style="margin-left:10px">100 Classic Movies You Must Watch

100 Classic Movies You Must Watch

Movie-lovers would have a list of classic movies. Here we recommend a list of 100 classic movies for you. Most of them ranked in movie websites while some may not, they are classic ones that you should watch. *Storyline are quoted from imdb.com.

Classic movies remain their popularity even decades are gone. DVDSmith provides various backup tools to DVD owners for copying or burning DVD movies in flexible ways:
copy DVD on hard drive as DVD folder with a freeware - DVDSmith Movie Backup,
clone DVD to blank DVD disc in 1:1 ratio - Any DVD Cloner,
convert DVD to videos for playback on portable devices like iPhone/iPad/Android devices, etc - Any DVD Cloner Platinum.

1. Toy Story 2 (1999)
When Woody is stolen by a toy collector, Buzz and his friends vow to rescue him, but Woody finds the idea of immortality in a museum tempting.

2. Man on Wire (2008)
A look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers in 1974, what some consider, "the artistic crime of the century."

3. Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)
An in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.

4. The Interrupters (2011)
A year in the life of a city grappling with urban violence.

5. The Godfather (1972)
The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

6. Toy Story (1995)
A cowboy doll is profoundly threatened and jealous when a new spaceman figure supplants him as top toy in a boy's room.

7. Waste Land (2010)
An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.

8. Citizen Kane (1941)
Following the death of a publishing tycoon, news reporters scramble to discover the meaning of his final utterance.

9. Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
An insane general starts a process to nuclear holocaust that a war room of politicians and generals frantically try to stop.

10. North by Northwest (1959)
A hapless New York advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.

11. Rear Window (1954)
A wheelchair bound photographer spies on his neighbours from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

12. Afghan Star (2008)
A look at how contestants on the a musical contest program "Pop Idol" in Afghanistan risk their lives to appear on the show.

13. Aruitemo Aruitemo (Still Walking) (2008)
Still Walking is a family drama about grown children visiting their elderly parents, which unfolds over one summer day. The aging parents have lived in the family home for decades. Their son and daughter return for a rare family reunion, bringing their own families with them. They have gathered to commemorate the tragic death of the eldest son, who drowned in an accident fifteen years ago. Although the roomy house is as comforting and unchanging as the mother's homemade feast, everyone in the family has subtly changed.

14. Poetry (2010)
A sixty-something woman, faced with the discovery of a heinous family crime and in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, finds strength and purpose when she enrolls in a poetry class.

15. The Third Man (1949)
Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, black-market opportunist Harry Lime.

16. The Invisible War (2012)
An investigative documentary about the epidemic of rape of soldiers within the US military.

17. Laura (1944)
A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.

18. The Taste of Others (2000)
Three men, three women, opposites, possibilities, and tastes. Castella owns a industrial steel barrel plant in Rouen; Bruno is his flute-playing driver, Franck is his temporary bodyguard while he negotiates a contract with Iranians, his wife Angélique does frou-frou interior decorating and loves her dog. The conventional Castella hires a forty-year-old actress, Clara, to tutor him in English, and he finds her and her Bohemian lifestyle fascinating. Is this love? What would she say if he declared himself? Through Bruno, Franck meets Manie, a barmaid who deals hash. They begin an affair. Are they in love? They joke about marriage. As the women hold back, the men must make decisions.

19. How to Survive a Plague (2012)
The story of two coalitions -- ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) -- whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition.

20. Repulsion (1965)
Left alone when her sister goes on vacation, a young beauty finds herself besieged on all sides by the demons of her past.

21. All About Eve (1950)
An ingenue insinuates herself in to the company of an established but aging stage actress and her circle of theater friends.

22. On the Waterfront (1954)
An ex-prize fighter turned longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses.

23. Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai) (1954)
A poor village under attack by bandits recruits seven unemployed samurai to help them defend themselves.

24. The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
This film documents the effects of a tragic bus accident on the population of a small town.

25. Jaws (1975)
When a gigantic great white shark begins to menace the small island community of Amity, a police chief, a marine scientist and grizzled fisherman set out to stop it.

26. Modern Times (1936)
The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman.

27. The 400 Blows (Les Quatre cents coups) (1959)
Intensely touching story of a misunderstood young adolescent who left without attention, delves into a life of petty crime.

28. Last Train Home (2009)
A couple embarks on a journey home for Chinese new year along with 130 million other migrant workers, to reunite with their children and struggle for a future. Their unseen story plays out as China soars towards being a world superpower.

29. Rashômon (Rashomon) (In the Woods) (1951)
A heinous crime and its aftermath are recalled from differing points of view.

30. Singin'in the Rain (1952)
A silent film production company and cast make a difficult transition to sound.

31. The Terminator (1984)
A robotic assassin from a post-apocalyptic future travels back in time to eliminate a waitress, whose son will grow up and lead humanity in a war against machines.

32. The Crying Game (1992)
A British soldier is kidnapped by IRA terrorists. He befriends one of his captors, who is drawn into the soldier's world.

33. The Last Picture Show (1971)
A group of 50's high schoolers come of age in a bleak, isolated, atrophied West Texas town that is slowly dying, both economically and culturally.

