55 Movies You Have to Watch by the Time you're 30

As an OCD, I love lists. An even better than lists are to do lists. Or the best is following the to do list. The satisfaction of crossing out items are something you either know or not.

But one thing I don't like is lists of the movies I should watch or books I should read. Probably because I would not be crossing out so many and feeling accomplished in my assumed semi intellectual lifestyle.

But Today I stumbled upon a list which was very much align with my taste, of the movies you should watch by the time you are 30. In my remaining 1 year and 9 months I would try to finish this list and write the review of the movies that I watch from the list. This would be a good practice for me to watch the stupid shows on Amazon prime or rewatch "Devil Wears Prada" for the 555th time.
Please add anything you feel is missing from this list. I love suggestions.
P.S. I would start from number 24 and skip the movies I already watched and remember vividly. And when I am done I go back and do 1-23.

The list is as follows:

1. Casablanca (1942)  - Watched, Amazing Love Story, Cried
2. Some Like it Hot (1959) - To Watch, no clue
3. Breathless (1960) - To Watch, Don't Remember
4. Psycho (1960)-  To Watch, no clue
5. The Graduate (1967)- Watched, Actually Funny
6. Midnight Cowboy (1969)-  To Watch, no clue
7. A Clockwork Orange (1971)- To Watch ( mixed feelings)
8. The Godfather (1972) - Watched, no description needed
9. Chinatown (1974)- To Watch, no clue
10. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)- Watched, Amazed, Unexplainable experience
11. Month Python and the Holy Grail (1975)- To Watch, Love the name (LOL)
12. Taxi Driver (1976)- Watched, Amazed
13. Annie Hall (1977)- Watched, Woody Allen Blah
14. National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) - To Watch,  (LOL), I was born that year
15. Apocalypse Now (1979)- Watched, Amazed
16. E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)- Watched, Amazed
17. This is Spinal Tap (1984)- To Watch, no clue
18. Back to the Future (1985)- To Watch, Don't Remember, probably overrated
19. The Breakfast Club (1985)- To Watch, no clue
20. The Goonies (1985)- To Watch, no clue
21. Blue Velvet (1986)- To Watch, no clue
22. Stand by Me (1986)- To Watch, no clue
23. Heathers (1988)- To Watch, no clue
24. Coming to America (1988)- To Watch, no clue ( I start from here cause I think it is really funny)
25. Beaches (1988)- To Watch, no clue
26. When Harry Met Sally (1989)- To Watch, Don't Remember
27. Edward Scissor-hands (1990)- Watched, Amazed
28. Goodfellas (1990)- To Watch, Resisted Watching for Long Time
29. Reservoir Dogs (1992)- To Watch, no clue
30. Leon: The Professional (1994)- Watched, Amazed
31. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)- Watched, Amazed
32. Pulp Fiction (1994)- Watched, Amazed
33. Reality Bites (1994)- To Watch, no clue
34. The Usual Suspects (1995)- To Watch, no clue
35. Kids (1995)- To Watch, no clue
36. Clueless (1995)  - Watched, Overrated
37. Walking and Talking (1996)- To Watch, no clue
38. Swingers (1996)- To Watch, no clue
39. Good Will Hunting (1997)- Watched, Amazed
40. Rushmore (1998)- To Watch, no clue
41. The Truman Show (1998)- Watched, Amazed
42. American Beauty (1999)- Watched, Amazed
43. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)- To Watch, no clue
44. Requiem for a Dream (2000)- To Watch, Don't Remember
45. Lost In Translation (2003)- Watched, Amazed
46. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)- Watched, Overrated
47. The Departed (2006)- Watched, Amazed
48. Inception (2010) - Watched, Overrated
49. Melancholia (2011)- To Watch, no clue
50. The Artist (2011)- Watched, Amazed
51. Bachelorette (2012)- To Watch, no clue
52. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)- To Watch, Resisted Watching for Long Time
53. Frances Ha (2012)- To Watch, no clue
54. Silver Linings Playbook (2012)- Watched, Amazed
55. Her (2013)   - Watched, Overrated

When Marnie was there

I have long been MIA on this blog since something called school was happening, and now it is over, for the rest of my life. I am still in a good shock from it, since I have never not been at school. But my first reaction was watching a lot of movies, well for now this is the plan.

