<p>Mudder --I’m with you all the way!</p>
<p>Interesteddad, if the next generation can forgive our “Easy Rider,” maybe we can give them a pass on “American Pie”–? ;)</p>
<p>Goodness, Lake. I’d forgotten “The Great McGinty” though I don’t know how. I had to go back and check the list. It wasn’t there. Naturally.</p>
<p>Snoopy, I hope you’re planning on continuing your interest in great cinema in college. Such sophisticated taste shouldn’t be allowed to go to waste. (BTW, I love everyone who loves “Chinatown.” It doesn’t mean we’re engaged or anything. [“Aliens”])</p>
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<p>I weep for your friends. You should meet TallSon, my 15-year-old film maker. His latest project was for his Spanish class – the script was about a skinny Anglo kid who wanted to become a champion in Mexican wrestling. </p>
<p>He thought “The Core” was stupid.</p>
<p>I refused to go anywhere near The Core. With any luck I’ll have to shoot my friends with a cannoli if they dis The Godfather again. Cause he left the gun and took the cannoli.</p>
<p>Mudder, thanks. But I have a long ways to go. My parents are very… indifferent to my tastes. I’m just waiting to get a job to pay for the hundreds of DVDs I’m going to have to buy. Funny you should mention college; UChicago has Doc Films, so :D</p>
<p>Perhaps, snoopy, you are a long-lost child of mine. TallSon says I don’t actually have a personality, just a collection of movie quotes. Ever since I was bit by a dead bee I haven’t been myself.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Snoopy, my kids like Chinatown a lot, too. </p></li>
<li><p>Ummmm . . . I sorta liked American Pie. Not as much as The Conformist or Cries and Whispers – not top-100 films liked – but it was a pretty enjoyable, well-made teen sex farce, way above average for a crowded genre.</p></li>
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<p>Yes, but it pretended like it was original, therefore forfeiting any potential it had in my mind. Porky’s? Fast Times? I’ll even give you Porky’s II.</p>
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<p>Fortunately, the top films aren’t evaluated only on superficial visceral impact, which vary from person to person.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>American Pie is infinitely better than any iteration of Porky’s (the original of which did, kind of, establish a genre, insofar as being grosser than Beach Blanket Bingo made it a new genre). It’s not infinitely better than Fast Times At Ridgemont High, but that’s because Fast Times is a really good movie. I don’t know that American Pie pretended it was original – I get the sense that the directors had watched a “classic” teen sex farce or two in their lives. It’s just in the nature of teen sex farces that you can’t assume your audience will be familiar with an non-Disney film released more than two years ago.</p></li>
<li><p>When I say I wasn’t impressed with Citizen Kane on a “visceral” level, I mean that I didn’t care about the narrative much, I found a lot of the script heavy-handed and uninteresting, and it’s not beautiful enough to overcome that for me. I can understand intellectually some of what people appreciate about the film, especially its technical aspects, but I don’t get why it inspires so much devotion. That’s not a problem I have with most of the other top-rated films. It has immense historical importance for taking itself seriously as high art at a time when few films did, and inspiring the whole auteur movement, but it’s not satisfying to me out of that context.</p></li>
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<p>I don’t love “Citizen Kane,” but I do admire it - a lot - and I think it’s a fair, certainly defensible choice for the top film. I do love “Nashville,” and I’m glad to see more than one Altman film on the list (MASH is #54). I’m also in full agreement with including “The Last Picture Show” and “Sullivan’s Travels.”</p>
<p>Some of the films that made the list this time are, for me, excellent movies that still don’t quite deserve top 100 status: All the President’s Men, In the Heat of the Night, Cabaret. I would categorize Sixth Sense and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf as very good films, but better than Manchurian Candidate or American in Paris? Not on this girl’s scorecard. </p>
<p>And Sound of Music moved up this time around, from 55 to 40. That’s … just … wrong.</p>
<p>I think Easy Rider reflected the times- some things in society WERE vapid, and the differences in American Society by location is shown in a stark , sad way</p>
