Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 25- Casablanca

1942 Film

8.7/10-IMDb

Release date: November 26, 1942 (USA)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Running time: 102 minutes

Featured song: As Time Goes By

Screenplay: Howard E. Koch, Philip G. Epstein, Julius J. Epstein

Description

It is early December 1941. American expatriate Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is the proprietor of an upscale nightclub and gambling den in Casablanca. "Rick's Café Américain" attracts a varied clientele: Vichy French, Italian, and German officials; refugees desperate to reach the still neutral United States; and those who prey on them. Although Rick professes to be neutral in all matters, it is later revealed he ran guns to Ethiopia and fought on the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War.

From left to right: Henreid, Bergman, Rains and Bogart

Petty crook Ugarte (Peter Lorre) shows up and boasts to Rick of "letters of transit" obtained by murdering two German couriers. The papers allow the bearer to travel freely around German-controlled Europe and to neutral Portugal, and are thus almost priceless to the refugees stranded in Casablanca. Ugarte plans to sell them at the club later that night. Before he can, however, he is arrested by the local police under the command of Vichy Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), an unabashedly corrupt official. Ugarte dies in custody without revealing that he had entrusted the letters to Rick.

At this point, the reason for Rick's bitterness—his former lover, Norwegian Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman)—walks into his establishment. Upon spotting Rick's friend and house pianist, Sam (Dooley Wilson), Ilsa asks him to play "As Time Goes By". Rick storms over, furious that Sam has disobeyed his order never to perform that song, and is stunned to see Ilsa. She is accompanied by her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a renowned fugitive Czech Resistance leader. They need the letters to escape to America, where he can continue his work. German Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) has come to Casablanca to see that Laszlo does not succeed.

When Laszlo makes inquiries, Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet), a major underworld figure and Rick's friendly business rival, divulges his suspicion that Rick has the letters. In private, Rick refuses to sell at any price, telling Laszlo to ask his wife the reason. They are interrupted when Strasser leads a group of officers in singing "Die Wacht am Rhein". Laszlo orders the house band to play "La Marseillaise". When the band looks to Rick, he nods his head. Laszlo starts singing, alone at first, then patriotic fervor grips the crowd and everyone joins in, drowning out the Germans. In retaliation, Strasser has Renault close the club.

That night, Ilsa confronts Rick in the deserted café. When he refuses to give her the letters, she threatens him with a gun, but then confesses that she still loves him. She explains that when they first met and fell in love in Paris, she believed that her husband had been killed attempting to escape from a concentration camp. Later, while preparing to flee with Rick from the imminent fall of the city to the German army, she learned that Laszlo was alive and in hiding. She left Rick without explanation to tend her ill husband.

Bogart and Bergman

The lovers are reconciled. Rick agrees to help, leading her to believe that she will stay with him when Laszlo leaves. When Laszlo unexpectedly shows up, having narrowly escaped a police raid on a Resistance meeting, Rick has waiter Carl (S. K. Sakall) spirit Ilsa away.

Laszlo, aware of Rick's love for Ilsa, tries to persuade him to use the letters to take her to safety. When the police arrest Laszlo on a minor, trumped-up charge, Rick convinces Renault to release him by promising to set him up for a much more serious crime: possession of the letters of transit. To allay Renault's suspicions, Rick explains he and Ilsa will be leaving for America.

When Renault tries to arrest Laszlo as arranged, Rick forces him at gunpoint to assist in their escape. At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa board the plane to Lisbon with her husband, telling her she would regret it if she stayed, "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

Strasser, tipped off by Renault, drives up alone. Rick kills him when he tries to intervene. When the police arrive, Renault pauses, then tells them to "round up the usual suspects." Renault suggests to Rick that they join the Free French at Brazzaville as they walk away into the fog.

