#94 - Pulp Fiction

This is the stuff a movie buff's dreams are made of. Quentin Tarantino's 1994 magnum opus "Pulp Fiction" is the fastest, best two-and-a-half hours that ever came out of the 1990s (well, maybe it shares the prize with 1990's "GoodFellas"). It is a modern masterpiece that invented new rules for how movies can be made. Tarantino takes movies and television shows from days gone by, takes out the best parts of them, adds some adult themes and language, and presents them all at once in an overwhelming and devilishly good movie.

What is essentially just the story of two hit-men's lives for a couple of days (played by Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in his comeback role) turns out to be the stuff of great novels. Tarantino said that the reason for the multiple storylines, with characters weaving in and out of them all, was that he wanted to do what novels could do but films had never attempted.

I've seen the movie several times, but the element that jumped out at me on this viewing was the detachment of the storylines. As I was watching Marsellus Wallace being raped by a couple of hillbillies, I thought back to Vincent Vega taking out Mia Wallace -- what a different time, mood, and basically entire movie that was.

And can we talk about the segment "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife"? In my opinion, Uma Thurman is the reason this movie is so great. The way she moves, speaks, lives is entirely unique and unlike anything we've ever seen before. Every time I hear her say she'll be down and ready to go in "two shakes of lamb's tail," chills go up and down my spine. Her comment after arriving back to the dinner table (how she loves going to the bathroom at restaurants and coming back to find her food waiting for her) is one of my favorite lines in movie history. Not because it is overtly compelling, but because it was able to put into words a feeling we've all had -- that small joy in seeing a full plate of food waiting for us.

As far as I'm concerned, the first hour of this movie is some of the best filmmaking ever achieved. The next thirty minutes (mainly Bruce Willis's "The Gold Watch" segment) has always bothered me for some reason -- it is definitely the most detached from the main set of characters (Vega, the Wallaces, etc.) and maybe that's why it makes me uncomfortable. It just seems forced to me. Call me crazy.

But after that small bump in the road the film resumes and finishes off with another hour that is almost as amazing as the film's first sixty minutes.

The nonlinear storytelling is, of course, one of the movie's most discussed attributes. The following is a description of what we are shown:

1. Prologue - The Diner (i)

2. Car scene/Brett's

3. "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife"

4. Butch flashback/leaving the boxing match

5. "The Gold Watch"

6. "The Bonnie Situation"

7. Epilogue - The Diner (ii)

That's how we're shown the events, but they actually happen like this:

1. Butch flashback

2. Car scene/Brett's

3. "The Bonnie Situation"

4. Prologue - The Diner (i)

5. Epilogue - The Diner (ii)

6. "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Washburn's Wife"

7. Butch leaving boxing match

8. "The Gold Watch"

Wow. Talk about guts as a filmmaker. To make the prologue and epilogue actually happen one after the other, and actually be in the very middle of the movie's events, is something that not only films had never done before "Pulp Fiction," but no form of fiction that comes to mind has ever done it either. This is what makes "Pulp Fiction" a modern classic, both deserving of a spot on this list and deserving of a spot higher than #94.

#18 - The General

Ah, my first silent film experience. I've only tried watching a silent film once in my life. I could not stand it, and bowed out gracefully at the seven-minute mark. This movie was different.

From the opening sequence, I was inexplicably invested in the characters. Buster Keaton, an actor trained in Vaudeville, plays Johnnie Gray, a resident of Marietta, Georgia, who is refused enlistment because the Confederacy thinks he would be better used as a train engineer. No one understands this logic, Johnnie included, and he is branded a coward and deserter for not enlisting. He even loses his love for it.

One year after the war started, Union strategists plan the hi-jacking and theft of a train traveling from Marietta to Chattanooga. As they drive the train they plan to burn down every bridge, thus cutting off the Confederate supplies drastically. The train they plan to steal just happens to be Johnnie's train, and his love interest just happens to be riding it that day, heading North to see her father who was wounded in battle.

When the Union spies successfully overtake 'The General' (the name of the train), they incur an unexpected hostage: the love interest stayed on the train while everyone else went into the town for dinner. When Johnnie sees that people are stealing his train, he follows them in another train. What follows is a series of hilarious, well-timed sabotages and strategies to catch up with the hijacked train. Eventually, Johnnie of course catches up with the train and is able to take it back safely, saving his love interest and thus making her see that he is not a coward after all.

When this movie first came out in theaters, it was a major flop. The production costs were high because of all the train sequences, but no one seemed to enjoy the finished product. One theory behind the reasoning for this dislike was that the movie seemed to lean toward the Confederate side -- even though it had been 62 years since the Civil War had ended, people apparently still felt strongly about it.

