I have fully embraced my AFI top 100 movies watch project, and have now jammed through the “bottom” 11 movies on the list with the idea to keep watching my way “up” until I get to #1 (Citizen Kane, not surprisingly).
Here are my thoughts on the most recent batch of seven movies I’ve caught: Do The Right Thing, The Last Picture Show, Pulp Fiction, The French Connection, Goodfellas, Sophie’s Choice, and Swing Time.
96. Do The Right Thing (1989)
I had only seen Do The Right Thing once before when I was a kid, and my first thought while revisiting it was that I was too young at the time to fully appreciate it.
My second and presiding thought is that it’s a masterpiece, a broiling, funny, dark, and deeply human menagerie of humanity and culture and racial tensions on a brutally hot day in Brooklyn.
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
This is the most surprising experience I’ve had with my AFI 100 movie watch thus far. The Last Picture Show fell under movies I had kind of heard of, and frankly I’m mostly familiar with Peter Bogdanovich as Dr. Melfi’s therapist on The Sopranos (he’s outstanding in it) versus as a famous film director.
The Larry McMurtry source material, the small town Texas setting in the early ‘50s, and especially the choice to film the movie in black-and-white all allow the characters and performances – led by Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, and Sam Bottoms – to pop off the screen.
94. Pulp Fiction (1994)
It’s way up there in terms of my favorite movies of all time. I’m a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, and Pulp Fiction is locked into my top slot of the film’s he’s directed (Reservoir Dogs and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood round out my Top 3 just at the moment).
So therefore revisiting it was a pure delight. As I get older, the hard drugs-related stuff gets a bit more jarring (I mean, John Travolta and Uma Thurman basically play massive drug addicts hanging out with each other one night, right?), but what I loved focusing on this time around was how massively bizarre the sequence is starting with Butch retrieving his father’s watch (bestowed upon him by Christopher Walken as a kid, of course).
93. The French Connection (1971)
I’m sure I borrowed The French Connection on VHS from my local library when I was a kid, and I roughly had an idea of the goings on, and especially the famous New York City subway and car chase sequence at the end.
Revisiting the movie now, I found much of the movie to have a nearly jarring pacing that you don’t see in modern movies. There’s little background music, and we’re forced to spend a lot of time simply watching cops staking out the bad guys during a frigid NYC winter. But overall, it all works, especially based on the raw charisma of Gene Hackman as Detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle.
Sidenote here that Carlito’s Way builds upon the subway chase sequence, eventually tying in Grand Central Station, and it’s one of the most exciting end runs of a movie I’ve ever seen.
92. Goodfellas (1990)
It’s far and away my favorite movie, I’ve seen it countless times, and I get something new out of it every single go round.
Even now, I’m working on a Secret Project related to it for Pop Thruster. Stay tuned…
91. Sophie’s Choice (1982)
I had the vaguest memory of the iconic and tragic scene that comes late in Sophie’s Choice, so I was both surprised and mesmerized by how deeply I locked into this two and a half hour movie.
Among the surprises: most of the action (and by action, it’s pretty talky overall) takes place in the U.S. circa 1947, and that Kevin Klein is heavily featured – and that it’s easily his best dramatic performance (best comedic performance that will live in my heart evermore: A Fish Called Wanda). His performance is only topped of course by that of Meryl Streep, who is simply sensational.
It’s a sad movie in many respects, but a deeply compelling and even dare I say entertaining one. Streep and Klein are an all-time pairing, and I’ll be thinking about this one for years to come.
90. Swing Time (1936)
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are a delight on the dancefloor, and overall this is a super lighthearted musical comedy number (that weirdly is also pretty light on the musical and comedy and even dancing bits?).
I’m also tempted to mention that Swing Time is pretty “dated,” but in doing so I recognize that this movie is 90 years old!
Eleven movies down, 89 to go. The AFI movies rewatch marches on.