TICKLING UP THE AFI TOP 100 LIST, 2007
This comes from the recent “Movie Magic” (or “Cinema au Slumber”) radio show me and Big Stew did on RRR, in our alter-egos of Farmer David Leapster and Margaret Pommer-Stew.
Basically we had a look at the American Film Institute’s latest dust-brush and crumb-adjustment to its annual top 100 list, and found it wanting in certain areas. What follows is my comments on the movies the AFI folks voted for, in the order their top 100 listed them.
What follows after that is the movies I would have included, or at least considered, that were left out of the AFI list. Some of the exclusions are pretty difficult to take. Some of the inclusions are brain-frazzling.
http://connect.afi.com/site/PageServer?JServSessionIdr011=me8uk4gae4.app14b&pagename=100yearslist
In the defence of the AFI choices, they had certain listed criteria, which included that movies on the list had to be substantially culturally from the US in terms of place of origin, or key creative personnel involved, etc. If you want to read all that guff, go to the American Film Institute Website, which also includes the 400 movies which voters were limited to in voting for the Top 100. Some of the inclusions in that are even more lunatic.
THE AFI TOP 100 LIST
1 – Citizen Kane
Saves thinking about another number one, a bit like throwing in “Exile on Main Street” by the Stones in top albums polls. It’s roughly in the vicinity of where it ought to be. It was like American movies growing up all in one hit, but not getting all boring and responsible while doing it, like a U2 album.
PS Just saw it again, for the first time in quite a while. Still dynamite. The various backlashers in recent times are either just sick of seeing it on these kinds of lists, or are completely tone-deaf to movies.
2 – The Godfather
Buckets of atmosphere and somewhat before its time as a ethnically-based revision of the gangster movie, and has stood the test of time, but I’m probably the one guy around that thinks it’s overrated, a little bit stiff in the armpits, and it’s listed too high here, given a century’s worth of viable competition.
3 – Casablanca
The perfect Hollywood Quality Street assortment of heroism, intrigue, humour and fairy-bread romance all on the one pizza, great leads, rock-solid supporting cast, has worked for 60-plus years and will work for another 60.
4 – Raging Bull
My pick of the Scorsese pictures along with “King of Comedy”, brain-meltingly brutal no-way-out for the viewer character study, probably the best boxing picture ever made which takes in much stronger territory than most sporting sub-genres. As much of a felony assault as a motion picture, but controlled and with perspective, which is what it has over “Goodfellas” with the same two leads. No objections from me.
5 – Singin in the Rain
Not all blithe yodel and tappin tootsies – a very nice sly edge sending up Hollywood movie making lends it humour and a spine. Hasn’t gone off like cheese, probably as a result of this. A classic movie musical that is easily endurable by people who don’t like classic Hollywood musicals.
6 – Gone with the Wind
I’m holding off on this one until a rainy millennium. I’ll take everyone else’s word, although a lifelong confusion over the flap-eared alleged hunkidom of Clark Gable presents problems for me.
7 – Lawrence of Arabia
The epic’s epic and all that trad jazz. I’ll file this under “Gone with the Wind” for future deathbed viewing, although David Lean could make a movie.
8 – Schindler’s List
As someone who used to write film reviews for the Australian Jewish News, I honestly feel I have no need to see any movie involving Nazis ever again, unless Jack Benny, Charlie Chaplin or the Three Stooges are in it, and Schindler is right on that list. However I will admit to serious eyebrow raising over any Spielberg picture made any great amount of time after the 1970s, and the more worthy the subject matter, the higher the eyebrow shoots. If I had to guess, my guess would be that this is listed around 800 places too high.
9 – Vertigo
All of Hitchcock’s bizarre sex-fear stuff at its most naked crammed into the one nominally mystery movie, but hand-puppeted by a guy who was in total control even when he was getting really out there, pushed over the edge by one of the greatest music scores in movie history. Maybe the greatest movie by a really great movie maker.
10 – The Wizard of Oz
Fantasy, mind-control oriented tunes and low vaudeville combined uncannily aptly, with pictorial alacrity that seems unbelievable for 1939. Whoever cast the movie should have got an Oscar. Absolutely timeless, and I’m sure the kids of 2139 will be enjoying it when they’ll probably be watching it on their toothbrushes, or their video socks.
