So usually I don't agree with these top movie lists. They always seem to put a few recent tear-jerkers a little too close to the top for me. But the American Film Institute's 2007 list of the Top-100 American movies is pretty good. I took the liberty of making a few of my top films bold and striking a few I don't think belong.
AFI's Top-100 American Movies:
1. "Citizen Kane," 1941.
2. "The Godfather," 1972.
3. "Casablanca," 1942.
4. "Raging Bull," 1980.
5. "Singin' in the Rain," 1952.
6. "Gone With the Wind," 1939.
7. "Lawrence of Arabia," 1962.
8. "Schindler's List," 1993.
9. "Vertigo," 1958.
10. "The Wizard of Oz," 1939.
11. "City Lights," 1931.
12. "The Searchers," 1956.
13. "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope," 1977.
14. "Psycho," 1960.
15. "2001: A Space Odyssey," 1968.
16. "Sunset Blvd.", 1950.
17. "The Graduate," 1967.
18. "The General," 1927.
19. "On the Waterfront," 1954.
20. "It's a Wonderful Life," 1946.
21. "Chinatown," 1974.
22. "Some Like It Hot," 1959.
23. "The Grapes of Wrath," 1940.
24. "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," 1982.
25. "To Kill a Mockingbird," 1962.
26. "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," 1939.
27. "High Noon," 1952.
28. "All About Eve," 1950.
29. "Double Indemnity," 1944.
30. "Apocalypse Now," 1979.
31. "The Maltese Falcon," 1941.
32. "The Godfather Part II," 1974.
33. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," 1975.
34. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," 1937.
35. "Annie Hall," 1977.
36. "The Bridge on the River Kwai," 1957.
37. "The Best Years of Our Lives," 1946.
38. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," 1948.
39. "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," 1964.
40. "The Sound of Music," 1965.
41. "King Kong," 1933.
42. "Bonnie and Clyde," 1967.
43. "Midnight Cowboy," 1969.
44. "The Philadelphia Story," 1940.
45. "Shane," 1953.
46. "It Happened One Night," 1934.
47. "A Streetcar Named Desire," 1951.
48. "Rear Window," 1954.
49. "Intolerance," 1916.
50. "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," 2001.
51. "West Side Story," 1961.
52. "Taxi Driver," 1976.
53. "The Deer Hunter," 1978.
54. "M-A-S-H," 1970.
55. "North by Northwest," 1959.
56. "Jaws," 1975.
57. "Rocky," 1976.
58. "The Gold Rush," 1925.
59. "Nashville," 1975.
60. "Duck Soup," 1933.
61. "Sullivan's Travels," 1941.
62. "American Graffiti," 1973.
63. "Cabaret," 1972.
64. "Network," 1976.
65. "The African Queen," 1951.
66. "Raiders of the Lost Ark," 1981.
67. "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", 1966.
68. "Unforgiven," 1992.
69. "Tootsie," 1982.
70. "A Clockwork Orange," 1971.
71. "Saving Private Ryan," 1998.
72. "The Shawshank Redemption," 1994.
73. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," 1969.
74. "The Silence of the Lambs," 1991.
75. "In the Heat of the Night," 1967.
76. "Forrest Gump," 1994.
77. "All the President's Men," 1976.
78. "Modern Times," 1936.
79. "The Wild Bunch," 1969.
80. "The Apartment," 1960.
81. "Spartacus," 1960.
82. "Sunrise," 1927.
83. "Titanic," 1997.
84. "Easy Rider," 1969.
85. "A Night at the Opera," 1935.
86. "Platoon," 1986.
87. "12 Angry Men," 1957.
88. "Bringing Up Baby," 1938.
89. "The Sixth Sense," 1999.
90. "Swing Time," 1936.
91. "Sophie's Choice," 1982.
92. "Goodfellas," 1990.
93. "The French Connection," 1971.
94. "Pulp Fiction," 1994.
95. "The Last Picture Show," 1971.
96. "Do the Right Thing," 1989.
97. "Blade Runner," 1982.
98. "Yankee Doodle Dandy," 1942.
99. "Toy Story," 1995.
100. "Ben-Hur," 1959.
I struck "E.T.", "Saving Private Ryan," "Forrest Gump", "Titanic," and "The Sixth Sense."
"E.T." is a cute movie, and nice for it's time, but it's no "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
"Saving Private Ryan" probably could stay, out of all of these I was the most iffy about cutting it. Is it the best WWII movie ever made? I think it's the only one on this list, so they're saying it's the best ever.
Don't get me started on "Forrest Gump", though - I think it's the most over-rated movie of my lifetime. The main character in that movie doesn't do anything, he just reacts to the decades around him as they march by - stumbling through history with increasing success. Sure, it's entertaining, but also very pandering to the people who lived through those decades ("remember this event from your youth? Well Forrest Gump was there and he said something inappropriate!" "Remember this bumper sticker? Forrest Gump made it up!") One part absurd, one part mushy and overly-sentimental, the movie fails to do anything particularly new or special. The only way I can even sit through the movie is assume that the writers and directors are mocking Gump and his backwards ways. Even then it's still painful.
"Titanic" is a cute love story, but it doesn't belong here.
"The Sixth Sense" was clever, don't get me wrong, but in ten years it'll dropped.
So what's missing from this list, you might ask? Well, I've rounded up a few of my favorites from history. Sure, some of them might be a little too flashy or too recent, but I think that these will stand up to the test of time.
The 19 the AFI forgot:
"Out of the Past," 1947. A really good and oft-overlooked Film Noir. Plus, there's this guy in it who looks just like Ben Affleck. I swear.
"The Killing," 1956. If you liked Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, then you'll love this movie about a heist gone wrong that's told out of sequence, directed by Stanley Kubrick.
"Blazing Saddles," 1974. I can't believe this isn't on the list. Wow.
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind," 1977. See notes about "E.T." above.
"Alien," 1979. It's a little slow at points, but when it's moving it's moving.
"The Muppet Movie," 1979. It's the Muppets. You have to.
"Back to the Future," 1985. My favorite movie ever made. Hands down the best screenplay in the history of screenplays. It's so freakin' clever. And the performances? Genius. Christopher Lloyd was born to play Doc Brown. And fantastic direction. Down to the details. Each time I watch the movie I see something new. All around perfection.
"Lethal Weapon," 1987. It's more touching then you remember.
"The Princess Bride," 1987. Amazing and clever.
"Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", 1988. So what if the story is copped from "Chinatown" - this is a movie that couldn't / wouldn't be made today. Everything came together at the right place in the right time for this one.
"Glory," 1989. Maybe the best Civil War movie ever?
"Beauty and the Beast," 1991. Classic.
"Malcolm X," 1992. One of my favorite biographical movies ever.
"Jurassic Park," 1993. The movie that started the whole CGI computer train that we're on today. An innovator.
"Braveheart," 1995. Very good war movie. Brutal.
"The Usual Suspects," 1995. So clever. Even more twisted on multiple viewings (unlike "The Sixth Sense").
"The Big Lebowski," 1998. Each of the Coen Brothers movies is so very different, thus it's difficult to pick the best. Maybe this one?
"The Matrix," 1999. Again, so much of our recent cinema steals heavily from this Wachowski Brothers ... Siblings ... movie.
"Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," 2003. Is it too soon to call this an instant classic? I don't think so. He is Captain Jack Sparrow, after all ...
And lastly, for fun, my other favorite movie that does not belong here, but I have to mention it anyway - "The Cannonball Run," 1981. Probably more fun to make than to watch, it's still pretty amusing ... |
