How to bum out your girlfriend in 20 movies or less

Months ago, my girlfriend expressed interest in learning more about movies. She's not a movie nerd like me, but she knows good flicks when she sees them and definitely has specific tastes, not to mention an incredible memory for what she hears and reads. Like we'll watch a movie once and she'll quote back the whole thing at random times and I'll be like, "huh?" I still regularly botch quotes from "Super Troopers" and I've seen that movie an excessive amount of times.

But, there are a great many classic or well-known movies that she hasn't seen yet. I was excited that she wanted to learn more so I made a list of 20 movies that I thought she should see at some point for a variety of reasons. Some are personal favorites of mine, some are important benchmarks in their genres and some are just kinda standard classics. We were in the midst of a year long LDR when I made the list and she didn't want to watch them alone, so the list had to chill for a while. Recently, my girlfriend moved across the country to live with me here in Seattle because she's awesome like that and we have begun to attack the list.

Here's the list, which is no real particular order:

1. Blade Runner (1982) dir. Ridley Scott
2. The Godfather (1972) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
3. Rashomon (1950) dir. Akira Kurosawa
4. Rear Window (1954) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
5. Heat (1995) dir. Michael Mann
6. Alien (1979) dir. Ridley Scott
7. Aliens (1986) dir. James Cameron
8. Full Metal Jacket (1987) dir. Stanley Kubrick
9. RoboCop (1980) dir. Paul Verhoven
10. Akira (1988) dir. Katsuhiro Otomo
11. Princess Mononoke (1997) dir. Hayao Miyazaki
12. Jaws (1975) dir. Stephen Spielberg
13. Cool Hand Luke (1967) dir. Stuart Rosenberg
14. The Outsiders (1983) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
15. Stand By Me (1986) dir. Rob Reiner
16. The Terminator (1984) dir. James Cameron
17. Die Hard (1988) dir. John McTiernan
18. The Thing (1982) dir. John Carpenter
19. Rocky (1976) dir. Sylvester Stallone
20. Phantasm (1979) dir. Don Coscarelli

As you can see, that's a pretty dudely list that's heavy on the horror, sci-fi and action flicks. The girlfriend has a strong aversion to horror films because they genuinely freak her out and cause visceral reactions. I keep telling her this is awesome because I haven't had those sorts of reactions to many horror flicks since I was a young buck. So I'm excited to show her some shining examples of the genre and hopefully she won't break up with me after she watches "Alien" for the first time.

The other night, we started in on the list and she chose "Cool Hand Luke" to watch first. I hadn't seen it in a good 5 years I'd say, so it was fun watching it again and I'll post a "hilarious" review soon here, and will probably do the same for these flicks as we watch them. If we make it through half of them and she's still speaking to me, I'll consider our relationship solid as a rock!