Research Guides: Film: Films

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Media Services

Materials may be used in the Library or may circulate for a 3 day loan period. During working hours, materials must be checked out in Media Services on the Terrace Level. Hours are Monday through Thursday 12 noon to 6:00 p.m. and Friday 12 noon to 3:30 p.m. After hours, users must complete an Audio Visual Request Form and submit it at the Information Services desk. The materials will be available at the Lending Services Desk by 10 a.m. the next day or Monday morning if requested after 3:30 p.m. Friday.

Contact Judy Titus at ext. 3388 or jltitus@cedarcrest.edu with any questions.

Films About Filmmaking

Landmarks of Early Film by David Shepard (producer)
Call Number: DVD 791.43 L257O

Best International Feature

8 1/2 by Federico Fellini (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 E34an

Winner: 1963
Babette's Feast by Gabriel Axel (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 B112f

Winner: 1987
Indochine by Régis Wargnier (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 I41AA

Winner: 1992
Belle Époque by Fernando Trueba (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 B438E

Publication Date: 1993

Winner: 1993
Burnt by the Sun by Nikita Mikhalkov (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 B967b

Winner: 1994
All About My Mother by Pedro Almodóvar (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 A416AB

Winner: 1999
The Sea Inside by Alejandro Amenábar (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 S438I

Winner: 2004
Tsotsi by Gavin Hood (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 T882AA

Winner: 2005
Parasite by Bong Joon-ho (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 P221pa

Winner: 2019

From the Media Collection: Best Picture Winners

The Broadway Melody by Harry Beaumont (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 B863M

A pair of sisters from the vaudeville circuit try to make it big time on Broadway, but matters of the heart complicate the attempt.
Best Picture: 1929
All Quiet on the Western Front by Lewis Milestone (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 A416Q

A German youth eagerly enters World War I, but his enthusiasm wanes as he gets a firsthand view of the horror.
Best Picture: 1930
Cimarron by Wesley Ruggles (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 C573AA

A newspaper editor settles in an Oklahoma boom town with his reluctant wife at the end of the nineteenth century.
Best Picture: 1931
Grand Hotel by Edmund Goulding (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G751H

A group of very different individuals staying at a luxurious hotel in Berlin deal with each of their respective dramas.
Best Picture: 1932
Mutiny on the Bounty by Frank Lloyd (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 M992O

In 1787, British ship Bounty leaves Portsmouth to bring a cargo of bread-fruit from Tahiti but the savage on-board conditions imposed by Captain Bligh trigger a mutiny led by officer Fletcher Christian.
Best Picture: 1935
The Great Ziegfeld by Robert Leonard (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G786Y

The ups and downs of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., famed producer of extravagant stage revues, are portrayed.
Best Picture: 1936
The Life of Emile Zola by William Dieterle (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 L722O

The biopic of the famous French muckraking writer and his involvement in fighting the injustice of the Dreyfus Affair.
Best Picture: 1937
Rebecca by Alfred Hitchcock (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 R289AA

A self-conscious woman juggles adjusting to her new role as an aristocrat's wife and avoiding being intimidated by his first wife's spectral presence.
Best Picture: 1940
How Green Was My Valley by John Ford (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 H847G

At the turn of the century in a Welsh mining village, the Morgans, he stern, she gentle, raise coal-mining sons and hope their youngest will find a better life.
Best Picture: 1941
Mrs. Miniver by William Wyler (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 M678M

A British family struggles to survive the first months of World War II.
Best Picture: 1942
Going My Way by Leo McCarey (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G615M

When young Father O'Malley arrives at St. Dominic's, old Father Fitzgibbon doesn't think much of the church's newest member.
Best Picture: 1944
The Lost Weekend by Billy Wilder (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 L881W

The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four-day drinking bout.
Best Picture: 1945
The Best Years of Our Lives by William Wyler (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 B561Y

Three World War II veterans, two of them traumatized or disabled, return home to the American midwest to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.
Best Picture: 1946
Gentleman's Agreement by Elia Kazan (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G338AG

A reporter pretends to be Jewish in order to cover a story on anti-Semitism, and personally discovers the true depths of bigotry and hatred.
Best Picture: 1947
Hamlet by Laurence Olivier (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 H223aa

Prince Hamlet struggles over whether or not he should kill his uncle, whom he suspects has murdered his father, the former king.
Best Picture: 1948
An American in Paris by Vincente Minnelli (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 A512I

