10 Movies I Recommend to Nearly Everybody (Part 1)
I think you can't go wrong with these film choices
Like me and everyone else, you’re looking for something great to watch.
That’s why I’m here! I’ve tried to curate a long list of films that I think most people will at least enjoy, if not love.
By “most people,” I mean pretty much any normal, thinking person I know.
That’s you.
As best I could, I have tried to free this list from my personal biases — Midwest American, Gen-X, dude stuff, cerebal fare. No doubt you’ll get a dash of these in this list.
But I’m writing this for you, not me. That’s because the algorithms on streaming websites are largely failures, and because movie recommendations are largely now promotional, trying to sell stuff rather than satisfy you. In my experience, “movie recommendations” tend to care more about your pocketbook than your edification.
Here, therefore, is Part 1 of Movies I Recommend to Nearly Everybody.
Since my list is at 320 movies and growing, this Part 1 is going to end up be — *gulp* — at least 32 parts long. Don’t worry; you’ll get these in small doses.
In no particular order . . .
Whale Rider
Feel-Good Family film set in 2002 New Zealand, with a dash of anti-globalism
Roger Ebert, a strong influence on this list, promoted the heck out of this movie when it came out. In its first half-hour, I found it to be almost TV-movie quality. Meaning lame.
However, this movie, about a young Maori girl named Pai with a split dysfunctional family, seems to not only avoid cliches but enjoys upending them. It’s almost a typical drama in that it’s about a young female destined to be her tribe’s leader, and yet no one but a male has served has chief.
But that possible feminist dilemma is wrapped up with the globalism that threatens to deplete or upend her Maori tribe. Pai’s father has abandoned the tribe for modern living. As well, the tribe’s traditions are entirely threatened by encroaching modernism.
Anyway, do you know the movie cliche where the kid is at a school play, and mom and/or dad are late for the play? All the tension is about them showing up to the play to see their kid’s one shining moment. And of course they do.
“Whale Rider” enjoys dealing in cliche-obliteration and cultural paradoxes, including the combo of traditional conservatism preserved through novelties.
The Station Agent
Everybody needs friends, including extreme introverts, even though they don’t think so
I test out on the 99th percentile of any extroversion-introversion scale. So when a movie depicts my type, I scrutinize it.
This movie does that, and gets it exactly right. Peter Dinklage plays that type, a man with an obsession for trains. As a hobbyist, he moves into a dilapidated train depot somewhere in New Jersey. Hoping to be left alone, a gregarious hot-dog vendor comes into his life. And then another friend. And then another.
There are few movies so sweet about unexpected friendships. Since most fare these days tends to be dark and brooding, I consider “The Station Agent” to be a populist treasure — great acting, great characters, great directing, and a quaint depiction of life itself — something anybody can watch.
Modern Times
Charlie Chaplin smiles through an industrial hellscape
A classic that everyone must see.
Recently I’ve been teaching various 19th century American literature stories, and the social, psychological, and environmental problems caused by the first wave of the Industrial Revolution come up in spades.
Over a hundred years later, Chaplin in “Modern Times” says that not only has nothing changed, it’s gotten worse. His tramp character is threatened to become part of the machine — a victim of the modern factory system, and I suspect too, of the entertainment industry and the political vortex that eventually trapped and exiled Chaplin himself.
Modern moviemakers keep mining this film, including the recent “Joker” movie. It’s therefore an absoltely necessary watch for the sake of knowing film history.
Big Night
The restaurant business is really, ridiculously brutal
Sneakily a film about business and artistry, “Big Night” quite obviously is about two Italian immigrant brothers owning an East Coast restaurant that’s a failure. Across the street is its opposite, a successful Italian restaurant.
Yet these brothers stick to their principles, especially the brother who’s a chief — he’s a great cook who will not please the masses, who just want spaghetti and meatballs.
If you made it this far on the list, I might pick this movie as THE movie that could please just about anybody of any persuasion, ideology, sensibility, and movie taste. Certainly, Pixar realized that and made their best movie based on key elements of “Big Night,” in the classic animated film “Ratatouille.”
