Movies I Have Never Seen

[Jeff of Earth-J]

What movies have you never seen (that you probably should have)?

I'll start.

I have never seen Ben Hur.

[ClarkKent_DC]

Oh, too many to count. But for openers:

• The original King Kong.
• Bela Lugosi's Dracula. (Or, for that matter, any of the classic Universal monster movies, save Frankenstein.)
• None of the Harry Potter movies.
• None of the versions of A Star Is Born.
• A Clockwork Orange.
• None of the Star Wars movies that came after the original six.
• The fourth Die Hard movie.
• None of the Rocky movies.

and I have never seen Ben Hur.

[Randy Jackson]

Most comic book movies the last few years.

Thinking about it, most movies the last few years. I'm rarely in the mood these days. 

[ClarkKent_DC]

Randy Jackson said:

Most comic book movies the last few years.

Thinking about it, most movies the last few years. I'm rarely in the mood these days. 

But have you seen Ben Hur?

[Mark Sullivan (Vertiginous Mod)]

If I saw Ben Hur it was ages ago. I don't think I've ever seen Gone With The Wind all the way through. Or Citizen Kane.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I even have Ben Hur... on full screen VHS. At the time, most VHS movies were full screen. Soon after I acquired it I discovered widescreen and became acclimated to it very quickly. I wouldn't watch it full screen but haven't gotten around to re-acquiring it in widescreen.

[JD DeLuzio]

I finally saw Lawrence of Arabia.

I've seen both versions of Ben-Hur, and watched Citizen Kane a few times.

Gone with the Wind? I cannot get through more than ten minutes before I turn it off. It may be the Classic Film of Hollywood's Golden Age that I just never see.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

I haven't seen Ben Hur. Not Sparticus, either. Or Quo Vadis, which in college we joked was Latin for "who farted?"

I haven't seen A Clockwork Orange, even though I own a copy on DVD. 

I haven't seen Star Wars II, III, or IX.

I haven't seen any Harry Potter movies after the... fourth one, I think.

I haven't seen The Wolf of Wall Street, The Aviator, or The Irishman.

I haven't seen There Will Be Blood, The Master, Magnolia, or The Phantom Thread.

I don't think I've seen anything by Darren Aronovsky.

I haven't seen the movie of Hamiliton, or In the Heights. 

I haven't seen Toy Story 3 or 4.

I haven't seen Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I have never seen Hitchcock's Marnie.

I have never seen Kurosawa's Ran.

[Captain Comics]

There are probably a lot of "classic" movies I've never seen, because they weren't carried on WREG-TV Channel 3 in Memphis in the '60s and '70s. That's where I saw most of the B&W movies of my youth, when Channel 3 began airing old movies overnight, as the first 24/7 channel in Memphis.

I really want to, though, because usually when I see one I discover it's incredibly good, just like I've always heard. For example, I finally got around to Double Indemnity recently, and was floored by its power.

The problem is that I don't know what I don't know. I don't know what movies to look for because I don't know they exist. There's one I can think of: Jezebel. That's because I keep hearing about it on TMC. I'm not a huge Bette Davis fan -- I found Dark Victory a bit perfunctory -- but I suppose I'll see it someday. I really enjoyed All About Eve.

As for modern movies, I have seen the ones I want to see, for the most part. I haven't watched any Harry Potter movies, because I don't feel the need, having read Vertigo's Books of Magic. In fact, if I had to make a list, it would mirror Rob's in a lot of ways. Haven't watched Toy Story 2-4. The Master. Wolf of Wall Street. The Irishman. Most of them I could see on streaming if I wanted to, but I've never wanted to. When the opportunity comes up, there's always something else I'd rather devote two hours to.

My sisters have always loved Gone with the Wind, but it didn't look interesting to me as a boy. They finally made me watch it in my 20s, and I hated it. I reminded them that the Confederates were the bad guys; they were literally committing treason and shooting soldiers of the U.S. Army by the thousands. (I looked it up once: More American troops died at the hands of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia than by the Wehrmacht in WWII. If you throw in Lee's own troops as "Americans" who died in his battles, the number more than doubles.) I had no sympathy for any of them, and Scarlett O'Hara was out-and-out Worst Person in the Movie. Selfish, conniving, cruel. In retrospect, I realize why they liked the movie: A woman was the star. Like my wife said about Captain Marvel, it's thrilling for women when the lead character looks like them and doesn't depend on a man for her success. Scarlett falls into that category, I suppose, despite being a viper. And we do tend to forgive leads in movies, even when they do terrible things, because we're programmed to by thousands of other movies. Still, if I were Rhett Butler, I would have had more than a single bad word to say to Scarlett at the end.

I've seen the bulk of the Universal horror movies, many of them multiple times. (I will never tire of Dracula, Frankenstein or Bride of Frankenstein.) There are a few of them, mainly post-Karloff Mummy movies, that are still on my list. I have them all now on Blu-ray, so they'll get watched.

Of course I've seen Citizen Kane a couple of times. And yes, I've even seen Ben-Hur.

Maybe we should make a thread about classic movies? Those of us who have seen them can recommend (or not recommend) for those who haven't. I'd be happy to curate a master list at the top.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"The problem is that I don't know what I don't know... Maybe we should make a thread about classic movies?"

My thought when I started this discussion was that, sooner or later, someone would rise to defend one movie or another. As it stands, there have already been three movies mentioned in previous posts I could recommend. (No, one of them is not Gone with the Wind, although I have seen it several times, including twice on the big screen.)