The AFI once again handed out their list of 100 Best American Movies, and once again the number one spot went to “Citizen Kane.” Don’t get me wrong, “Citizen Kane” is a great movie, but it has hogged up the number one spot on every list of best movies ever made for so long that it needs to be put aside to make room for, oh I don’t know, Billy Wilder’s “Ace In The Hole.”
Glenn Kenny over at Premiere.com did the heavy lifting of putting together a list of alternate choices for the best 100 American Movies and, although I agreed with many of his picks, I felt there were still a lot of films that should have been on his list that weren’t. No “Faster Pussycat, Kill!…Kill!”? The title alone does more to make you want to see the movie than most titles. And, no “He Ran All the Way”? The late great John Garfield’s last movie (directed by the late great John Berry) will stop you in your tracks.
Anyway, putting this list together was a lot of fun, so enjoy.
1. “Ace In The Hole” (1951, Wilder)
2. “Greed” (1924, von Stroheim)
3. “Matewan” (1987, Sayles)
4. “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955, Ray)
5. “Mean Streets” (1973, Scorsese)
6. “Blue Velvet” (1986, Lynch)
7. “Dog Day Afternoon” (1975, Lumet)
8. “He Who Gets Slapped” (1924, Sjostrom)
9. “Frankenstein” (1931, Whale)
10. “Dracula” (1931, Browning)
11. “Young Frankenstein” (1974, Brooks)
12. “The Killing” (1956, Kubrick)
13. “The Big Heat” (1953, Lang)
14. “He Ran All The Way” (1951, Berry)
15. “Rebecca” (1940, Hitchcock)
16. “Monsieur Verdoux” (1947, Chaplin)
17. “D.O.A.” (1950, Mate)
18. “The Exorcist” (1973, Friedkin)
19. “Imitation of Life” (1959, Sirk)
20. “Night of the Living Dead” (1968, Romero)
21. “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” (1974, Peckinpah)
22. “The Sweet Smell of Success” (1957, Mackendrick)
23. “Touch of Evil” (1958, Welles)
24. “Cape Fear” (Thompson, 1962)
25. “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963, Kramer)
26. “The Great Escape” (1963, Sturges)
27. “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968, Polanski)
28. “Five Easy Pieces” (1970, Rafelson)
29. “The Big Sleep” (1946, Hawks)
30. “Serpico” (1973, Lumet)
31. “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three” (1974, Sargent)
32. “The Honeymoon Killers” (1970, Kastle)
33. “Moonstruck” (1987, Jewison)
34. “Full Metal Jacket” (1987, Kubrick)
35. “Footlight Parade” (1933, Berkeley)
36. “Hair” (1979, Forman)
37. “Little Big Man” (1970, Penn)
38. “Stagecoach” (1939, Ford)
39. “Atlantic City” (1980, Malle)
40. “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (Rafelson)
41. “Hangmen Also Die” (1943, Lang)
42. “Silkwood” (1983, Nichols)
43. “The Right Stuff” (1983, Kaufman)
44. “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” (1968, Miller)
45. “Amadeus” (1984, Forman)
46. “Once Upon a Time In America” (1984, Leone)
47. “Sorcerer” (1977, Friedkin)
48. “Harold and Maude” (1971, Ashby)
49. “Alien” (1979, Scott)
50. “Harlan County USA” (Kopple)
51. “Halloween” (1978, Carpenter)
52. “This Is Spinal Tap” (1984, Reiner)
53. “Badlands” (1973, Malick)
54. “Supervixins” (1975, Meyer)
55. “Fargo” (1996, The Cohen Brothers)
56. “Eraserhead” (1977, Lynch)
57. “Starship Troopers” (Verhoeven)
58. “Robocop” (1987, Verhoeven)
59. “Crybaby” (Waters)
60. “Team America” (Parker)
61. “Goodfellas” (1990, Scorsese)
62. “Empire of the Sun” (1987, Spielberg)
63. “Boyz N the Hood” (1991, Singleton)
64. “Naked Lunch” (Cronenberg)
65. “King of New York” (1991, Ferrara)
66. “Reservoir Dogs” (1992, Tarantino)
67. “The Ice Storm” (Lee, 1997)
68. “Magnolia” (Anderson, 2000)
69. “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1980, Apted)
70. “A Place In the Sun” (1951, Stevens)
71. “Safe” (1993, Haynes)
72. “Traffic” (2001, Soderbergh)
73. “Pollock” (2000, Harris)
74. “Lolita” (1998, Lyne)
75. “Ms. 45” (1981, Ferrara)
76. “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962, Axelrod and Frankenheimer)
77. “Borat” (2006, Charles)
78. “Mysterious Skin” (2004, Araki)
79. “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974, Cassavetes)
80. “To Live and Die in LA” (1985, Friedkin)
81. “The Big Red One” (1980, Fuller)
82. “Summer of ’42” (1971, Mulligan)
83. “Freaks” (1932, Browning)
84. “Opening Night” (1977, Cassavetes)
85. “The Night of the Hunter” (1955, Laughton)
86. “Flags of Our Fathers” & “Letters From Iwo Jima” (2006, Eastwood)
87. “Safety Last” (1923, Lloyd)
88. “A Place In the Sun” (1951, Stevens)
89. “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975, Foreman)
90. “Leaving Las Vegas” (1995, Figgis)
91. “Angel Heart” (1987, Parker)
92. “Diner” (1982, Levinson)
93. “Mulholland Drive” (2001, Lynch)
94. “My Darling Clementine” (1946, Ford)
95. “Short Cuts” (1993, Altman)
96. “Tension” (1951, Berry)
97. “Anatomy of a Murder” (1959, Preminger)
98. “The Lady From Shanghai” (1948, Welles)
99. “A King In New York” (1957, Chaplin)
100. “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990, Lyne)
THE AFI TOP 100 U.S. FILMS
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.
