afi top 100 – Page 6 – Movie Valhalla

BEN-HUR (1959)

The biggest hit of its day has a supreme technical achievement slung over a story that feels to me like middling Bible fanfic.

My favorite romantic comedy of all time, it uses new tricks in every scene to get inside the neurotic heads of its characters.

Scorsese’s “masterpiece” about a boxer whose life falls apart because of his toxic masculinity.

The car chase is justly famous, but these days its cops with a “shoot first ask questions later” attitude are extremely hard to root for.

The definitive neo-noir, a movie I love, now inextricably linked with the crimes of its director.

Maybe the definitive movie about one of the worst events in human history.

A surprisingly universal and human story of three soldiers returning to their home town after World War II, from decades before “PTSD” was a term.

Showbiz is an eternal, elemental struggle in one of the greatest of all satires.

John Wayne drags a handsome guy around the American West because he is so racist. It’s kind of like the Odyssey.

Sidney Poitier has to solve a murder in a small southern town that hates him. A great social movie but kind of a blah procedural.