. Wikipedia

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Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 24- Once Upon a Time in the West

1968 Film

8.7/10-IMDb

98%-Rotten Tomatoes

Release date: May 28, 1969 (USA)

Director: Sergio Leone

Music composed by: Ennio Morricone

Awards: David di Donatello for Best Producer

Screenplay: Sergio Leone, Sergio Donati

Description

The film portrays two conflicts that take place around Flagstone, a fictional town in the American Old West: a land battle related to construction of a railroad, and a mission of vengeance against a cold-blooded killer. The main storyline revolves around a struggle for Sweetwater, a piece of land near Flagstone containing the region's only water source. The land was bought by Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), who foresaw that the railroad would have to pass through that area to provide water for the steam locomotives. When railroad tycoon Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) learns of this, he sends his hired gun Frank (Henry Fonda) to simply intimidate McBain to move off the land, but Frank instead kills McBain and his three children, planting evidence on the scene to frame the bandit Cheyenne (Jason Robards) and his gang. It appears the land has no owner; however, a former prostitute (Claudia Cardinale), arrives from New Orleans, and reveals she is Jill McBain, Brett's wife, who married him previously, and she is the owner of the land.

Meanwhile, a mysterious harmonica-playing gunman (Charles Bronson), whom Cheyenne later dubs "Harmonica", pursues Frank. In the film's opening scene, Harmonica kills three men sent by Frank to kill him, and, in a roadhouse on the way to Sweetwater, he informs Cheyenne that the three gunfighters he killed appeared to be posing as Cheyenne's men. Sometime later, Harmonica kills two men sent by Frank to kill Jill.

Back at Sweetwater, construction materials are delivered to build a railroad station and a small town. Harmonica explains to Cheyenne that Jill will lose Sweetwater unless the station is built by the time the track's construction crews reach that point, and Cheyenne puts his men to work building it.

Meanwhile, Frank turns against Morton, who wanted to make a deal with Jill. Frank's betrayal is made easy by the fact that Morton is crippled. After coercing her into sex, Frank forces Jill to sell the property in an auction. He tries to buy the farm cheaply by intimidating the other bidders, but Harmonica arrives, holding Cheyenne at gunpoint, and makes a much higher bid based on his reward money for delivering Cheyenne to the authorities. Harmonica rebuffs an offer by Frank to buy the farm off him for one dollar more than he paid at the auction. Immediately after, some of Frank's men try to kill Frank, having been paid by Morton to turn against him, but — much to Jill's outrage — Harmonica helps Frank kill them in order to save that privilege for himself.

After Morton and the rest of Frank's men are killed in a battle with Cheyenne's gang, Frank goes to Sweetwater to confront Harmonica. On two occasions, Frank has asked Harmonica who he is, but both times Harmonica refused to answer him. Instead, he mysteriously quoted names of men Frank has murdered. This time, Harmonica says he will reveal who he is "Only at the point of [Frank] dying". The two men position themselves for a duel, at which point Harmonica's motive for revenge is revealed in a flashback: When Harmonica was a boy, a younger Frank, already a cruel bandit, forced him to balance his adult brother on his shoulders while his brother had a noose around his neck. As the boy struggled to support his brother's weight, Frank stuffed a harmonica in his mouth and told him to play for his brother. Harmonica finally collapses, and his brother dies. The sound of breathing in and out of a harmonica is the basis for the character's theme throughout the film.

Harmonica draws first and shoots Frank, and when Frank again asks who he is, he puts the harmonica in Frank's mouth. Frank nods weakly in recognition and dies. With Frank dead, Harmonica and Cheyenne say goodbye to Jill, who is supervising construction of the train station as the track-laying crews reach Sweetwater. Cheyenne collapses, revealing that he had been fatally shot during the fight with Frank's gang by tycoon Morton. The work train arrives, Jill carrying water to the rail workers, and Harmonica rides away with Cheyenne's body.

