MGM: 100 Years, 100 Essential Movies

MGM: The studio whose movies come with the unforgettable lion’s roar.

When it comes to choosing the 100 essential MGM movies for their 100th anniversary, there’s good news and bad news. The good: We’ve got The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, the spaghetti Western masterpiece, along with many more classics (West Side Story, The Great Escape, A Fish Called Wanda), modern hits (Creed, Barbershop, Legally Blonde), and more 007 than you can shake and stir a stick at.

The bad: Many of the movies we associate with MGM — like The Wizard of Oz or famous musicals like Singin’ in the Rain — aren’t featured here. Why? Okay, history lesson time. Back in 1986, Ted Turner bought the MGM library, creating Turner Entertainment Company. In 1996, Time Warner bought that company, combining the Turner properties with Warner Bros.’, which is why all those movies are on the MAX streaming service.

And because we’re celebrating MGM’s 100th birthday in conjunction with Fandango At Home, we’re selecting only movies currently owned by MGM. So what does that leave us with? Bond, James Bond. Through all the ups and downs and boardroom deals, MGM has always been in league with cinema’s favorite secret agent, and we tried to cover all the Bonds here. Sean Connery (Dr. No). Roger Moore (The Spy Who Loved Me). Timothy Dalton (The Living Daylights). Pearce Brosnan (GoldenEye). Daniel Craig (Casino Royale).

We also have the United Artists library, which MGM bought in 1982. This allows us to choose films from as far back as the 1950s, including Best Picture winners The Apartment, In the Heat of the Night, Midnight Cowboy, Rocky, Annie Hall, and Rain Man.

Along with those are deeply influential films, like the eerie The Night of the Hunter, paranoid thriller The Manchurian Candidate, ice-cold Thief, humanist courtroom drama 12 Angry Men, and Ronin with its incredible car chases.

Many directors and stars have gone in league with what would become the MGM library, including Stanley Kubrick (Paths of Glory), Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull), Robert Altman (The Long Goodbye), Peter Sellers (The Pink Panther), Marilyn Monroe (Some Like It Hot), Sissy Spacek (Carrie), Cher (Moonstruck), Patrick Swayze (Road House), Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas), and Robin Williams (The Birdcage).

Beyond United Artists, MGM also purchased Orion Pictures, which unlocks genre prizes like RoboCop, The Terminator, and The Return of the Living Dead, along with Best Picture winners The Silence of the Lambs and Dances With Wolves.

And now, it’s a new day and age for MGM, having been acquired by Amazon in 2021. In this revitalized era, the Rocky and Creed series have lived on, movies like Licorice Pizza, Cyrano, and Till released, and they’ll continue to re-invent Bond for modern times.

Now, rent or purchase any of the 100 essential MGM movies on Fandango at Home and celebrate 100 years of MGM!