two movies that come to mind - Love Actually and Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park was the first screenplay I ever read - and Love Actually is still one of my favorite screenplays ever written with the wittiest and most memorable dialogue and bantor.

Oh my God, and how could I forget ANY Pixar movie - UP is a great screenplay, but so is Toy story 3, structurally ,visually moving and breathtaking. Loved Wall-E as well.

Without racking my brain too hard: Shawshank Groundhog Day About a Boy Searching for Bobby Fischer E.T. I selected these 5 because I love all the set-ups and payoffs in all of them, and they all have big, strong climaxes and the resolutions are all satisfying.

Well, we should have one that exemplifies 'typical' three-act structure as a base line. (Sidebar: when I taught screenwriting evening classes, I used to make all my students watch Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk as their three-act structure example - and most of them were 50+ and only watched rom-coms and cosy dramas, so you can imagine how that went down!) But I'm not sure The Incredible Hulk is quite up to the standard we're looking for here! I've heard it said that Edward Scissorhands has all the classic plot points, reversals, act breaks etc in all the right places. Does anyone have another example of a text-book structure? Then we need some rule-breakers! I'm nominating: Memento for innovative use of time and causality, and clever control of how information is fed to the audience. Also great example of an unreliable protagonist, which is rare and difficult... Pacific Rim for a true dual protagonist structure (which cleverly staggers the two character's introductions and backstories) and many points of structural interest (there's no dark point/ all is lost at the end of act two; all the characters come in pairs; the movie chooses to tell the end of the battle against the kaiju, not the more conventional beginning of it, etc...)

His Girl Friday--rapid-fire/talk-over dialogue The Apartment--simple plot perfection Raiders of the Lost Ark--brilliant exposition with showing v. telling Ninotchka--Lubitsch.

Serenity is, imho, a structurally perfect movie.

ok... a brain dump: Cop/Action movies Die Hard 48 hrs Lethal Weapon French Connection Action/Sci Fi/Horror Star Wars/Empire strikes back The Terminator Avatar Serenity 2001 Space Odyssey Alien/Aliens Blade Runner Raiders of the Lost Ark Bourne Conspiracy Dr. No Rosemary's Baby Dark Knight Crime/Drama Lawrence of Arabia Deer Hunter Kramer vs Kramer All the president's men Ocean's 11 (Clooney) Godfather (1&2) Maltese Falcon (Bogart) Chinatown The Driver (Ryan O'Neal) Shawshank Redemption Brief Encounter Comedy/Rom Com When Harry met Sally You've got mail Bridesmaids Some like it hot Local Hero Blazing Saddles The Producers (Zero Mostel) Toy Story 3 Dr Strangelove Annie Hall Western Unforgiven Rio Bravo Once upon a time in the west. The Good, the bad & the ugly. The searchers

If you saw only these 30 films and nothing else, and if you studied them over and over again for everything from character to structure to dialogue to theme -- and tried to emulate what you saw and learned -- and had some innate talent and worked really hard -- I believe you'd be writing at a higher level than those who haven't seen these movies. THE APARTMENT SUNSET BLVD. ANNIE HALL BROADWAY DANNY ROSE THE GRADUATE LAWRENCE OF ARABIA THE GREAT ESCAPE THE GODFATHER THE GODFATHER, PART II GOODFELLAS RAGING BULL REAR WINDOW NOTORIOUS (Hitchcock, not Biggie Smalls) CASABLANCA AMADEUS THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION BROADCAST NEWS HIS GIRL FRIDAY PULP FICTION YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN CHINATOWN ON THE WATERFRONT THE STING NETWORK DR. STRANGELOVE TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT FARGO CITIZEN KANE THE SEVEN SAMURAI

Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid All The President's Men The Apartment Crimes & Misdemeanors Point Blank (the 2010 French thriller) I don't know about The Shawshank Redepemtion... I love that movie, but I love the "movie" way more than the "script" and it's very singular and not many films are like it or even patterned after it (like say Die Hard or Raiders or Lethal Weapon or anything by Hitchcock). The curious thing is many of the classic films that Johnnycho mentions, I know draw a blank face from development people and other writers. On a certain level, Billy Wilder's movies give a masterclass in writing. I'd also steer away from adaptations, especially from plays.