11 – City Lights
Chaplin milks the pathos – O Lord, the pathos – in a movie which combines impeccably mounted and somewhat fussbudgetty comedy with kind of a tone poem of base-line romantic emotions, and in other words, I suspect a modern audience might fidget themselves to death during this one, and some of his silent shorts or Modern Times might play better to them now. It’s kind of perfect at what it is, but whether that’s what people would get now, I’ll reserve judgement on.
12 – The Searchers
Expert, fatalistic, picaresque western about an atrocity and revenge which wanders but the audience’s attention won’t. John Ford made pictures that seemed a little less self-important and paternalistic than this one, which is my only reservation about how highly it’s placed on this list. If you’re John Wayne resistant that won’t help either, but he was never much better than he was in this.
13 – Star Wars
If there was a “Casablanca” of space operas, I guess this would be it for the variety and range of entertainment styles it chunders through without the pan ever flying off the handle. But on the other claw, I don’t think there can be a “Casablanca” of space operas. One is a highly entertaining giddy movie that transcends its limitations and the other is a highly entertaining giddy movie. Not George Lucas’s best movie, and depending on how much you loosen the belt-buckle of definition, not even his best science-fiction movie.
14 – Psycho
Another Hitchcock study of sex, fear, fear of sex and sex as fear, this time with a mother complex for the ages and tricked out as a horror movie. A lot of what’s invariably credited to the genius of Hitchcock was right there in the Robert Bloch potboiler novel nobody ever bothers to read, and what he extracts from it, and the little stylistic things he does around it are actually the genius of Hitchcock.
15 – 2001: A Space Odyssey
As science-fiction, before its time then, behind its time now. As a movie it’s kind of a highly involving light and sound show, albeit superior to the one at the Swan Hill goldfields we always used to be taken to at school, and with an ending that is almost entirely dependent on what mental baggage the viewer chooses to bring along with them. It’s definitely worth a look, but Kubrick made better and less untidy movies than this.
16 – Sunset Boulevard
Crunchy Billy Wilder satirical surgery on the subject of Hollywood on Hollywood, sub-section behind the scenes. Great performances. If you know the history, some unusually deadly in-jokes, especially in the casting. Maybe not the Wilder movie most likely to play strongly to an audience now, but before its time at the time.
17 – The Graduate
Something about the older woman-younger clod sex thing frazzled the fuses of the greater world public about this one and it seems to have left an indelible dent on the scones of everyone not named Leaping Larry L. Two great actors in the leads, no doubt, but I can think of five funnier pictures during a two-second knee scratch, and to me comedies mostly get points for being funny, no matter how headachingly they zing the heartstrings. To me this dates nearly as much as the Chaplin.
18 – The General
For an 80 year old silent picture made when its subject of the Civil War wasn’t such old news, this holds up pretty well, mainly because the Buster Keaton lead character has a prosaic off-hand kind of attitude, although a very non-prosaic physical approach to problem solving. One of the great comedians in the sort of rare solid plot setting that helps both the picture and the comedy. Not at all overrated in this position.
19 – On the Waterfront
Elia Kazan made some great movies and seems immune to being ever catching the title of “Great director”. Even with this one, everyone just goes, “Ahh, Brando”. It’s grittiness and blue collar settings won’t have the same impact now, but there’s dramatic guts a-plenty, all over the joint.
20 – It’s a Wonderful Life
Never been tempted. One of Frank Capra’s wish-fulfillment feelgood movies of the thirties, which he didn’t get around to making until 1946, with a rock-solid supporting actor cast which must set some sort of all-time record for faces you recognise without knowing all the names. Awash in decades of viewer goodwill and they can’t all be wrong, but something tells me that “Arsenic and Old Lace” would play better to contemporary audiences than the other Capra movies.
21 – Chinatown
Rollicking Thin Lizzy song, but this is the updated 40s private eye movie Roman Polanski made in the 70s with Jack Nicholson, back when Jack used to act rather than bloat before your eyes and pitch fits while imitating Jack Nicholson at random. Again, I can think of better revisionist private eye movies from this era without twanging a single neuron, but I probably ought to give this one a more recent optic swipe. That said, I think this is ranked too high. Polanski could make movies. He did make better ones than this, from memory.
22 – Some Like It Hot
Guys dressing in drag and having various “Carry On” type whoopsie moments doesn’t really do it for me any more than the “Carry On” pictures did, even with Marilyn’s famous Monroes pitching about hither and yon. I fully acknowledge that the rest of the planet has long since lost their tiny minds about the male dress-wearing in this movie, and that there are funny moments in it, and it’s not a bad picture or anything, but to me this is about the single most overrated comedy movie in history. Billy Wilder made funnier pictures when he was making more serious pictures.
