Showing posts with label Top 100. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Top 100. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

AFI Top 100 Movies

 
I still really, really do not get the greatness of Citizen Kane.  It's fine, I guess, but I don't get why it's considered to be the best movie ever.  Really, Kane at #1, and To Kill a Mockingbird at #34?  Who makes these lists?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UYlX1-mj4s

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

AFI Top 100 Movies, Revised



I don't really know why AFI felt the need to revisit their original list after only 10 years, but it's interesting to see how political correctness changed it. 

The new movies included:  The General  (1926), Intolerance  (1916), Fellowship of the Ring  (2001), Nashville  (1975), Sullivan's Travels  (1941), Cabaret  (1972), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  (1966), Saving Private Ryan  (1998), The Shawshank Redemption  (1994), In the Heat of the Night  (1967), All the President's Men  (1976),  Spartacus  (1960), Sunrise  (1927), Titanic  (1997), A Night at the Opera  (1935), 12 Angry Men  (1957), The Sixth Sense  (1999), Swing Time  (1936), Sophie's Choice  (1982),  The Last Picture Show  (1971), Do the Right Thing  (1989), Blade Runner  (1982), and Toy Story  (1995).

Almost 1/4 of the list was replaced, some by newer movies.
 
The films removed from the list included:  Doctor Zhivago  (1965), The Birth of a Nation  (1915), From Here to Eternity  (1953), Amadeus  (1984), All Quiet on the Western Front  (1930), The Third Man  (1949), Fantasia  (1940), Rebel Without a Cause  (1955), Stagecoach  (1939), Close Encounters of the Third Kind  (1977), The Manchurian Candidate  (1962), An American in Paris  (1951), Wuthering Heights  (1939), Dances with Wolves  (1990), Giant  (1956), Fargo  (1996), Mutiny on the Bounty  (1935), Frankenstein  (1931), Patton  (1970), The Jazz Singer  (1927), My Fair Lady (1964), A Place in the Sun  (1951), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967).
 
I think the ones that surprise me the most are Rebel Without a Cause, Jazz Singer, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, as they're considered landmark movies.  But of course, Nashville - which nobody's even heard of - and Titanic - which was cinematically impressive but had a crappy storyline - are good enough to replace them.  Obviously this means I don't know anything.
 

Sunday, March 3, 2013

The Wild Bunch

Top 100 (#80/79); Thrills (#69); Stars - William Holden (#25), Ernest Borgnine (Current); Top Ten - Western (#6)

Ugh.  This ranks up there with Unforgiven as my most disliked western.  A gang of outlaws in the last days of the Old West rob banks and trains, take advantage of women, and try to avoid the mercenaries who are after them.

There's not a single woman in the movie who's not being used by men.  I realize it shows what kind of men they were and all that, but it really was excessive.

William Holden and his adversary Robert Ryan looked too much alike, and I found that confusing.

The gunfights, however, were cinematically impressive.  And that's about as positive as I'm going to get.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62qvse2Rl-M

Friday, February 22, 2013

In the Heat of the Night

Top 100 (#75 Revised); Stars - Sidney Poitier (#22); Cheers (#21); Quotes - "They call me Mr. Tibbs" (#16); Heroes - Virgil Tibbs (#19)

Excellent movie.  A Philadelphia homicide detective is falsely accused of murder while visiting relatives in the South.  He then has to help the racist sheriff figure out who really did it.

Have I mentioned that I love Sidney Poitier?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLltYjpxpwI

Friday, February 15, 2013

City Lights

Top 100 (#76/11); Laughs (#38); Stars - Charlie Chaplin (#10); Cheers (#31); Heroes - The Tramp (#38); Passions (#10); Top Ten - Romantic Comedy (#1)

Good, sweet, but maybe a bit overhyped - then again, I'm watching it 80 years later.  The Tramp falls in love with a blind girl and tries to come up with the money she needs to save the home where she lives with her grandmother. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rkNBH5fbMk

Sunday, February 3, 2013

A Night at the Opera

Top 100 (#85 Revised); Laughs (#12); Stars - The Marx Brothers (#20)

Okay, so I don't really like the Marx Brothers all that much anyway.  I like Laurel & Hardy better.  But this wasn't my favorite of their movies.  Maybe it was because of all the opera.  Maybe it was because Zeppo wasn't in it.  Who knows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Axzxe1a78E

Friday, February 1, 2013

The Deer Hunter

Top 100 (#79/53); Thrills (#30)

Three buddies from a factory town enter the Vietnam war together.  They serve together, end up separating, and each find different fates.

Too gritty.  I very didn't like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpBkc2jK-6w

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Goodfellas

Top 100 (#94/92); Top Ten - Gangster (#2)

Just when I said all gangster movies were the same, along came this one - a gangster movie with a touch of Woody Allen.

