71. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1997 Rank: NEW)
DreamWorks, 1998
PRINCIPAL CAST
Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Matt Damon
DIRECTOR Steven Spielberg
PRODUCERS Steven Spielberg, Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon, Gary Levinsohn
SCREENWRITER Robert Rodat All of Private James Ryan’s brothers have been killed in the line of duty. A unit of war-weary soldiers is forced to risk their lives to find the young man and bring him home. The film was a realistic and uncompromising account of the war often romanticized by Hollywood.
72. THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1997 Rank: NEW)
Columbia, 1994
PRINCIPAL CAST
Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman
DIRECTOR Frank Darabont
PRODUCER Niki Marvin
SCREENWRITER Frank Darabont Banker Robbins is wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to life in a harsh Maine prison, which drips with corruption. His intelligence helps him gain the respect of his fellow inmates, including Freeman’s entrepreneurial “Red,” while secretly devising a plan to escape.
73. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1997 Rank: 50)
Twentieth Century-Fox, 1969
PRINCIPAL CAST
Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
DIRECTOR George Roy Hill
PRODUCERS Paul Monash, John Foreman
SCREENWRITER William Goldman The chemistry of Newman and Redford redefined the buddy movie. Goldman’s script follows Butch and Sundance as they rob banks from the Old West all the way to Bolivia, making heroes out of anti-heroes. The movie’s key song
Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head is a fun counterpart to the actual plight of our friends.
74. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1997 Rank: 65)
Orion, 1991
PRINCIPAL CAST
Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins
DIRECTOR Jonathan Demme
PRODUCERS Edward Saxton, Kenneth Utt, Ronald M. Bozman
SCREENWRITER Ted Tally “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti,” hisses Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant serial killer engaged by Foster’s FBI agent in an effort to capture another killer on the loose.
75. IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1997 Rank: NEW)
United Artists, 1967
PRINCIPAL CAST
Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Lee Grant
DIRECTOR Norman Jewison
PRODUCER Walter Mirisch
SCREENWRITER Stirling Silliphant Poitier is Virgil Tibbs, the Philadelphia detective drawn into a Mississippi murder case no one knows how to handle. Quincy Jones’ evocative jazz score punctuates the heat and bigotry, but it is Poitier’s “They call me Mister Tibbs” and the slap heard ‘round the world that made audiences cheer.
76. FORREST GUMP (1997 Rank: 71)
Paramount, 1994
PRINCIPAL CAST
Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Sally Field
DIRECTOR Robert Zemeckis
PRODUCERS Wendy Finerman, Steve Starkey, Steve Tisch
SCREENWRITER Eric Roth Forrest will tell his story to anyone who will listen. Mentally challenged, he seems to be at the right place at the right time meeting everyone from JFK to Elvis to John Lennon and doesn’t understand his good fortune. Breakthroughs in technology allowed Zemekis to digitally alter history to fit the world of Forrest Gump.
77. ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1997 Rank: NEW)
Warner Bros., 1976
PRINCIPAL CAST
Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jason Robards
DIRECTOR Alan J. Pakula
PRODUCER Walter Coblenz
SCREENWRITER William Goldman Both a taut political thriller and detective story, Redford and Hoffman are Woodward and Bernstein, the two novice Washington Post reporters who uncovered the Watergate break-in and cover-up.
78. MODERN TIMES (1997 Rank: 81)
United Artists, 1936
PRINCIPAL CAST
Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard
DIRECTOR Charles Chaplin
PRODUCER Charles Chaplin
SCREENWRITER Charles Chaplin Chaplin speaks! And ends the silent era with this film about a little man working on an assembly line, who is literally caught in the hub of an industrialized society, and after several trips to the hospital and jail, ultimately finds happiness with a kindred soul.
79. THE WILD BUNCH (1997 Rank: 80)
Warner Bros., 1969
PRINCIPAL CAST
William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien, Warren Oates
DIRECTOR Sam Peckinpah
PRODUCER Phil Feldman
SCREENWRITERS Walon Green, Sam Peckinpah, Roy N. Sickner Aging outlaws and relentless bounty hunters converge at the US-Mexico border in 1913. Slow-motion action violence became Peckinpah’s calling card after the success of this Western masterpiece.
80. THE APARTMENT (1997 Rank: 93)
United Artists, 1960
PRINCIPAL CAST
Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Jack Kruschen
DIRECTOR Billy Wilder
PRODUCER Billy Wilder
SCREENWRITERS I.A.L. Diamond, Billy Wilder Wilder’s wry take on corporate America skewers the climb through the bedroom to the boardroom. Lemmon is a career-climbing executive who offers his boss’ the use of his apartment for an extra-marital fling. His foolproof plan falls apart when he falls in love with his boss’s girlfriend. “That’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise!”
