...And Fifty Films

When I promised my class that I will post a list of books on www.employee2owner.com I also agreed to post a list of films which are not only good entertainment but would also help in familiarising them with the English language. Most Indian students at the postgraduate level are quite good in their knowledge and understanding of the language but their lack of practice in speaking the language and non existent exposure to the American or British culture leaves a big gap in their comprehension of the nuances of spoken English. I encourage my students to watch as many good English films as possible, especially the classics, to get used the the rhythm of the spoken language and perhaps be able to distinguish various different ways it is spoken in different parts of the world. I normally recommend in the class whatever good films I have seen that week or that month but when a request for a list of films came along I thought rattling of ten or twenty films would be the easiest thing to do. But when I sat down to draw a list, it turned out to be more daunting task than I had expected. The tough part was not which films to include but, as usually is the case with such lists, which ones to leave out. This time the list is not too short. Surprisingly I could not keep it any shorter than this. This is an of-the-cuff list; 'first to knock first admitted' as Saul Bellow's Augie March would say.



Satindra's List


Pay It Forward
Walk the Line
You've Got Mail
Finding Nemo
The Queen
The Last King of Scotland
My Best Friend's Wedding
The Pursuit of Happyness
Hotel Rwanda
Traffic
Notting Hill
Apollo 13
About a Boy
Love Actually
Rain Man
Erin Brockovich
Good Will Hunting
The Wedding Planner
Doctor Zhivago
Dirty Dancing
Chicago
Citizen Cane
The Sound of Music
My Fair Lady
Roman Holiday
Becket
Casablanca
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Singing in the Rain
Lawrence of Arabia
The Aviator
Gone With the Wind
Pretty Woman
Schindler's List
Top Gun
Jerry McGuire
Gandhi
Raging Bull
Hurricane
Titanic
Catch Me if You Can
Goodwill Hunting
Madagascar
Blood Diamond
To Kill a Mockingbird
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Bridge Over the River Kwai
Bonnie and Clyde
The Graduate
Midnight Cowboy
The Philadelphia Story
A Streetcar Named Desire
Taxi Driver
Rocky
Saving private Ryan
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Fiddler on the Roof
Spartacus
Forrest Gump
The French Connection
Benhur
Bruce Almighty
Father of the Bride
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
Meet the Parents
The Green Mile
Amadeus
Braveheart
Lust For Life
When Harry Met Sally
The Terminal
Minority Report
It Could Happen to You
There is Something About Mary
An Officer and a Gentleman
A Star is Born
Grease
The American President
Crash
Babel
Terms of Endearment
A Few Good Men
Casino
The Thomas Crown Affair
Sabrina
Intolerable Cruelty
Cocktail
Wizard of Oz
Hitch
Seabiscuit
Troy
Vertigo
The French Kiss
Guess Who is Coming to Dinner
A Beautiful Mind
Ray
Babe
Dances With Wolves
Dr.No
Star Wars
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Dirty Harry

These are a lot of films; yet there are a lot of other good films out there. Watch some of these films and if you come across a really good one; let me know too.