The movie is a brilliant mix of comedy and action. Buster Keaton's facial expressions are so vivid and say so much without words, it makes it easy to see how silent films worked. The movie actually had me laughing out loud a few times, a rarity when I'm watching a movie by myself -- even the funniest in cinema history.

For me, this movie is all about what is pleasing to the audience -- a few jokes mixed in with some suspense that actually seems plausible and yet is still interesting to watch. These two elements combine to make a truly enjoyable film, and by far the best silent film I've ever seen all the way through (even though it's only the first).

#7 - Lawrence of Arabia

There's something about epics that I just can't wrap my mind around. In my point of view, a simple two-hour movie is plenty long enough -- you don't need four hours to tell a single story. With the exception of "Gone with the Wind," which I like only because it's about the South, I just can't get into epics like 1962's "Lawrence of Arabia."

The film lasts 3 hours and 46 minutes. My favorite feature about my DVD player is that you can fast-forward a movie and still hear all of the dialogue and see all of the action, just in a sped-up fashion (with subtitles, understanding what everyone says is a breeze). Watching movies this way cuts down on a quarter of the time it would normally take to watch the movie. So I watched this movie completely in fast-forward and it still took almost three hours out of my Sunday afternoon.

But enough complaining, long movies are the standard on AFI's list, and I'd better get used to them. In "Lawrence of Arabia" we are told the story of T.E. Lawrence, a man who starts out as a wisecracking military grunt and rises through the ranks quite rapidly with a series of impressive strategic moves. The scope and quality of the movie is legendary -- Steven Spielberg once said that he realized he wanted to be a filmmaker after watching "Lawrence of Arabia."

Peter O'Toole's breakout role as Lawrence could have been a bore, three-and-a-half hours of staunch military conduct: blah. But O'Toole gives Lawrence a flair and a wit that was surprising and funny (I wasn't expecting so much humor when I started the movie). O'Toole handles the movie deftly, giving each scene the same quality as if it were the only one.

My favorite idea the movie puts forth is that of the extraordinary man longing to be ordinary. Lawrence has a talent that Great Britain takes advantage of: charismatic leadership and a knowledge of the land like no other Brit. Through his techniques and dealings with the local royalty, Lawrence successfully enacts several missions that further the British cause in the Middle East in World War I.

The war scenes are of course epic and the acting top-notch. But the movie taken as a whole was just not my cup of tea. I think the movie is deserving of all the accolades it has received, but being in the Top 10 seems a bit of an odd choice to me.

#23 - The Grapes of Wrath

This movie has always been hard for me to watch. Not because it is overly gruesome or maudlin, but because I cannot seem to stay awake through the entire thing at one time. I started it last night, got about 20 minutes in and was fast asleep. This afternoon when I tried to start again I fell asleep again. The same thing happened the last time I tried to watch this movie. Today I had to force myself to sit in an upright chair and just watch the movie.

"The Grapes of Wrath" is a 1940 film based on a 1939 novel by John Steinbeck. Set in the late 1930s American West, the film tells the story of the Joad family who travel from Oklahoma to California, looking for work.

Once I actually watched the movie, I decided that it was just good, not great. This is one of the movies I think should be very much farther down the list than #23, but that's just my opinion.

Henry Fonda stars as Tom in the role that put him on the map, and he is just fine at making the viewer feel the pain of coming home to a changed place and having to pick up the pieces and move on from there. But the star of this movie is his mother, Ma Joad, an Oscar-winning role for Jane Darwell. She spends most of the film blubbering about her family's poor condition, but what else do you expect from an aging Depression-era matriach?

The moods set in the film are truly legendary--the dance scene near the end is a perfect example. I feel like I have been to that dance. With the teenagers dancing chastely, a fight (a riot according to the sheriffs) breaking out between the compound's authorities and vigilantes, and the children dancing in a wide circle, it's scenes like this that make you almost want to live through the Depression.

Tom eventually moves on from the Joad family, leaving them in the middle of the night (not without saying goodbye to the worrisome Ma, of course). The movie ends on a hopeful note, with Tom leaving to enact some of the social reform his friend who died once lived for. He vows to stand up for the little guy, and his final speech was one of the most moving I've seen in a while. Watch it for that speech and Darwell's performance, and you'll get your money's worth (if you can stay awake, that is).

To boil it down: Top 100? Of course. Top 50? Sure, I guess. Top 25? Nah.

#8 - Schindler's List

I watched this film right after "Apocalypse Now," which in retrospect was probably not the best choice. After being slapped across the face with violence in "Apocalypse Now," I was ready for some shoot-'em-up action. Instead I watched a little girl in a red coat run around and spent about three hours trying to differentiate between Liam Neeson (good Nazi) and Ralph Fiennes (bad Nazi).