23 – The Grapes of Wrath
Well, they got another John Ford picture in there, and for me this is more the wrong one than “The Searchers”. It’s all highly serious, what with the plight of them poor Okies and the John Steinbeck literary agent backing, the cast is solid and so is the picture. Like wood. It’s quality work, but with all the depression of all relevant kinds, and the gruelling nature of the exercise, not leavened by any noticeable humour, or dramatic changes of pace, it’s also grisly hard work. This movie is as much fun as folk music. It’s an artefact of its time, and not by any means poor, has historical value and validity and I say let’s all go out for pizza and ice-creams.
24 – E.T.
Spielberg’s great talent as a movie maker is to use the medium to tell stories. That’s what he’s good at. To me this is the sort of story that is made for him – one of those heart-tugger kid’s fantasies that has a point to make, emotional highs and lows, and is based enough in reality of a kind to register with adults as well. Stylistic and presentational Spielberg tendencies that became really bad habits are perfectly suited to this project, and for what it is, I think he got it all right. Only reservations - have no idea how it would play today – haven’t seen it since release, and I’m struggling openly with the concept that since Bert Newton invented the moving picture that there haven’t been 24, or 48, or 148 greater movies than this one.
25 – To Kill a Mockingbird
Gregory Peck was presumably genetically molded and put on this earth to play the lead role, and that carries a lot of weight in this movie. It’s pointless arguing about this one – pretty much every second person on the planet loves it, it does what it does really well, and though the suits and cars may have dated, and the dialogue is quaintly free of either classic or hip-hop moderne cuss-words, the issues of mob-think and extreme racial uneasiness haven’t changed to the point where current audiences will need too much head-scratching time to recognise them. Presumably director Robert Mulligan’s only risk of being included in a top 100 film listing.
26 – Mr Smith Goes to Washington
Frank Capra, wish-fulfillment, feelgood, 1930s, I said it all before. Probably holds up better than “Billy Jack Goes to Washington”, or Isaac Washington the friendly bartender from “The Love Boat”. 100 greatest movies of all time? Well, like the Americans say, “I have issues”.
27 – High Noon
Iconic western so long considered a classic it’s probably not worth arguing about. I’m not sure the real sagebrush chewin western die-hards would rank this above some of the John Ford or Howard Hawks movies, and I’d make a case for the Sergio Leone’s, at least one Peckinpah, and maybe some of those Randolph Scott-Bud Boeticher oddball ones from the late 50s.
28 – All About Eve
Theatrical expose and showcase for Ac-TORS ac-ting, kicks you around the head emotionally and leaves the heartstrings to their own devices, and in some ways, plays pretty contemporary for subject matter right now. Bette Davis and George Sanders go nuts and they’re just the folks who can do it. No arguments.
29 – Double Indemnity
40s noir crime story revolving around insurance agent – a typically contemporary approach of that time - with Fred McMurray cast against the type that viewers from the “My Three Sons” era would expect to see him as. Handling of material is airlessly tight, the fatalism convincing, puts the viewer right in the position of knowing the protagonist’s scheme is wrong, but desperately wanting it to go right. Kind of unusual material for Billy Wilder, but the genial, questioning, on-screen presence of Edward G Robinson captures that inherent cynicism that human beings will inevitably tend to revert to their worst instincts. It’s a solid pick.
30 – Apocalypse Now
Updating Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to the Vietnam War is probably underrated as an audacious approach, and pulling it off as well as this without doing any disservice to the gruesome bitterness of either source stands as something of a miracle. Probably should be higher, and a valid candidate, although not mine, for Coppola’s greatest movie.
31 – The Maltese Falcon
John Huston takes the Dashiell Hammett private eye story to the screen as perfectly as it could be done. Does everything well, from muted heroics, to suspense to dark humour to plausible sense of danger. Great movie.
32 – The Godfather, Part II
Same as I said before. Another really good movie. A lot of other screen-peepers say this one is better than the first, I think it’s more episodic and the first one is tighter and thus grabbier and has more moves in it that people remember. It’s no disgrace to be ranked here though.
