GASP list - (noun) A list of the best movies ever made.
Last semester I was discussing time travel with a few fellow computer geeks when one of them mentioned that she'd never seen Groundhog Day. I literally gasped. “What do you mean, you’ve never seen Groundhog Day!?”
It still bothers me. How could she have survived twenty-five years on this earth without ever witnessing one of Bill Murray’s greatest comedies? Inconceivable.
That’s what we mean we talk about the GASP list, the unofficial list of movies that every living being on this earth should see because they are so great and so deeply ingrained into popular culture that the rest of us cannot fathom the idea that other people haven’t seen them.
There is no official list, but here are two really good ones: Julie Grey’s GASP list and the Tulsa International Film Festival’s GASP list. Both lists cover the classics, and if there are movies on either list that you’ve never seen, you shouldn’t admit it.
While the more traditional GASP list is perfectly fine, it doesn’t quite do it for us. Too many of our favorites are left off, perhaps because they’re not exactly Academy Award material, so A and I put finger to keyboard and came up with our own GASP list.
We simply cannot be your friend unless you’ve seen all of these movies. ALL of them.
Adventures in Babysitting
Back to the Future
Beauty and the Beast
Big
Braveheart
The Breakfast Club
By By Love
Can’t Hardly Wait
A Christmas Story
Cinderella
Clue
Clueless
Death Race
Die Hard
Disturbing Behavior
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
Empire Records
The Faculty
The Fast and the Furious
The First Wives Club
Four Brothers
Groundhog Day
Gone in 60 Seconds
The Goonies
Halloween
Hocus Pocus
Home Alone
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Inception
Identity
The Incredibles
The Inside Man
Jaws
Kiss the Girls
A League of Their Own
The Little Mermaid
Little Rascals
The Lion King
Lone Star State of Mind
Memento
Monsters, Inc.
Mr. Brooks
My Best Friend’s Wedding
The Notebook
Now and Then
Office Space
Overnight Delivery
Point Break
Primal Fear
Remember the Titans
Role Models
Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion
The Sandlot
Saving Private Ryan
Scream
Seven
Shag: The Movie
The Shawshank Redemption
The Silence of the Lambs
Sixteen Candles
Shooter
Sleeping Beauty
Spice World
St. Elmo’s Fire
S.W.A.T
Taken
To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar
Toy Story
The Usual Suspects
Underworld
Waiting
Walk the Line
Wedding Crashers
The Wedding Planner
The Wizard of Oz
Zombieland
Zoolander