. Wikipedia

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Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 23- The Silence of the Lambs

1991 Film

8.7/10-IMDb

94%-Rotten Tomatoes

4.5/5-Amazon.com

Release date: February 14, 1991 (USA)

Director: Jonathan Demme

Sequel: Hannibal

Screenplay: Ted Tally

Prequels: Hannibal Rising, Red Dragon

Description

Clarice Starling (Foster) is pulled from her training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia, by Jack Crawford (Glenn) of the Bureau's Behavioral Science Unit. He tasks her with interviewingHannibal Lecter (Hopkins), a former psychiatrist and incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer, believing Lecter's insight might be useful in the pursuit of a serial killer nicknamed "Buffalo Bill" (Levine), who skins his female victims' corpses.

Starling travels to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where she is led by Frederick Chilton (Heald) to Lecter's solitary quarters. Although initially pleasant and courteous, Lecter grows impatient with Starling's attempts at "dissecting" him and rebuffs her. As she is leaving, one of the prisoners flicks semen at her. Lecter, who considers this act "unspeakably ugly", calls Starling back and tells her to seek out an old patient of his. This leads her to a storage shed where she discovers a man's severed head. She returns to Lecter, who tells her that the man is linked to Buffalo Bill. He offers to profile Buffalo Bill on the condition that he be transferred away from Chilton, whom he detests.

When Buffalo Bill kidnaps a U.S. Senator's daughter, Catherine Martin, Crawford authorizes Starling to offer Lecter a fake deal promising a prison transfer if he provides information that helps find Buffalo Bill and rescue the abductee. Instead, Lecter begins a game of quid pro quo with Starling, offering comprehensive clues and insights about Buffalo Bill if Starling will give him information about her own past, something she was advised not to do. Chilton secretly records the conversation and reveals Starling's deal as a sham before offering to transfer Lecter in exchange for a deal of Chilton's own making. Lecter agrees and is flown to Memphis, Tennessee, where he reveals personal information on Buffalo Bill to federal agents.

As the manhunt begins, Starling visits Lecter at his special cell in a Tennessee courthouse and confronts him with her decryption of the name he provided ("Louis Friend", an anagram of "iron sulfide", also known as fool's gold). Lecter refuses Starling's pleas for the truth and forces her to recount her traumatic childhood. She tells him how she was orphaned and relocated to a relative's farm in Montana, where she discovered a lamb slaughterhouse and even made a failed attempt to rescue one of them. Lecter gives her back the case files on Buffalo Bill after their conversation is interrupted by Chilton and the police who escort her from the building. Later that evening, Lecter kills his guards, escapes from his cell and disappears.

Starling analyzes Lecter's annotations to the case files and realizes that Buffalo Bill knew his first victim personally. Starling travels to the victim's hometown and discovers that Buffalo Bill was a tailor, with dresses and dress patterns identical to the patches of skin removed from each of his victims. She telephones Crawford to inform him that Buffalo Bill is trying to fashion a "woman suit" of real skin, but Crawford is already en route to make an arrest, having cross-referenced Lecter's notes with hospital archives and finding a man named Jame Gumb, who once applied unsuccessfully for a sex-change operation. Starling continues interviewing friends of Buffalo Bill's first victim in Ohio while Crawford leads an F.B.I. tactical team to Gumb's address inIllinois. The house in Illinois is empty and Starling is led to the house of "Jack Gordon", who she realizes is actually Jame Gumb. She pursues him into his multi-room basement, where she discovers that Catherine is still alive, but trapped in a dry well. After turning off the basement lights, Gumb stalks Starling in the dark with night-vision goggles but gives his position away when he cocks his revolver; Starling turns around just in time and kills him.

Some time later at her FBI Academy graduation party, Starling receives a phone call from Lecter, who is at an airport in Bimini. He assures her that he does not plan to pursue her and asks her to return the favor, which she says she cannot do. Lecter then hangs up the phone, saying that he is "having an old friend for dinner" and begins following a newly-arrived Chilton before disappearing into the crowd.