34. Three Colors: Red (1994)
Final entry in a trilogy of films dealing with contemporary French society concerns a model who discovers her neighbour is keen on invading people's privacy.

35. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
When a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage, she begins to learn the truth about herself.

36. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
A man refuses to conform to life in a rural prison.

37. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
When Prince John and the Norman Lords begin oppressing the Saxon masses in King Richard's absence, a Saxon lord fights back as the outlaw leader of a rebel guerrilla army.

38. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.

39. Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone (2011)
A career retrospective of Fishbone, an all African-American rock band from Los Angeles who created a high energy blend of funk, metal, ska, and punk and experienced a career as chaotic and unique as the music they created.

40. Il conformista (The Conformist) (1970)
A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.

41. M (1931)
When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.

42. Rebecca (1940)
When a naive young woman marries a rich widower and settles in his gigantic mansion, she finds the memory of the first wife maintaining a grip on her husband and the servants.

43. 12 Angry Men (Twelve Angry Men) (1957)
A dissenting juror in a murder trial slowly manages to convince the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in court.

44. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
A poor Midwest family is forced off of their land. They travel to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.

45. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Fred Dobbs and Bob Curtin, two Americans searching for work in Mexico, convince an old prospector to help them mine for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains.

46. Frankenstein (1931)
Horror classic in which an obsessed scientist assembles a living being from parts of exhumed corpses.

47. The Gold Rush (1925)
The Tramp goes the Klondike in search of gold and finds it and more.

48. The Searchers (1956)
As a Civil War veteran spends years searching for a young niece captured by Indians, his motivation becomes increasingly questionable.

49. We Were Here (2011)
A deep and reflective look at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco and how individuals rose to the occasion during the first years of this unimaginable crisis.

50. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
In a murder trial, the defendant says he suffered temporary insanity after the victim raped his wife. What is the truth, and will he win his case?

51. Battleship Potemkin (1925)
A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resulting street demonstration which brought on a police massacre.

52. Nostalgia for the Light (2010)
In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.

53. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Mary Shelley reveals the main characters of her novel survived: Dr. Frankenstein (goaded by an even madder scientist) builds his monster a mate.

54. Mary Poppins (1964)
A magic nanny comes to work for a cold banker's unhappy family.

55. Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)
A cinematic portrait of the life and career of the infamous American execution device designer and holocaust denier.

56. Pinocchio (1940)
A living puppet, with the help of a cricket as his conscience, must prove himself worthy to become a real boy.

57. The Wages of Fear (1953)
In a decrepit South American village, men are hired to transport an urgent nitroglycerine shipment without the equipment that would make it safe.

58. La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) (1939)
Renoir's look at bourgeois life in France at the onset of World War II. An assorted cast of characters - the rich and their poor servants - meet up at a French chateau.

59. Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness (2011)
A riveting portrait of the great writer whose stories became the basis of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness tells the tale of the rebellious genius who created an entirely new literature. Plumbing the depths of a Jewish world locked in crisis and on the cusp of profound change, he captured that world with brilliant humor. Sholem Aleichem was not just a witness to the creation of a new modern Jewish identity, but one of the very men who forged it.

60. The Leopard (1963)
The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 1860's Sicily.

61. Three Colors: Blue (Trois Couleurs: Bleu) (1993)
First of a trilogy of films dealing with contemporary French society concerns how the wife of a composer deals with the death of her husband and child.

62. Tokyo Story (Tôkyô monogatari) (1953)
An old couple visit their children and grandchildren in the city; but the children have little time for them.

63. Before Sunrise (1995)
A young man and woman meet on a train in Europe, and wind up spending one romantic evening together in Vienna. Unfortunately, both know that this will probably be their only night together.

64. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) (1920)
Dr. Caligari's somnambulist, Cesare, and his deadly predictions.

65. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
A distant poor relative of the Duke of D'Ascoyne plots to inherit the title by murdering the eight other heirs who stand ahead of him in the line of succession.

66. Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008)
A group of women rise up to peace to Liberia and help bring to power the country's first female head of state.

67. The African Queen (1952)
In Africa during WW1, a gin-swilling riverboat owner/captain is persuaded by a strait-laced missionary to use his boat to attack an enemy warship.

68. Top Hat (1935)
An American dancer comes to Britain and falls for a model whom he initially annoyed, but she mistakes him for his goofy producer.

69. Bob Roberts (1992)
A corrupt rightwing folksinger runs a crooked election campaign while only one independent muck-raking reporter is trying to stop him.

70. Husbands and Wives (1992)
When their best friends announce that they're separating, a professor and his wife discover the faults in their marriage.

71. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
In the post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland, a cynical drifter agrees to help a small, gasoline rich, community escape a band of bandits.

72. Stagecoach (1939)
A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo and learn something about each other in the process.

73. Rio Bravo (1959)
A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a cripple, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.

74. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
The story of a mistreated donkey and the people around him. A study on saintliness and a sister piece to Bresson's Mouchette.

75. Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander) (1982)
Two young Swedish children experience the many comedies and tragedies of their family, the Ekdahls.

