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Author
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Topic: Movie Critic gives his top Hollywood movies of all time
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Paul Goulet
Master Film Handler
Posts: 347
From: Rhode Island
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 02-01-2008 12:14 PM
web page
Movies: Critic Michael Janusonis gives his choices for top Hollywood movies of all time, for the latest American Film Institute poll
01:00 AM EST on Friday, February 1, 2008
BEST ANIMATED FILM: The Lion King.
Walt Disney Pictures
For more than a decade the American Film Institute has been polling some 1,800 filmmakers, film historians, movie critics and opinion makers from across the country to name the best of American movies to be honored on their annual TV show.
Over the years we’ve been asked to name the greatest movies of the past 100 years, the best musicals, the best movie lines, the best movie stars, the best thrillers, the funniest movies, the most romantic movies, the most cheer-raising movies. Last year, on the 10th anniversary of their poll, the AFI seemed to have run out of ideas because they asked us once again to name the 100 greatest American movies of all time, which was the same subject as their first poll. They wondered whether, after 10 years, we would come up with different choices. After all, a decade’s worth of new movies had now become eligible, not to mention that opinions do change with the changing times. However, not so much in this case. Most of the same films that were named the greatest in 1997 were still the greatest in 2007!
This year’s poll sort of dips back into that well one more time, although instead of the usual 100 greatest-something-or-other films, we were asked to name the 10 best films of 10 different genres — animation, fantasy, romantic comedies, science-fiction, Western, gangster, sports, courtroom drama, mystery, epic.
We were prodded in our choices by AFI’s list of 50 films for each genre. We could use that list as a helpful guide or even put in as many as 10 of our own choices for each genre. We also were asked to rank our personal Number One movie from each genre for tie-breaking purposes.
Although there were a total of 500 films listed by AFI, some were listed twice in different genres. For instance, the baseball fantasy Field of Dreams was listed in both the fantasy and sports categories. Adam’s Rib, the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy romantic comedy in which they played married lawyers on opposite sides of a case, was in both the romantic comedy and courtroom drama categories. Jerry Maguire, starring Tom Cruise as an ultra-slick sports agent who finally discovers romance, was in both the sports and the romantic comedy categories. The musical Damn Yankees! was listed in the sports genre, although it could easily have been listed as fantasy . . . or as a musical had there been a musical category. Actually, sports seemed to have been the most playfully designed category, having room for everything from Damn Yankees! to The Bad News Bears to The Karate Kid to the football-prison-comedy-social drama The Longest Yard.
Some of their choices seemed even more of a stretch. One year voters named director Billy Wilder’s classic cross-dressing comedy Some Like It Hot the funniest American movie of all time. It stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as musicians hiding from murderous gangsters in an all-girl band where the lead singer is played by Marilyn Monroe. But there was no flat-out comedy genre in this year’s AFI list. So the rollicking Some Like It Hot was listed in the best gangster category.
There were other odd choices, too. Peter Bogdanovich’s bleak social drama The Last Picture Show found itself in the Western category, probably because it was set in a small town in Texas, alongside such traditional Westerns as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and How the West Was Won. But then Mel Brooks’ wacky Western spoof Blazing Saddles also was in the Western category.
The likable comedy-fantasy Back to the Future was not listed under fantasy, but science-fiction, which I suppose it technically is, although it seems much more than that.
Because there was no comedy category, the hilarious courtroom caper My Cousin Vinny was listed under courtroom drama. Yet I couldn’t resist voting for this nutty film, which stars Joe Pesci as a novice lawyer who barely passed the bar exam representing his young cousin who has been accused of murder in a small Southern town.
And how would you list Forrest Gump? Fantasy perhaps, or social comedy? No, it was listed as an epic.
Paring down 10 films from 50 choices proved not as easy as it might seem, especially in the animation, science-fiction and epic categories. Let’s see, should it be Bambi over Cinderella? Pinocchio over Peter Pan? Finding Nemo over Happy Feet?
In sci-fi, should it be The Day the Earth Stood Still over The Fly? Or Jurassic Park over Planet of the Apes?
In the end, I let my heart rule . . . films that I can watch again and again without getting tired of them won out. Thus, the 1953 version of The War of the Worlds trumped Steven Spielberg’s 2005 remake, which was a more elaborate but not-quite-as-thrilling copy, while Invasion of the Body Snatchers beat out The Matrix.
For epics, should it be Gandhi or Gladiator? The King of Kings or The Last Temptation of Christ? But Martin Scorsese’s Temptation seemed more of a social drama, and in the end I wound up voting for none of those four.
The only time I broke ranks with AFI’s list was in the romantic comedy category, where I added a personal favorite, It Should Happen to You, in which Judy Holliday plays an out-of-work actress who becomes famous for being famous by renting a series of billboards all over New York City and having them plastered with her name.
So here are my choices in each category. Add or subtract your own. It all boils down to a personal best.