Three friends struggle to find work in Paris. Things become more complicated when two of them fall in love with the same woman.
Best Picture: 1951
The Greatest Show on Earth by Cecil B DeMille (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G786S

The dramatic lives of trapeze artists, a clown, and an elephant trainer are told against a background of circus spectacle.
Best Picture: 1952
From Here to Eternity by Fred Zinnemann (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 F931H

At a U.S. Army base in 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his commanding officer's wife and top aide begin a tentative affair.
Best Picture: 1953
On the Waterfront by Elia Kazan (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 O58T

An ex-prize fighter turned New Jersey longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses, including his older brother, as he starts to connect with the grieving sister of one of the syndicate's victims.
Best Picture: 1954
Marty by Delbert Mann (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 M388AA

A middle-aged butcher and a school teacher who have given up on the idea of love meet at a dance and fall for each other.
Best Picture: 1955
Around the World in 80 Days by Michael Anderson (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 A766T

A Victorian Englishman bets that with the new steamships and railways he can circumnavigate the globe in eighty days.
Best Picture: 1956
The Bridge on the River Kwai by David Lean (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 B851O

British POWs are forced to build a railway bridge across the river Kwai for their Japanese captors in occupied Burma, not knowing that the allied forces are planning a daring commando raid through the jungle to destroy it.
Best Picture: 1957
Gigi by Vincente Minnelli (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G459AA

Weary of the conventions of Parisian society, a rich playboy and a youthful courtesan-in-training enjoy a platonic friendship which may not stay platonic for long.
Best Picture: 1968
Ben-Hur by William Wyler (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 B456H

After a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend in 1st-century Jerusalem, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.
Best Picture: 1959
The Apartment by Billy Wilder (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 A639AA

A Manhattan insurance clerk tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.
Best Picture: 1960
West Side Story by Robert Wise (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 W521s

Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.
Best Picture: 1961
Lawrence of Arabia by David Lean (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 L419O

The story of T.E. Lawrence, the English officer who successfully united and led the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes during World War I in order to fight the Turks.
Best Picture: 1962
My Fair Lady by George Cukor (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 M995f

In 1910s London, snobbish phonetics professor Henry Higgins agrees to a wager that he can make crude flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, presentable in high society.
Best Picture: 1964
The Sound of Music by Robert Wise (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 S724O

A young novice is sent by her convent in 1930s Austria to become a governess to the seven children of a widowed naval officer.
Best Picture: 1965
A Man for All Seasons by Fred Zinnemann (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 M265F

The story of Sir Thomas More, who stood up to King Henry VIII when the King rejected the Roman Catholic Church to obtain a divorce and remarry.
Best Picture: 1966
In the Heat of the Night by Norman Jewison (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 I35TH

A black Philadelphia police detective is mistakenly suspected of a local murder while passing through a racially hostile Mississippi town, and after being cleared is reluctantly asked by the police chief to investigate the case.
Best Picture: 1967
Oliver! by Carol Reed (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 O48AA

After being sold to a mortician, young orphan Oliver Twist runs away and meets a group of boys trained to be pickpockets by an elderly mentor in 1830s London.
Best Picture: 1968
Midnight Cowboy by John Schlesinger (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 M628C

A naive hustler travels from Texas to New York City to seek personal fortune, finding a new friend in the process.
Best Picture: 1969
Patton by Franklin Schaffner (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 P322aa

The World War II phase of the career of controversial American general George S. Patton.
Best Picture: 1970
The French Connection by William Friedkin (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 F873C

A pair of NYPD detectives in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a heroin smuggling ring based in Marseilles, but stopping them and capturing their leaders proves an elusive goal.
Best Picture: 1971
The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G583AA

The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty in postwar New York City transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant youngest son.
Best Picture: 1972
The Sting by George Roy Hill (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 S859AA

Two con men set up an elaborate plan to swindle an enormous sum out of the man who killed their mutual friend.
Best Picture: 1973
The Godfather, Part II by Francis Ford Coppola (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G583p2

The early life and career of Vito Corleone in 1920s New York City is portrayed, while his son, Michael, expands and tightens his grip on the family crime syndicate.
Best Picture: 1974
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Milos Forman (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 O58F

In the Fall of 1963, a Korean War veteran and criminal pleads insanity and is admitted to a mental institution, where he rallies up the scared patients against the tyrannical nurse.
Best Picture: 1975
Rocky by John Avildsen (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 R684AA