I came across this movie on the Fandango website, where you can just say you want to watch a movie   now and it shows you all the show times around you.

You all know about my obsession with studio Ghibli and in general with good animations. and when I saw this movie is from Ghibli, I could not hesitate.

As always, the animation was very well made. With the flowiest scenes and softest colors and magical music.

The story line though was weird. The movie is about an adopted girl, 10 years old, who suffers from Asthma and is sent to a village to get better in a good weather. She is in general not a very happy kid and recently been more reserved.

In the village she finds an old empty mansion and starts imagining hanging out with a very pretty girl who lives there with her evil nannies.

This is where the movie gets weird since the relationship between two girls get awkward. They keep saying they love each other and I got a feeling that is this an LGBT movie?! or what is the message they want to deliver? Is this a kid's movie? In general my mind was very occupied with figuring this out for a long time.

Ghibli has always some sort of magic in their movies. That made me even more skeptical that what is this movie about.

But later everything sorts out and I do not want to be a spoiler, but there is nothing mind blowing about it (LOL), they simply have touched some Fruedian concepts.

I would certainly recommend the movie to any animation lover and give 7/10.

Ida

Winning the best foreign movie Oscar is enough motivation to watch a movie, right?
Well that, and the movie being in black and white with a touch of WWII, are enough for me, though half way through the movie, I was expecting it to be another movie I wanted to watch some months ago.

Ida is a simple beautiful movie, about a young polish nun who in search of her dead parents, she meets her not so conservative aunt and realizes that she actually is Jewish. During the war, her parents were kept in the woods and fed by a guy, and at the end were killed by him. The girl and her aunt go on a journey to find the guy by asking from his son who refuses to help.

The movie is very smooth and well made, the acts are amazing and very believable. The conflict between the girl and her aunt's belief, the girl's innocence and how the connect. The movie has a very sad theme, specially that it is in black and white and in another language.

I would not recommend watching this movie if you are not into foreign films, since you will be bored.
I give a 6/10 to this movie

The tale of princess Kaguya

I remember when I was very young, they used to show this Chinese movie on tv about a princess coming from the moon, or going to the moon !??! I wonder if this the same story.

I am most biased when it gets to animations and even more biased when the animation is from studio Ghibli, because they are so perfect and so talented and make these cute things that you don't even need a story to follow, you just want to sit and watch.

The story is about a girl who comes from the moon into the life of a poor couple, and she brings a lot of gold with her. The husband decides with all this money they have to take her to the city and build a mansion and raise her like a princess.They give her best lessons and make her wear the nicest clothes until she become famous in the city and legitimate bachelors start asking her for marriage. The girl is not happy and feels trapped in her castle and she wants to go back to the village and live freely.

It sounds a little bit of a cliche, but believe me you won't notice that. This animation is very well made with plots all hand drawn with soft colors and very flow y. The music is amazing and everything came together so well that you feel all their feelings and make connection with the character. This is certainly not your flamboyant Pixar or Disney animations and you would certainly not expect that from Ghibli, but they always made amazing animations like spirited away which already won an Academy awards best animation.

I would certainly recommend this to anyone who likes well made animations and give a 7.5/10 to it.

Whiplash

IMDb 8.7, metacritic %88 , everyone would think they have to watch this movie, and I think you should really, It is a good movie but how are all of these movies competing with boyhood? or we simply do not have better movies? or I am turning into an old lady who nags about everything?!?

I like all the movies that are somehow music related, and this movie is no exception. The movie is neat, smart, sneaky, emotional and all together but then on average it does semi perfect.

