June 23, 2007
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100 Top Movies
Just for fun over the weekend. The American Film Institute reissued their top 100 films ten years after the original list. If you’d like, copy the list on your blog and mark ones you’ve seen, ones you liked, disliked, would like to see, using any coding system you’d like.
We must still have some medieval blood in us: the medieval people loved lists. I have to admit that I do too. The colored ones are ones I’ve seen. I’m certain any one reading this will have seen more.
Movies were taboo in my childhood and I won’t even tell you what my childish mind imagined took place in “evil theaters”. I once remarked to my brother that “Mom and Dad must have gone to a lot of movies to have seven children.”
I’d love to know which ones from this list that you think we really need to watch.
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies--10th Anniv. Edition:
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)
slowest movie I've ever seen
8 Schindler's List (1993) Q
9 Vertigo (1958)
10 The Wizard of Oz (1939) I saw this *after*
I humiliated my son
11 City Lights (1931)
12 The Searchers (1956)
13 Star Wars (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)
this one disturbed me
34 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
35 Annie Hall (1977)
36 The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)Q
37 The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
38 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
39 Dr. Strangelove (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) five stars, we loved this
51 West Side Story (1961)
52 Taxi Driver (1976)
53 The Deer Hunter (1978)
I cried for days after seeing this
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)
you gotta love Katherine Hepburn
66 The Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
67 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
68 Unforgiven (1992)
69 Tootsie (1982) We laughed so hard when
this came out. We started it again ten
years later with our boys and abruptly
turned it off; standards had changed.
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 (1970)
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)
Comments (12)
I’ve watched 26 of the 100.
It’s nice to keep a couple of good lists, so that I can know what to choose when DH is not around.
Dana in GA
I’ve seen 33 of these, not all memorable, I must say. I couldn’t tell you I was really impressed with several, like “12 Angry Men” (watched because my daughter watched it in high school). But two that you haven’t seen I really recommend: “Titanic” because it has a really good storyline, including some real people such as “the ‘unsinkable’ Molly Brown,” if you’ve seen that movie; and because it was well done; and secondly, “Schindler’s List,” also seen because my kids’ high school had them watch it, along with having Holocaust survivors come speak to them. There are far too many kids today who don’t understand the scope and breadth of the Holocaust or how it could have happened. Yes, it is graphic, but necessary so that future generations don’t start to believe that it didn’t really happen.
Did you know the full title of Ben-hur is something like “Ben-Hur: A Story of the Christ”? It’s a movie my kids are even allowed to watch on Sabbath, since it clearly demonstrates God’s desire for our good and our obedience.
The list contains some movies I will never see- I already know they are filled with immorality, violence, or some other form of ungodliness. (I don’t believe in eating sandwiches half-full of mold in spite of the widely-accepted theory, “The good parts are worth it”, either.)
Casablanca is excellent. And I also recommend To Kill a Mockingbird and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And the Sixth Sense is pretty awesome, especially if nobody has ever told you anything about it. I have seen 39 of these movies–many of the older ones, fewer of the newer ones.
What does ir. mean after Bridge On the River Kwai? That’s a good movie, too. A couple I have seen that I wish I hadn’t (in my pre-Christian days), like Sophie’s Choice. I could have lived without Psycho, too.
As for Titanic, I haven’t seen it, and wouldn’t, but I highly recommend the older version from 1953 starring Barbara Stanwyck. Ben-Hur is good, too–the story is excellent, but Charlton Heston’s acting leaves a bit to be desired. It’s amazing that a movie subtitled “A Tale of the Christ” actually won an academy award!
I cannot understand how Treasure of the Sierra Madre made it onto this top 100 list! It was awful.
Thanks for the comments. I really don’t get excited about movies the way I do about books. More than anything I wanted to hear if one of these was excellent.
Originally I put “in queue” for the few that we planned to watch. But the margins are whacked, so I just changed it to Q.
We have a CD of Movie Themes and my favorite is the theme from Schindler’s List. When the violin plays the haunting melody it saturates my soul. “Let me guess,” my son says, “You want *this* one at your funeral too.”
Hi Carol!
I have seen 69 of those movies.
You really must see;
Singin in the Rain, Schindler’s List (you will cry for days and that song will make you cry a river), On the Waterfront (excellent!!!) and To Kill a Mockingbird (My favorite drama of all time. This is such a wonderful movie. Please watch it!)
Thank you Donna. I’m a blank look when it comes to On the Waterfront. I plan to read both Schindler’s List and To Kill a Mockingbird before I watch them. I promise I’ll watch it then!
PS Welcome back! I can’t wait for *wedding* pictures, although the rehearsal pictures are fabulous.
I’ve seen 52. – I also did the list at my site, with some commentary.
Carrie
P.S. I’ll send your book out tomorrow! It’s hard to sell my books, but it helps to know this one’s going to a good, book-loving home.
OH, my….you should see (almost) ALL of them! Truthfully, I’ve not seen Titanic….no great loss, except for the costumes, I heard.
)
But, because you have a highly developed social acumen you would suddenly find more bridges between the wonderful world of literature and pop culture. And there’s yet another reason it is such a pleasure to read your blog.
Well, Carolyne, how nice of you to comment. Thank you for your kind words.
Sometimes I forget that anyone reads this besides the regular commenters (there must be a better word than commenter).
I got The Grapes of Wrath on DVD from our library. I intend to plop it in and attack my ironing pile soon. It’s hard to iron and watch foreign (dubbed) films.
Carol, I think it is better to read and I know you do that, but on the down time I would suggest 3,5,26,36,and 48
Carol,
Sorry I’m behind and catching up on your posts. I’ve seen 79 of these. My first job was at a movie theater, and Terry loves movies so that accounts for me having watched so many. Of those 79, there must be at least 10 I’d rather not have seen (Pulp Fiction, Deer Hunter, Silence of the Lambs and Goodfella would top that list) and about as many that I know I have seen but cannot remember anything about them (Chinatown and North by Northwest for example).
Ones that I would highly recommend: Singin’in the Rain (one of my favorite musicals because of the dancing!), Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve (stories about “old Hollywood” with famous performances by Gloria Swanson and Bettye Davis), and The Best Years of Our Lives (a movie about returning WWII vets and their difficult adjustment back to civilian life).
I’ll post the list on Maple Grove today.
Blessings,
Sandy