33 – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Hippie era ethos and author should date it, and maybe they do by now, but essentially a timeless parable of the individual’s need for self-expression vs the dulling demands of an organised but thick-witted societal structure. The novel, script and director Milos Forman’s manipulation of dramatic mile-posts, humour, emotional intensity are judged to a kind of machine-tooled perfection that could almost be intrusive, but this is a movie that needed Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher, and got them, so forget about it. Not to mention a cast of supporting faces that would do justice to a police line-up in a Dick Tracy comic.
34 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
The Disney house-style of emotional manipulation at its most psychologically deadly and completely disarming. Impossibly impressive technological achievement for the time as well. One of the greatest movies ever made.
35 – Annie Hall
This feels like the token Woody Allen choice, but as a combination of the wheel-spinning dizzy comedy inventiveness of the earlier funnier films, the darker ruminative and more character based tendencies of the middle period before he completely lost it and went into dull melodrama with big words, and a somewhat unexpected variation on traditional Hollywood romance (although in New York) he got it all right here, and it’s a good choice.
36 – Bridge On the River Kwai
A rigorously well-acted and serious study of pluck and heroism in WW II from the unlikely source of the same novelist who wrote the book they got the “Planet of the Apes” pictures from, and not really as much fun as that fantale fact, but it held the attention through 1076 plays on television back in the 1970s. Somehow doesn’t really sing to me as one of the all-time top 50 movies right now.
37 – The Best Years of Our Lives
Extremely conservative jumped-up soap opera which I can understand how everyone went ga-ga city over back in 1946 considering it was about returned WWII servicemen, but my guess is you’d need ocky-straps attached to the seats to keep the kids watching it now, political considerations not even remotely being the issue, not that they’ll help exactly. Leapster says this all-star, all-snooze tissue-grinder is an ever-reliable candidate for possibly being the most consistently over-rated movie in the history of chewing-gum embossed seats, and I can’t for the life of me think of why, except that possibly nobody has actually bothered to watch it since 1946.
38 – Treasure of the Sierra Madre
John Huston’s Billy Wilder style rumination on the Terrible Greed and Base Nature of the species is again, so long entrenched as a classic that at this late date, you may as well suggest we should move the City of Melbourne to King Island for the scenery as question “Sierra Madre’s” classic status. But, for the record, it’s got atmosphere, suspense, plenty of grip on both brain and lower internal organs, but it’s long, and it’s got flat spots. Don’t know how it would wear with a current audience. Atypical Bogart role helps.
39 – Dr Strangelove
The satirical points it makes probably seem a lot more obvious now than they did then, partly because it originated or at least recorded them first, but I’m not sure that helps all these years down the pike, when the Cold War is either no longer on the menu, or is a different kind of –dinner-dance with some different kinds of cast members. Some great comedy performances in tailor-made roles. Overall, it’s ponderous for a comedy, but look who made it. Whether the satirical point-battering makes up for a slightly cack-lite laugh tally for a big-time comedy movie will depend on the individual viewer. It’s definitely a well-made memorable movie.
40 – The Sound of Music
Leave me right out of this one.
41 – King Kong
Yep, even with the 12 inch model dino-bats outacting the featured male lead, there’s a movie-making magic about this that time hasn’t dimmed. What has dimmed is the dull, nothing-happening bits, which is anything up until our favourite big lunkhead of the title comes in, which seems to take about three shades of forever. You can make a case for it. Without even seeing the Peter Jackson mattress, I already know the 1933 one is the best version of this story ever.
42 – Bonnie and Clyde
Unexpected juggling of light and shade in good movie by chronically underrated director, Arthur Penn.
43 – Midnight Cowboy
This was a cold gust of street air up the pants leg of movie-going suburbia at the time, and in a way still is. One of the more unusual buddy movies, although that’s not all it is. No arguments from little me about this one.
44 – The Philadelphia Story
The one time I tried to get through this it put me out like a light. Apparently terribly sophisticated, but the reality is, everyone loves the later musical version, “High Society”, and ask 9000 people at the deli counter at the supermarket when you’re trying to do your shop on a Saturday morning whether any of them have ever seen this one, or remember it.
45 – Shane
Again, engrained western classic. You might as well argue about whether doors should be made of wood or not. It’s a decent, honest, earnest movie which holds the attention.
46 – It Happened One Night
Screwball comedy of the time kick-starting the mini-genre of romantic comedies about two people on the road thrown together by circumstance who hate each other’s guts at first but eventually come to a personal accommodation. When John Cusack was in it, they called it “The Sure Thing”. I’m going to struggle through my Clark Gable problem one day and see the original. Meant to be great.