The story is about a guy studying drums at a famous music school when he is noticed by the conductor of the school's orchestra, who happens to be a guy looking for THE talent and he spots him and brings him into his orchestra and push him to his limits by mocking and cursing and throwing stuffs at him only to make him brings out the star but at one event the student couldn't take it anymore and attacks the conductor which then gets him expelled from the school and then a series of attempts for revenge happen.

In general the movie is short, to the point, clear and that is what I like comparing to all the 3 hour movies that I'm afraid is becoming a new trend. It shows the emotions, pain and the struggle and although you see tears and cuts and bloods but you are gonna smile and love it.

I would recommend watching this movie but warn you that the movie has a fast tone and can get harsh, definitely not a relaxing happy go lucky movie and I give a 7/10 to it.

Birdman

I am trying to watch all the academy award nominees before the event and JUST because I have so much free time (lol,kidding, I am defending my thesis in a month or so also) and every movie is disappointing me after the other one.

Me and my friend have been debating whether to watch this movie or not because from the trailer and all the awards it won it looks kind of a conceptual movie and I am not good with understanding conceptual movies even in my own language and culture, but then I gave it a shot and to my surprise, there is nothing sophisticated about this movie.

Birdman is about the struggle of a lead actor of an old superhero series called birdman who refused to continue playing in it with the dream of going to Broadway, but simply he is not a broadway material.

The acts are good in this movie, but the whole story is very mundane , and the birdman accompanying the guy throughout the movie is a little bit annoying.

Unless there are several layers of understanding and I am stuck at level one, this is an OK movie and I would only say watch it if you are very much into theater and shows and movies and how critiques work ( the concepts I mean) and will give a 5/10 to this movie !

Big eyes

We love Tim Burton,we go and watch whatever he makes or slightly is associated with and  have we ever been disappointed? NO, except his recent break up with the long time girlfriend whom we love as much (dude seriously?!?)

He always gets this deep but small things about life that we rarely notice and add lots of magic and weirdness to it and we watch it, we get excited and later we think about it and say ahaaa!!!

Big eyes is not an exception, the story of a divorce painter and her daughter who ran away to SF and they meet this con artist fake painter. He later gets married to the painter and sells her art under his own name, makes a fortune and becomes famous by keeping the woman suppressed , making her draw these pictures of kids with giant eyes.

The movie shows how one can simply gets trapped in a situation and never gets the courage to get out simply by not using their brains. Also it hows how in an unhealthy relationship one can simply loses their identity by making a monster out of the other person.

But most importantly this movie is weird, in a beautiful way, something between beetle juice and well I am not sure, maybe this is the most conventional movie from Tim Burton.Also very good act from Amy Adams, of a woman whose divorce made her lose herself where there are multiple times you want to shout at the screen and say WOMAN, please!!!


I give a happy 7/10 to this and recommend it to everyone, you will thank me later , tata

P.S. apparently the movie is based on a real story !

Generation War ("Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter" )

I can't say that I an expert on WWII history or I watched all of the movies about it, but I certainly do have this obsession or fascination about the whole concept. I watch the movies and wonder HOW, how suddenly one day you start becoming the enemy of your friends and neighbors, or you move all the way to another country and kill its people , or tell people of a country that they are not allowed to live there anymore, more important than that, who are we as humans to decide about others' lives . These are all I think when I watch war movies, and WWII specifically because each of those movies illustrate different sides of the war.

This movie or better say three episodes of the movie is by far one of the most beautiful movies that I watched about WWII, simply because you see all these groups, and non of them are the bad guys and the rest the good ones.The victim is all the people who are involved from each side and at some point some of them lose their humanities, some come back to their senses and some simply just follow like a ship.

The story is about 5 friends at the time of the war living in Germany. One becomes a nurse at the front, one is a lieutenant of the Nazi's , his brother is a simple soldier and one becomes an aspiring singer. The story happens over the years of 1941 to 1945 and during this time their paths cross each others frequently.
What I loved about this movie is how well the interaction between people is shown, when they are thorn between who they love and who they have to support and how they think they have to be loyal and try to belong.

