The Searchers Videos

As part of our look at various inconoclastic films and the influences that lead to them, here s a look at some of the films that helped form George Lucas Star Wars.Some great films here: Hidden Fortress directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshir

Summertime seems to be movie list-making time in just about every publication. I imagine it's because once you slap Chris Pine or Christian Bale onto a summer magazine cover, you're stuck waiting for the fall buzz to kick up ... or anxious film writers out there are hoping to remind audiences that they can ease the pain of mindless blockbusters with meat-and-potato classics. Either way, we get a lot of lists. Esquire has a particularly interesting one up, though. They've compiled a collection of 75 movies they feel every man should see in his lifetime, and go so far as to suggest they've all shaped American manhood in some fashion. Some of the choices are obvious classics: In the Heat of the Night, 12 Angry Men, Chinatown, The Godfather, North by Northwest, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The French Connection. Some are a little more on the forgotten side, like Fitzcarraldo and Run Silent, Run Deep. But some of the choices are a little questionable. Iron Man? Three Kings? Runaway Train? Lone Star? Enjoyable sure, but are they must watch classics? Did Lone Star really shape modern manhood? I'm pretty sure Iron Man didn't considering it came out oh, exactly one year ago. Surely Easy Rider or Death Wish should have two of those spots. Doesn't John McClane deserve a rank above Johnny Dangerously? No Goodfellas? Why only one John Wayne (The Searchers) and no Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck? Check out the list and ponder whether you think watching all 75 of these makes (or has made) a true man, as Esquire's version has me a little worried. Then come back and tell us what films you think are more essential than these. *And no, clearly no one thinks there's an essential list for women. We may have to put that one together here on Cinematical.Filed under: Classics, Fandom, Newsstand, Lists Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Classics, Fandom, Exhibition, Lists There are a few classic films that I simply refused to rent while growing up, specifically for the reason that I knew I should see them for the first time on a big screen. Of these, I managed to see both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner in a theater, while others, such as Lawrence of Arabia and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, were on television too often to ignore them on the small screen first. One film that I'm still dying to see in a theater is Terrence Malick's Badlands. A few years ago I actually went to a special screening of the film in Connecticut, but it was disappointingly (understatement) projected from a DVD copy. Then two months ago it played one show at NYC's IFC Center, but I had to miss it for another engagement. Last week Entertainment Weekly presented an article/photo gallery titled "23 Movies You'd Like to See on the Big Screen," which lists these kinds of films (there's actually many more than 23 cited), most of which should ONLY be seen on the big screen, as they were originally meant to be. The list includes obvious epic choices like 2001, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With the Wind, The Greatest Show on Earth and The Ten Commandments, as well as other classics, like Malick's Days of Heaven, Casablanca, Once Upon a Time in the West, Star Wars, High Society, Halloween, Singin' in the Rain, To Kill a Mockingbird, Psycho, Oklahoma!, The Music Man, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Searchers, Stagecoach and The French Connection.Continue reading Discuss: Movies to See ONLY on the Big Screen Permalink | Email this | Comments

In this variant of 1956's THE SEARCHERS, a tough frontier trapper tracks the young Cheyenne warrior who kidnapped his daughter.