47 – A Streetcar Named Desire
I think the more pictures and Drama, dear, tried to be devilishly contemporary in the 50s, the more they generally date like vintage knitting patterns now, and I think I’m very easily Blanche DuBois-ed out, but as it’s an Elia Kazan movie, I’ll give it the once-over, one of these decades.
48 – Rear Window
Another Hitchcock from the period when his real obsessions were presented at their rawest and his technique was at its most commanding and refined, this is probably the most conventional of the ones mentioned, and more like a regular crime/suspense picture, but with plenty of weirdness on hand to beat the band. Really memorable set-ups and set-pieces, and you’ll never watch Perry Mason or Ironside the same way ever again, presuming you ever watched them in the first place.
49 – Intolerance
Silent historical epic from before the dawn of time, undoubtedly contained its story-telling innovations, and genuine scope and spectacle but you better keep any sharp objects away from any audience members you try to get to watch it now. Probably included because director DW Griffith’s even earlier and in many ways more innovative feature “The Birth of a Nation” featured the Ku Klux Klan as heroes, and that probably doesn’t play quite as well to audiences now.
50 – Lord of the Rings (1st picture – Fellowship)
How do you put one-third of a story in as a great movie? At least Star Wars was a whole picture. Looked great. Largely humourless, hippo-bloato war movie with the occasional stand-out performance, effects, or atmosphere, kind of drowned in dollars. Like all the Rings movies, somehow managed to drain most of the charm, eccentricity, and sense of coherent, complete mythology out of the source material.
51 – West Side Story
Pass
52 – Taxi Driver
Yep, tough, complex, valid, vital, and if it had had songs and dancing maybe it could have been as great as West Side Story.
53 – The Deer Hunter
Unlike its amoral roughly contemporary sparring partner “Apocalypse Now” this has a touch of the conservatives about it, but has the unsparing wild eye view of a horrible war that tends to separate it from the political views of its characters, not to mention plunk the viewers’ heads deep into the horror of war bucket again and again. I think it’s a genuine epic, gruelling for the right reasons, and a great movie.
54 – MASH
The book was better than most realise, but had smaller ambitions than Altman’s movie, but he had his unusual, challenging 1970s style, bucketloads of audacity and the ability to entertain so winningly that you didn’t notice him pulling the other tricks off. He also had two extremely aptly chosen leads, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland. The TV series and a lot of time have knocked the shock out of the satire, but it’s still a very memorable picture.
55 – North by Northwest
Don’t ask me, my opinion changes every time I’ve seen it. On a bad day, phony and tedious with lousy process work and on a good day, a sparkalarkalarkaling entertainment conceit with touches of genius and human observation above and beyond that. Not his greatest pure entertainment picture though – that was “The Lady Vanishes”.
56 – Jaws
Moby Shark still getting a run-around, eh? Reasonably solid st-rytelling and characterisation for something like this, plus some good shock set-pieces. Wouldn’t be the best horror picture of that decade much less all time. Can’t see it as a top 100 picture.
57 – Rocky
Push the buttons, count the money. Would be lucky to crack my list of the top ten boxing movies. I’ll have to assume that everyone else is marching in step and I’m the one that’s not. I have incredible Stallone-blindness in almost everything he’s been in.
58 – The Gold Rush
Extremely neat Chaplin silent feature of the 20s with his little tramp character outsmarting the entire frozen wastes of the Yukon and all personnel. The set-pieces are possibly too famous – it’s a bit like how many times you’d like to hear “Stairway to Heaven”. He’s an incredible talent, but I think his short films are a better place to start.
59 – Nashville
More 70s Altman, and I have to see this one again.
60 – Duck Soup
Incredible flying blitz of gags in a variety of comedy styles, from the Marx Bros plus some insane musical production numbers held together by Leo McCarey – a director who generally went more for structure, but gave in to the flow and paced it with gags here. As good a showcase for the Marx Bros as there was on film, although “Monkey Business” and “Horsefeathers” are close.
61 – Sullivan’s Travels
One of writer-director Preston Sturges’ travesties of Americana, studded with memorable minor characters played by top-draw second-banana comedy actors. These tend to play surprisingly well now. There probably had to be one of these on there.
62 – American Graffiti
Almost chokes you with the airless snap-frozen atmosphere of both smalltown cruising 1950s, and that poignant time of total potential (probably about to turn into the disappointingly conventional) of teens enjoying their last independence before inevitable responsibility. George Lucas’s best movie.
