AFI 100 Best…The Sequel
AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)
Pros:
1. Vertigo was moved waaaay up…into the top ten no less.
2. Nashville, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Sunrise, and yes, I’m saying it….Titanic are in.
3. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Jazz Singer, My Fair Lady, and An American in Paris are out.
4. The Godfather moved up one notch, poising it to take number 1 (which Citizen Kane definitely deserves, but still, Godfather is my favorite).
5. With The Sixth Sense and Do The Right Thing, we have the inclusion of two pretty great movies as well as the inclusion of two filmmakers of color.
Cons:
1. Amadeus, one of my top ten favorite films and certain the best one ever made about music, has dropped off the list.
2. Birth of a Nation, which is definitely a racist film but deserving because of its amazing impact on box office and film style, was knocked off. However, I guess it’s okay since they put Griffith’s Intolerance in both as a nod to the filmmaking genius but also to honor a film that Griffith himself was said to have made to atone for his earlier racist epic.
3. Raging Bull jumps up into the top ten right behind the “invincible 3″ (Casablanca, Godfather, Citizen Kane). Now, I like Raging Bull as much as the next man, but still…Scorsese made films I like much better (why is Goodfellas near the bottom of the list?).
4. Of the more recently made films to join the list we have Saving Private Ryan. Aside from that amazing opening sequence, it’s over-rated. But since it lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love, I guess this is the inevitable “corrective.”
5. What does David Lynch have to do to get on this list!
