Almost a year ago, I decided to challenge my movie knowledge.  Back in January, I thought I knew about old movies. I thought I had seen the classics. Eleven months later, I am fully aware how wrong I was.

When my movie resolution project started, I set out to watch 66 movies on this list of 116.  It seemed daunting, but thanks to TCM’s 30 Days of Oscar and some massive expansion in the streaming offerings on Netflix and Amazon, it proved to be a little too easy.

So I decided to up the ante, consulted another list, and added 38 more titles to the quest.  Since then, the summer at the WSOP and a hectic travel schedule has slowed my lightning-fast pace of the early months, but, here I am, on December 2nd, and I just have six movies to go.  As I type, I am checking the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope vehicle “Road to Morocco” off my list. As the proejct intends, it is a movie I likely would have never gotten around to without a little prodding, but now I can say I have seen at least one of the “Road to” series I have heard about before.

It will be my 96th movie of this project.  Once the final goal is reached, that number will be 102.  Of those, there were some big, big hits, like Boyz N the Hood, which ended up being an all-time favorite.  Then there were some duds, like Nashville, which I couldn’t even manage to finish.  Here is what I have watched so far ranked from favorite to least favorite. To give you a quick breakdown,  I would saw 1-10 were exceptionally good, but the top 30 were all hits in my book. From 30-50, we have movies that weren’t bad, but weren’t ones I need to see again. The next 25 or so aren’t terrible, but it was less than fun to get through to the end and cross them of the list, while the final twenty were more or less bad, with the last five or so being borderline unwatchable:

1. Boyz N the Hood
2. The Great Escape
3. Ace in the Hole
4. The Blackboard Jungle
5. Good Night, and Good Luck
6. Goodbye, Mr Chips
7. Pillow Talk
8. Return of the Secaucus 7
9. Cat Ballou
10. On Golden Pond
11. The Lady Eve
12. A Letter to Three Wives
13. Laura
14. The Great Dictator
15. The Quiet Man
16. Bull Durham
17. Jezebel
18. Glory
19. Lost Horizon
20. The Defiant Ones
21. The Caine Mutiny
22. Mutiny on the Bounty
23. Queen Christina
24. Requiem for a Dream
25. Out of the Past
26. Do the Right Thing
27. Mr Deed Goes to Town
28. A Raisin in the Sun
29. The Magnificent Ambersons
30. The Kid
31. Gun Crazy
32. Mrs. Miniver
33. This Is Spinal Tap
34. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
35. Saturday Night Fever
36. Dodsworth
37. The Americanization of Emily
38. The Pride of the Yankees
39. The Awful Truth
40. Stormy Weather
41. Hail the Conquering Hero
42. Cat People
43. The Life of Emile Zola
44. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
45. The Longest Day
46. Little Big Man
47. Swing Time
48. The Day the Earth Stood Still
49. A Night at the Opera
50. The Sweet Smell of Success
51. Bataan
52. Touch of Evil
53. Twelve O’Clock High
54. Around the World in 80 Days
55. Red River
56. Young Mr. Lincoln
57. From Russia with Love
58. Goldfinger
59. All That Jazz
60. Beau Geste
61. The Ox-Bow Incident
62. The General
63. Scarface (1932)
64. The Last Temptation of Christ
65. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
66. I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
67. 20,000 Leauges Under the Sea
68. Lawrence of Arabia
69. The Man Who Would Be King
70. Cool Hand Luke
71. Badlands
72. The Yearling
73. Winchester ‘73
74. Fantastic Voyage
75. Fury
76. She Done Him Wrong
77. The War of the Worlds
78. Bullitt
79. Five Easy Pieces
80. Only Angels Have Wings
81. The Thin Man
82. Gilda
83. Camille
84. The Phantom of the Opera
85. Safety Last
86. The Greatest Show on Earth
87. Harold and Maude
88. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
89. The Cheat
90. Nashville
91. Out of Africa
92. Hud
93. Atlantic City
94. The Wild Bunch
95. Broken Blossoms

So where does that leave me?  With 56 movies to choose a lucky six from and 29 days to do it.  And what do I need from you all? Tell me if I really do need to watch 2001 before the year ends. Should one of the six slots go to yet another silent movie? Where can one even find sex, lies, and videotape these days?

This is my final plea, fellow film lovers. Help me make these last six count. Which ones are your picks?:

1. All Quiet on the Western Front
2. The Bank Dick
3. Ben-Hur (1926)
4. The Big Parade
5. Blue Velvet
6. Brazil
7. Cabin in the Sky
8. City Lights
9. Coming Home
10. Dirty Harry
11. Force of Evil
12. Frankenstein
13. The Freshman (1925)
14. Halloween
15. The Hustler
16. The King of Comedy
17. Last Tango in Paris
18. The Little Foxes
19. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
20. Modern Times
21. My Darling Clementine
22. The Night of the Living Dead (1968)
23. The Outlaw Josey Wales
24. The Poor Little Rich Girl
25. Porgy and Bess
26. The Scarlet Empress
27. Sex, Lies, and Videotape
28. Sleeper
29. Sons of the Desert
30. Sophie’s Choice
31. Sounder
32. Stranger Than Paradise
33. The Thing from Another World
34. Trouble in Paradise
35. 2001: A Space Odyssey
36. The Wind
37. A Woman Under the Influence
38. The Broadway Melody of 1929
39. Cavalcade
40. El Cid
41. David Copperfied (1935)
42. The Great Ziegfeld
43. The Gunfighter
44. Intruder in the Dust
45. The Little Colonel
46. The Mark of Zorro
47. Medium Cool
48. Melvin and Howard
49. El Norte
50. On the Beach
51. Rambling Rose
52. Run Silent, Run Deep
53. Sands of Iwo Jima
54. Shadows
55. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
56. Within Our Gates