63 – Cabaret
One of the few musicals I get. Liza Minnelli is incredible, believe it or don’t. Joel Grey steals the picture. When they made Hogan’s Heroes they thought making a sitcom about Nazis was bizarre. Well, here’s Nazis – the Musical. Staging of musical numbers knocks your head off with both the pictures and the message. Some evil humour in there too, and genuine sadness. Maybe the non-singing drama flags next to the production numbers sometimes, but overall a pretty amazing achievement, from underrated director Bob Fosse.
64 – Network
Does seem like it came from a stage play with stage intact at times, but hysteria-pitch satire on TV business comes through with scary-funny latter-day accuracy at times, despite some dated wardrobe and haircuts.
65 – The African Queen
Opposites thrown together by circumstance, etc, etc. A star vehicle, time-honoured, and would anyone like to hear Hotel California again?
66 – Raiders of the Lost Ark
Even if you considered this series for five seconds, they picked the wrong movie, and if you gave the series five seconds consideration for this list, you picked the wrong planet.
67 – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
I am
68 – Unforgiven
Clint’s guernsey on the list, I guess. It might even crack his personal top five. At least it wasn’t “Firefox” or the one with the orangutan.
69 – Tootsie
At least it wasn’t Mrs Doubtfire. Has anyone compiling this list seen any comedy movies at all?
70 – A Clockwork Orange
The dystopian science-fiction setting, the telegraphed black humour, the production design and punk-rock long underwear and top-hats, and the we-are-shocking-you-now pathological cruelty set-pieces are what made it stand-out, made it remembered, and now make it something of a dated curio, like some Ken Russell movie he forgot to direct but came out anyway. Better cast than “Eyes Wide Shut” I guess. “O Lucky Man” with the same star, and even at far greater length, did what this was meant to do a lot better, and a lot less flashily in a way, and if it had had ‘Kubrick’ listed as director, would probably be right here instead of this movie.
71 – Saving Private Ryan
A guy who can’t help being an involving storyteller at the movies, blows all the artillery in a harrowing, technically exacting, but largely confusing and extraneous opening twenty minutes, and then piles on the emotion-grab coinkydinks and war movie clichés until your attention span heads one way, your bile count the other, and both of them are the wrong way. If anyone’s still rating this movie, and it came as news to me, there’s about 8,093 WWII pictures that did it all better, but I guess didn’t have the publicity campaign.
72 – The Shawshank Redemption
Never bothered.
73 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Possibly an entertainment/star vehicle of its time, but George Roy Hill probably deserves something on there, and it resonated for a generation of movie-goers, who are now too old to either resonate or be movie-goers. I guess more people now know George Roy for “Slapshot”. Someone should probably take a look at “Slaughterhouse Five” again now that Kurt Vonnegut’s croaked. Personally, I like “Funny Farm” with Chevy Chase but both of those things are an acquired taste.
74 – Silence of the Lambs
I think of this as more of a hit of its time rather than something particularly enduring, if that’s a criterion that any of us are caring about. An ok modishly pathological character-based suspense piece with good actors but that’s about the whole bar menu.
75 – In the Heat of the Night
Despite having a lot of the same elements working for it as “To Kill a Mockingbird” – it dates more somehow, but it’s more of a crime-suspense picture and an expertly handled one, and it has star-power in the leads, with Sydney Pointier and Rod Von Steiger. They had to get one Poitier picture in there, since for about ten years he was the biggest star in the history of wildly flung popcorn. Don’t know what this movie means to people now.
76 – Forrest Gump
There was just a whiff of something colon chokingly cute and violently self-consciously “aren’t we clever”, along with a case of the mainstream-audience suck-ups about this one that has succeeded in putting me off it completely right to this day. Anyway, isn’t this basically Woody Allen’s “Zelig” mixed with a few jolts of Peter Sellers’ “Being There”, and haven’t I seen both of those already?
(On viewing this recently, I have to say I was overly ruthless about this picture, and should have shown more ruth. It’s exceedingly good-hearted and well-acted, if a little vague in terms of having a point of view, and striving to be all things to all mass audience ticket-buyers. I can’t quite justify fully recanting what I said above, because I still think there’s a germ of truth in there somewhere, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the movie. I just don’t think it’s in the top 100 movies ever made, or the top 200, and I doubt it’d be in my top 1000 either. I’d still put Zelig in ahead of it, even though that’s a comedy with a chill factor, and Forrest Gump is more overtly moving. Zelig wouldn’t make my top 100 either, as good as it is. There’s too many better Woody Allen movies in line ahead of it.)