Local Hero
When you hate your small town so much, you want to sell it to an oil corporation
At gunpoint, I might pick this as my favorite movie ever.
First, I admire anything that doesn’t have a villain. How do you write a compelling story by doing that? Everybody knows you need the tension that a good villain produces!
Here, a giant oil corporation should be the villain. They want to buy a remote Scottish town because of oil found off the coast.
The catch is, first, that the town wants to sell. Okay, that’s the first movie-cliche overturned; we all know that in this scenario, the small-town Davids should be fighting against evil corporate Goliaths.
Another catch is that the representatives of the corporation, after visiting the town, fall in love with it. They don’t want to buy it for the oil. That would be the second cliche overturned.
Add in an African who’s pastoring a remote Scottish church, a Soviet who visits the town via the sea, and a female love interest who may or may not be a mermaid.
This film is all magical charm, and it’s about the wonders of living, from the sand and soil under your feet to the stars above.
Seven Chances
In which Buster Keaton will marry anybody — ANYBODY! — for $7 million
Most critics pick other Keaton films as their favorites, including and especially “The General.”
I slightly prefer “Seven Chances,” which has a wacko plot and even wackier scenes in which Keaton’s hapless protagonist must outrace a thousand desperate women who want to marry him.
That’s because his character has been promised $7 million dollars via a dead relative’s will, if he marries by 7pm … on the same day that he receives news of the will’s clause!
The race is on for him to marry someone, anyone, to get the money. And it is a literal race, towards women and then away from a great many of them.
Note that $7 million back in 1925 equates to — *pauses to look up US government inflation calculator* — $123,000,000 in today’s money!
The Father
No movie shows better what it’s probably like to have Alzheimer’s first-hand
Easily the most somber movie on this list, I was shocked by this elegant 2020 movie’s ability to capture old-age senility, perhaps Alzheimer’s, from a *first-person perspective*.
Check out my video on this:
Shane
The archetype of archetypal Westerns
The novel is arguably better, but if you’d like to save an extra 2-3 hours, the film is a total classic of the genre.
I keep seeing “The Searchers” as a go-to for the ultimate Western, so that probably makes “Shane” underrated. I keep seeing elements of it in modern superhero fare, most notably the Wolverine movie “Logan,” but also anything else in which the hero is nearly washed-up and at his wit’s end.
Red River
Who knew that long cattle drives could be so entertaining?
I do prefer Howard Hawks’ “Red River” to “Shane,” though. It’s superficially entertaining while being, the more I think about it, politically disturbing.
This is one of the few times where John Wayne arguably plays a villain, not exactly, but close enough. He’s a early 19th century cattle-driver who gets attacked by Indians, then murders a couple of Mexicans to establish his ranch, right at the border that would be the Texas-Mexico divide at the Rio Grande.
The movie skips forward 20 years or so, when this character needs to take his livestock far north to sell them. He’s got conflicts with an orphan he adopted, now a grown man played by Montogomery Clift.
I suspect watching cattle go across the movie screen will never be more entertaining than this.
Also, Walter Brennan. Those of you who know him, that’s a mic drop.
Matchstick Men
Con-artistry and OCD combine to meet their match: a teenager!
Our last movie on Part 1’s list, Ridley Scott directed this, and you wouldn’t know it while watching. Scott seems large and bombastic; “Matchstick Men” is more of a quirky intimate movie, mostly comedy and partly heist-thriller.
I love con-artist movies, and on top of that, Nicolas Cage plays here an OCD con-artist, the kind who if he finds a speck of dirt on the carpet of his living room, he has to take an entire day to disinfect his entire house!
This problem isn’t his worst. In act one, his estranged teenage daughter shows up to live with him. Teenagers > specks on carpet that trigger OCD.
Besides all the plot twists, to watch Cage and Sam Rockwell do what they do is movie-magic at its peak, as good as any pair of movie actors you can name. Why no director has ever paired them since “Matchstick Men,” I’ll never figure out.
Happy viewing!