1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

July 9th, 2010 | POSTED BY Edward Davidson

So I recently bought the book 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE.

An early goal in my lifetime was to be able to go to the Literature section in the bookstore, point to the whole section, and say “I read that”. You know the drill, actually read everything on the college recommended reading list from High School? Well, I’ve gotten older, gotten wiser, and realised that is never going to happen. I’ve read some of them, but I’m never going to make it through everything there.
However, being an illiterate, fat, lazy, navel gazing American, I do love me some movies.
I also LOVE lists! I love top 10 lists, top 100 lists, best of the year lists, worst of the year lists, etc. Can’t get enough of them. So this book is going to be a great bible for me. You can argue whether some of the films belong in there, and others don’t (“How could they leave ‘blank’ off the list?!” “Why is Mad Max on their list but The Road Warrior is not?!” and so on). But this book is a fun massive tome with excellent movie rental suggestions and what I would think would be the Mt. Everest of an achievement. To be able to say “I sat on my ass and watched everything listed here” would be something.
The closest I’ve come to this undertaking before is to make myself watch every movie that has ever won the Best Picture Oscar. I did that so I could say what was the worst movie to win the Oscar (Tom Jones) and what was the best (too many to list).

So, on to the metrics: The volume I have now actually is the 5th edition of 6 editions that have been published yearly.  Every year, they add a few movies and take a few off to keep the list at 1001.  Also, they do some odd combining occasionally (For example, in earlier editions the first Lord of the Rings movie was it’s own listing, as were the other two, but now they have combined them all into one movie.  Yet the original Star Wars movies are all listed separately.)  Because of these multiple editions, to have seen everything they have ever listed would actually be 1,056 movies to see before you die.

As of this writing, I have seen 463 of these films over my lifetime.  So I’m not even halfway to dead yet!  Yay!  In 2010, I have seen or re-watched 12 of these movies, I currently own 96 of them on video, and 221 of them that I do not own are available on Netflix streaming right now.  My goal is to use the cheap/free means at my disposal to see how many more I can get through. 

I plan making updates here when I’ve seen stuff on this list, even if I’m watching it again.  Some of these I just want to watch with the kids again, or they are just worth seeing over and over.  But I hope to make some headway.  It’s a Quixotic fantasy to think I’ll make it all the way through the list, but what the hell.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, DVDs