Yeah...didn't like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaXO3yg1REE

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Wuthering Heights

Top 100 (#73); Stars - Laurence Olivier (#14); Passions (#15)

What a bunch of spiteful, miserable people. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBwqhLA43yE

Monday, December 3, 2012

Stagecoach

Top 100 (#63); Stars - John Wayne (#13); Top Ten - Western (#9)

This movie takes everything you need to make a good western - a gunslinger, a preacher, the town drunk, and a saloon girl with a heart of gold - and puts them together on a stagecoach.  It's John Ford's answer to movies like Dinner at Eight and Grand Hotel - take a mixed bag of characters and put them in a situation where their paths cross.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6v-auTctSo

Friday, November 23, 2012

Fargo

Top 100 (#84); Laughs (#93); Heroes - Marge Gunderson (#33)

Fargo is a dark comedy about an extortion/kidnapping gone terribly wrong.  It's ok, but gruesome.  Frances McDormand is good, and all the references to Steve Buscemi being funny looking are humorous ("Funny looking?  In what way?" "I don't know.  Just funny looking.")

I'm not sure why it's called Fargo, since it takes place in Brainerd and the Twin Cities.  However, Minnesota boys Joel and Ethan Coen aren't too up on their Minnesota geography anyways.  It apparently takes four hours to drive from Brainerd to Minneapolis, and if you're driving to the Twin Cities from Fargo, Brainerd is right on the way.  And seriously, except for old people up on the Range, Minnesotans don't talk like that!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJUFTm6cJXM

Saturday, November 17, 2012

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Top 100 (#30/38); Thrills (#67); Stars - Humphrey Bogart (#1); Quotes - "Badges?  We ain't got no badges!  We don't need no badges!  I don't have to show you any stinking badges!" (#36)

Humphrey Bogart is very good as a miner driven crazy by his greed.  He sets out with two other men to find a legendary lode of gold, but is overcome with paranoia and gold fever.

A bit long, but very well done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgITBzujCS0

Friday, November 16, 2012

Swing Time

Top 100 (#90 Revised); Stars - Fred Astaire (#5), Ginger Rogers (#14); Songs - The Way You Look Tonight (#43); Passions (#30)

I have to give people like Lerner & Loewe and Rogers & Hammerstein credit, because before they came along, plots of movie musicals were rather thing. 

However, these movies weren't so much about the plot as they were about song and dance, and that's where we get wonderful songs like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs2nH9gSXOE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaVLbk_3UeU


Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The Searchers

Top 100 (#96/12); Stars - John Wayne (#13); Top Ten - Western (#1)

When John Wayne's niece is captured by Indians, he and his adopted nephew set off on an impossible quest to find and retrieve her.  The search takes years, but he doesn't give up.

I'm not big on westerns, but I liked this movie.  And I'm thinking it has the biggest jump between the original Top 100 list and the revised one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcpuHzllobQ

Monday, October 29, 2012

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Top 100 (#67 - Revised); Stars - Elizabeth Taylor (#7); Passions (#89)

I don't get the appeal of this movie.  Two hours of people yelling at each other.  Seriously, that's all it is.  Well acted?  I suppose.  And some argue that the beauty of this story is that Taylor's and Burton's characters love each other and stick together despite the volatility of their relationship.  I don't call that love.  I call that co-dependence.

Truth is, I found the movie grating and annoying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDucj50eQYs

Friday, October 26, 2012

Sunrise

Top 100 (#82 - Revised); Passions (#63)

A man decides to kill his wife so he can run off with his mistress.  My, these old movies were scandalous!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLLEBAQLZ3Q 

Monday, October 8, 2012

Sunset Boulevard

Top 100 (#12/16); Score (#16); Stars - Buster Keaton (#21), William Holden (#25); Quotes - "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close up" (#7), "I am big!  It's the pictures that got small" (#24)

I wasn't expecting this to be film noir, but it worked.  I liked it because it was different - it's hard to peg.  Silent screen star Norma Desmond still believes, 30 years later, that she's wonderfully famous and doesn't want to face the fact that people have forgotten her.  She's living in the past, and once struggling screenwriter William Holden stumbles into her world, he finds he can't easily leave it.

Gloria Swanson was campy and overdramatic, but that's what the character called for.  I think Holden had the same clause in his contract that Matthew McConaughey must have - one that says he has to appear shirtless in every movie.  And I loved that Ms. Desmond's bridge club was made up of cameos by other silent film stars, including my favorite, Buster Keaton.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKfBCitChcg

Saturday, October 6, 2012

The General

Top 100 (Revised #18); Laughs (#18); Stars - Buster Keaton (#21)

When a Confederate locomotive is stolen by Union soldiers, Buster Keaton saves the day and wins the heart of his true love.

Not my favorite Keaton movie, probably because it was much too long.  Did early audiences really sit that long through silent movies?  Sheesh.  They could have spent that time Charlestoning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSGWoXDFM64

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Spartacus

Top 100 (Revised #81); Thrills (#62); Stars - Kirk Douglas (#17); Cheers (#44); Heroes - Spartacus (#22); Top Ten - Epic (#5)

What?  "I am Spartacus" is not one of the top quotes?  Who came up with these lists?

Overall, I'd say it was good for a guy movie.  Not one of my favorites though.  But Goose Cousin loves Kirk Douglas' butt chin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V32PWJX-GpY

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Taxi Driver

Top 100 (#47/52); Thrills (#22); Quotes - "You talking to me?" (#10); Villains - Travis Bickle (#30)

It wasn't what I expected, but I'm not sure what I was really expecting.  I wasn't expecting it to be artsy-fartsy.  And I was thinking it was more violent than it was.  And I thought Jodie Foster's role would be bigger.  I don't know.  But I didn't really like it - and I hadn't figured that I would.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4p_rX74TgI