Early on in our self-isolation, Dan and I decided to work through the American Film Institute’s Top 100. We figured this little project would help make sure that we didn’t emerge from our quarantine cocoon having only rewatched The Office a dozen times. (So far, we’ve only watched The Office one time through.)
…And just like that, we have watched a quarter of the list! Below are the 25 films we’ve seen so far, roughly in order of how I felt about them.
- Rear Window (I was long overdue to watch this one, and it became an immediate favorite)
- Vertigo (One complaint I have with the AFI list is that it feels dominated by just a few directors… that said, I am so glad we caught up on so many of Hitchcock’s films)
- High Noon (I still have the theme song in my head)
- The Best Years of Our Lives
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (“Say, can you help a fellow American who’s down on his luck?“)
- Sophie’s Choice
- Do the Right Thing
- American Graffiti
- All About Eve
- Singin’ in the Rain (This is the only movie on this list that I’d seen before)
- Psycho
- North by Northwest
- Rocky (I was determined not to like this movie, and surprised myself)
- The Godfather: Part II
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?
- Tootsie
- The Apartment (The power of so many films on the AFI list is the boundaries that they broke when they first premiered, some of which can be lost on me… Tootsie, Some Like it Hot and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff? are three other great examples of this)
- Double Indemnity
- Chinatown
- Taxi Driver
- Some Like It Hot
- The Wild Bunch
- The Godfather
- Unforgiven
- The French Connection (This is the only film we’ve watched that I would say I absolutely did not like… I was so bored I couldn’t even recount the plot to you)
Of the remaining 75 films, there are 33 more that neither Dan nor I have seen. We’d best get back to work! Do you have a favorite from AFI’s list? And if I created a second list featuring, say, female directors and stories about women, which films would you include?
