UKC

Reminded of this by the other thread where I admitted to never having seen The Shining. 

Then The Third Man was mentioned.

Add to those

Raging Bull

It's A Wonderful Life 

Citizen Kane

On The Waterfront

The Wizard of Oz

and a whole host of foreign stuff.  

(I'm leaving out franchises like Star Wars/Terminator)

Last time I watched a film out of a sense of duty it was Easy Rider and I felt very short changed.

The Wizard of Oz

Well worth a watch, just to imagine you're a theatre-goer who has only ever seen black and white films, and then appreciate the way they introduce colour, so clever.

I can't imagine you'd feel short-changed by any of those. On The Waterfront gave me the guiding principle for my teenage years: Question: What are you rebelling against? Answer: What've you got?

I thought Citizen Kane was a bit meh as a film. I'm told there are lots of amazing and groundbreaking techniques in it and that's great but if you're not marveling at them there isn't so much left to marvel at.

That quote is from The Wild One - On the Waterfront's famous quotable line is "I coulda been a contender"

Good point! The Waterfront quote is the guiding principle of my old age.

It depends what you want out of a film I suppose. I'm no film nut but have seen all of those and thought perfectly watchable, if not as entertainment then as relics of their eras. Easy Rider is silly by todays standards, and probably was to many at the time, but when the other stuff at the cinema is Paint you Wagon, would have been a revolution for some. I think the scenes with the red necks still hold up.

Going into any film as some sort of duty seems unlikely to go well.

I tried this a couple of years ago and did something rare, I turned it off and did not return to it to finish it off 

The Wizard of Oz always has that nice, fuzzy, warm nostalgia of Family Christmas when I was a kid.  I think they must have put it on every year back then.  We had a black and white TV so I never ever got the "transition to colour" sequence until years later

A few of the classic musicals. I generally am not a fan of musicals as a genre but some of the genuine classics do need to be seen. West Side Story is the main absentee for me, followed by The King and I. I own both on DVD and will soon get around to watching them. The King and I is more for the sake of my 2020 Deborah Kerr obsession, admittedly.

Flying monkeys- shudder. Nothing warm about them- gave me the creeps. And my son still has a phobia about witches!

Some older films I've loved

The treasure of Sierra madre (a film with my favourite screen bandit) 

In the heat of the night

Bad day at Black rock

All quiet on the western front (1930)

Them

And a couple of foreign language ones:

Ran - possibly my favourite film of all time

Embrace of the serpent

Have to agree. I think the problem is that all the groundbreaking techniques were adopted by everyone else so, by the time you get to see it, the story is all you have left and I thought it was a merely OK story. I've watched it a few times now in the hope it will 'click' and it does get better but not much better.

Same.  Cinematography is amazing but the story has very little to it, particularly if you already know what/who Rosebud is.