Top of my head Big Fish (First Screenplay I ever read, and the intercutting through the final scene is a great exercise/example of keeping a story coherent and fast). The Social Network Juno

I think that Disney's TANGLED is a great example of structure and a great fun family film. It hits all the main beats that we would expect from a mainstream family film, and shows how that structure can really work in favour of that genre. The majority of recent animated kids films probably work along this same structure. Having just read RESERVOIR DOGS, I would nominate that as an example of a well-crafted story via an almost total reliance on dialogue. I think it reminds us how important dialogue is even in a visual medium. LOOPER is a fantastic, zippy script that shows how simply a great story can be written. It didn't get bogged down with trying to explain everything in detail, but sets up its world early, and then just goes with the story - exposition is given in spades in the early part of the film, but doesn't seem forced. I think it is also a great example of being a story about two things.....I still think that, under the shiny time-travel veneer, this is a story about motherhood....but that is just me.... BLACK SWAN (yeah I love it) - but it is a great example of using subtext in a fillm in relation to the protagonist's state of mind, and is effective at throwing the audience into her world and pulling you into the story. And, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey - as an example of beautiful, visual story-telling....perhaps an opposite to RESERVOIR DOGS in its reliance on visual story-telling as opposed to story-telling through dialogue....and explores universal themes about the meaning of life and existence.....it also happens to be the greatest film ever made, so we should all watch it! ;-) And all of these films explore those universal themes that make us invest our time and really earn something from watching them, whether that is LOVE, LOSS, FAMILY, THE MEANING OF LIFE, SELF-IMAGE etc etc, they all reflect issues that we have all, more than likely, dealt with in our lives. Anyway, just my twopenneth....:-)

I've been thinking about this a little more and it occurs to me that because writers tend to specialize by genre, there's a real issue in terms of aligning these lists of movies with their genre. In other words, instead of an overall 30 essential movies list, maybe there needs to be a 30 essential dramas list or a 30 essential comedies list, etc... For example, there are 10 comedies in my list plus a few action/comedy movies, but I feel like if I were putting a list together specifically to help build a cinematic vocabulary for someone writing a *contemporary* comedy, could I really justify leaving out Monty Python, Ealing comedies, the Farrelly Brothers, the Coens or Simon Pegg? Or what about Neil Simon, Office Space, Spinal Tap or The Princess Bride? Moreover, would a modern comedy writer need to be familiar with The Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Harold and Maude, MASH (Robert Altman), Smokey & the Bandit, Every Which Way But Loose and a gazillion other classic comedies?

This is really hard because film school trained me to be biased toward great directing over great writing. Back to the Future is one of the best screenplays ever, but the draft on the web is way before the final draft. North by Northwest is a master class, but the style is very far from what a spec script is expected to be today. I haven't read Tootsie, but that movie is so well-written, I'd love to. I think Ferris Bueller's Day Off may be great example of how to get away with breaking a lot of rules in one script and holding it all together with aplomb.

Almost anything by Preston Sturges. You will learn structure, dialogue and rising tension, as well as character and sparkling dialogue. And the screenplays - in their original type written form - are published. They may seem old fashioned at first, but I virtually guarantee that as you watch/read a lightbulb will go off in your head: aha, that's how it's done.

3:10 TO YUMA (2007 Mangold/Brandt/Haas version) -- for character building, internal vs. external conflicts, use of subtext, and dramatic reveals--parsing out crucial info for maximum dramatic impact. MICHAEL CLAYTON & BOURNE IDENTITY -- Tony Gilroy's a master among masters for lean, evocative reads and showing how to craft action sequences packed with emotion, meaning and crucial story points. And the character work ain't too shabby either!