Like "Apocalypse Now," I didn't find the starring performances in this movie to be all that compelling. However, I found the secondary and even the performances by the extras to be some of the best in movie history. The two moments that spring to mind are: 1) when the little boy is looking for a hiding spot and jumps down a latrine hole, only to find that it is already taken by three or four other children and 2) the looks of elation on the women's faces when they are sent to the showers at Auschwitz, thinking they are about to be gassed but find out it's only water that they're being showered with.

These little moments remind me of "Titanic." My two favorite moments in that movie do not involve Jack, Rose, or any of the principal cast. No, it's definitely the moments when the old couple hug each other in bed with the water rising and the sadness of the string quartet that plays as the ship goes down. None of the little moments in "Schindler's List" do anything to drive the plot forward, but they are the reasons I found this movie to be so stirring. I will be haunted for far longer by the several gunshots to the insignificant heads than I will be by Ben Kingsley's unmoving performance as a clever accountant.

However, one bright spot in the principal cast of this movie was Liam Neeson's final breakdown. It was only then that we saw Schindler's vulnerability -- a man who was so magnanimous, but then realizes that there is always room for improvement. Although it seemed odd to equate human life to a golden pin, the sentiment was right and Neeson did a fine job getting the point across.

All in all, "Schindler's List" is more than deserving to be in the top quarter of this list. But #8? I'm not so sure about that one. But nevertheless it remains a timeless tale (made even more timeless by its black-and-white format) that will be sure to jerk tears out of the eyes of audiences for many years to come.

#30 - Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 war epic "Apocalypse Now" has become famous for several reasons. The two most notable are the famous quote "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" (more on that later) and the ridiculous amount of obstacles and annoyance Coppola had to go through to get the film made. An entirely separate movie has been produced that details the struggles of getting the film made ("Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse"). Martin Sheen, the main character, suffered a heart attack midway through production. Talk about heartache on poor Coppola's project.

But what results out of all that turmoil is a gem of American cinema. While it can be slow in some parts, the movie still retains a sense of urgency that is infectious -- you can't wait to see what the next scene will hold. From Robert Duvall's infamous napalm speech amidst surfin' safaris and bombing the Charlies out of the forest to seeing a young Laurence Fishburne's as Mr. Clean, the movie has a lot of good things going for it.

That being said, I think the performances relied too heavily on the material. Marlon Brando is amazing as Colonel Kurtz, the allegedly insane murderer who Sheen's character is sent to kill. But everyone else seemed to just be reciting the lines--which was fine because the screenplay was beautifully written (and with a base text like "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, where can you go wrong?).

The movie's scope--its grandness of scale--is the best thing it has going for it. The elaborate war sequences with bridges destroyed, helicopters bombed, Vietnamese women gunned down, and a seemingly harmless spear through someone's torso all culminate to create one of the most violent, cerebral, profound movies of our time.

#80 - The Apartment

Attempted suicide and extramarital trysts organized by an insurance agency grunt worker to move up the corporate ladder are not two elements popular in modern-day romantic comedies. But 1960's "The Apartment," starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in one of her first roles, takes a new approach to the formula and breaks a lot of ground on its way.

Lemmon is C.C. Baxter, an office worker for a high-rise insurance agency in New York City. MacLaine is Fran Kubelik, the sarcastic elevator attendant for the building which houses 31,259 employees (as Lemmon so astutely accounts). The two maintain a flirtatious relationship throughout the first part of the movie. Baxter has the odd tendency to loan out his apartment near Central Park to four members of the upper management team in his office. The men use his apartment to escape from their wives, bring their mistresses or dates to a place near the city, and enjoy themselves as consenting adults. Baxter doesn't mind as long as the arrangement is quid pro quo -- with each adjustment he has to make to his life, Baxter knows that it will all pay off the day he gets the big promotion.

And that day comes when a fifth member of upper management would like to use his apartment for dates, planning on taking his summer love interest, Fran Kubelik. Baxter, unbeknownst to the woman's identity, agrees and is given a big promotion. When he finds out it is Fran his boss is taking to his apartment, he makes a string of bad decisions. The boss dumps Fran and she ends up in Baxter's bed, overdosed on sleeping pills. Baxter becomes her caretaker and the two develop a more intimate relationship over the next two days.

Whew. That is a lot of plot to get through. Usually movies like this exhaust me. The whole "Well, he find out she was lying so he went and told his wife, and blah blah blah" routine can become tiresome and too gossipy after a short while. But this movie handles the many plot layers rather effortlessly. The jokes are quick, the situations complex and contemporary for a movie made before my parents were born.

One of the most groundbreaking aspects of "The Apartment" is its depiction of office life in a 1960s New York office. I think this is the first time we see people as robots in an office setting--clocking in, clocking out, boarding the elevator, standing up and leaving at exactly 5:20 p.m. They are all so drone-like, and I don't think it's anything anyone had seen before. With movies like "Office Space" and television shows like "The Office," it seems like America has satirized the typical office a little too much and has squeezed everything out of it. But "The Apartment" is clearly a front-runner for being the first to point out that office jobs are miserable in the funniest ways possible.