77 – All the President’s Men
The game doesn’t change so the Watergate era stuff still resonates. Extra chill injected to highly effective political suspense thriller due to wildly improbable events having actually occurred in the soiled pages of real life. Cast didn’t hurt.
78 – Modern Times
Chaplin incorporated some stuff from his silent shorts, added some new stuff that seemed to be effective comedy variations on “Metropolis” of all comedy-resistant movies, found a new use for his little tramp character as a victimised unit of social satire, and made probably his overall most effective feature. This one still ought to play ok.
79 – The Wild Bunch
Revisionist Peckinpah buddy-group western with elegiac sense of history – of both the West and the movie genre - that is ranked far too low here.
80 – The Apartment
Contemporary references to early 60s style sex “swinging” have brutally dated this Billy Wilder movie, which wouldn’t be a problem if he wasn’t trying to play a candy-pop romance off against the usual mistaken how’syourfathers and ill-timed whoopsies while milking the sleaze for adult daringness. I dunno, I thought this was medium tedium all the way. All those Billy Wilder pictures and they couldn’t find the Leonard Maltin to look up “Stalag 17”, The Lost Weekend”, or even “Kiss Me Stupid” with Dean Martin and my favourite martian. And that’s not even counting my pick as his best movie, “Ace in the Hole” which is a bad omission on this list.
81 – Spartacus
Little point arguing.
82 – Sunrise
FW Murnau was an artist, knew what he was doing, but this particular cinematic tone poem of emotional shading or whatever it is, has never inspired me to anything in particular other than grinding my teeth. If they’d loosened the pants around their necks about non-US movies, his one in here would be the original “Nosferatu” which you might even be able to nail a contemporary audience into their chairs to watch without instituting mass rioting.
83 – Titanic
Yeah, right, definitely. Next month, The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island
84 – Easy Rider
I think there were counter-culture type pictures as good or better around the same time, but this one probably bridged a gap between the vital exploitation pictures of the 60s and the more openly experimental entertainment style of the 70s American movies. It plays well now. You can make a decent case for it.
85 – A Night At the Opera
Very watchable Marx Bros MGM picture with great comedy material interrupted by more or less pleasant and entirely unnecessary musical snooze sections. Not their second best picture.
86 – Platoon
As much of a mess as Saving Private Ryan, riddled with clog-fisted plot rigging and WWII era movie clichés jerrimanders, and an inert performance by Tom Berenger. As erratically Keystone Kops like as his output is, Oliver Stone makes better movies than this almost every time. In fact he probably makes more entertaining bowel movements almost every time. To me, a really lousy choice.
87 – 12 Angry Men
It looks like a better shot and camera-choreographed television play, and the emotional rigging is plainly visible through the duh-rama, but there’s some good stage acting in there, and the emotional intensity still holds up. Lee J Cobb is a champ as the heel.
88 – Bringing Up Baby
Howard Hawks screwball comedy of sex and the sexes relies heavily on situations, elaborately obvious set-ups, ooo-err confusion, mugging, has funny moments, but not like a contemporary WC Fields, Marx Bros or Laurel and Hardy movie or anything, and is probably way overrated.
89 – The Sixth Sense
You tell me. I think movies should be allowed on here in 20 years time, if anyone still remembers them. It’s not a bad test.
90 – Swing Time
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I generally last around one tap routine. He was obviously a syncopated octopus of a dancer, she was really an appealing performer, but I’m not the one to ask about these movies.
91 – Sophie’s Choice
Like anyone except Meryl Streep’s auntie has seen this one in about 20 years. I remember it dimly in all senses, but regardless of what the novel was, the movie was a soap opera with a lot of rain and storms breaking and Meryl wearing the hell out of a Polish accent and comedy wig.
92 – Goodfellas
Everyone else’s gangster Scorsese choice, but not mine.
93 – The French Connection
Well, it was big in its day, and might kind of play ok now, thanks to big action set-pieces and Gene Hackman. Kind of surprised to see it there.
94 – Pulp Fiction
Yes, easily. Tarantino was a great re-user and re-inventor and blasted a hole through what commercial crime/suspense movies had become. Backlash all you like, he was a one-man cinema movement.
