TSPDT - Recommended Viewing


	TSPDT's Recommended Viewing
	Home By Title: A-B C-D E-F G-H I-L M-N O-R S T U-Z By Director: A-B C-D E-F G-H I-L M-N O-R S T U-Z
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	*All additions/amendments to our Recommended Viewing* section are listed here.**

	This section consolidates all of TSPDT's film recommendations, most of which you can also view via our director pages, found here and here. These are - in essence - our favourite 2,000-plus films, and we encourage you to seek as many of them out. Our recommended viewing section contains many acclaimed classics (that you'd expect to see on many all-time-best lists, and do), but it also contains plenty of neglected films (including Delmer Dave's public domain-crucified The Red House, George Archainbaud's The Lost Squadron, and Frank Perry's The Diary of a Mad Housewife) that we believe deserve their 'day in the sun.'

	All films listed in this section have been seen by the makers of this website. We are not critics, just buffs, and it's fair to say that this list - due to the fact that there are still very many remarkable films (by reputation) which we haven't seen - will continue to grow steadily. Between us, we have seen over 6,000 films to date, but in all seriousness that barely scratches the surface, especially considering that many of those were lame mainstream fare, prior to our taste buds developing to some credible degree. We haven't seen enough Asian, African or South American films to due justice to their cinema, but we're getting better. We also haven't seen enough avant-garde or animated films, but once again, we are improving in this area (the proliferation of short films available online has helped our cause).

	It must be said, honestly and firmly, that - despite having seen more films from the 1980s and 1990s - we have a predilection for American genre films, especially between 1930 and 1959. We make no apologies for this, especially when you consider the quality of filmmakers that worked (often subversively) within this realm-: Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Mann, Douglas Sirk, George Cukor, John Ford, Vincente Minnelli, King Vidor, Nicholas Ray, Otto Preminger, Samuel Fuller and many, many others.

	To give you a better understanding of what you might expect from our recommendations, the following numbers are a broad statistical breakdown of the films we had seen up to January 2008.
	By Decade: 1990s (20%), 1980s (14%), 1950s (13%), 2000s (12%), 1960s (11%), 1970s (11%), 1940s (10%), 1930s (6%), 1920s (2%), Pre-1920s (1%).
	By Region: North America (61%), Europe (21%), Britain (10%), Asia (5%), Australasia (1%), Central/South America (1%), Africa (below 1%). Sorry to all our Asian, African, and Latin American friends. There's no doubt we've got some 'work' to do there.
	Leading Directors (in terms of films we've seen): Alfred Hitchcock (41), John Ford (38), Jean-Luc Godard (34), Woody Allen (33), Fritz Lang (30), Anthony Mann (29), Ingmar Bergman (26), Stan Brakhage (26), Robert Altman (26), John Huston (26), George Cukor (24), Martin Scorsese (24), Raoul Walsh (24), and Howard Hawks (24).

	Q: Are some of your recommendations more 'solid' than others? A: Yes
	HR - Highly Recommended (Masterpiece/Near-Masterpiece) We classify 'highly recommended' films as being superb cinematic achievements. These films are either flawless or near-flawless entertainments and/or artistic triumphs that occupy a special place in our lives. This is our pantheon, it is our canon... call it what you like. These films must not be missed.
	R - Recommended (Strong cinematic effort/Better Than Good) We classify 'recommended' films, in most cases, as strong and important cinematic efforts that probably - for us, at least - don't quite achieve the resonance or artistic profundity of a 'highly recommended' film (although many come very close, and after another viewing - who knows - may be elevated to 'highly recommended' status). These films should also not be missed.

	Q: I'd like to sample some of your recommendations, but I'm a little uncertain as to where to start. Could you please maybe recommend those films that you consider absolute must-sees? A: You mean like we used to? OK, you win.

	We've sorted our recommendations By Title, By Director, and By Year.

	Alternatively, please toddle-off to the 1,000 Greatest Films section to view the most critically-acclaimed films of all-time.



	Home By Title: A-B C-D E-F G-H I-L M-N O-R S T U-Z By Director: A-B C-D E-F G-H I-L M-N O-R S T U-Z
	By Year: 1900-1929 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s