I’ve had this thought floating around in the back of my head for years that I’ve wanted to watch all 100 of the American Film Institute’s top 100 movies.
Now that it’s the summer and I’m in the afterglow of my New York Knicks winning their first NBA title in 53 years, I figured this would be the perfect time to get after it.
If you’re not familiar with AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies list, it’s pulled together from a poll of “more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies,” via Wikipedia. Also noteworthy: these are American movies only, and it was last updated way back in 2007.
So in short we’re talking 100 famous American movies dating back to the invention of the motion picture, none of which are particularly new. In reviewing the list, there are a chunk I’ve seen countless times and consider to be in my personal pantheon, Goodfellas chief among them. Then there are a bunch of others I’ve seen and am well familiar with, with another category of movies that I saw once upon a time in my life and may or may not be fully coherent on the details of.
Overall, I noted that I had seen 68 of the 100. Pretty good, but as someone who loves movies and has been increasingly writing about them of late, I consider this to be, if you’ll pardon my language, some shameful shit as the iconic Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce) from The Wire might say.
Additionally, as the kind of person crazy enough to both embark upon and complete a five-year mission to compile and catalog the best 1,000 albums ever, I decided to start with the “bottom” of the AFI 100 and work my way up.
Here’s how things are going so far.
100. Ben-Hur (1959)
I had last seen Ben-Hur as a pre-teen, during a phase when I would rent VHS tapes out of my local library on Long Island up the max limit each time, and burn my way through the stack the second I got home.
Therefore, I vaguely recalled Charlton Heston and the famous chariot race, but very little else. With a running time of about 3.75 hours, that means there was a lot that I had forgotten.
In very short, Ben-Hur is a pre-CGI, massive budget swords-and-sandals meets religious epic. I had particularly forgotten about all of the religious bits, which form something of the story of Jesus Christ running parallel to the story of Judah Ben-Hur (Heston) and his doings in Judea and other parts of the Roman Empire.
The influence of this movie was on my mind throughout much of my viewing, ranging from the likes of Star Trek to Monty Python’s Life of Brian to Gladiator.
99. Toy Story (1995)
While I recalled more about the basic story of Toy Story versus Ben-Hur, I hadn’t seen it in decades, and was slightly apprehensive about how engaged I’d be heading in to stream it circa 2026.
My short review: I couldn’t have been more delighted by it. The animation is bright and striking in the best kind of way, the writing sharp, specific, genuinely funny, and pop culture-infused (I clocked that Joss Whedon shares a screenwriting credit), the voice acting pitch perfect (led by Tom Hanks as Woody), and the overall impact surprisingly nostalgic and even emotional.
Related: all these many years later, Toy Story 5 just premiered on June 19th, 2026.
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
I’m going to be honest here. I didn’t sit through Yankee Doodle Dandy in its entirety. In fact… okay, I watched the trailer. But to be fair it’s a pretty long trailer.
I’m just not generally a musicals person, and this 1942 musical is jam packed with World War II-era songs like “Over There” and the titular “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” I wasn’t that enthralled with James Cagney’s singing voice, and didn’t feel like shelling out the $15 to Fandango to dive further into this experience.
It actually pains me slightly to write the above words as I’m such a completist, even for a completely made-up project such as deciding to watch all of – okay most of – the American Film Institute’s top 100 movies of all time.
97. Blade Runner (1982)
Memory is a funny thing. It’s funny that my vague memory of watching Blade Runner on a beat up VHS tape as a kid is so different versus my experience of watching it in 2026 – somehow I vividly recalled the beginning and end while completing blanking out on the entire middle? – and it’s also funny (but not in a ha ha way) how Blade Runner plays with memory both in terms of humans and androids (replicants within the film) as a compelling and frighteningly prescient message to our current Age of AI.