zzzorf’s 1000 Movie Recommendations For All Cinephiles

Created by zzzorf.

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Nearly every Cinephile (a person who is fond of the cinema) has heard of definitive movie lists such as 1001 Movies to See Before You Die and They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? (and it's horror counterpart They Shoot Zombies, Don't They?), lists that have been compiled by critics or their rankings (respectively), to name the best movies of all time. Well this list takes their idea but puts a more personal spin on it.

Borrowing an idea from an acquaintance of mine, fish_beauty, and his personal list Dinner and a Thousand Movies?, this list is 1000 movies that I would recommend to any and all Cinephiles to watch. This is not a list of my 1000 favourite movies, and in fact probably only a half of these would potentially be in that list, but movies that I think offer a lot to everyone and believe everyone should see. You will find movies from the above lists, because honestly they are the best movies of all time for a reason, but they will be hand in hand with great obscurities that many will not of heard of.

What qualifies me to make a list like this and hope people will take it seriously? Well I have watched over 6000 different movies in my lifetime according to my profile and even though I have only classed myself as a Cinephile since July 2016 I have done my best to go back and watch a lot of those movies that I wouldn't of as just a regular movie watcher and have spread out into other areas of cinema due to my involvement in things like the March Around the World challenge here on Letterboxd, the Facebook groups connected to Flickchart and the iCM Forum, an unofficial forum for iCheckMovies.

So how did I choose the movies for this list? Well after initially having another half the amount of movies needed I decided to make the list proportionate to what I've seen from each decade. Using a spreadsheet developed by another acquaintance, StinsyLinson, for her own personal movie challenge, and tweaking it for my needs, it let me know just how many movies I could add for each decade (and even goes deeper year by year to make it even more specific which I hope to fully realise in future versions of this list). Thus I was able to focus in on what movies should definitely be added and able to cut movies easier that were borderline additions. Therefore this list is sorted by release date to suit the way I have chosen them. Also, to allow more movies to be included I did not put more than one movie in from a series, I would leave it up to the viewer if they want to watch them, in some instances though I did put a sequel instead of the original where I believed they were more important than the first. Once selected I then went through and put the following information into each entry to make it more complete.(available in the Letterboxd version only, which can be found here https://boxd.it/8FSaY )
Name - The original name of the movie, that is for foreign movies it's original language name.
Year - The year of release according to Letterboxd.
Country - The country where the movie comes from.
Type - Feature Film, Short Film, TV Movie etc.
Language - The main language of the movie.
Genre - What genre the movie is.
Director - The director of the film (Female directors are marked with an (F) for easy reference for anyone who is interested).
Reason - A lot will have the movies Rotten Tomatoes site synopsis, others will have quotes from critics and some will have trivia, all hopefully giving you a reason to choose to watch the movie.


As I watch 60-100 movies a month I am hoping to update this list monthly so don't forget to check back for new movies that may catch your interest. If you do decide to watch movies of this list I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or at least be linked to your review to give it a read. If not I still thankyou for looking at my list and would love to hear your thoughts.