I would definitely recommend watching this movie if you have a good 3 nights to finish it, and give a 8.5/10 to it

Still Alice

I am writing this as I still have tears in my eyes from the beauty of this movie, of how unexpected life is, how we are blessed that we are healthy and how it is hard for families who have someone with a non curable disease.

This story is about Alice, a middle aged ( around 50 year old ) Columbia linguistic professor, very smart and very successful, who has an amazing marriage and three children. She realizes that she has problem remembering things and after doing many MRIs and test she is diagnosed with early age alzheimer's which was genetically passed on to her from her father.
Julianne Moore does a great job playing Alice's role and showing her struggle as the disease is progressing and it makes her lose her identity, abilities and language which she was defined with them. It is amazing how you can deeply feel what happens to her and how her memory is deteriorating and she is struggling to survive but leaving notes and alarms and practice memorizing all the time.
Another beautiful thing about the movie is how her family are coping with the situation all of them being very supportive and helpful specially her husband and then her younger daughter with whom she didn't have a deep relationship.

I would definitely recommend watching this movie if you have the heart to do it because it gets very emotional, I would give a 7/10 to this movie 

Gone Girl

I am not sure how this post is going to turn out since I have mixed feelings towards this movie.
I was hearing all the huffs and puffs about the movie and told myself that I am going to be disappointed since I am not the biggest David Fincher fan , don't get me wrong, I love fight club, but he is just not my type and it is not him, it is me (LOL, it is so NOT me).

The idea of the movie is brilliant, like those movies that you think whoever came up with it is a very harmful person for the society and he movie is well made. They easily played with people's assumptions and feelings towards the characters but it was too freaking long. In my opinion they could easily make 2 movies out of this one and each of them would be as interesting. I felt that they had too many ideas that they wanted to squeeze them into one movie which resulted in this stew of cheating, childhood problem,family problem, genius vs ordinary and killing . I could not possibly think of one of them to focus on. Well my boyfriend definitely did not like the movie but I think it is because the girl was a freaking genius and she tricked the guy very well for a revenge , HAHA.

The story is about a city girl lost in the character of a series of story books she write and a simple village guy married together and at some point the girl feels bored and lost and probably the guy feels inadequate and a series of events happen which I am not gonna spoil them here.

I should say that the acts were amazing and the scenes and the music were good too. But after a while I got too bored and I guess I felt asleep for the last 15 minutes of the movie.

I would give a 7/10 to this movie and would recommend watching it if you are either obsessed with David Fincher OR have 3 extra hours that you really have no idea what to do with it.

The Interview

Well I should say that whether North Korean hacked Sony or they just made the story to advertise for the movie, they wanted to sound important or anything else, I watched this movie from a very cynical point of view. With the IMDb score falling from 9.9 to 7.3 in two nights I was sure this is not gonna be the best movie ever BUT honestly it was not that bad.

The story is about the cast of a cheesy TV serie going to NK for an interview with the leader to make their program look more important , along the way FBI interferes and ask them to kill the leader !!!
They go to NK and one of the guys (James Franco) become friends with the leader and fall into their trap.

Seth Rogen is funny, and it was clear that they tried their best to make a funny movie, which was semi successful because I laughed a couple of times, but other than that I didn't get the big deal and why would NK hack Sony for it.

Anyways, If you want to go through the trouble of finding it online, or pay to rent it, I wouldn't keep you from doing it for 6/10.

Penguins of Madagascar

I always appreciate a good funny animation, especially if it has cute stuff in it.
I am not sure if this movie is a sequel to Madagascar, but something parallel to that about those ninja penguins.
Very well made animation with cute penguins and funny little things happening and actually if you pay enough attention, there are a lot of references to random things.

I would definitely recommend watching this movie if you are bored, sad or have nothing else to do, you won't be disappointed with a 6/10.