<p>Sometimes, the importance of a movie is not “just” the movie itself, but the ground it broke, the effect on society, the way it portrayed the world</p>
<p>A movie like Citizen Kane, wasn’t just a movie, it was about a lifestyle, a way of life, a strata of society</p>
<p>There are probably many movies that were missed, some small gems, but influence in a grand scale was not acheived</p>
<p>I think a movie like The Crying Game was amazing…for its impact, its story telling, its depth, and the conspiracy of its viewers</p>
<p>What! they knocked off “My Fair Lady” ? Even as a kid when I watched that I knew it was something special. </p>
<p>Dont know much about “Citizen Kane” and dont care either.</p>
<p>“Nashville” is absolutely a gem. Its a panoly of Americana. When you are in the right mood for it, you will be amazed.</p>
<p>A great Hitchcok film was overlooked: “Marnie”.</p>
<p>Far as I am concerned they can take out the “Rings”. Peter Jackson is obsessed with graphics and not much else. Replace it with any or all Clint Eastwood films, how about “Mystic River” ? By the way, the first film Clint directed “Play Misty For Me” was as good and atmospheric as the last film he directed. Some people are good the first time out.</p>
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<p>I know. But, watch it again sometime. It is just a dreadful, dreadful piece of filmmaking…topped off by the cheapest, most manipulative ending in the history of film</p>
<p>Compare it to, for example, “Bonnie and Clyde”. A similar film in terms of its revolutionay impact on the film industry. Watch it again. It left both me and then teenage daughter gasping for air. Just an unbelievably well-made, powerful movie with superb acting…every bit as good today as the day it was released. In a way, the ending is the same as Easy Riders, except that the entire film (and the characters themselves) move inexorcably to the inevitable ending and the ending is one of the most breathtaking scenes ever filmed – even today where shoot 'em ups fill prime time TV, which was not the case when the movie was released. Could you have Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill without the ballet like carnage of Bonnie and Clyde? I don’t know.</p>
<p>I am in no way well informed in movie lore, but then I am not completely without some informed opinion. I was shocked when I read frazzled1’s list of what had been dropped and what added to the FFI list of 100 Greatest Films. The fact that someone as uninformed as myself knows that dropping “Birth of a Nation,” “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Stagecoach,” and “Rebel Without a Cause," to make room for movies like “Titanic,” and “Easy Rider” is wrong tells you something is off. </p>
<p>Is this another case of dumbing down culture to enrich commerce? I am not a conspiracy kind of guy but is someone trying to sell DVDs?</p>
<p>My view may be equally cynical, but less sinister.</p>
<p>I think there needs to be some “play” and movement in the rankings to keep them at the fore. If the list was identical, we wouldn’t know about it.</p>
<p>Additionally, controversy is good. It shows that people care about filmmaking and it gets them to focus on quality and criticism. And for those who are not film buffs, like tommybill, it lures them into the discussion.</p>
<p>And some of the added items are intended to please the masses, to engage them. Others are intended to make you consider items on the fringe that AMC and FMC and TCM might not have in their repertoires but deserve a dusting off – not so much to boost sales, but to recognize achievement within the industry. </p>
<p>I think Robert Altman’s death, for instance, is connected to Nashville cracking the list. Whether it’s his death that made people realize that there was a gross oversight; or because his death elevated the film beyond a rightful place that’s lower on the list…I don’t know. But I’m sure that there’s a connection and why not? These things make the list more timely and less like a reliquary.</p>
<p>There’s another film from the 1940s that made the list. I’m not familiar with it. I might add it to my Netflix queue…if only to see if I can guess why the AFI is calling it to our attention.</p>
<p>The idea is to promote an industry and an art form, to elevate it – among its practitioners as well as the consumers/observers who feed its future. Controversy is a good thing to build into a list if that’s the goal. I’m less outraged than I am intrigued. I think it’s great sport to decide which items were intended to provoke debate and which ones were just misguided and ill-advised blunders.</p>