Halliwell's Top 1000: The Ultimate Movie Countdown

A man and his son search for a stolen bicycle vital for his job.

Blue This is the first film in a trilogy of films who’s colors make up the three colors of France. With the colors meaning – freedom, equality and brotherliness. “Blue” relating to the French ideals of freedom that are somewhat vague. A film by Krzysztof Kie?lowski.

White is the second film from the trilogy by Kieślowski. “White” meaning equality. Here Kieślowski shows his talent at making comedies. It’s about the relationship between Karol, a polish hair dresser, and the beautiful Dominique, who he’s dependant on.

Red This is the third film from the trilogy by Kieślowski. “Red” meaning brotherliness. Here Kieślowski masterly tells strange coincidentally linked stories in the most packed work.

A village postman with no sense of humour delivers his mail via bicycle on the day the travelling fair comes to town. He is disrupted by a short film about US speed and efficiency and the playful teasing of the village folk.

Bullied at school and ignored and abused at home by his indifferent mother and older brother, Billy Casper, a 15-year-old working-class Yorkshire boy, tames and trains his pet kestrel falcon whom he names Kes. Helped and encouraged by his English teacher and his fellow students, Billy finally finds a positive purpose to his unhappy existence.

A French teen collaborating with the Nazis falls for a wealthy Jewish girl.

Gabriel Conroy and wife Gretta attend an early January dinner with friends at the home of his spinster aunts, an evening which results in an epiphany for both of them.

With this poetically fabulous film classic Italian director Federico Fellini makes a world wide success of emotional melodrama and a highlight of the Italian Neo-realism movement.

The Marriage of Maria Braun is a collage of the times in Germany after the war, economic miracles, and a portrait of a woman who in her circumstances wants to emancipate and have a successful and happy career. The film is a masterpiece from German director Fassbinder.

A cabaret singer corrupts a city planner in 1957 Germany.

Partially based on the life of Sybille Schmitz, who found fame under the Nazi regime, but whose career was destroyed afterward. Veronika Voss is a once prominent UFA actress, kept by her doctor, who raises suspicion in a sports journalist.

A Hard Day’s Night is named after the successful Beatles album of the same name. The film tells in a mocking style the life of the modern pop stars. The film shows the Beatles at the height of their career as they move between hotel rooms, trains, and concerts.

Architect Walter Craig, seeking the possibility of some work at a country farmhouse, soon finds himself once again stuck in his recurring nightmare. Dreading the end of the dream that he knows is coming, he must first listen to all the assembled guests' own bizarre tales.

Louis Mazzini's mother belongs to the aristocratic family D'Ascoyne, but she ran away with an opera singer. Therefore, she and Louis were rejected by the D'Ascoynes. Once adult, Louis decides to avenges his mother and him, by becoming the next Duke of the family. Murdering every potential successor is clearly the safest way to achieve his goal.

A 19th Century New Hampshire farmer who makes a compact with the Devil for economic success enlists Daniel Webster to extract him from his contract.

Open City is a landmark in film history. Filmed in secrecy during the Nazi occupation of Italy, the film shows a realistic portrayal of the underground resistance in Italy in 1945. The film has strong impacting imagery with it’s mix of fiction and reality that strengthened Italian Neo-realism and the film industry.

A biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, tracing the Corsican's career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign) to his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797.

Dr. Jekyll faces horrible consequences when he lets his dark side run wild with a potion that changes him into the animalistic Mr. Hyde.

Don’t Look Now is a thriller starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as a married couple who tragically loose their daughter and thereafter are confronted with only mysterious occurrences.

A specialist getaway drive is relentlessly pursued by a detective.

An African American detective is asked to investigate a murder in a racist southern town

Stan and Ollie try to deliver the deed to a valuable gold mine to the daughter of a dead prospector. Unfortunately, the daughter's evil guardian is determined to have the gold mine for himself and his saloon-singer wife.

A young man named Kaspar Hauser suddenly appears in Nuremberg in 1828, barely able to talk or walk, and bearing a strange note.

