I too have never seen Citizen Kane. It may well be better than anything before or since, but it’s not very often I’m in the mood for a black-and-white movie where an old geezer waxes nostalgically about his childhood toy.
I looked at a list of the highest-grossing movies of all time, and I’ve missed Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean, Alice in Wonderland, Twilight, Transformers, and all but one of the Harry Potter movies. Oh, and the last three Star Wars movies.
I’ve seen most of the classics, which will happen if you get old and watch enough TV.
Although I generally love Tim Burton movies, I have never seen Edward Scissorhands. I was nineteen when it came out, and all the teen girls fawning over Johnny Depp put me off.
Way too many for me to name. Most of the big ones from the 70s, including Jaws, The Godfather, Close Encounters - ah heck, I wouldn’t be able to list them all even if I tried. It wasn’t until the last few years that I started going out to movies regularly.
Never seen any of the Twilight movies. Didn’t see The Godfather in its entirety until last year (and liked but didn’t love it). Still haven’t seen The Godfather Part II or III in their entirety. Have never seen Schindler’s List, or The Shawshank Redemption, although I keep telling myself I really should.
I’ve seen most of the others mentioned so far (and was not as blown away by Citizen Kane as everyone told me I would be; my expectations were probably much too high).
I haven’t seen:
Inception
city of God
It’s a Wonderful Life
Sunset Boulevard
The Professional
Taxi Driver
Lawrence of Arabia
Paths of Glory
The Pianist
To Kill a Mockingbird
Spirited Away
…and more
The only one I want to see off the list above is Taxi Driver, only because I want to see all of Deniro’s movies before he sold out.
You need to read one of the many books dedicated to it (or the chapter in film studies books dedicated to it.) The story stinks but the techniques are incredible even by today’s standards. For example, in the scene where he’s at the head of the table looking at everybody, every single face is in focus even though they aren’t in the same plane.
There are a lot of movies I just haven’t gotten to yet - I had lots of free time before the days of DVDs and VCRs. I just saw Jules and Jim a few months ago. But movies I don’t intend to ever see are:
It’s a Wonderful Life (I know the plot, and it sounds mawkish)
A Christmas Story (saw bits when my kids were watching - mid-west Christmas nostalgia doesn’t do it for this New York Jewish kid
Titanic: just because, and even though we own the VHS version. I don’t have enough years left to sit through that thing.
Schindler’s List *
M *
The Third Man
Das Boot *
City Lights
Modern Times
Downfall
Cinema Paradiso *
Braveheart *
Rashômon
The Great Dictator
Rebecca
The Great Escape
Unforgiven
Oldboy
Touch of Evil
Princess Mononoke
Strangers On A Train
Donnie Darko
Notorious
The General
Platoon
The Lion King
The Big Sleep (I’ll be seeing this in a couple of weeks at a Noir retrospective)
Witness for the Prosecution
Wild Strawberries
Scarface
The Thing
Amores Perros *
Grave of the Fireflies
Diabolique (I’ll be seeing it in a couple of weeks at a Henri-Georges Clouzot retrospective)
Nights of Cabiria
Ed Wood
Shadow of a Doubt (I’ll be seeing this in a couple of weeks at the Noir retrospective)
Rope
Brief Encounter
The Battle of Algiers
The 400 Blows
Duck Soup
Ikiru *
All Quiet on the Western Front
La Strada
My Neighbor Totoro
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Changeling
Infernal Affairs
(* these are movies that I own on DVD but have never watched)
Some I saw so many decades ago that I might as well not have seen them at all, like Ben Hur or Harvey, though I counted them anyway.
My list would be a lot longer if I’d done it a few months ago. Some movies I’ve only seen for the first time recently thanks to a new membership at the Gene Siskel Film Center, such as Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, The Wild Bunch, Metropolis, Bicycle Thieves, and 8 1/2. The membership, which means I can see all movies there for $5, is something I should have done many many many years ago. If I had, that list would be a whole lot shorter. I hope to knock down that list over the next year. It’d be great if the Siskel were to have a Hitchcock retrospective, a silent film festival and a Fellini retrospective.
There’s not one movie on that list that I don’t want to see, although the silent films, the Miyazaki films and the Marx Brothers are lowest priority.