ANIMATED
Bambi (1942)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Dumbo (1941)
Fantasia (1940)
Finding Nemo (2003)
The Lion King (1994)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Pinocchio (1940)
Shrek (2001)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Number One: The Lion King
FANTASY
Being John Malkovich (1999)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (2005)
Ghost (1990)
Groundhog Day (1993)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
King Kong (1933)
Mary Poppins (1964)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Number One: The Wizard of Oz
GANGSTER
The Departed (2006)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
GoodFellas (1990)
Little Caesar (1930)
On the Waterfront (1954)
The Public Enemy (1931)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932)
White Heat (1949)
Number One: Reservoir Dogs
SCIENCE-FICTION
Alien (1979)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
E.T. — The Extra-terrestrial (1982)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Them! (1954)
The War of the Worlds (1953)
Number One: E.T. — The Extra-terrestrial
WESTERN
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Destry Rides Again (1939)
High Noon (1952)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
Red River (1948)
Rio Bravo (1959)
The Searchers (1956)
Shane (1953)
Stagecoach (1939)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Number One: High Noon
SPORTS
The Bad News Bears (1976)
Champion (1949)
Damn Yankees! (1958)
Jerry Maguire (1996)
The Longest Yard (1974)
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Raging Bull (1980)
Rocky (1976)
Seabiscuit (2003)
Number One: Million Dollar Baby
MYSTERY
The Big Sleep (1946)
The Bourne Identity (2002)
Charade (1963)
Chinatown (1974)
Gaslight (1944)
Laura (1944)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
North by Northwest (1959)
Rear Window (1954)
Vertigo (1958)
Number One: Vertigo
ROMANTIC COMEDY
Adam’s Rib (1949)
Annie Hall (1977)
The Apartment (1960)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
His Girl Friday (1940)
It Happened One Night (1934)
It Should Happen to You (1954)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Roman Holiday (1953)
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Number One: It Happened One Night
COURTROOM DRAMA
The Caine Mutiny (1954)
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Fury (1936)
Inherit the Wind (1960)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
My Cousin Vinny (1992)
Paths of Glory (1957)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
12 Angry Men (1957)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Number One: To Kill a Mockingbird
EPIC
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Ben-Hur (1926)
Ben-Hur (1959)
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Patton (1970)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
Titanic (1997)
Number One: Gone With the Wind
mjanuson@projo.com
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Michael Coate
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1904
From: Los Angeles, California
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 02-01-2008 07:22 PM
Ditching that "Lion King" bit at the beginning (which was a photo caption and not article text) and adding some stylization/formatting might make this lengthy and possible headache-inducing article easier to read. The editor in me will take a stab at it.
quote:
Movies: Critic Michael Janusonis gives his choices for top Hollywood movies of all time, for the latest American Film Institute poll
01:00 AM EST on Friday, February 1, 2008
For more than a decade the American Film Institute has been polling some 1,800 filmmakers, film historians, movie critics and opinion makers from across the country to name the best of American movies to be honored on their annual TV show.
Over the years we’ve been asked to name the greatest movies of the past 100 years, the best musicals, the best movie lines, the best movie stars, the best thrillers, the funniest movies, the most romantic movies, the most cheer-raising movies. Last year, on the 10th anniversary of their poll, the AFI seemed to have run out of ideas because they asked us once again to name the 100 greatest American movies of all time, which was the same subject as their first poll. They wondered whether, after 10 years, we would come up with different choices. After all, a decade’s worth of new movies had now become eligible, not to mention that opinions do change with the changing times. However, not so much in this case. Most of the same films that were named the greatest in 1997 were still the greatest in 2007!
This year’s poll sort of dips back into that well one more time, although instead of the usual 100 greatest-something-or-other films, we were asked to name the 10 best films of 10 different genres — animation, fantasy, romantic comedies, science-fiction, Western, gangster, sports, courtroom drama, mystery, epic.
We were prodded in our choices by AFI’s list of 50 films for each genre. We could use that list as a helpful guide or even put in as many as 10 of our own choices for each genre. We also were asked to rank our personal Number One movie from each genre for tie-breaking purposes.
Although there were a total of 500 films listed by AFI, some were listed twice in different genres. For instance, the baseball fantasy "Field of Dreams" was listed in both the fantasy and sports categories. "Adam’s Rib," the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy romantic comedy in which they played married lawyers on opposite sides of a case, was in both the romantic comedy and courtroom drama categories. "Jerry Maguire," starring Tom Cruise as an ultra-slick sports agent who finally discovers romance, was in both the sports and the romantic comedy categories. The musical "Damn Yankees!" was listed in the sports genre, although it could easily have been listed as fantasy . . . or as a musical had there been a musical category. Actually, sports seemed to have been the most playfully designed category, having room for everything from "Damn Yankees!" to "The Bad News Bears" to "The Karate Kid" to the football-prison-comedy-social drama "The Longest Yard."
