100 Films

I've been searching for a good list of the the best films ever made. There are many, but I think I'm going to reference the American Film Institute's. It was created from a poll of 1500 artists and other members of the film industry, so I'll take it as a pretty good averaging of what people think of as the best movies ever made. I've looked at Time's list, imdb's, and others, but I feel like the AFI's is the most representative of qualified opinion, and I just decided to go with it (sometimes my choices are made arbitrarily, ah well). There is a reason behind all of this, of course. I'm going to try to watch all of the ones I have never seen on it. I feel that it's important to not just see movies, but see the best ones. If I'm going to spend 2 hours sitting in front of my tv, I might as well infuse that time with as much culture, history, emotion, and great acting as possible. And when I see myself watching tv as much as I do (more than I would like, but it IS hard to get away from), I want to do something productive with it, to stop myself from watching the trash so many people are addicted to (Family Guy, while funny, is by no means something I wish to spend more time watching). So I'm going to start renting movies from the library, if they have them, or getting them from The Dreaming Ant, a great dvd rental place on Craig Street that I love.

Rather than taking the list of best picture winners and watching them, I decided to go with these lists primarily because there's a lot of overlap, and many critics believe that many of the best films never won, or in some cases were even nominated, for the award. Citizen Kane wasn't, and it is considered to be one of the most influential films ever made. Unfortunately, the list is made of American films only. One day I might delve into foreign film more deeply, and I truly love many a foreign movie (Water or Spirited Away, anyone?) but then I think I would spend all my time on my couch. They've also updated this list since 1998, when it was first made, but I think I'll just stick to this one. Otherwise it gets far too complicated. We'll see how far I get.

As it is, I think I've already seen about half of the films on this list (go me!). Now to seek out the rest. The one's I have yet to see are in bold. One of the worst things, though, is that I've seen bits of far more than what's shown. But because I haven't seen them the whole way through, I haven't counted them. Ah well. I can even make this more fun, and see if I can get any friends to join me.

1	Citizen Kane	1941
2	Casablanca	1942
3	The Godfather	1972
4	Gone with the Wind	1939
5	Lawrence of Arabia	1962
6	The Wizard of Oz	1939
7	The Graduate	1967
8	On the Waterfront	1954
9	Schindler's List	1993
10	Singin' in the Rain	1952
11	It's a Wonderful Life	1946
12	Sunset Boulevard	1950
13	The Bridge on the River Kwai	1957
14	Some Like It Hot	1959
15	Star Wars	1977
16	All About Eve	1950
17	The African Queen	1951
18	Psycho	1960
19	Chinatown	1974
20	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	1975
21	The Grapes of Wrath	1940
22	2001: A Space Odyssey	1968
23	The Maltese Falcon	1941
24	Raging Bull	1980
25	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial	1982
26	Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb	1964
27	Bonnie and Clyde	1967
28	Apocalypse Now	1979
29	Mr. Smith Goes to Washington	1939
30	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	1948
31	Annie Hall	1977
32	The Godfather Part II	1974
33	High Noon	1952
34	To Kill a Mockingbird	1962
35	It Happened One Night	1934
36	Midnight Cowboy	1969
37	The Best Years of Our Lives	1946
38	Double Indemnity	1944
39	Doctor Zhivago	1965
40	North by Northwest	1959
41	West Side Story	1961
42	Rear Window	1954
43	King Kong	1933
44	The Birth of a Nation	1915
45	A Streetcar Named Desire	1951
46	A Clockwork Orange	1971
47	Taxi Driver	1976
48	Jaws	1975
49	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs	1937
50	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	1969
51	The Philadelphia Story	1940
52	From Here to Eternity	1953
53	Amadeus	1984
54	All Quiet on the Western Front	1930
55	The Sound of Music	1965
56	M*A*S*H	1970
57	The Third Man	1949
58	Fantasia	1940
59	Rebel Without a Cause	1955
60	Raiders of the Lost Ark	1981
61	Vertigo	1958
62	Tootsie	1982
63	Stagecoach	1939
64	Close Encounters of the Third Kind	1977
65	The Silence of the Lambs	1991
66	Network	1976
67	The Manchurian Candidate	1962
68	An American in Paris	1951
69	Shane	1953
70	The French Connection	1971
71	Forrest Gump	1994
72	Ben-Hur	1959
73	Wuthering Heights	1939
74	The Gold Rush	1925
75	Dances with Wolves	1990
76	City Lights	1931
77	American Graffiti	1973
78	Rocky	1976
79	The Deer Hunter	1978
80	The Wild Bunch	1969
81	Modern Times	1936
82	Giant	1956
83	Platoon	1986
84	Fargo	1996
85	Duck Soup	1933
86	Mutiny on the Bounty	1935
87	Frankenstein	1931
88	Easy Rider	1969
89	Patton	1970
90	The Jazz Singer	1927
91	My Fair Lady	1964
92	A Place in the Sun	1951
93	The Apartment	1960
94	Goodfellas	1990
95	Pulp Fiction	1994
96	The Searchers	1956
97	Bringing Up Baby	1938
98	Unforgiven	1992
99	Guess Who's Coming to Dinner	1967
100	Yankee Doodle Dandy	1942