03/11/2008 The 100 Best Movies

OF AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list, I have seen a total of 36. Including, 5 of the top 10 movies, and also 5 of the bottom 10 movies. The majority of the films that I have watched are from the bottom half of the list. The highest movie on the list that I have seen is #2 "The Godfather" and the lowest ranked film that I have watched is #99 "Toy Story." I was surprised by a few of the movies on the list, for example "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" being as high as #34.

One film on the list that I have yet to see is the #1 rated film, "Citizen Kane." Below is a review of the film by BBC's David Wood.
"A fictional biography of media magnate Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) - a thinly veiled William Randolph Hearst that brought Welles and RKO all kinds of problems - that recreates a life in flashback, Welles' "Citizen Kane" was a startling cinematic debut by any standards, and from a 25-year-old made it nothing short of remarkable.
Beginning with Kane's lonely death at his crumbling and ornate Xanadu mansion, the film details the destruction of Kane's childhood when his mother unwittingly inherits a legacy and his resulting adolescent realisation that part of the legacy includes a newspaper, which Kane decides to run personally. From there, Kane builds a media empire, dabbles in politics and women, and eventually starts to alienate all those around him.
A potent metaphor for the betrayal of principles, the souring of the American Dream, and an intelligent mediation on the corrupting nature of power, the film's reputation is nothing short of gargantuan. Regularly cited as the greatest movie ever made, there's no doubting its pure brilliance and status as a contender for so lofty a claim.
What is beyond doubt is that Welles and his collaborative troupe of Herman J Mankiewicz (screenplay), Gregg Toland (photography), Robert Wise (editor), and the fantastic cast of leading players managed to invent a whole new cinematic vocabulary. The attention to detail (ceilinged sets, the meticulous creation of Xanadu) and technical brilliance (deep focus photography and hitherto unchartered camera angles) combined to influence the future of cinema. "Citizen Kane" is the margin by which all of Welles' later efforts came to be judged and also, in many ways, the benchmark of film production."

The movie "Toy Story" came in at #99 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list. "Toy Story" was an inspirational story about two toys efforts to rescue each other and return to the little boy that loves them before he moves away. At the beginning Woody and Buzz Lightyear compete with each other to be the favorite toy, and come to have a strong dislike for each other. Throughout the movie the two bicker a lot, but end up needing each other and end up rescueing each other in different ways. Woody rescues Buzz from his ignorant ways about being a toy. Then Buzz resuces Woody from his the neighbor kid who harms toys for fun. Then after all of they have been through, the two come over their hate for each and work together to make it back to the kid they love.