95 – The Last Picture Show
Bogdanovich gets his gong. Can’t comment – never seen it all the way through.
96 – Do The Right Thing
Probably as good a choice of Spike Lee movie as could have been made, presuming one had to be in there. Danny Aiello and John Turturro in the cast made a difference.
97 – Blade Runner
This is like Clockwork Orange, only with less claims for social significance. Extremely visually atmospheric settings, with some memorably pathological moments, and it’s kind of 1984 run around again with a detective theme, and it’s watchable and memorable in bits, but basically an entertainment, and basically not quite all there. At least “The Matrix” isn’t in there.
98 – Yankee Doodle Dandy
More old musicals. Supposedly Cagney is a one man riot in this. Not my table, madam.
99 – Toy Story
Put in there no doubt as the archetype of a technological category of movie-making, much as it seemed they put “Snow White” in there. Toy Story is an extremely likeable movie too. However ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is everything a great movie should be – something that interweaves story, characters, visual craft, effects, emotional manipulation, music, other sound, in exactly the right proportions to produce an emotionally exacting, but exceedingly satisfying artistic whole. Toy Story is bright clever and funny. I have no problem with it making the Top 100, but head to head, I think they probably should have put a few more old school Disney features ahead of it.
100 – Ben-Hur
Well it’s big and it’s long and it’s not outstandingly dull, so it’s not Senator Bob Brown, and it deserves to be there more than Ben Affleck, Ben Cousins or Ben Zine. Beats Son of Maciste versus the Yoga Instructor of Hercules too. Mind you, Don Knotts starring in “The Ghost and Mr Chicken” fulfils most of the same exacting criteria.
OTHER MOVIES THAT MAYBE SHOULD BE ON THE AFI LIST BUT MISSED OUT ON ACCOUNT OF FORREST GRUMP AND SAVING PRIVATE WEENIE
(Movies in brackets are ones I probably wouldn’t put in, but you could make a case for, and plenty do, and are way stronger choices than some of the carpet fluff in the ‘official’ list. Also a couple of non-US, non-English language movies I would have definitely included in an unrestricted Top 100 list.)
The Conversation
The Lady from Shanghai
Man on the Flying Trapeze//The Bank Dick//It’s a Gift
The Party
The Night of the Hunter
Monkey Business//Horse Feathers
Ace in the Hole aka The Big Carnival
Duel
The King of Marvin Gardens
Five Easy Pieces
Full Metal Jacket
The Shining
Once Upon a Time in America
Casino
The King of Comedy
All the King’s Men
American Beauty//Storytelling//Happiness
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind//The People vs Larry Flynt
Natural Born Killers//Salvador//Wall Street
Bananas//Sleeper//Play It Again, Sam
The Front
(Badlands)
Blazing Saddles//Young Frankenstein//The Producers
Eraserhead
Fantasia// Pinocchio
Cool Hand Luke
The Third Man
A Face in the Crowd
Masque of the Red Death
Bride of Frankenstein
Sherlock Jr
Goldfinger//Dr No
Goodbye Mr Chips
The Browning Version
The Lady Vanishes
Dead of Night (UK, 40s)
The Black Cat (Edgar Ulmer, 30s)
(The Hustler)
The Last Detail
Rollerball
O Lucky Man
This Sporting Life
Wake in Fright
Forbidden Planet
Arsenic and Old Lace
Little Caesar
The Public Enemy
Scarface (original)
Scarface (remake)
Carlito’s Way
The Lost Weekend
What’s Up Doc
(Targets)
Stardust Memories
My Darling Clementine
(The Wages of Fear// M. Hulot’s Holiday)
The Outlaw, Josey Wales
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Peeping Tom
Nightmare Alley
Reservoir Dogs
Laws of Gravity
The Tenant
Army of Darkness
The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers
The Sweet Smell of Success
This is Spinal Tap
A Mighty Wind//(Best in Show)
(To Be or Not to Be) (original)
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
The Loved One
Lolita
Ride the High Country
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Schlock
Into the Night
Miller’s Crossing
Barton Fink
(O Brother, Where Art Thou)
A few John Sayles pictures
A Fine Madness
Odd Man Out
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Targets
The Ghost Breakers
I Walked with a Zombie
Cuba
(Night Moves)
Catch-22
Radio Days (Zelig)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Champion//The Set-Up//The Harder They Fall
Paths of Glory
Horror of Dracula
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