3. Rear Window
No, Birds is not the iconic Hitchcock film, Rear Window is (though one could also make an argument for Rope). It’s hard to tell which is the bigger draw here – Hitchcock’s unique storytelling style on a single set, or Jimmy Stewart’s performance.
Grace Kelly wearing costumes from Edith Head alone also make it a movie worth watching, even if mystery suspense isn’t your thing. The basic storyline is that a newspaper photographer is stuck at home mending from a broken leg with nothing to occupy his time save his neighbors in the apartment complex. The photographer witnesses what he believes to be a murder, which he decides to solve from his window.
4. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was the epitome of the “spaghetti western.” For those who don’t know, the genre of Spaghetti Western is so named because they were mostly made by Italian directors in the ’60s and ’70s (spaghetti instead of espresso, really?). The director that defined the genre was Sergio Leone and Dollars Trilogy (A Fistfull Of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly), which starred Clint Eastwood.
Leone hadn’t originally intended the movies to be a trilogy. So if you haven’t seen the first two, it won’t impact your enjoyment of The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. If you’re a fan of cinema in general, Leone’s work stands out for its well-thought-out close-ups, his use of silence, and dramatic scores. This is a great example of the genre at its zenith. That is one of the many reasons why it’s on our list of 25 best movies ever made!
