September 23, 2013

• Top 100 Movies of the Last 100 Years

  Our local movie theater has recently been offering $4 showings of movies that are about to be released on DVD. My husband and I took advantage of the opportunity to see Star Trek: Into Darkness and Iron Man 3 on the big screen one more time. While we were buying our tickets for Iron Man 3 last night, I picked up a flyer for some classic movies that they are showing in the next few weeks, and on the back of the flyer is the American Film Institute list of the top 100 movies in the past 100 years. Here they are:

  

  1. Citizen Kane
  2. The Godfather
  3. Casablanca
  4. Raging Bull
  5. Singin’ In the Rain
  6. Gone With the Wind
  7. Lawrence of Arabia
  8. Schindler’s List
  9. Vertigo
  10. The Wizard of Oz
  11.  City Lights
  12.  The Searchers
  13.  Star Wars
  14.  Psycho
  15.  2001: A Space Odyssey
  16.  Sunset Blvd.
  17.  The Graduate
  18.  The General
  19.  On the Waterfront
  20.  It’s a Wonderful Life
  21.  Chinatown
  22.  Some Like It Hot
  23.  The Grapes of Wrath
  24.  E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
  25.  To Kill a Mockingbird
  26.  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
  27.  High Noon
  28.  All About Eve
  29.  Double Indemnity
  30.  Apocalypse Now
  31.  The Maltese Falcon
  32.  The Godfather Part II
  33.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  34.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
  35.  Annie Hall
  36.  The Bridge On the River Kwai
  37.  The Best Years of Our Lives
  38.  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
  39.  Dr. Strangelove
  40.  The Sound of Music
  41.  King Kong
  42.  Bonnie and Clyde
  43.  Midnight Cowboy
  44.  The Philadelphia Story
  45.  Shane
  46.  It Happened One Night
  47.  A Streetcar Named Desire
  48.  Rear Window
  49.  Intolerance
  50.  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
  51.  West Side Story
  52.  Taxi Driver
  53.  The Deer Hunter
  54.  M*A*S*H
  55.  North By Northwest
  56.  Jaws
  57.  Rocky
  58.  The Gold Rush
  59.  Nashville
  60.  Duck Soup
  61.  Sullivan’s Travels
  62.  American Graffiti
  63.  Cabaret
  64.  Network
  65.  The African Queen
  66.  Raiders of the Lost Ark
  67.  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
  68.  Unforgiven
  69.  Tootsie
  70.  A Clockwork Orange
  71.  Saving Private Ryan
  72.  The Shawshank Redemption
  73.  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
  74.  The Silence of the Lambs
  75.  In the Heat of the Night
  76.  Forrest Gump
  77.  All the President’s Men
  78.  Modern Times
  79.  The Wild Bunch
  80.  The Apartment
  81.  Spartacus
  82.  Sunrise
  83.  Titanic
  84.  Easy Rider
  85.  A Night At the Opera
  86.  Platoon
  87.  12 Angry Men
  88.  Bringing Up Baby
  89.  The Sixth Sense
  90.  Swing Time
  91.  Sophie’s Choice
  92.  Goodfellas
  93.  The French Connection
  94.  Pulp Fiction
  95.  The Last Picture Show
  96.  Do the Right Thing
  97.  Blade Runner
  98.  Yankee Doodle Dandy
  99.  Toy Story
  100. Ben-Hur

  Of course I take issue with the inclusion of some movies, the exclusion of others and the order of most of them Like all art, movies are subjective; people like what they like and dislike what they dislike. I dislike paying to cry or cringe my way through a movie, but don’t mind paying to spend a couple of hours laughing. I did find it interesting that only one of these movies is from the current century.

  I was somewhat surprised that I’ve seen less than half of these movies. I know I’ve seen 36 of them, and there are several that I think I saw long ago, but my memory of them is a bit fuzzy.

  How many of these movies have you seen?

  • 10:17 am
  • 4 Comments