Movies that should be shown in film school?

Oh I didn't expect Limitliess. Actually I was quite surprised they showed Limitless. I was told by the professor that we were watching Limitless to break down everything that is wrong with the movie and what not to do.

So I guess he showed us one he didn't think was that good, in order to learn from it. When he later on asked which movie the students liked the least, we all said Limitless.

Didn't think of it until I saw it here, but I totally agree with Chinatown..pretty much a flawless film.

Well the most appropriate movie will be PULP FICTION according to me.

I don't know if it would hold up completely, but how about something like The Player. My reasoning is that the whole movie is a movie about movies. It describes what makes a good movie as it seeks to apply its own advice. It also describes particular historical scenes. For instance it starts with a long single shot, while discussing the opening sequence of A Touch of Evil which is a very long complex tracking shot.



Mindwalk- Good example for dialog driven movies
Days of Heaven-Cinematography
Thin Blue Line (Faults in the justice systemin a particular case in Dallas Texas) and The Devil's Playground (about the Amish ritual that allows a teenager of sixteen to be free to experiment with secular culture for a few years before they commit to the church). StreetWise (follows several young teenagers who wander the streets in Seattle Washington) - Documentaries
Just a few.

The Godfather (1972) (for a perfectly made epic story)

Highlander (1986) (for the editing)
Citizen Kane (1941) (for the breakthroughs of storytelling and cinematography)
and
The Matrix (1999) (for the technical aspects).

Definitely 12 Angry Men.
Masterful way to use 1 location with nothing but dialogue driving the plot.

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The choices would really depend greatly on what your looking to teach students, if a course is looking to prepare people for career in modern mainstream film and TV I suppose it makes sense to analyse such works.

Agree with this, I think it depends on the genre and what you're trying to do. Silence of the Lambs is for me one ifvtge best films ever made, not just for it's performances but it's music, it's framing, it's cuts, it's angles etc. But what works perfectly there wouldn't work perfectly somewhere else.

Halloween I think from a horror perspective, is a good how to film. It creates so much atmosphere just from the music and framing.

What is a film school without The Birds and Psycho, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Sansho the Bailiff, Tokyo Story?


Children of Men...Limitless... Damn...

Yeah I felt my film school was kind of the opposite and kept saying you should 'show' instead of 'tell', where as 12 Angry Men had a lot of telling of the plot in comparison.

Inception

Interesting choice. Why Inception?