The 12-Hour Film Expert: Everything You Need to Know about Movies, by brothers Noah and James Charney, has a reductivist title, but the book itself is a reasonably detailed history of American cinema. On the other hand, foreign-language films are squeezed into a single chapter, which the writers admit—and demonstrate—“is well-nigh impossible to do”.
The book is organised into twelve chapters, each of which begins with a list of a few key films, “the most important ones to watch.” An appendix, The Movie Playlist, lists further genres and subgenres, each with twelve recommended films. At the end of the Playlist, the “rule of twelve” gives way to a list of directors from various countries outside the US, each represented by their best-known films.
There’s a general emphasis on more recent films, and there are some odd omissions: numerous genres, such as war, gangster films, period dramas, documentaries, and animation, are excluded. Stanley Kubrick’s films are conspicuously absent from any of the book’s lists.
These are the twelve chapters and their key films:
The Invention of the Movies —
The book is organised into twelve chapters, each of which begins with a list of a few key films, “the most important ones to watch.” An appendix, The Movie Playlist, lists further genres and subgenres, each with twelve recommended films. At the end of the Playlist, the “rule of twelve” gives way to a list of directors from various countries outside the US, each represented by their best-known films.
There’s a general emphasis on more recent films, and there are some odd omissions: numerous genres, such as war, gangster films, period dramas, documentaries, and animation, are excluded. Stanley Kubrick’s films are conspicuously absent from any of the book’s lists.
These are the twelve chapters and their key films:
The Invention of the Movies —
- A Trip to the Moon
- The Great Train Robbery
- The Gold Rush
- Sunrise
- Casablanca
- Citizen Kane
- Stagecoach
- The Searchers
- Red River
- Double Indemnity
- Out of the Past
- Touch of Evil
- Chinatown
- Bringing up Baby
- Airplane!
- When Harry Met Sally
- Top Hat
- Singin’ in the Rain
- Moulin Rouge!
- The Wages of Fear
- The Birds
- The Italian Job
- Cat People
- Halloween
- The Babadook
- The Bourne Identity
- Nobody
- Run Lola Run
- X-Men
- Star Wars IV–VI
- The Lord of the Rings I–III
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
- Bicycle Thieves
- Seven Samurai
- Nostalghia
