Came in to mention this and Radio Flyer.
Seabiscuit
A River Runs Through It
The Year My Voice Broke
Age of Innocence
Among the films mentioned I particularly liked the narration in Kind Hearts and Coronets and Barry Lyndon.
“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.” - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
“I never knew the old Vienna…before the war.”
There was opening narration, but it does not continue throughout the film.
Exactly, which is why I’d argue establishing narration (only at the beginning and/or end) is different from a true “narrator” who recurs regularly throughout the film. While The Third Man, All About Eve, The Day of the Jackal, The War of the Worlds and The Lord of the Rings may have some voiceover exposition at the beginning, they are not narrated films.
Also, Russian Ark isn’t narrated. It’s simply a long POV with the person talking off-camera amidst the events, not over them.
Memento depended pretty heavily on the narration.
“Why am I chasing this guy? Wait, he’s chasing me!”
**Watchmen **had bits of narration by Rorschach.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) has pretty nifty narration: Robert Downey Jr.'s character, Harry Lockhart, is doing a real-time narration of the movie, explaining his motivations and decisions as they happen (mostly – he’s a little unreliable at times).
The narration is one of the reasons, among many, that this is such a fun movie to watch. Downey Jr.'s (and Val Kilmer’s) acting + Shane Black’s writing and direction = pure entertainment.
Well, sticking to the IMDB’s top movies…
***Shawshank Redemption ***(narrated by Morgan"Red" Freeman)
***Goodfellas ***(narrated by Ray “Henry Hill” Liotta, for the most part, but by other characters in parts)
Forrest Gump
***Sunset Boulevard ***(Narrated by William Holden, from beyond)
American Beauty (narrated by Kevin Spacey, from beyond)
***A Clockwork Orange ***(narrated by Malcolm “Alex” McDowell)
***Life Is Beautiful ***(narrated by grown-up Josue)
***Amadeus ***(narrated by F. Murray “Salieri” Abraham)
Blade Runner (narrated by Harrison “Deckard” Ford)
Stand By Me (narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, the adult version of Gordie)
The Princess Bride (narrated by Peter “Grandpa” Falk)
AlecGuinness’ character (Omar Sharif’s half-brother) is the narrator of ***Dr. Zhivago ***
The Big Lebowski
The Name of the Rose
This is the first movie with narration to pop into my mind. Excellent flick.
*“And you? How 'bout it, filmgoer? Have you solved the case of the - the dead people in L.A.? Times Square audiences, please don’t shout at the screen, and stop picking at that, it’ll just get worse.”
*
Love this movie!
A Christmas Story
Amélie
Does Stranger than Fiction count? Since the narration is a key plot point, I am not sure if it is true narration.
Casino, as noted, was narrated, and by at least two characters. Since narration is presumed to be spoken after the fact and in person, I thought Joe Pesci’s narration was a bit of a cheat.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show had a narrator.
*Dances With Wolves *- the narration is Dunbar’s journal entries.
It seems like you’re as likely as not to get narration in French movies. If that’s a valid observation, I’d be interested in learning why it’s so.
I don’t like it when movies made from novels dispense with the narrator. Lord Jim is narrated, at least for the set-up, as is the entire novel by Joseph Conrad .
If it’s permissible to ask a tangental question, are there any movies that follow the literary device of the unreliable narrator? I know it’s understood that that “movies have to be stupider than books,” so would the audience have trouble with anything less obvious than Rashomon?
I don’t think so. Example: Forrest Gump. A lot of Forrest’s narration is so transparently unreliable that it’s written for laughs. But still, everthing we see from his POV is the standard God’s-eye view we expect at the movies.