Thursday, June 21, 2007

Let the Complaints Begin

"Fargo" was booted to make room for "Titanic" (which I didn't think anyone respected nowadays), but we can all breath a sigh of relief in knowing that Buster Keaton finally made it onto the American Film Institute's revamped top 100 American films of all time. I'll be filing a column on it this week, but let's go ahead and voice some complaints here. (I know Chris Bellamy already has some ready...)

As someone who prefers "Raging Bull," "The Searchers" and "Vertigo" to "The Graduate," I think overall this list is much better than AFI's 1998 effort, even if it still lacks "Sherlock Jr." (Keaton went from not being on the list to having the no. 18 spot with "The General.") Robert Altman's "Nashville" should be much higher, but I guess we should just be grateful it's there at all.

Note: I linked to Ebert's article on the list because it has all 100 films on a page. If you want to enjoy the AFI's "visual tour," feel free.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OK, here's what I'm gonna do. In honor of the absurd addition of "Titanic" to this list, I decided to rattle off a handful of films just from the '90s alone that were more deserving. (There are hundreds, but I'm just limiting it to the best.) This is just off the top of my head...no looking on IMDb or anything like that. Hey, after that, maybe we could even go backward decade-by-decade, all the way to the beginning of the century.

Even, dare I say, the '20s. (Yes that's right, American Film Institute: There WERE movies before the 1930s. No, seriously!)

Anyway, the '90s:

Magnolia, Fargo, JFK, Leaving Las Vegas, The Crying Game (if it's eligible), The Truman Show, Boogie Nights, Hoop Dreams (are docs not eligible?), The Insider, Bullets Over Broadway (only ONE Woody Allen movie?), Three Kings, Malcolm X, Fight Club (yeah, that's right Jer), Barton Fink, Short Cuts, The Player, Jackie Brown, The Age of Innocence, Sweet and Lowdown, Deconstructing Harry, Being John Malkovich...and hundreds of others.

On the bright side, at least Titanic made 900 trillion dollars.

1980s, anyone? I'll start with "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," "Brazil" and "The Right Stuff." Dammit.

But take heart, Jeremy - at least "Crash" didn't make it (it was on the list of finalists).