Bride of Frankenstein begins where James Whale's Frankenstein from 1931 ended. Dr. Frankenstein has not been killed as previously portrayed and now he wants to get away from the mad experiments. Yet when his wife is kidnapped by his creation, Frankenstein agrees to help him create a new monster, this time a woman.

Mean Streets is the pioneering artistic film from director Martin Scorseses. With it’s experimental ease this gangster film documented the rules and rights structure and laws of the Italian-American small time criminal ambiance from 1960’s New York.

Longtime alcoholic Don Birnam has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst... but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last – one way or another.

A nebbish schoolteacher begs his smooth (and misogynistic) pal to teach him 'the knack' – how to score with women. Serendipitously, the men meet up with a new girl in town, as well as a friendly lunatic who can’t help but paint things white.

The 39 Steps is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpieces. A romantic thriller that revolves around a Canadian tourist visiting London who gets caught in the middle of a murder plot that has police and the secret service after him. A classic Hitchcock of romance mixed with adventure and picturesque scenes.

Three detectives in the corrupt and brutal L.A. police force of the 1950s use differing methods to uncover a conspiracy behind the shotgun slayings of the patrons at an all-night diner in this lush tribute to tough film noir crime films. Based on the multi-layered James Ellroy novel.

The unassuming, nebbishy inventor Sidney Stratton creates a miraculous fabric that will never be dirty or worn out. Clearly he can make a fortune selling clothes made of the material, but may cause a crisis in the process. After all, once someone buys one of his suits they won't ever have to fix them or buy another one, and the clothing industry...

Five young adults in a small American town face the revelations of secrets that threaten to ruin their hopes and dreams.

Mike Nichols’ film from Edward Albees play brought new themes to the film industry. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton have never been more brilliant together as they portray an experienced married couple who love each other yet verbally attack one another when they see how boring their naïve newlywed guests have made their night.

During his final days, a dying man is reunited with old friends, former lovers, his ex-wife, and his estranged son.

In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.

Stagecoach is a western film from director John Ford. John Wayne stars as The Ringo Kid and would become world famous from the film.

The coming of age of a youth named Sonny in a small Texas town in the 1950s.

Three friends struggle to find work in Paris. Things become more complicated when two of them fall in love with the same woman.

Dramatization of the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1950's, in which a teenage girl and her twenty-something boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.

A meek bank clerk who oversees the shipment of bullion joins with an eccentric neighbor to steal gold bars and smuggle them out of the country as miniature Eiffel Towers.

César runs a bar along Marseilles' port, assisted by his 23-year-old son, Marius. Friends since childhood, Fanny and Marius love each other, but Marius has a secret wanderlust: every ship's whistle stirs a longing for foreign lands. When M. Panisse seeks Fanny's hand in marriage and when a departing clipper needs a deckhand, Marius and Fanny mus...

After Fanny's boyfriend leaves her and sails away, she finds out she's pregnant.

Leaping forward twenty years, the trilogy continues with the death of Fanny's husband, Panisse, and the discovery of her secret by her son, Césariot. The young man resolves to track down his biological father, Marius, whose life has been fraught with calamity and poverty.

In the late 19th century, two Swedish emigrants, Lasse Karlsson and his son Pelle, arrive on the Danish island of Bornholm hoping to find work on a farm and save enough money to travel to the United States of America.

Stark, perverse story of murder, kidnapping, and police corruption in Mexican border town.

Persona is a psychoanalytical film from Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and reputed as his greatest masterpiece. The film deals with a silent actress and her relationship with her nurse who narrates her story.

Paths of Glory Paths of Glory is an anti-war film from Stanley Kubrick starring Kirk Douglas. The film takes place during World War I.

During a rescue mission on an unknown planet an unidentified creature comes aboard a crews ship. Soon the fight for life and death begins. A masterful British science fiction horror film from Ridley Scott.

12 Angry Men is the 1957 film debut for director Sidney Lumet. An interpretion from a Broadway show, this film is about 12 jurors who must decide whether an 18-year-old is guilty of killing his father.

The Manchurian Candidate is a political thriller from American director John Frankenheimer. An American soldier is brainwashed into being a killer for the communist Russians during the Korean War.