevard
  • The Third Man
  • The Tin Drum
  • A Touch of Class
  • Triumph of the Will
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  • Unforgiven
  • The Verdict
  • White
  • Wild Strawberries
  • The Wizard of Oz
  • Woman in the Dunes
  • Woman of the Year
  • Zelig