A&E - AFI's New Top 100

Click the link above for the list.

Since it's pretty much required for anyone who fancies himself a film pundit to comment on such things, here are a few thoughts on the new AFI Top 100.

First, Citizen Kane absolutely deserves top honors. It's kind of become old hat to recognize it as such, but screw that. The fact is, the film (unlike any other I've seen from that era) still plays today. And I LOVE Casablanca, but it does play like a movie from the 40s. Citizen Kane has the kind of pacing and dialogue you find in films that have come out in the last five years, features an incredible leading performance, and is still one of the most innovative films ever made. Honestly, it's not in my Top 10 favorites, but if I had to make a Top 10 of the greatest achievements in film, this would easily be in the top 5.

I LOVE The Godfather, but The Godfather, Pt. II is a better movie. It just is. The two of them put together, though (as I and many others do) is the second-best film ever made (behind 2001: A Space Odyssey and just ahead of Apocalypse Now).

You have no idea how cool it is that Raging Bull is #4. To me, Scorsese's best film is The Last Temptation of Christ, but Raging Bull is an incredible piece of work that never, until now, got the respect it deserved, and I was beyond happy when that came up (yeah, I watched the 3-hour broadcast).

I've seen half the movies on the list. Sweet.

Schindler's List is...it's not the most overrated movie of the 90s (that'd be Forrest Gump), but it's not a Top 10 movie. I don't mean to demean it, and saying something like that is a little controversial, but the fact is that it works as well as it does because of the subject matter, not because of especially great performances or great direction.

They just kinda slided Do The Right Thing in there at 96, probably just to stave off the (justified) complaints that there were no black filmmakers represented on the last list.

I don't like Platoon or Forrest Gump. I'm on the verge of flat-out hating the latter, and nothing you can say can change the fact that it's a self-serving piece of nostalgia with the weakest lead characters I've ever seen in a major motion picture.

A Clockwork Orange plummeted almost 30 places since the last list. There's no good reason for that.

If they made Bonnie and Clyde today, it wouldn't be nearly as cool because there'd have to be a real love story between the two of them. They handled that so effing well in that movie.

For your convenience, movies that I've seen from the list that you should absolutely see, besides some of the more obvious stuff that I talk about all the time (since the main purpose of the list, to me at least, is to encourage people to go out and see great pieces of filmmaking).
Blade Runner
Do The Right Thing
Goodfellas
12 Angry Men
The Apartment
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
American Graffiti
The Deer Hunter
Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Chinatown
Double Indemnity
Lawrence of Arabia