March review - The IMDB challenge

So for March we challenged ourselves to watch 15 films off the IMDB top 250 list that we had never seen before. Initially supposed to be the first 15, this changed to the first 15 we could easily get hold of. Below are the films I watched for the month.

1. 12 Angry Men
2. Modern Times
3. City Lights
4. M
5. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
6. North by Northwest
7. Vertigo
8. Citizen Kane
9. Once Upon a Time In the West
10.  Double Indemnity
11.  The Great Dictator
12.  To Kill a Mockingbird
13.  Leon
14.  Taxi Driver
15.  Life is Beautiful

This was a great challenge and sums up The Film Project perfectly, a lot of these are films I would never have sought out to view, and yet only one was rated any less than 4 stars. I saw 3 that even got a perfect 5 stars. Below are those 3, truly the best films I saw in March. This is a challenge we will continue in 2014 and I urge you to try and do the same, there are films here you'd never have thought of viewing that are utterly amazing.

                                     

• Leon is the film on the list I know I should have seen but for some reason I have never gotten round to it. A superb tale of the assassin and the girl he rescues, trains and ultimately saves. Jean Reno is superb and the opening scenes that introduce him are amazing.

• 12 Angry Men is a fantastic tale of a jury convinced of a mans guilt apart from Henry Fonda. He slowly attempts to convince the jury to at least consider the case, rather than just accept their gut feeling, what follows is a fantastic film set mainly in the one room with a stunning performance from Fonda.

• Life is Beautiful was my favourite film of the challenge. A simply mesmerising comedy/drama that had me in fits of laughter for an hour, then fits of tears for the rest. It's a superb, emotional, heartbreaking ride with an ending that I'm not ashamed to say had me wrecked.Roberto Benigni deserved his Oscar, his performance is truly wonderful.