Some of their choices seemed even more of a stretch. One year voters named director Billy Wilder’s classic cross-dressing comedy "Some Like It Hot" the funniest American movie of all time. It stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as musicians hiding from murderous gangsters in an all-girl band where the lead singer is played by Marilyn Monroe. But there was no flat-out comedy genre in this year’s AFI list. So the rollicking "Some Like It Hot" was listed in the best gangster category.
There were other odd choices, too. Peter Bogdanovich’s bleak social drama "The Last Picture Show" found itself in the Western category, probably because it was set in a small town in Texas, alongside such traditional Westerns as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "How the West Was Won." But then Mel Brooks’ wacky Western spoof "Blazing Saddles" also was in the Western category.
The likable comedy-fantasy "Back to the Future" was not listed under fantasy, but science-fiction, which I suppose it technically is, although it seems much more than that.
Because there was no comedy category, the hilarious courtroom caper "My Cousin Vinny" was listed under courtroom drama. Yet I couldn’t resist voting for this nutty film, which stars Joe Pesci as a novice lawyer who barely passed the bar exam representing his young cousin who has been accused of murder in a small Southern town.
And how would you list "Forrest Gump"? Fantasy perhaps, or social comedy? No, it was listed as an epic.
Paring down 10 films from 50 choices proved not as easy as it might seem, especially in the animation, science-fiction and epic categories. Let’s see, should it be "Bambi" over "Cinderella"? "Pinocchio" over "Peter Pan"? "Finding Nemo" over "Happy Feet"?
In sci-fi, should it be "The Day the Earth Stood Still" over "The Fly"? Or "Jurassic Park" over "Planet of the Apes"?
In the end, I let my heart rule . . . films that I can watch again and again without getting tired of them won out. Thus, the 1953 version of "The War of the Worlds" trumped Steven Spielberg’s 2005 remake, which was a more elaborate but not-quite-as-thrilling copy, while "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" beat out "The Matrix."
For epics, should it be "Gandhi" or "Gladiator"? "The King of Kings" or "The Last Temptation of Christ"? But Martin Scorsese’s "Temptation" seemed more of a social drama, and in the end I wound up voting for none of those four.
The only time I broke ranks with AFI’s list was in the romantic comedy category, where I added a personal favorite, "It Should Happen to You," in which Judy Holliday plays an out-of-work actress who becomes famous for being famous by renting a series of billboards all over New York City and having them plastered with her name.
So here are my choices in each category. Add or subtract your own. It all boils down to a personal best.
ANIMATED
Bambi (1942)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Dumbo (1941)
Fantasia (1940)
Finding Nemo (2003)
The Lion King (1994)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Pinocchio (1940)
Shrek (2001)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Number One: The Lion King
FANTASY
Being John Malkovich (1999)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (2005)
Ghost (1990)
Groundhog Day (1993)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
King Kong (1933)
Mary Poppins (1964)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Number One: The Wizard of Oz
GANGSTER
The Departed (2006)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
GoodFellas (1990)
Little Caesar (1930)
On the Waterfront (1954)
The Public Enemy (1931)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932)
White Heat (1949)
Number One: Reservoir Dogs
SCIENCE-FICTION
Alien (1979)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
E.T. — The Extra-terrestrial (1982)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Them! (1954)
The War of the Worlds (1953)
Number One: E.T. — The Extra-terrestrial
WESTERN
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Destry Rides Again (1939)
High Noon (1952)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
Red River (1948)
Rio Bravo (1959)
The Searchers (1956)
Shane (1953)
Stagecoach (1939)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Number One: High Noon
SPORTS
The Bad News Bears (1976)
Champion (1949)
Damn Yankees! (1958)
Jerry Maguire (1996)
The Longest Yard (1974)
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Raging Bull (1980)
Rocky (1976)
Seabiscuit (2003)
Number One: Million Dollar Baby
MYSTERY
The Big Sleep (1946)
The Bourne Identity (2002)
Charade (1963)
Chinatown (1974)
Gaslight (1944)
Laura (1944)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
North by Northwest (1959)
Rear Window (1954)
Vertigo (1958)
Number One: Vertigo
ROMANTIC COMEDY
Adam’s Rib (1949)
Annie Hall (1977)
The Apartment (1960)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
His Girl Friday (1940)
It Happened One Night (1934)
It Should Happen to You (1954)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Roman Holiday (1953)
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Number One: It Happened One Night
COURTROOM DRAMA
The Caine Mutiny (1954)
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Fury (1936)
Inherit the Wind (1960)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
My Cousin Vinny (1992)
Paths of Glory (1957)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
12 Angry Men (1957)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Number One: To Kill a Mockingbird
EPIC
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Ben-Hur (1926)
Ben-Hur (1959)
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Patton (1970)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
Titanic (1997)
Number One: Gone With the Wind
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