50) Body Heat (1981, Lawrence Kasdan) – AFI Ranking: 92nd
“You’re not too smart, I like that in a man” – Matty Walker
A remake/reimagining of another AFI list-ee, Double Indemnity, Body Heat ratchets up the sex, and the literal heat. Set in Florida, as opposed to Los Angeles, the muggy humidity is palpable, and creates a slimy backdrop. Body Heat lures you in with a simple affair between Ned (William Hurt) and the married, Matty (Kathleen Turner), a seduction, really. Kathleen Turner is awesome in this movie.
As with Double Indemnity, this affair ultimately leads to Ned, a lawyer, helping Matty amend her husband’s will, before killing him off. It would normally be ridiculous to say ‘yes’ to either request, but in Body Heat it’s totally believable that Ned would do this. His lust, and perhaps love, for Matty has pulled the wool over his eyes. Slowly, but surely, the rug gets pulled out from under Ned’s feet.
49) The Fugitive (1993, Andrew Davis) – AFI Ranking: 33rd
Maybe the best experience I’ve ever had on an airplane happened in 2017. I was flying to Ireland to meet my only reader, who was already there with their family. I was prepared for a long flight with books and crossword puzzles, but when I got on the plane I was surprised to find they had movies! I watched The Fugitive, which I hadn’t seen in 10+ years at that point, and was oh so delighted.
The Fugitive just moves. It’s a modern Hitchcock movie. Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) is wrongfully convicted of killing his wife (the wrong man trope). There is no doubt in the audience’s mind that he did not murder his wife. He escapes prison during a bus crash and now must prove his innocence while evading capture. His decision to stay in Chicago to try and prove his innocence is the most entertaining option for the audience, but perhaps it stems from the fact that the police and U.S. Marshalls seemed to have no issues tracking him down after his initial escape. This leads to arguably the most memorable sequence in the movie, where he’s pursued by police, and has his first confrontation with U.S. Marshall Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones).
Additional thrills: the actual bus crash (an explosive scene involving an oncoming train; there are two separate scenes where it looks like the U.S. Marshalls have found his hideout; there are multiple scenes in a hospital where it looks like he’ll be found out, including once where Tommy Lee Jones and Co. are chasing him; anything involving the one-armed man; the climactic showdown.
I’m probably even forgetting some of them, but, this movie is basically a modern Hitchcock movie with more exciting action sequences. Simple, effective, always enjoyable.
48). Memento (2000, Christopher Nolan) – AFI Ranking: N/A
Memento won’t be the movie Christopher Nolan is remembered for, but an argument could be made that it should be the first movie people say in his eulogy. It’s not as re-watchable as the the Dark Knight Trilogy, or as futuristic as Interstellar, but Memento is wonderfully inventive and disorienting.
At its core, Memento is like The Fugitive, a man is trying to find out who killed his wife. Except, of course, that the man suffered amnesia from the attack. Other movies have included amnesia (Spellbound, the Bourne series), but none of the others make the audience feel the effects of amnesia as well. Often it’s someone trying to put the pieces back together, and then finally remembering, but Memento has one timeline going in reverse so that we can see how we got to what we saw earlier, one timeline moving forward, and they’re intercut with each other.
There are many great little touches at the start of new scenes where Leonard (Guy Pearce) has to literally figure out what’s happening. One time he comes to and he’s running and there are gunshots. He assumes he’s chasing someone before realizing that they’re, in fact, chasing him. Another time he wakes up in the bathroom holding a half empty bottle of liquor. He tries to assess whether he’s been drinking. It’s a disorienting, uneasy viewing experience. Just like how the character lives his life.
I have this movie replacing Gaslight (AFI #78), a movie that I haven’t yet seen, but I have a lot of respect for it as the movie’s impact lives on with “gaslighting”, a specific verb used colloquially for whenever someone is deliberately lying to someone else and making it seem like it’s their fault. Memento has similarities with many of the characters manipulating Leonard for their own gain, and he has little recourse but to take polaroids and tattoo himself a note before he forgets the whole experience and it starts all over.
47). Sicario (2015, Denis Villeneuve) – AFI Ranking: N/A
I almost feel like a fraud with Sicario because I’ve only seen it once, but it’s intense, and it will be around for a long time. It deals with the drug war by the Mexican border, and into Mexico, certainly an intense, life or death matter, rife with plenty of scenes for suspense. Add to that, FBI Agent Kate (Emily Blunt) is being used and manipulated by her cohorts (Josh Brolin and Benecio Del Toro) and there’s always someone tricking someone or messing her over.
I have this movie replacing The Wild Bunch (AFI #69). Haven’t seen it, supposed to be a classic about the end of the western era, but given the similarities between the drug cartel world and the old west, it seemed an apt replacement.
46). Collateral (2004, Michael Mann) – AFI Ranking: N/A
I have this movie replacing Strangers on a Train (AFI #32) as a higher octane version of having a homicidal stranger come into your life who will not leave until you’ve helped him kill someone else.
Collateral is awesome. Max (Jamie Foxx) is a cab driver in L.A. who gets the worst fare imaginable when Vincent (Tom Cruise), gets into his car offering a lot of money, to take him to five locations. We learn after the first location that Vincent is a hitman, and now Max is a hostage, forced to take him to all of these locations so that he can kill people. Vincent talks about it in the movie, but it’s very much an “adapt or die” situation.