P.S. Definitely pay a lot of attention to the dialogues , I was rolling on the floor laughing the whole time

Into the Woods

I think I waited too long for this movie to come out which resulted in an enormous amount of expectations built up. With Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp ,  Emily Blunt, playing the red riding hood, jack and the beanstalk, Cinderella, Rapunzel , all these does sound really exciting, well ...

To begin with this movie is a musical with amazing songs and singing from professionals and amazing scenes , but it is a very long movie, too long maybe. It could end three times and still we knew the story.

The little red riding hood, jack and the beanstalk, Cinderella, Rapunzel all cross paths into the woods and the want to teach us to be loyal, compassionate, wise, decisive and all those good things,

But who knew the little red riding hood was such a brat who got raped by the wolf, Cinderella had no idea what she wants from life and only wanted the prince charming to chase her, prince charming was ladies' man making out with everyone and Rapunzel was simply an imbecile.  Well thank you whoever made this movie, now I know it all,

If you are really bored and are obsessed with fairy tales maybe you should go watch this movie,
just be careful, the theme song is SUPER catchy , 5/10

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

hallelujah, I still get goosebumps thinking about the movie. HOW are they so good at making movies?!?

During the whole 2.5 hours of watching movie, I was just asking HOW? this is too good.
This was the last part of hobbits and I am so sad about it. I hope with all the skills and technology they got during past years they start making LOTR again or something similar, because this is too good to end.

The only thing that happens in this movie is the battle of the five armies and that is it, but who cares. All the scenes, sounds, special effects, 3D effects , all are so good that no one needs a story to follow.

I would definitely recommend EVERYONE to go and watch this, Please, tonight, 9/10

Hunger games, Mockingjay part 1

There is a point when you feel that you are done with a movie and I feel I am at that point with Hunger games. After the second movie I was very excited to watch the rest and I tried to keep the excitement alive but When I watched it I was sure I am done.
There is only so much you can keep making new parts and keep people excited , but you got to stop somewhere.

President at district 13 is trying to get everyone to help fight against the capital (who I still don't know if is a good guy or a bad guy, well girl) and they have Katniss to be their voice and their mockingjay.
By going to different districts and showing how miserable everyone is and then hacking to the capital system and broadcast these videos for them they are building their army.

It kind of is very obvious what is going to happen but I don't care anymore.

I would recommend this only to the very enthusiastic fans and give 5/10 to it.

This is where I leave you

Two months ago my mom was visiting me and since she arrived she was bugging me to go watch movies (I should mention my movie watching habits directly comes from her). Her obsession with family drama was the reason I picked this movie to watch with her.

The father of a family dies and all the kids gather at their childhood house for the funeral. The sister with her super busy husband, the brother who is trying but can't have a baby, the brother who has recently been cheated on and the smallest son who still needs to grow up. All of them bring their own problems and drama and on top of that , their dad's last wish was for them to stay for a week at the house. 

Many dramatic events and encounter happens and of course at the end they realize how much they love each other. Family drama in general can be a very cliche subject, I seen some good movies with this genre, my favorite is "Parenthood" tv series. In general this movie was a good one because of the cast and all the funny things that happens in it, but is not a very deep movie. There is specifically one thing I did not like was how cheating is pictured so ordinary and an every day habit, which pissed me off.

At the end, I would recommend this for a feeling good movie to watch maybe with family, or when alone and with low expectations , giving it a 5/10.

The book of life

Animations have always been my safe , to go choice when I want to watch a movie in the theatre. To my surprise, this year we have a good number of animations (good animations) out which I only got to watch this one so far.

Though this movie is about Mexican myths and legends, It is produced so amazingly that would keep everyone interested. I only chose to watch it by checking the poster, and for the first 5 minutes I was very doubtful, but soon It got a very smooth tone to it.

The story is about two young boys in love with the same girl with their own struggles.
Everything about this movie, from the pictures, to the music, the voices , they are all perfectly beautiful and heart stealing. It is obvious that a good amount of skills, thought and time have been spent on making this animation. I can even go further and say this animation was an absolute piece of art for anyone to enjoy.

