The List Is Life

Earlier in my life I used to love making lists of my favorite movies, records, books, and other art works—but especially movies. During college I’d sit in class and re-arrange the likes of Star Wars, Rear Window, or other titles occupying my top ten, top twenty, or even my top 100.

Of course these lists are all around us now, which takes away from their luster. Top ten lists are a ubiquitous part of so much media, from the Countdown nightly news show on MSNBC to David Letterman's Top Ten. But there is one list I started following many years ago that I still respect.

Every ten years Sight & Sound magazine polls top film critics from around the world on the ten greatest movies ever made. It started in the 1950s, and I believe the first time around The Bicycle Thief was ranked #1. For decades, though, Citizen Kane has of course enjoyed that distinction. Anyway, in college the Sight & Sound list got me watching films I’d never heard of, like L’Aventura, Persona or Ugetsu.

In 2000 The American Film Institute also came out with a list of the top 100 American movies, which Valarie and I had pinned to our bulletin board for awhile, checking off movies we’ve seen. But I disputed a lot of that list, and indeed: the further you get from the Sight & Sound list, the more questionable the selections become.

This morning I came across Time magazine's new list of the top 100 movies. Compiled by the magazine’s two longtime critics, Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel, the list had plenty of familiar masterworks like Citizen Kane, The Godfather and Singin’ In the Rain. But there were plenty of surprises.

Even at first glance I found a number of movies you’d expect to be on the list but weren’t: Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Vertigo. And their places were taken by some movies that are, while certainly very good, in my and most people's opinion not among the 100 best of all time: Amodovar’s Talk to Her, Finding Nemo, City of God, Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly.

But there were also some inspired choices on the Time list, like Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express and Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, as well as landmark martial arts films like Drunken Master II and A Touch of Zen.

But the subjectivity of such a list as Time's is typified by the fact that Purple Rose of Cairo is the only Woody Allen film to make the cut. To me Cairo isn’t even among the five or six best Allen films, let alone the very best. How can anybody possibly think it’s better than Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hanna And Her Sisters, or Annie Hall? Personally, I’d also put Broadway Danny Rose, Husbands and Wives, Deconstructing Harry, Zelig, Love and Death, and Sleeper ahead of Purple Rose of Cairo, if not more.

But I known dissention and debate are what these lists are all about. Is that why I like them, or why I hate myself for liking them? It's attractive to think of a canon of films we can all agree are great, but in reality there's a lot of deliberation that has to go on, a lot of campaigning for and against the merit of certain movies. Ultimately that's a good thing.

And just in case you're wondering, right off the presses is a new top twenty list of my own, subject to change perhaps as soon as an half-hour from now. But here goes:

(1) Star Wars; (2) Le Samurai; (3) 2001: A Space Odyssey; (4) Pulp Fiction; (5) Taxi Driver; (6) Manhattan; (7) Citizen Kane; (8) Apocalypse Now; (9) The Limey; (10) The Royal Tenenbaums; (11) 8½; (12) Koyaanisqatsi; (13) My Own Private Idaho; (14) Lost Highway; (15) The Empire Strikes Back; (16) Vertigo; (17) The Conversation; (18) Murder, My Sweet; (19) Beau Travail; (20) The Searchers.

Feel free to share a list of your own.

Comments

[justin]

We must be cut from similar cloth. I read that list yesterday, and also promptly sat down and compiled my Top 10.

1) It's a Wonderful Life
2) Dumb and Dumber
3) The Sixth Sense
4) City of God (I loved this movie)
5) Life is Beautiful
6) Sound of Music
7) Star Wars
8) Groundhog Day
9) My Best Friends Wedding
10) High Fidelity

-Here's the deal. I love comedies and musicals. And it is ridiculous that so few of them make Top 10 lists. Drama's are good. But they're really not that entertaining, at least to me... anyway, lists are just fun to make. I've got a whole batch of top 10 songs and albums, if you ever want to do a music post.

[Brian]

I definitely love The Sixth Sense, City of God, Star Wars, Groundhog Day, and High Fidelity. And the point is well taken about comedies. Not many of them made my top 10, but I very well could have included National Lampoon's Vacation (a guilty pleasure), various Monty Python films, Better Off Dead, etc.

[justin]

You know what comedy gets better and better, the more I watch it... Rushmore. I think Bill Murray is better in this film than he was in Lost in Translation.

And my problem with critics Top 10 lists is they're usually so pretentious. Maybe its just cause they watch so many films, they're inspired by anything different and unique.

anyway, Time listed "There's Something About Mary" as a guilty pleasure. GUILTY PLEASURE?!? That's a great movie. You shouldn't be ashamed to like it.

A guilty pleasure is PORN. Porn is a guilty pleasure.

[Brian]

I think the term "guilty pleasure" applies when the laughs have a sophomoric origin. And "Something About Mary" definitely qualifies. Catching your penis in a zipper or moussing your hair with semen is not highbrow comedy. But of course it is a very funny movie.

[Tim]

Appreciate the site, Brian. Sight and Sound is pretty much the gold standard, though Time Out magazine had a nice top 100, somewhat slanted to British films, but not egregiously so. There is an insane compendium of top film lists at www.filmsite.org, if you haven't seen it.

My personal top 10 would be:

1) Star Wars
2) Blue Velvet
3) The Big Lebowski
4) L'Avventura
5) 8 1/2
6) Lawrence of Arabia
7) Vertigo
8) La Dolce Vita
9) Taxi Driver
10) Sunset Boulevard

Honorable Mention to: Sweet Smell of Success, Roman Holiday, Seven Samurai, Wild Strawberries, The Iron Giant, My Neighbor Totoro, Three Colors: Blue, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Third Man, Night of the Hunter, The Lady Eve, Wings of Desire, Mirror, Children of Paradise, It's A Gift, Top Secret, and, yes, I'm going to say it: Napoleon Dynamite.

[Brian]

Awesome list! Blue Velvet, The Big Lebowski, La Dolce Vita all could have easily been on my list, as well as the Three Colors trilogy (especially Red), Third Man, Night of the Hunter, and Wings of Desire.

[allan]

I suppose one could argue that the "best" movies (or should I say "films" -- while wearing my tweed jacket with the elbow patches) have certain qualities of cinematography, plot, dialogue, acting, etc.. I don't know much about that but here are some of my favorites: The Bedsitting Room, Bedazzled (the original), Darkstar, A Clockwork Orange, The Killing, Two Lane Blacktop, Le Samourai, Evil Roy Slade (hilarious TV movie), Star Wars, and (my guilty pleasure) Masked And Anonymous.