Mark Ruffalo plays a cop who seems to be catching onto what is happening, but then he’s killed in the middle of the movie! So, now what hope does Max have? He has to adapt, something he’s been afraid to do his whole life. Even if he adapts, that might not be enough.
45). Cape Fear (1991, Martin Scorsese) – AFI Ranking: N/A
This is the most literal replacement, with the original Cape Fear (1962) ranking 61st on the AFI list. The newer version has one of the best character introductions for someone you’re supposed to fear. De Niro has played a lot of bad, homicidal people, but outside of Raging Bull, I don’t know if he’s played anyone as physically terrifying. Do we need to see anything else?
44). The Matrix (1999, The Wachowski brothers) – AFI Ranking: #66
There were few movie experiences like the first time I saw The Matrix. The fact that it came out in ’99 and the AFI included it on their list (in 2001) shows the immediate impact this movie had.
The first thing to point out are the game-changing special effects, many of which were parodied in movies like Shrek and Scary Movie. This movie has awesome fight sequences; even the friendly training scene between Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) is fun to watch. The lobby scene toward the end, and everything leading up to Morpheus’ capture are probably the most thrilling.
It’s one of the most impactful and enjoyable action movies ever. I didn’t even totally understand what was going on when I first saw it. They barely explain it. And they didn’t have to.
43). Basic Instinct (1992, Paul Verhoeven) – AFI Ranking: N/A
I have Basic Instinct replacing Double Indemnity (AFI #24) as a more updated, and more dangerous, erotic thriller.
One aspect of this movie that I really enjoy, as compared to Body Heat and Double Indemnity, is that you’re suspicious of Catherine Tramell immediately, but there’s no proof that she committed the murder of her former musician lover, Boz. To be clear, everything about her seems “wrong”: she’s friends with other known murderers, she writes thriller books about murder, she doesn’t seem particularly surprised or sorry to hear about Boz’s death. But nothing we see her do is illegal. She never asks Nick (Michael Douglas) to modify her husband’s will or his life insurance. She doesn’t ask him to help kill her husband. While the other two movies are masterful at making you understand why the character ignores the red flags and follows through on those requests, none of that exists in Basic Instinct. Catherine was just the romantic friend of a musician who happened to be murdered mid-coitus, and the police bring her in for questioning.
The most famous scene is the police interrogation. Catherine owns the police with her confidence and charm. She’s extremely relaxed, doesn’t call for a lawyer, and doesn’t shy away from saying provocative things to excite the room full of male cops. Nick is convinced she did it, but he has no proof. He’s a former addict with a troubled past, including a bad incident where he killed a couple of tourists while high on cocaine during an undercover assignment.
Nick stays close to Catherine, trying to catch her off guard. But, of course, this works against him, and he’s eventually sucked into her seductive web.
There are more deaths surrounding Catherine, including Nick’s therapist/lover/former lover of Catherine’s, Dr. Beth Garner. More details emerge about Catherine’s life and little by little it starts to paint a clearer picture, ultimately rocketing us toward a thrilling finale.
In 1992, this movie was such a stick of dynamite that two things immediately happened: 1) Madonna went and made Body of Evidence (1993), a blatant rip-off, to try and up the erotic thriller ante; and 2) Sharon Stone immediately went and made Sliver (1993), a thriller which cast her as a more bookish and meek woman, in an effort to dial back the audience’s association with Catherine Tramell. How this movie was left of the AFI’s list, I’ll never understand.
42). The Omen (1976, Richard Donner) – AFI Ranking: 81st
Some combination of The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen feels like a forgotten horror movie. The one thing I really enjoyed about this movie is that it is not afraid to “go there”. SPOILERS AHEAD, but at Damien’s birthday party, the nanny just jumps out of the window and hangs herself. The priest gets decapitated. The new nanny is nefarious and eerie. The mother is attacked. Damian is a little creep.
41). Reservoir Dogs (1992, Quentin Tarantino) – AFI Ranking: N/A
Similar to how 12 Angry Men doesn’t show the trial, Reservoir Dogs is not about the thrills of committing a heist, but rather the aftermath where it starts to unravel. I haven’t seen the notable classic, The Treasure of Sierra Madre (AFI #67), but as I understand it, there’s a similar unravelling, which is why Reservoir Dogs is a fitting replacement.
It’s the movie that put Quentin Tarantino on the map. There’s a great three-way standoff scene that pays homage to Tarantino’s favorite movie, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. There is a lot of tension around what went wrong with the heist, and then the dramatic irony of knowing that one of the characters is an undercover cop, and bracing ourselves as to whether or not the rest of them will figure it out.
Of course, most notorious, is the torture scene. Certain movies and franchises are gratuitous in this vain, warranting the label “torture porn”. Reservoir Dogs isn’t excessively gory or violent, but it still communicates the brutality even while panning away from the actual torture. As mentioned in the Pulp Fiction entry, Tarantino also does a great job drawing it out so that the tension isn’t immediately released like it would be during a movie from the Saw franchise. It’s a rough, tension-filled viewing. Also, it’s comically juxtaposed to the radio playing Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the middle with you”. I will never hear that song and not think of Reservoir Dogs.
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