. Wikipedia

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Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 22- Se7en

1995 Film

8.7/10-IMDb

84%-Rotten Tomatoes

Release date: September 22, 1995 (USA)

Director: David Fincher

Screenplay: Andrew Kevin Walker

Cinematography: Darius Khondji

Description

In an unidentified city of near-constant rain and urban decay, the soon-to-be retiring Detective William R. Somerset (Freeman) is partnered with short-tempered Detective David Mills (Pitt) who recently transferred to the department.

The detectives investigate a series of murders relating to the seven deadly sins, such as an obese man who was forced to feed himself to death, representing "Gluttony." They find clues at each crime scene related to other deaths, and believe they are chasing a serial killer. A set of fingerprints found at the scene of the "Greed" murder, the fatal bloodletting of a rich attorney, leads them to an apartment where they find an emaciated man strapped to a bed. Though he initially appears to be dead, it soon is discovered that the man has been kept alive and entirely immobile by the killer for exactly one year to the day; a drug dealer and child molester before his captivity, this victim represents "Sloth". Though unable to learn anything from the insensate victim, the detectives agree that the killer has planned these crimes for more than a year.

Somerset is eventually invited to meet Mills' wife, Tracy (Paltrow), who is unhappy with Mills' recent move to the city. Somerset becomes Tracy's confidante, and she meets with him after the first few murders. Upon learning that she is pregnant but has not told her husband, Somerset confides in her his fear that the city is no place to start a family, and reveals that he almost married years earlier, but it never happened. Somerset advises her to not tell Mills if she plans to have an abortion; otherwise, if she decides to keep the child, "spoil that kid every chance you get".

Using library records, Somerset and Mills track down a man named John Doe (Kevin Spacey), who has frequently checked out books related to the deadly sins. When Doe finds the detectives approaching his apartment, he opens fire on them and flees, chased by Mills. Eventually, Doe gains the upper hand and holds Mills at gunpoint, but then abruptly leaves. Investigation of Doe's apartment finds handwritten volumes of his irrational judgments and clues leading to another potential victim, but no fingerprints. They arrive too late to find their "Lust" victim, a prostitute killed by an unwilling man wearing a bladed S&M device, forced by Doe to simultaneously rape and kill her. Some time later, they investigate the death of a young model whose face had been mutilated. Having chosen to kill herself rather than live with a disfigured face, she is the victim of "Pride".

As they return to the police station, Doe appears to them and offers himself for arrest, with the blood of the model and an unidentified victim on his hands. They find out that he has been cutting the skin off his fingers to avoid leaving fingerprints. Through his lawyer, Doe claims he will lead the two detectives to the last two bodies and confess to the crimes, or otherwise will plead insanity. Though Somerset is worried, Mills agrees to the demand. Doe directs the two detectives to a remote desert area far from the city; along the way, he claims that God told him to punish the wicked and reveal the world for the awful place that it is. He also makes cryptic comments toward Mills, much to his annoyance.

After arriving at the location, a delivery van approaches; Somerset intercepts the driver, leaving Mills and Doe alone. The driver hands over a package he was instructed to deliver at precisely this time and location. While Mills holds Doe at gunpoint, Doe mentions how much he admires him, but does not say why. Somerset opens the package and recoils in horror at the sight of the contents. He races back to warn Mills not to listen to Doe, but the killer reveals that the box contains Tracy's head. Doe claims to represent the sin of "Envy"; he was envious of Mills' normal life, and killed Tracy after failing to "play husband" with her. He then taunts the distraught Mills with the knowledge that Tracy was pregnant. Somerset is unable to contain Mills as he kills Doe by shooting him repeatedly, becoming the embodiment of "Wrath". After Mills is taken away, Somerset is asked where he will be; he replies, "around".

With the sun setting over the desert, Somerset quotes Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls: "'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."

. Wikipedia

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Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 21- City of God

2002 Film

8.7/10-IMDb

90%-Rotten Tomatoes

Release date: January 17, 2003 (USA)

Director: Fernando Meirelles

Prequel: Golden Gate

Sequel: City of Men

Language: Brazilian Portuguese

Description

Chickens are being prepared for a meal when a chicken escapes and an armed gang chases after it in a favela called the Cidade de Deus ("City of God"). The chicken stops between the gang and a young man named Rocket (Buscapé), who believes that the gang wants to kill him. A flashback traces Rocket, the narrator, back to the 1960s.