A small-time Philadelphia boxer gets a supremely rare chance to fight the world heavyweight champion in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect.
Best Picture: 1976
Annie Hall by Woody Allen (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 A615H

Alvy Singer, a divorced Jewish comedian, reflects on his relationship with ex-lover Annie Hall, an aspiring nightclub singer, which ended abruptly just like his previous marriages.
Best Picture: 1977
The Deer Hunter by Michael Cimino (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 D312H

An in-depth examination of the ways in which the Vietnam War impacts and disrupts the lives of several friends in a small steel mill town in Pennsylvania.
Best Picture: 1978
Kramer vs. Kramer by Robert Benton (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 K89V

After his wife leaves him, a work-obsessed Manhattan advertising executive is forced to learn long-neglected parenting skills, but a heated custody battle over the couple's young son deepens the wounds left by the separation.
Best Picture: 1979
Ordinary People by Robert Redford (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 O65P

The accidental death of the older son of an affluent family deeply strains the relationships among the bitter mother, the good-natured father and the guilt-ridden younger son.
Best Picture: 1980
Chariots of Fire by Hugh Hudson (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4375 W279b37

Two British track athletes are driven to win in the 1924 Olympics as they wrestle with issues of pride and conscience.
Best Picture: 1981
Owned as part of "Best of Warner Brothers: 100 film collection"
Gandhi by Richard Attenborough (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G195AA

The life of the lawyer who became the famed leader of the Indian revolts against the British rule through his philosophy of nonviolent protest.
Best Picture: 1982
Terms of Endearment by James L. Brooks (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 T319o

Follows hard-to-please Aurora looking for love, and her daughter's family problems.
Best Picture: 1983
Amadeus by Milos Forman (director)
Call Number: VT 791.4372 A481AA

The life, success and troubles of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as told by Antonio Salieri, the contemporaneous composer who was deeply jealous of Mozart's talent and claimed to have murdered him.
Best Picture: 1984
Out of Africa by Sydney Pollack (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 O94O

In 20th-century colonial Kenya, a Danish baroness/plantation owner has a passionate love affair with a free-spirited big-game hunter.
Best Picture: 1985
Platoon by Oliver Stone (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 P718AA

Chris Taylor, a neophyte recruit in Vietnam, finds himself caught in a battle of wills between two sergeants, one good and the other evil. A shrewd examination of the brutality of war and the duality of man in conflict.
Best Picture: 1986
The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 L351E

The life of Emperor Pu Yi, who took the throne at age three, in 1908, before witnessing decades of cultural and political upheaval within and without the walls of the Forbidden City
Best Picture: 1987
Rain Man by Barry Levinson (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 R154M

After a selfish L.A. yuppie learns his estranged father left a fortune to an autistic-savant brother in Ohio that he didn't know existed, he absconds with his brother and sets out across the country, hoping to gain a larger inheritance.
Best Picture: 1988
Driving Miss Daisy by Bruce Beresford (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 D782M

An old Jewish woman and her African-American chauffeur in the American South have a relationship that grows and improves over the years.
Best Picture: 1989
Dances with Wolves by Kevin Costner (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 D173W

Lieutenant John Dunbar, assigned to a remote western Civil War outpost, befriends wolves and Native Americans, making him an intolerable aberration in the military.
Best Picture: 1990
The Silence of the Lambs by Jonathan Demme (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 S582O

A young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims.
Best Picture: 1991
Unforgiven by Clint Eastwood (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 U56AA

Retired Old West gunslinger William Munny reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner Ned Logan and a young man, The "Schofield Kid."
Best Picture: 1992
Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 S336L

In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.
Best Picture: 1993
Forrest Gump by Robert Zemeckis (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 F728G

Two presidencies, the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and other historical events unfold from the perspective of an Alabama man with an IQ of 75, whose only desire is to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart.
Best Picture: 1994
Braveheart by Mel Gibson (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 B826aa2

Scottish warrior William Wallace leads his countrymen in a rebellion to free his homeland from the tyranny of King Edward I of England.
Best Picture: 1995
The English Patient by Anthony Minghella (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 E58P

At the close of World War II, a young nurse tends to a badly-burned plane crash victim. His past is shown in flashbacks, revealing an involvement in a fateful love affair.
Best Picture: 1996
Titanic by James Cameron (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 T617aa

A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.
Best Picture: 1997
Shakespeare in Love by John Madden
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 S296I

