The first movie rental store I remember was called Crazy
Mikes. It died before the rest of the movie rental places and its insides were
converted into a Chinese buffet. In its lifetime it thrived as a different kind
of buffet, where guests satisfied their appetites with translucent plastic
containers they found behind the empty cardboard cases of movies they wanted to
see. The containers were then exchanged on the way out for actual copies of the
movies. And if there was no plastic container, there was no movie and you moved
along. Luck and timing were part of it and it was all an experience.
There were many different movie rental places in town. There
was Video View that turned into a lingerie bar, Monarch Video that also turned
into a Chinese food place, Blockbuster that turned into a mattress store, the
ill-fated Just DVD that attempted to capitalize on the emergence of the new
format and whose building was torn down after the business’s quick death, and
Video Update that turned into Movie Gallery, which turned into a children’s
store. That children’s store is a block from my parent’s house, and the
building’s previous life was a big part of mine.
The death of the movie rental store was another blow toward
the demise of entertainment on physical objects, of the sharing of objects
among strangers, where something in your house now could have been in someone
else’s a few days ago and in someone else’s a few days before that (though
libraries are still hanging on). But to me the death of the movie store was also
the death of a major social aspect of my youth. A walk to the movie store was
an event, a pastime for my group of friends and an initiation into it, complete
with rituals, traditions, and inside jokes (one involved one of us finding a
copy of The Missing, a movie we all hated, and stone-facedly suggesting we rent
it, every time we went there). It was an event that happened without planning.
The walk over carried with it magic powers, as the ritual was a sort of silent
trumpet call to assemble in an age before cell phones, somehow summoning all
the friends and friends of friends to my parents’ basement.
My youth passed in that basement and I turn to it in moments
of self-reflection. At some point in most people’s lives they cast their eyes
to the past in order to understand themselves in the present. It’s the most
obvious way to understand why we are the way we are. And in many ways I am who
I am because of movies. I had the friends I had, we told the jokes we told, we
spent the time we spent, and made the memories we made, often because of movie
nights in my parents’ basement. There were other things, of course, but movies
were a major catalyst for some of the best experiences of my life.
The basement gradually vacated, as most parents’ basements
do at some point, and other life events and milestones came and went. But a
love of movies has been a constant during life’s changing seasons. And movies
gradually began to do more for me than provide for an escape or entertainment,
though those remain important aspects. At some point I began to take movies
more seriously. This process probably began in the basement but continued over
time. I began to appreciate movies as an art form, and like any movie lover, my
tastes and discernment developed.
Like the ritual movie nights in the basement, movies
themselves went without saying, an unspoken presence and a default way to spend
time. And it took looking to the past to even realize how much I love them. Most
people love movies, and I’m not claiming to love them more than anyone else,
but realizing the central role they played in my development provided the urge
to look at them more closely, to take them more seriously, and to appreciate
them more fully.
A love of movies has united a new group of friends in this
stage of my life. We jokingly refer to ourselves as the Talking About Movies
Club, and when we talk about movies, arguments arise. Incredulous shouts of,
“You haven’t seen that?!” are frequent. There are movies – great movies,
notable movies, movies everyone has seen – that, for whatever reason, pass some
of us by. Everyone has a list of movies they should have seen but haven’t. And
there are certain movies that serious lovers of movies need to see. This
project is my attempt at filling in my “You haven’t seen that?!” gaps.
I have seen a lot of good movies, a lot of bad ones, and a
few great ones. There is something to be said for each category – even the bad
ones. But it is the great ones that inspire, challenge, test, provoke, disturb,
move, and uplift in the most significant ways. These are the foundations of
movie appreciation, and it is my goal to build my foundation more securely. And
so I started this quest.
In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) published the
first edition of AFI’s 100 Years … 100 Movies
list of the greatest American films of all time. And in 2007 they released
a 10-year anniversary updated list. My goal is to watch all of them and write
something about each.
Why the AFI list, as opposed to other top 100 lists? Mostly
because it contains titles I’m familiar with but haven’t seen – movies that
play an important role in the entertainment culture that surrounds me. Other
lists may be more authoritative (Roger Ebert called the Sight & Sound list “by far the most respected of the countless
polls of great movies—the only one most serious movie people take seriously"),
but contain many foreign films I have never heard of. I’m sure they are
wonderful, but my purpose in this project is to fill in gaps – the movies I
should have seen by now but haven’t. There will be time for foreign films later
(or maybe during). Other lists, like on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes, may be good,
but either reflect what is popular (as opposed to what is great, as on IMDB’s
list) or have ratings issues (on RT, if 50/50 critics think a movie is ok, it
will get a 100% rating – not a strong indicator of greatness).