I do certainly recommend this animation to everyone and would give a 8.5/10 to it.

Fury

It's been such a long time since my last blog and I know you all have been counting days for a new post. your WELCOME ;P

Honestly it was a pretty disappointing summer and only recently they realized if they wanna keep the theatres open they need to start showing good movies.I still watched a lot and I do have a couple of them that worth sharing.

The most recent movie I watched is Fury. A WWII Brad Pitt movie which I liked very much.They did a pretty good job in keeping the movie almost race neutral, even at some point (which I didn't catch and my friend reminded me :P) Brad Pitt says this is not about being good or bad , this is about killing or getting killed (I should add a disclaimer that I am VERY much against any form of violence and at some point thought maybe you didn't need to cross an ocean to make this choice, BUT, at least they didn't try to portrait a heroic American action to save the world)

The movie is about an innocent young type writer who is sent to the front in Germany as a replacement in Brad Pitts tank. He tried to keep away from the whole killing thing but of course it is inevitable in a war. from the very beginning Brad Pitt likes him and becomes some sort of a mentor to him and they bond very well. They also have 4 other people in the tank and their interactions is what a big part of this movie is about.

This movie has a lot of very violent scenes when I had to barricade myself behind my coat for a good chunks of time and I (very embarrassingly) had some tear shedding. To my defence where were lots of very strongly emotional scenes where you see how this innocent young boy changes into a killing machine or when you see Brad Pitt's role has softer sides to it also.

I do recommend this movie to watch to anyone who is even remotely feels interested and I guarantee they won't be disappointed. 7.5 is a very fair point to Fury.

The way back

I am sure I said it enough and you guys are probably tired of reading this, but I love WWII movies, from any perspective.Putting aside the ugly face of war, there is always that elements that makes you restore your faith in humanity. But what makes this specific movie very special is that it is not dissing any of the sides to make the movie commercial or political.

This movie is simply the story of 6 people, trying to run away from a camp in Siberia and go to India. Among them are an American, a Polish guy who knows the wilderness and survival, a Russian thug, a priest ,a guy who draws and another guy who has night blindness. Along the way a younger girl also joins them. They pass through cold snow packed Siberia, the deserts with no water, Himalaya and any hard wild natural condition you might imagine.

What I loved about this movie is the interaction between people, how they trust each other, help each other and try to survive which made me wonder If I ever again have the rights to nag about my life.

This movie is based on a true story, in which these people walk about a year and around 4000 miles and at the end only three of them survive.

I for sure recommend watching this movie and give a 7/10 to it.

Transformers: age of extinction

Muhahaha, I finally watched the new transformers' movie and my mind was blown away.Whether it was the good theater, IMAX screen and Dolby digital sound, OR the movie was really that good (which it was, seriously!) , the 3 hour felt more like an hour and I really wanted to see more.

There is just something about robots, and nice cars with new technologies , smart hot Asian  police girls and aliens with huge spaceships that makes me excited so very much. Especially when you see nice shiny  or carbonized race cars turning into giant robots and they fight and fly and kill, it is just amazing.

Well enough about that, this movies is about when human authorities decoded the transformers brains and they are mass producing them to kill the aliens, but the real transformers rise and try to stop it from happening because of a ... (well I guess I need to stop it otherwise this is gonna be a spoiler).

BUT, then there is the side story of the muscular poor heroic dad trying to save his even hott daughter and of course there is boyfriend who tries hard to be hot but fails. And what really annoyed me was the girl, with those gorgeous 2 meter of legs she could stop whining and actually be someone in the movie, and I waited and waited and waited for her to do something other than asking her dad and her boyfriend alternatively to protect her. The movie was extremely sexist because other than the Chinese lady doing some karate chopping and the geologist who was supposed to be the brain of the story but she did nothing, not even ended up falling in love with someone!!! the guys were doing all the work Good thing there was enough story with robots that they simply could remove all the humans and the movie would stay as interesting.


Go watch the movie already, 7.5/10 !!! XO