#99 - Toy Story

I looked forward to watching this movie from the moment I decided to take up this challenge. One day in, I couldn't resist the temptation anymore -- I just had to take this trip back in time and relive my childhood. A trip back to 1995, to be exact, when I as a five-year-old boy first saw this movie in theaters (this is one of only three movies on the list that I've seen on the big screen). This movie works on so many levels -- humor, heart, and technical mastery: three characteristics that have become hallmarks of any Disney/Pixar movie.

But what makes this movie stand out for me and the AFI voters is not just that is was the first Pixar movie released. It is its relentless desire to please everyone in the audience. Everyone in America has played with a toy at some point in life -- whether it was a cornhusk doll, a Raggedy Ann, a Cabbage Patch Kid, or a Bratz doll, everyone has had something as a child to hold on, to play with, to use their imagination with.

So for children, the idea that our toys come to life was absolutely mind-boggling. It opened up an entire world of possibilities for our creativities. But for the adults who knew better, "Toy Story" also did not disappoint. The humor is so classically funny that everyone can laugh at the jokes, but there are some jokes that are so dry that they are clearly aimed for a more mature audience. Unlike "Shrek" with its uncouth cursing and flatulence jokes that appeal to only the immature sides of adults, "Toy Story" is a movie that everyone can enjoy. And I do mean everyone.

# 35 - Annie Hall

I'll just come right out and say it -- this is Woody Allen's only good movie. I know, there's "Manhattan" and "Hannah and Her Sisters," but nothing he's ever done has the same spark as 1977's "Annie Hall." Told in a series of flash-backs, monologues, and even a random animated sequence, this film typifies Woody Allen's style of filmmaking and the New York-style neuroses he brought to mainstream America.

Diane Keaton's Oscar-winning portrayal of the title character is classic and unsurpassed in clumsy grace and "la-de-dah" style by any other actress in film history. The movie shows that some of our greatest loves are not marked with longevity -- Annie and Allen's character Alvy Singer only dated about a year-and-a-half. But it's quality that matters to Alvy, not quantity.

My favorite scene: Alvy and Annie are visiting friends in California (the worst place in the world for Alvy) and they are experimenting with cocaine. Alvy, a first-time user, accidentally sneezes right before his sniffs up the drug, thus blowing the expensive powder everywhere, including on the supplier's face. Simple, iconic, and fun.

While the characters are great and the humor is dry and witty (just the way I like it), the best and most groundbreaking quality of this movie is its non-linear storytelling. It opens with a monologue by Alvy, who explains his break-up with Annie. We then go to midway through their relationship, take a few imaginary trips through their pasts, and wind up with their introduction to one another near the middle of the movie. From then on, it's the same off-kilter routine: we take three steps forward, two steps back. This dance is completely unique to "Annie Hall" and is one of the reasons the movie has enjoyed such universal praise.

#33 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

This is not the first time I've ever attempted to watch AFI's Top 100 List. The first attempt was made near the end of ninth grade, when I was just 14 years old. I made it about halfway through the list, but I only understood about a third of what I saw. I watched 1975's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" on the last day of school, when I got home. I didn't understand a bit of it. I'm happy to say that, on second viewing five years later, I understood most of it (at least I think so).

Jack Nicholson plays R.P. McMurphy, a man who is institutionalized for being belligerent and anti-authoritarian but not for any kind of mental illness. A constant aggressor of the status quo, McMurphy learns to hate the quietly tyrannical Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher. The movie follows McMurphy's time in the institution and shows his relationships with the other people in his ward -- most of them there voluntarily instead of being committed. Nurse Ratched loves to go against the grain of McMurphy's radical ideas, and the two build a hateful relationship that explodes near the end of the movie and ends with one of the most tragic occurrences depicted in American cinema.

What I disliked about this movie was the reputation that preceded it. I have always heard that Nurse Ratched was one of the meanest, most evil villains in film history (she is listed by AFI as the 5th greatest villain ever). Instead I saw a woman who simply liked having a routine and liked having order instead of chaos -- these are not undesirable qualities to look for in a head nurse of a mental institution ward. I found myself victimizing Nurse Ratched and making a villain out of McMurphy. He steals a school bus and takes all of his cognizant ward-mates on a deep-sea fishing trip (on a stolen boat), he organizes a Christmas party and invites guests from the outside, and he makes an absolute mess out of the ward and nurse's office in the process.

I'm not saying Nurse Ratched wasn't a little cold, a little calculating, a little sinister ... but a villain? Not in my book. All that aside, the movie is a truly great exploration of what it's like to be constantly going against the grain of drone-like thought with raw, individualistic expression.