The world's greatest ever playwright, William Shakespeare, is young, out of ideas and short of cash, but meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays.
Best Picture: 1998
American Beauty by Sam Mendes (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 A512B

A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend.
Best Picture: 1999
Gladiator by Ridley Scott (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G542AA

A former Roman General sets out to exact vengeance against the corrupt emperor who murdered his family and sent him into slavery.
Best Picture: 2000
A Beautiful Mind by Ron Howard (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 B384m

After John Nash, a brilliant but asocial mathematician, accepts secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn for the nightmarish.
Best Picture: 2001
Chicago by Rob Marshall (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 C532aa

Two death-row murderesses develop a fierce rivalry while competing for publicity, celebrity, and a sleazy lawyer's attention.
Best Picture: 2002
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King by Peter Jackson (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 L866O

Gandalf and Aragorn lead the World of Men against Sauron's army to draw his gaze from Frodo and Sam as they approach Mount Doom with the One Ring.
Best Picture: 2003
Million Dollar Baby by Clint Eastwood (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 M655B

A determined woman works with a hardened boxing trainer to become a professional.
Best Picture: 2004
Crash by Paul Haggis (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 C894AA

Los Angeles citizens with vastly separate lives collide in interweaving stories of race, loss and redemption.
Best Picture: 2005
The Departed by Martin Scorsese (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 D419AA

An undercover cop and a mole in the police attempt to identify each other while infiltrating an Irish gang in South Boston.
Best Picture: 2006
No Country for Old Men by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen (directors)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 N739C

Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and more than two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande.
Best Picture: 2007
Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 S634M

A Mumbai teenager reflects on his life after being accused of cheating on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"
Best Picture: 2008
The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 H967L

During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.
Best Picture: 2009
The King's Speech by Tom Hooper (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 K55S

The story of King George VI, his impromptu ascension to the throne of the British Empire in 1936, and the speech therapist who helped the unsure monarch overcome his stammer.
Best Picture: 2010
The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 A791aa

An egomaniacal film star develops a relationship with a young dancer against the backdrop of Hollywood's silent era.
Best Picture: 2011
Argo by Ben Affleck (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 A693aa

Acting under the cover of a Hollywood producer scouting a location for a science fiction film, a CIA agent launches a dangerous operation to rescue six Americans in Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1979.
Best Picture: 2012
12 Years a Slave by Steve McQueen (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 T971y

In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.
Best Picture: 2013
Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) by Alejandro Iñárritu (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 B618aa

A washed-up superhero actor attempts to revive his fading career by writing, directing, and starring in a Broadway production.
Best Picture: 2014
Spotlight by Tom McCarthy (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 S765aa

The true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the entire Catholic Church to its core.
Best Picture: 2015
Moonlight by Barry Jenkins (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 P699moo

A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.
Best Picture: 2016
The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 D366sh

At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.
Best Picture: 2017
Green Book by Peter Farrelly (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 G789gr

A working-class Italian-American bouncer becomes the driver for an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.
Best Picture: 2018
Parasite [Gisaengchung] by Bong Joon Ho (director)
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 P221pa

Greed and class discrimination threaten the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan.
Best Picture: 2019
Nomadland by Chloe Zhao
Call Number: DVD 791.4372 Z63n

A woman in her sixties, after losing everything in the Great Recession, embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.
Best Picture: 2020

AFI's Greatest Films

The American Film Institute has created lists of (in their estimation) the greatest films. Links to the individual lists are below; many of them are available through the library. All lists are interactive; check off how many you've seen!

AFI: All Lists
Explore the categories at your leisure
100 Years, 100 Movies
The original list, released 1998
100 Years, 100 Movies (10th Anniversary)
The updated list, released 2007
The 10 Top 10
Top 10 films in 10 different categories
100 Years, 100 Cheers
The 100 most inspiring films
100 Years, 100 Movie Quotes
The 100 most iconic quotes in film
100 Years, 100 Songs
The 100 best songs in film
100 Years, 100 Heroes and Villains
Lists of the 50 greatest heroes and 50 greatest villains in film
100 Years, 100 Passions
The 100 greatest love stories on film
100 Years, 100 Thrills
The 100 most thrilling films
100 Years, 100 Laughs
The 100 greatest comedies
100 Years, 100 Stars
The 100 most iconic film stars (50 men, 50 women)
100 Years of Film Scores
The 25 greatest film scores
100 Years of Musicals
The 25 greatest musical films