Lists of best, greatest, and favorite.

A new blog, and a new AFI List of Greatest films. Though he hasn't responded to this new enumeration, Johnathan Rosenbaum(my favorite American film critic) still had the final word on AFI and these lists in general, and he wrote it 10 years ago.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/100best.html

A choice paragraph:

Yet I'm not sure the AFI can justify getting even two cents for its present agenda. I'm told that when it recently shut down its art theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the AFI's director, Jean Firstenberg, told the press that video made repertory programming unnecessary. If that's what she said and that's what she meant, I'd rather see any NEA funds for the AFI used to reduce it to rubble. And given its egregious industry ass kissing throughout its existence, I'm tempted to conclude that its only substantial contribution to film culture--American or global--was producing David Lynch's Eraserhead at its film school.

And yet I still watched the list when it aired, getting incensed at inclusions (Titanic? The Sound of Music?) and omissions (Cassavetes? Malick?). For all my complaining, I am happier to have something to argue against than a truly perfect list for me, since that would still limit the conversation.

Now, the AFI list obviously gets a few things correct, Citizen Kane, Singin' in the Rain and Casablanca are still stellar works a full 66, 57 and 64 years on. I still have problems proclaiming the Godfather films as anything other than expert craftsmanship, though. Operatic and silly, those films showcase great acting and technical skill but they don't move me as much as a single frame of Cassavetes or Scorscese, whose Raging Bull is great but not at the level of After Hours or Goodfellas. Gone with the Wind leaves me cold unless Gable is on screen, and Lawrence of Arabia is British to its core, not American. Vertigo is amazing, but Schindler's List is maudlin and Wizard of Oz is not the equal of many other of those classic 1939 films left off the list, like His Girl Friday.

So what is my top 10 list? That was a children's game I played on my last blog, but a damn fun one. I won't worry about my top 100, which seems to have even more potential to leave off brilliant films. I also can't limit it to American films, another distinction that feels silly. I will limit it to one film per director, just for variety. So here's how I feel today:

1. Pierrot le Fou (Jean Luc Godard, 1965)
2. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
3. Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
4. Days of Heaven (Terrance Malick, 1978)
5. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)
6. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
7. Celine et Julie vont en bateau (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
8. Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)
9. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1939)
10. Ta'm e guilass (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)