{"id":2310645,"date":"2026-03-03T17:45:48","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2310645"},"modified":"2026-03-03T17:45:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:45:48","slug":"the-afi-should-bring-back-its-top-100-movies-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/the-afi-should-bring-back-its-top-100-movies-list\/","title":{"rendered":"The AFI Should Bring Back Its Top 100 Movies List"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I love lists. I\u2019ve worked at ScreenCrush for more than a decade now, and I can\u2019t even imagine the number of lists I\u2019ve written in that time. Dozens, easily. Hundreds, potentially. Thousands, possibly?<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve never really thought about\u00a0why I like lists so much. I grew up obsessively watching\u00a0Siskel & Ebert<\/a>,\u00a0which\u00a0devoted annual episodes to the hosts\u2019 lists of the best and worst films of\u00a0the year. Those episodes were always appointment viewing, even if Roger Ebert<\/a> apparently hated doing them.\u00a0In 2012<\/a>, he said\u00a0lists \u201chad value only in the minds of feature editors fretting that their movie critics had too much free time\u201d and called them a \u201cdiabolical time-waster designed to boost a web site\u2019s page visits.\u201d (Which, uh, fair.)<\/p>\n

That might explain why only Gene Siskel contributed\u00a0to the single most important list of my teenage years: The American Film Institute\u2019s 100 Years, 100 Movies. First announced in 1998, the AFI Top 100 was created to\u00a0honor 100 years of cinema and 30 years of the American Film Institute.\u00a0In\u00a0its own words, the AFI recruited 1500 “leaders in front of and behind the camera, filmmakers, executives, exhibitors, journalists, historians, as well as notable Americans” to vote for the titles they considered \u201cthe 100 greatest American movies of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voters were given a list from the AFI of 400\u00a0nominated films, and\u00a0asked to judge them based on\u00a0\u201cpopularity over time, critical and award recognition, creative and technical achievement, historical significance, and cultural impact.\u201d Their top 100 was revealed on a star-studded, three-hour TV special that aired on CBS, hosted by Jodie Foster, Richard Gere, and Sally Field. The best of the best, according to voters, was Orson Welles\u2019\u00a0Citizen Kane<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0TV broadcast of the AFI Top 100 is quite the document of the late 1990s. It includes Mel Brooks singing the praises of the original\u00a0Frankenstein, and Chevy Chase (in sunglasses!) explaining Charlie Chaplin\u2019s importance to the world of physical comedy. Samuel L. Jackson talks about D.W. Griffith\u2019s notoriously racist but hugely influential silent feature\u00a0The Birth of a Nation, and Dustin Hoffman\u00a0gets choked up as he\u00a0explains how much\u00a0his role in\u00a0Tootsie meant to him.<\/p>\n

The talking heads include a wild array of actors, directors, and celebrities ranging from Bill Clinton to Woody Allen to Sarah Ferguson\u00a0to Donald Trump, who joked on the broadcast about watching\u00a0King Kong\u00a0for the buildings, not the giant ape.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Movies That Were Supposed to Be Huge, Then Flopped<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The 100 Years, 100 Movies\u00a0TV special\u00a0was a hit\u00a0on CBS; it was later broadcast in extended form on TNT. For the next 11 years, the AFI built on that success with new annual rankings.\u00a0In 1999, they listed the 100 greatest movie stars (Humphrey Bogart\u00a0was chosen as the #1\u00a0actor; Katharine Hepburn topped the list of actresses). In 2004, they revealed the 100 greatest movie songs. (\u201cOver the Rainbow\u201d from\u00a0The Wizard of Oz reigned supreme in that one.)<\/p>\n

In 2007, they updated the original Top 100 after a new round of voting. Citizen Kane\u00a0remained number one, but\u00a0the overall order of titles was quite different. 23 new films joined the Top 100,\u00a0like Sidney Lumet\u2019s\u00a012 Angry Men and Ridley Scott\u2019s\u00a0Blade Runner,\u00a0while 23 others were removed,\u00a0including Vicente Minnelli\u2019s\u00a0An American in Paris\u00a0and Kevin Costner\u2019s\u00a0Dances With Wolves.<\/p>\n

After the updated Top 100, the\u00a0AFI published one more annual list \u2014 technically 10 shorter lists of 10 great films in genres like animation, gangster, and sci-fi. But there was\u00a0never a 20th anniversary update to the original Top 100. There were no lists of any kind, in fact.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0American Film\u00a0Institute still exists, and still does important work running a conservatory and\u00a0its\u00a0annual AFI Fest, among other projects. But\u00a0they stopped producing annual lists in 2008. The ones they created in the past remain prominently featured on the front page of\u00a0AFI\u2019s website<\/a>, but they haven\u2019t been updated in almost 20 years.<\/p>\n

From what I can gather online, the annual list tradition mostly ended because the CBS broadcasts stopped garnering the\u00a0big ratings. It also probably didn\u2019t help that the lists were\u00a0sometimes quite controversial. In June of 1998<\/a>, Roger Ebert answered a reader letter about\u00a0the AFI Top 100, and its confusing\u00a0inclusion of the British film\u00a0The Third Man\u00a0in a ranking of the great\u00a0American movies, by dismissing the whole project out of hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire AFI list has been a fiasco,\u201d Ebert declared, adding that it was \u201can arbitrary selection of 100 titles from an equally arbitrary selection of 400 titles, chosen by an arbitrary group of voters, many of whom have bad taste and are uninformed about film history.\u201d He suggested the boondoggle could have been called\u00a0\u201cThe 100 Greatest Relatively Recent Popular Studio Films Mostly About White Males.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, the AFI Top 100 list is flawed. (The list of people called upon to talk about\u00a0it on the\u00a0CBS TV special\u00a0is\u00a0very\u00a0flawed.)\u00a0The broadcast is maddening at times. In order to cram all 100 films into\u00a0a three-hour program, most of the honored titles received only a minute or two of screen time. Many A-list stars appear \u2014 no wonder the show got big ratings \u2014 but\u00a0almost no\u00a0historians or critics. As a result, the \u201cexperts\u201d featured onscreen offer little historical context or technical insights. Who gives a crap what Tommy Larsorda thought about\u00a0Patton?<\/p>\n

