afi top 100 – Page 5 – Movie Valhalla

THE GOLD RUSH (1925)

Charlie Chaplin’s biggest hit is also probably my favorite of his movies that I’ve yet seen.

A spectacular, hilarious comedy about the end of the world.

The Marx Brothers reinvented comedy for the sound era, but had to tone down their sheer anarchy (a little) to score their biggest hit.

A movie that looks deep into its own soul and finds only horror.

In which Buster Keaton almost dies over and over in the name of comedy, and also drops an actual train off an actual bridge.

Somewhere beneath everything that’s been piled on top of it is one of the greatest movies ever made.

Meryl Streep’s all-timer of a performance can’t make me ever want to watch this movie again.

It earned an X-rating for its “homosexual frame of reference,” but I mostly found unrelentingly depressing.

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.