Three impoverished thieves known as the "Tender Trio" – Shaggy, Clipper, and Goose – rob and loot business owners; Goose is Rocket's brother. The thieves split part of the loot with the citizens of the City, and are protected by them in return. Several younger boys idolize the trio and one, Li'l Dice (Dadinho), convinces them to hold up a motel and rob its occupants. The gang agree but, resolving not to kill anyone, tell Li'l Dice to serve as lookout. They give him a gun and tell him to fire a warning shot if the police arrive but an unsatisfied Li'l Dice fires a warning shot mid-robbery and guns down the motel inhabitants once the gang have run off. The massacre brings the attention of the police, forcing the trio to split up: Clipper joins the church, Shaggy is shot by the police while trying to escape, and Goose is shot by Li'l Dice after taking the thieving boy's money while his friend Benny (Bené) watches.

Later in the '70's. Rocket has joined a group of young hippies. He enjoys photography, and likes one girl, but his attempts to get close to her are ruined by a group of petty criminal kids known as "The Runts". Li'l Dice now calls himself "Li'l Zé" ("Zé Pequeno"), and along with Benny has established a drug empire by eliminating all of the competition, except for one dealer named Carrot, and forcing Carrot's manager Blackie (Neguinho) to work for him instead.

A relative peace has come over the City of God under the reign of Li'l Zé, who avoids police attention by having an initiate kill a Runt. Zé plans to kill Carrot, but Benny talks him out of it.

Eventually, Benny and his girlfriend decide to leave the City, but during the farewell party Zé is distracted, and Blackie accidentally kills Benny while trying to shoot Li'l Zé. As Benny was the only man holding Zé back from taking over Carrot's business, his death leaves Zé unchecked and Carrot kills Blackie for endangering his life.

Following Benny's death, Zé beats up a peaceful man named Knockout Ned and rapes Ned's girlfriend. After Ned's brother stabs Zé, his gang retaliates by killing his brother and firing on Ned's house and killing his uncle. Ned, looking for revenge, sides with Carrot and eventually a war breaks out between Carrot and Zé.

As the '80's begin, both sides enlist more "soldiers", with Zé providing weapons for the Runts and eventually the reason for the war is forgotten. One day, Zé has Rocket take photos of him and his gang. After Rocket leaves his film with a friend who works at a newspaper, a female reporter publishes one of the prints, since nobody can get into the City of God anymore. Rocket takes a romantic interest in the reporter, eventually losing his virginity to her.

Rocket thinks his life is endangered but agrees to continue taking photographs, not realizing Zé is very pleased with increased notoriety. Rocket then returns to the City for more photographs, bringing the film to its beginning. Confronted by the gang, Rocket is surprised that Zé is asking him to take pictures, but as he prepares to take the photo, the police arrive, who drive off when Carrot arrives. In the gunfight, Ned is killed by a boy who has infiltrated his gang to avenge his father, a security guard who was killed by Ned during a bank robbery. The police capture Li'l Zé and Carrot, planning to give the media Carrot, whose gang never paid off the police, while they steal Zé's money and let him go. He is then murdered by the Runts who intend to run the criminal enterprise themselves. Rocket secretly takes pictures of both scenes, as well as Zé's dead body, and brings them back to the newspaper.

Rocket is seen in the newspaper office looking at all of his photographs through a magnifying glass, and deciding whether to publish the photo of corrupt cops and become famous or the photo of Li'l Zé's body and get an internship. He decides on the latter and the film ends with the Runts walking around the City of God, making a hit list of the dealers they plan to kill in order to take over the drug business. They mention that a Comando Vermelho ("Red Command") is coming.

. Wikipedia

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