What's the Best Movie You've Never Seen?

Every summer, the American Film Institute releases a list of the best movies ever in some genre or another, and then every decade, they lump them all together for the best movies of all time. Well, kind of; the AFI doesn't account for foreign language films or documentaries in its lists. Then earlier this week, Turner Classic Movies unveiled the just as subjective 15 Most Influential Classic Movies, which started its own conversations. Roger Ebert recently responded, seeing how his list of the ten greatest films matches up with TCM's. There is no way to determine a "best" movie ever; influence can be quantified to a certain extent. Oscars and box office records are measuring sticks in some ways, although they're also independent of discussions about "best" movies in historical terms. And the impact of these lists is two-fold; it highlights movies that in a lot of ways need that kind of publicity just so future generations don't forget about Chaplin, Fritz Lang, Buster Keaton, Eisenstein, and others. The other by-product is that it reminds everyone of all the films they've never taken the time to watch. So what's the best movie you've never seen? For a long time, mine was All About Eve. I just had never been a big Bette Davis fan. But that's a must-see. Simply put, it's some of the best movie dialogue ever written. Now, it appears that the best movie I've never watched is Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, released in 1957. I think it's also the only Kubrick film I've never seen, which makes it even more of an anomaly. Because that's such a subjective question, here's a collection of several of the more recent lists of great movies from the past century or so. Maybe you know you've never seen Citizen Kane or The Godfather, or maybe you've used AFI lists and all the rest to fill up a NetFlix queue but you just haven't gotten to everything yet. But I'm sure in no time at all you can figure out the greatest film you've never seen. AFI (1998 and 2008) Sight and Sound (2002) IMDB Top 250 TCM New York Times 1,00 Greatest Films (alphabetical) Movieline Time Top 100 (2005) I'm looking forward to seeing what movies pop up, and in particular, which ones are mentioned more than once.

Comments

[The Aussie]

Out of the top ten on the AFI lists, I haven't seen 5 out of the 12 movies - The Godfather, Raging Bull, Lawrence of Arabia, The Graduate and On The Waterfront. The only one I'm really particularly interested in seeing is On the Waterfront.
I did a bit worse in the TCM list - only 6 out of 15. The ones I've seen are 42nd Street, It Happened One Night, Snow White, Gone With The Wind, Citizen Kane and The Searchers.

[Get The Big Picture]

They're all good. I'd say The Graduate is the easiest to sit down and watch, but if I were ranking them, I'd have Lawrence of Arabia as the best of the group by a smidge.

[knives]

I've really been meaning to see Ivan the Terrible lately
Also you have to Netflix, or whatever it's called, Paths of Glory today. Easily one of Kubrick's best and that's saying a lot.

[Michael]

Citizen Kane. I tried to watch it once about a decade ago. Maybe I was too young for it because I ended up turning it off from boredom. I recorded it when it came on TCM a few months ago, so eventually I'll try again.

[MRPigg]

The one well regarded classic film I have never seen that sticks out in my mind as always coming up is Lawrence of Arabia. One of these days I'll get around to it.