srah blah blah

You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me about my little girl hands?

In talking to a friend about my AFI project, I discovered that not only had I had not done an AFI progress update since 2009, but in the last three years I hadn't even seen all seven of the movies I had left to see. So I decided it was time to do another post AND finally finish the list.

• Raging Bull (#24)
  Yet another AFI Top 100 movie that I can acknowledge is very WELL-MADE, with lots of symbolism and well-crafted shots, but one I can't really get into myself. I like to have a character who I can identify with, or who I can admire, or who I at least find interesting. I can watch a boxing movie (or pretty much any sports movie for that matter) if there's an interesting story going on outside of the sports clips, but basically, when this guy wasn't beating people up inside the ring, he was beating people up outside the ring. He's pretty pathetic and it made me sad, rather than pulling me into his story.
• Unforgiven (#98)
  "Cocoon in the Wild West"
  
  An enjoyable story, and Clint Eastwood was enjoyably bad-ass.
• Easy Rider (#88)
  I felt like there was a central message that this movie wanted to convey, but it got lost in the distracting editing or somewhere. I got the general counterculture vs mainstream culture theme, but it felt like it just sort of fell off and ended without completing the message. So you're "free", but what do you actually DO? Is the freedom you're searching for the freedom to do nothing?
  
  I liked Jack Nicholson. I wish the movie had been about him.
• Taxi Driver (#47)
  I can see why a crazy person would identify with this film. It worries me to think how many Bickles might be out there.
  
  The shootout was particularly horrifying and graphic.
  
  All in all, it was really well-made, I'm glad to have watched it, I'm glad to check it off my AFI Top 100 list, but I don't need to see it ever again.
• The Wild Bunch (#80)
  After holding on to this Netflix disc for over a month, I finally bit the bullet and watched this. As best as I can tell, this is on the AFI Top 100 list mostly because of cinematographic techniques that were groundbreaking at the time. It is pretty interesting, visually, but I had trouble getting invested in the characters or the plot, so it just seemed like an endless series of similar gun battles and didn't do much for me. If I want to watch a movie about old dudes in the Wild West, I'd prefer Unforgiven.
• M*A*S*H (#56)
  I have had "Suicide is Painless" in my head for three days now.
  
  This is one of those movies that's more a series of vignettes than an actual story. We get to know the characters a little as the movie goes on, but they don't really go on a journey or learn anything. They have a few laughs, sew some people up, punch people in the face, then they get back in the same jeep they arrived in.
  
  Since M*A*S*H is pretty much my only exposure to the Korean War, I have no idea whether it was represented accurately, but the Swampmen seemed like they'd been influenced by 1960s counterculture a decade early. It's confusing making a movie about a 1950s war when you're in a 1970s war.
  
  It also bothered me that all of the Swampmen's attacks on Hot Lips were sexual. Couldn't they find a more creative way to get their revenge, instead of exposing her to the camp? I feel like I'm supposed to be on their side, but I didn't want to be.
• Bonnie and Clyde (#27)
  Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are extremely good-looking people and this movie was entertaining and well-paced and artsy enough to be interesting but not so artsy it sacrificed plot. My AFI Top 100 watching project is over, in a hail of gunfire!

The Final List of AFI Top 100 (1998 version) Movies I Have Seen:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Casablanca
3. The Godfather
4. Gone with the Wind
5. Lawrence of Arabia
6. The Wizard of Oz
7. The Graduate
8. On the Waterfront
9. Schindler's List
10. Singin' in the Rain
11. It's a Wonderful Life
12. Sunset Boulevard
13. The Bridge on the River Kwai
14. Some Like It Hot
15. Star Wars
16. All About Eve
17. The African Queen
18. Psycho
19. Chinatown
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
21. The Grapes of Wrath
22. 2001: A Space Odyssey
23. The Maltese Falcon
24. Raging Bull
25. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
26. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
27. Bonnie and Clyde
28. Apocalypse Now
29. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
31. Annie Hall
32. The Godfather Part II
33. High Noon
34. To Kill a Mockingbird
35. It Happened One Night
36. Midnight Cowboy
37. The Best Years of Our Lives
38. Double Indemnity
39. Doctor Zhivago
40. North by Northwest
41. West Side Story
42. Rear Window
43. King Kong
44. The Birth of a Nation
45. A Streetcar Named Desire
46. A Clockwork Orange
47. Taxi Driver
48. Jaws
49. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
51. The Philadelphia Story
52. From Here to Eternity
53. Amadeus
54. All Quiet on the Western Front
55. The Sound of Music
56. M*A*S*H
57. The Third Man
58. Fantasia
59. Rebel Without a Cause
60. Raiders of the Lost Ark
61. Vertigo
62. Tootsie
63. Stagecoach
64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
65. The Silence of the Lambs
66. Network
67. The Manchurian Candidate
68. An American in Paris
69. Shane
70. The French Connection
71. Forrest Gump
72. Ben-Hur
73. Wuthering Heights
74. The Gold Rush
75. Dances with Wolves
76. City Lights
77. American Graffiti
78. Rocky
79. The Deer Hunter
80. The Wild Bunch
81. Modern Times
82. Giant
83. Platoon
84. Fargo
85. Duck Soup
86. Mutiny on the Bounty
87. Frankenstein
88. Easy Rider
89. Patton
90. The Jazz Singer
91. My Fair Lady
92. A Place in the Sun
93. The Apartment
94. Goodfellas
95. Pulp Fiction
96. The Searchers
97. Bringing Up Baby
98. Unforgiven
99. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
100. Yankee Doodle Dandy

srah - Wednesday, 23 May 2012 - 11:24 AM
Tags: afi, movies