Updated: 7/4/2007; 10:41:13 PM

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

 Sunday, June 24, 2007

Movies are your best entertainment…

 

I missed out on the big AFI: 100 Best Movies folderol the other night because…well, for several reasons.  I don’t have as much respect for the American Film Institute as some because to my way of thinking, they seem to exist only to perpetuate the sale of films on VHS, DVD, etc.; their “Best Movie” lists are more often than not the “Most Popular” films.  Of the 2007 “winners,” here are a short list of the movies that made the list that made me scratch my head and say: “What the…”?

 

Lawrence of Arabia (1962): My understanding is the AFI list is supposed to be comprised of “the top-100 American movies.”  This film—grand as it may be to some—is not an American film.

 

Star Wars (1977): I enjoyed this as a kid…but I also enjoyed Flash Gordon, too.  Let’s give this one a rest.

 

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): I don’t care how many people tell me “Oh, this is a movie you really have to see in a theater,” it’s boring, ponderous crap and Kubrick stopped making good movies after Dr. Strangelove.  (This is on the list, but at #39.  Pathetic.)

 

The Graduate (1967): How does a film this dated manage to keep its staying power on this list over the years?  It’s half a good movie; the moment they introduce the Dustin Hoffman-Katharine Ross romance it goes flatter than stale ginger ale.

 

The Sound of Music (1965): I would rather chew off my foot than sit through this saccharine-fest ever again.

 

There are so many movies on this list that could be excised for far, far better films: Rocky (1976), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Forrest Gump (1994), Titanic (1997), Easy Rider (1969), The Sixth Sense (1999), etc., etc., etc.  This is kind of my major beef with the AFI list: lists are purely subjective, and a movie that rocks my world may leave you feeling like there’s two hours of your life you’ll never get back.

 

Eddie Copeland passed along an e-mail to me giving me a heads-up that several film bloggers are in the process of starting their own Top 100 list, and though I swore to myself I would let the AFI picks pass without incident, I can’t resist contributing my two cents.  What follows is my personal “Top 100” list—but let me issue a few caveats.  I’m not saying these are the best films—in fact, many of them might have my vast readership questioning how much rope I’ve been smoking of late—but merely a list of personal favorites: cult films, comedy classics and movies that, for better or worse, have either had a profound influence on me or just have me returning to see them again and again and again.  (I’d also like to say that my favorites cannot be contained to a hundred, and that most of these picks are movies that I have in my DVD collection, because that seemed like an excellent starting point…there are a great many other favorites not available on disc,)  If you Sound of Music or 2001 fans want to take me down a peg for my choices…feel free to do so in the comments section.  (To demonstrate that I’m not a total lowbrow, I put those movies that made the AFI’s Top 100 in bold.)

 

Ivan’s Top 100 Favorites (in fairly alphabetical order):

 

  1. 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
  2. Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
  3. All About Eve (1950)
  4. Atlantic City (1980)
  5. Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
  6. Born Yesterday (1950)
  7. Call Northside 777 (1948)
  8. Casablanca (1942)
  9. Chinatown (1974)
  10. Citizen Kane (1941)
  11. Curse of the Demon (Night of the Demon) (1957—Yes, this is a British-made film—if the AFI can break the rules, so can I)
  12. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying the Love the Bomb (1964)
  13. Duck Soup (1933)
  14. Force of Evil (1948)
  15. Freaks (1932)
  16. Gun Crazy (1949)
  17. Harlan County, USA (1976)
  18. High Noon (1952)
  19. His Girl Friday (1940)
  20. His Kind of Woman (1951)
  21. Horse Feathers (1932)
  22. I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
  23. In a Lonely Place (1950)
  24. In Cold Blood (1967)
  25. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
  26. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
  27. Johnny Guitar (1954)
  28. King Kong (1933)
  29. Kiss Me, Deadly (1955)
  30. Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)
  31. Manhattan (1979)
  32. Medium Cool (1969)
  33. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
  34. Modern Times (1936)
  35. Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
  36. Murder, My Sweet (1944)
  37. Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941)
  38. Nightmare Alley (1947)
  39. North by Northwest (1959)
  40. One, Two, Three (1961)
  41. Out of the Past (1947)
  42. Pandora’s Box (1928)
  43. Paths of Glory (1957)
  44. Petulia (1968)
  45. Quatermass and the Pit (1968—see #13)
  46. Rear Window (1954)
  47. Ride the High Country (1962)
  48. Road to Utopia (1945)
  49. Sailor Beware (1951)
  50. Safety Last (1923)
  51. Salt of the Earth (1954)
  52. Seconds (1966)
  53. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
  54. Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
  55. Shock Corridor (1963)
  56. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
  57. Sleeper (1973)
  58. Some Like it Hot (1959)
  59. Sons of the Desert (1933)
  60. Stalag 17 (1953)
  61. Strangers on a Train (1951)
  62. Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
  63. Sunrise (1927)
  64. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
  65. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
  66. Targets (1968)
  67. The Candidate (1972)
  68. The Conversation (1974)
  69. The Court Jester (1956)
  70. The Freshman (1925)
  71. The General (1927)
  72. The Glass Key (1942)
  73. The Gunfighter (1950)
  74. The Kid Brother (1927)
  75. The Killing (1956)
  76. The Lady From Shanghai (1948)
  77. The Last Picture Show (1971)
  78. The Late Show (1977)
  79. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
  80. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
  81. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)
  82. The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
  83. The Parallax View (1974)
  84. The Pawnbroker (1965)
  85. The Quiet Man (1952)
  86. The Searchers (1956)
  87. The Set-Up (1949)
  88. The Swimmer (1968)
  89. The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three (1974)
  90. The Talk of the Town (1942)
  91. The Thin Blue Line (1988)
  92. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
  93. The Verdict (1982)
  94. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
  95. Thieves’ Highway (1949)
  96. To Be or Not to Be (1942)
  97. Touch of Evil (1958)
  98. Way Out West (1937)
  99. White Heat (1949)
  100. Winchester ’73 (1950)
- Posted by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. - 8:35:04 PM - comment []