Here is the list:
1. "Citizen Kane," 1941.
2. "The Godfather," 1972.
3. "Casablanca," 1942.
4. "Raging Bull," 1980.
5. "Singin’ in the Rain," 1952.
6. "Gone With the Wind," 1939.
7. "Lawrence of Arabia," 1962.
8. "Schindler’s List," 1993.
9. "Vertigo," 1958.
10. "The Wizard of Oz," 1939.
11. "City Lights," 1931.
12. "The Searchers," 1956.
13. "Star Wars," 1977.
14. "Psycho," 1960.
15. "2001: A Space Odyssey," 1968.
16. "Sunset Blvd.", 1950.
17. "The Graduate," 1967.
18. "The General," 1927.
19. "On the Waterfront," 1954.
20. "It’s a Wonderful Life," 1946.
21. "Chinatown," 1974.
22. "Some Like It Hot," 1959.
23. "The Grapes of Wrath," 1940.
24. "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," 1982.
25. "To Kill a Mockingbird," 1962.
26. "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," 1939.
27. "High Noon," 1952.
28. "All About Eve," 1950.
29. "Double Indemnity," 1944.
30. "Apocalypse Now," 1979.
31. "The Maltese Falcon," 1941.
32. "The Godfather Part II," 1974.
33. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest," 1975.
34. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," 1937.
35. "Annie Hall," 1977.
36. "The Bridge on the River Kwai," 1957.
37. "The Best Years of Our Lives," 1946.
38. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," 1948.
39. "Dr. Strangelove," 1964.
40. "The Sound of Music," 1965.
41. "King Kong," 1933.
42. "Bonnie and Clyde," 1967.
43. "Midnight Cowboy," 1969.
44. "The Philadelphia Story," 1940.
45. "Shane," 1953.
46. "It Happened One Night," 1934.
47. "A Streetcar Named Desire," 1951.
48. "Rear Window," 1954.
49. "Intolerance," 1916.
50. "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring," 2001.
51. "West Side Story," 1961.
52. "Taxi Driver," 1976.
53. "The Deer Hunter," 1978.
54. "M*A*S*H," 1970.
55. "North by Northwest," 1959.
56. "Jaws," 1975.
57. "Rocky," 1976.
58. "The Gold Rush," 1925.
59. "Nashville," 1975.
60. "Duck Soup," 1933.
61. "Sullivan’s Travels," 1941.
62. "American Graffiti," 1973.
63. "Cabaret," 1972.
64. "Network," 1976.
65. "The African Queen," 1951.
66. "Raiders of the Lost Ark," 1981.
67. "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", 1966.
68. "Unforgiven," 1992.
69. "Tootsie," 1982.
70. "A Clockwork Orange," 1971.
71. "Saving Private Ryan," 1998.
72. "The Shawshank Redemption," 1994.
73. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," 1969.
74. "The Silence of the Lambs," 1991.
75. "In the Heat of the Night," 1967.
76. "Forrest Gump," 1994.
77. "All the President’s Men," 1976.
78. "Modern Times," 1936.
79. "The Wild Bunch," 1969.
80. "The Apartment, 1960.
81. "Spartacus," 1960.
82. "Sunrise," 1927.
83. "Titanic," 1997.
84. "Easy Rider," 1969.
85. "A Night at the Opera," 1935.
86. "Platoon," 1986.
87. "12 Angry Men," 1957.
88. "Bringing Up Baby," 1938.
89. "The Sixth Sense," 1999.
90. "Swing Time," 1936.
91. "Sophie’s Choice," 1982.
92. "Goodfellas," 1990.
93. "The French Connection," 1971.
94. "Pulp Fiction," 1994.
95. "The Last Picture Show," 1971.
96. "Do the Right Thing," 1989.
97. "Blade Runner," 1982.
98. "Yankee Doodle Dandy," 1942.
99. "Toy Story," 1995.
100. "Ben-Hur," 1959.
I have seen some, but not nearly as many I feel I should
have by now.
In the early days of our relationship Ashley used to
criticize me for being too critical. We bonded over a love of good movies, and
either I’ve rubbed off on her or we’ve seen enough good movies together, but
I’ve noticed a critical eye develop in her to rival my own. And so I’ve been
able to rope her into this quest.
We’re going in reverse order, and so first up is the 3 hour
and 42 minute behemoth Ben-Hur.