76. Playtime (Play Time) (1967)
Monsieur Hulot has to contact an American official in Paris, but he gets lost in the maze of modern architecture which is filled with the latest technical gadgets. Caught in the tourist invasion, Hulot roams around Paris with a group of American tourists, causing chaos in his usual manner.

77. Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)
A prepubescent chess prodigy refuses to harden himself in order to become a champion like the famous but unlikable Bobby Fischer.

78. Spoorloos (The Vanishing) (1988)
Rex and Saskia, a young couple in love, are on vacation. They stop at a busy service station and Saskia is abducted. After three years and no sign of Saskia, Rex begins receiving letters from the abductor.

79. Henry V (1989)
The gritty adaption of William Shakespeare's play about the English King's bloody conquest of France.

80. Live-in Maid (Cama adentro) (2004)
A wealthy woman and her live-in housekeeper must adjust their entrenched routine and relationship when Buenos Aires is plunged into economic crisis.

81. My Left Foot (1989)
The story of Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy. He learned to paint and write with his only controllable limb - his left foot.

82. Sita Sings the Blues (2008)
An animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw.

83. The Killer (Dip huet seung hung) (1989)
A disillusioned assassin accepts one last hit in hopes of using his earnings to restore vision to a singer he accidentally blinded, only to be double-crossed by his boss.

84. The Order of Myths (2007)
In 2007 Mobile, Alabama, Mardi Gras is celebrated... and complicated. Following a cast of characters, parades, and parties across an enduring color line, we see that beneath the surface of pageantry lies something else altogether.

85. I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba) (1964)
This study of Cuba--partially written by renowned poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko--captures the island just before it made the transition to a post-revolutionary society. Moving from city to country and back again, I AM CUBA examines the various problems caused by political oppression as well as by great discrepancies in wealth and power. Beginning in Havana in the pre-Castro era, we see how foreigners contributed to the city's prostitution and poverty; this sequence features dreamy, hallucinogenic camera work that creates a feeling of unease and dislocation. Then, in glorious images of palm tress and fertile land, the film looks at the sugar cane fields in the countryside, and the difficulties faced by peasants working the land. Finally, back in the city again, leftist students battle the police and a corrupt government--and pay a high price for their rebellion.

86. Sound City (2013)
A documentary on the fabled recording studio that was located in Van Nuys, California.

87. The Birth of a Nation (1915)
The Civil War divides friends and destroys families, but that's nothing compared to the anarchy in the black-ruled South after the war.

88. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
In New York, armed men hijack a subway car and demand a ransom for the passengers. Even if it's paid, how could they get away?

89. The Waiting Room (2012)
Go behind the doors of an American public hospital struggling to care for a community of largely uninsured patients.

90. Hukkle (2002)
Using almost no dialogue, the film follows a number of residents (both human and animal) of a small rural community in Hungary - an old man with hiccups, a shepherdess and her sheep, an old woman who may or may not be up to no good, some folk-singers at a wedding, etc. While most of the film is a series of vignettes, there is a sinister and often barely perceptible subplot involving murder.

91. Local Hero (1983)
An American oil company sends a man to Scotland to buy up an entire village where they want to build a refinery. But things don't go as expected.

92. Nóz w Wodzie (Knife in the Water) (1962)
On their way to a sailing trip, an aging husband and wife invite along an emphatic young hitchhiker out of sheer patronization.

93. Quai des Orfevres (Quay of the Goldsmiths) (Jenny Lamour) (1947)
Jenny Lamour wants to succeed in music hall. Her husband and accompanist is Maurice Martineau, a nice but jealous guy. When he knew Jenny is making eyes at Brignon, an old businessman, in order to get some engagements, he looses his temper and threatens Brignon with death. But Jenny went anyway to a rendez-vous at the old man's, who is murdered the same evening. The criminal investigations are lead by Inspector Antoine...

94. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
A young woman discovers her visiting "Uncle Charlie" may not be the man he seems to be.

95. The Invisible Man (1933)
A scientist finds a way of becoming invisible, but in doing so, he becomes murderously insane.

97. The Odd Couple (1968)
Two friends try sharing an apartment, but their ideas of housekeeping and lifestyles are as different as night and day.

98. Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer (2007)
A tribute to jazz diva Anita O'Day, completed just weeks before her death in November 2006.

99. Enemies of the People (2009)
The Khmer Rouge slaughtered nearly two million people in the late 1970s. Yet the Killing Fields of Cambodia remain unexplained. Until now. Enter Thet Sambath, an unassuming, yet cunning, investigative journalist who spends a decade of his life gaining the trust of the men and women who perpetrated the massacres. From the foot soldiers who slit throats to Pol Pot's right-hand man, the notorious Brother Number Two, Sambath records shocking testimony never before seen or heard. Having neglected his own family for years, Sambath's work comes at a price. But his is a personal mission. He lost his parents and his siblings in the Killing Fields. Amidst his journey to discover why his family died, we come to understand for the first time the real story of Cambodia's tragedy.

100. Ikiru (Doomed) (Living) (To Live) (1952)
A bureaucrat tries to find a meaning in his life after he discovers he has terminal cancer.