But in some ways,\u00a0those flaws make the list more valuable as a time capsule, capturing not only what people thought of as canonical\u00a0American cinema in the late 1990s,\u00a0but also\u00a0whose opinions and voices were valued in the assessment of canonical American cinema at the time. (\u201cTommy Lasorda,\u00a0why is F.W. Murnau\u2019s\u00a0Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans one of the true masterpieces of the silent era?\u201d)<\/p>\n

The changes to the voters and to the final list in the updated top 100 nine years later reflect that \u2014 and, in fact, Ebert himself offered a far more generous assessment of the AFI\u2019s ranking in 2007<\/a>. \u201cThe television special makes money for the American Film Institute, which is a noble and useful institution,\u201d he noted. \u201cAnd some kid somewhere is gonna rent Citizen Kane and have the same kind of epiphany I had when I first saw it as a teenager.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exactly. I\u2019d already watched\u00a0Citizen Kane\u00a0by the time that first AFI Top 100 debuted in 1998 (I was one of the dorkiest children who ever lived, in retrospect I am astonished I didn\u2019t wear suspenders and a pocket protector to school), but the rest of the list became my first cinematic bible. Before every visit to the video store, I would consult it, then try to pick off a title or two.<\/p>\n

I never made it through the whole\u00a0Top 100 \u2014 to this day, I still need to watch\u00a0George Stevens\u2019\u00a0A Place in the Sun \u2014 but\u00a0AFI introduced me, and a lot of budding cinephiles of my generation, to so many great movies. They\u00a0also, I realize now, introduced me to the joy of lists, and\u00a0of using them\u00a0as guides through the world of film.<\/p>\n

The AFI Top 100 fulfilled a need that was not being met in those very early days of the internet. There simply wasn\u2019t the abundance of movie lists and resources like there are now. But as someone who makes and reads a lot of lists I can tell you with confidence: Most online lists suck. I don\u2019t mean in\u00a0the \u201cHow could\u00a0u leave off\u00a0[insert favorite movie] your hole list sucks\u201d\u00a0sort of thoughtless internet comment way. I mean the vast majority are made as fast as possible by as few people as possible (or by no people, thanks ChatGPT). They involve\u00a0almost no\u00a0research, and they mostly regurgitate the same handfuls of titles over and over. Instead of a canon, you get an echo chamber.<\/p>\n

Say what you will about the AFI\u2019s final picks, but that\u2019s not how\u00a0their list was made. They polled 1500 people! They compiled their picks into a handsomely produced television special! The selections might have been imperfect. (The talking heads were\u00a0definitely\u00a0imperfect.) But\u00a0they produced a list that people talked about and debated and which\u00a0absolutely advanced the\u00a0cause of historical film education.<\/p>\n

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United Artists<\/span><\/p>\n

United Artists<\/p><\/div>\n

That\u2019s why the AFI needs to revive the Top 100 tradition. Not every year; that was overkill. But once a decade would be so useful, like an American cousin to\u00a0Sight & Sound\u2019s authoritative\u00a0\u201cGreatest Films of All Time<\/a>\u201d list, which even Roger Ebert respected enough to vote in every ten years. (In 2012,\u00a0his personal ballot included\u00a0Apocalypse Now<\/a>,\u00a0La Dolce Vita, and\u00a0The Tree of Life.) The updated AFI list could then be promoted on Letterboxd, it could be discussed on TikTok. A new special could air on TCM.\u00a0The lists\u2019 choices\u00a0could be screened at repertory theaters, and hyped on streamers like Netflix or the Criterion Channel.<\/p>\n

Sure, you can still find the old AFI list; it\u2019s probably a lot easier to watch\u00a0its selections now than it was when I tried to do it as a teenager\u00a0relying on his local Blockbuster. (You haven\u2019t known true shame until an exhausted staffer in a blue and yellow polo shirt has given you a withering death stare after you asked\u00a0them to check if they carry\u00a0The Best Years of Our Lives …\u00a0and\u00a0The Philadelphia Story … and All Quiet on the Western Front … oh and also Doctor Zhivago.)<\/p>\n

But film history didn\u2019t end in 2001. That was the year of the most recent film\ufffd\ufffdincluded in AFI\u2019s updated Top 100, Peter Jackson\u2019s\u00a0The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.\u00a0Think of all the modern masterpieces\u00a0that deserve\u00a0to be considered for that authoritative list, and the new generation of\u00a0potential filmgoers\u00a0that could be incepted with the love of old movies.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it: 2028 would mark the 30th anniversary of that original AFI list, a perfect occasion for its return. That timeline would also provide plenty of time to assemble another 1500 leaders in front of and behind the camera, filmmakers, executives, exhibitors, journalists, historians, as well as notable Americans. Tommy Lasorda sadly passed away in 2021, but I would be happy to contribute on his behalf. And I bet a lot of others who owe some of their film education to the AFI Top 100 would be too.<\/p>\n

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\"ScreenCrush<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Movies That Were Abandoned During Production and Never Finished<\/h2>\n
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These movies were started but never completed or released for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n