Every year the NFL comes out with a list of the Top 100 players and they announce their list ten spots at a time; I’m ripping off their format with these posts. The second to last showing, #20 – #11, is often times the most exciting and controversial because it’s really the last reveal – I can always figure out who the top 10 players will be once I know that this second to last group of 10 have been eliminated. Similarly, there are often people left just outside the top 10 that feel like snubs. With that said…
20). Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, George Miller) – AFI Ranking: N/A
This movie isn’t even really a favorite of mine, but if we’re talking about thrillers, I don’t think anything moves quite like Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s basically a 90-minute heart attack.
Picture Usain Bolt sprinting a half marathon race.
19). The Sixth Sense (1999, M. Night Shyamalan) – AFI Ranking: 60th
This movie had such an immediate impact that the AFI included it despite only coming out 1-2 years before they made their list. The Oscars acknowledged it in the Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay categories, an insanely rare feat for a supernatural horror movie.
It has one of the more memorable twists, something that can get lost in an unfortunately predictable staple over the rest of Shyamalan’s career, but his first movie was inarguably great. The twist works so well that you can also enjoy rewatching the movie and picking up on all of the clues.
The Sixth Sense is a combination zombie/ghost movie, and all of it is all the more terrifying because it impacts a kid. The acting is great, the scares come both slowly and quickly, riding the line between horror and thriller. It begs the question, how was it only #60 on the AFI list?
18). Saving Private Ryan (1998, Steven Spielberg) – AFI Ranking: 45th
There’s a lot about this movie that doesn’t hold up at all:
a) It has typical Spielberg schmaltz, a patriotic tribute to the U.S. soldiers of WWII where everything and everyone is black and white.
b) It has a giant plot hole, not a contrivance, a plot hole that screenwriting legend, William Goldman, pointed out when he slammed the movie in an article that some think cost the movie the Best Picture Oscar. This plot hole exists only so Spielberg can have a “gotcha” moment at the end of the movie.
c) It is insanely manipulative, beyond what normal movies do. It is particularly manipulative with irony. For example the troops find an unarmed Nazi, and let him go instead of killing him, and he ends up coming back and killing some of them. It’s all unnecessary.
So, why include it at #18? Because when this movie is “on”, there’s nothing like it. Spielberg, for all of his schmaltz and nonsense, is arguably the best technical storyteller ever.
A) The above scene showing D-Day might be the best scene in any movie, period. It’s very intense and thrilling; also horrifying and overwhelming. That scene with minimal dialogue says more about war than any of the rest of the movie.
B) The premise is actually cool: a platoon of soldiers are searching for one of their own to send him home after all of his brothers have died in combat. Though I highly doubt it would ever happen, it’s nice to think the military would consider something like this, and also sets up a rescue mission we’re invested in.
C) Tom Hanks…is unbelievable in this movie. For all of Spielberg’s sap, Hanks grounds this movie in the reality that he’s just an everyman schoolteacher from the midwest who got drafted and is trying to lead and survive and make the best of a messy situation. He’s the reason all of Spielberg’s manipulations work.
Saving Private Ryan is like Bo Jackson. Given its natural gifts (Spielberg, Hanks, etc.), it should’ve been in the conversation for greatest movie ever, and the fact that it isn’t in that debate, could be construed as a disappointment. However, it was great in spurts, and in those spurts, it’ll take your breath away.
17). Get Out (2017, Jordan Peele) – AFI Ranking: N/A
Maybe it’s recency bias, but Get Out is an inventive movie, blending the thriller and horror genres with social issue themes for a new perspective. What resulted is an exercise in unease.
The title of the movie is perfect. The whole time, all you can think is “Get Out!”. You know it’s a horror/thriller, where things are going to get bad. All of the white people are acting either overly enthusiastic toward Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), making odd comments about his race, and all of the black people are behaving in a strange, eery manner, suggesting something about them is a little off.
Every actor was good in the movie, but Catherine Keener deserves a shoutout for one of the more menacing performances in recent memory.
Bit by bit, the layers of the onion are peeled back and lead to a creative and shocking climax. I also have to say, I don’t know if I’ve had a more emotional movie moment than when the black and white police car shows up at the end. My heart dropped to the floor.
I have Get Out replacing The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (AFI #47). There’s another movie coming up that might serve as a more apt comparison, but there is overlap between these two movies; people who look like normal people, but they’re off, and the reason they’re off, is the crux of the whole movie.
16). Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski) – AFI Ranking: 16th
Chinatown may not be as heart-pounding or deadly as some of the other top entries, but it’s a great mystery story that represents a remarkable deconstruction of the film noir, murder mystery, and police/detective procedural sub-genres. It’s a convoluted plot that, similar to The Prestige, gives us the information we need early on in the movie while the wool is still over our eyes.
In fact, the wool is over our eyes for 90% of the movie. We’re just following Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson, at his coolest) as he tries to put all the pieces together. Even as he learns new information, there’s still a feeling that there’s something he’s missing. Faye Dunaway is iconic as the femme fatale, Evelyn Mulwray.
I don’t want to say too much about it, but the AFI, in addition to the recognition here, rated Chinatown their #2 mystery on their 10 in 10 list. It’s just a gem.
15). Halloween (1978, John Carpenter) – AFI Ranking: 68th
How the H did the AFI only rank it 68th? Probably because it gets downgraded for being a slasher movie. Heck, on their aforementioned top 10 in 10 genres list, horror isn’t even one of the 10 genres they rank! That’s not happening here! Halloween was really the first mainstream movie of its kind, drawing inspiration from Psycho, but really orienting more of the story around the slasher who stalks victims, really kicking the genre off in earnest.
When I was in Italy, I heard a saying (that I will misquote) comparing Italian cooking vs French cooking. It was something to the effect of, “French cooking is a lot of ingredients, combined in a complicated manner; Italian cooking is a few high quality ingredients, combined in a simple manner.” The speaker was Italian, to be fair, but I think the comparison extends to Halloween. It’s a simple premise, told in a straightforward way, but it’s brutally effective because of the high quality ingredients, chiefly: co-writer/director/composer/co-producer John Carpenter and co-writer/co-producer Debra Hill.
Most slasher movies are more about body count, gore and jumps-scares. In many ways, that’s just how the genre has evolved in order for these movies to build upon what came before them. At this point, it’s easy to forget that the original Halloween is more about tension. We only see four people killed on-screen, one dog, and one dead person who got killed off-screen. Of those six deaths, four occur in the last 20-30 minutes of the movie. The camera is stalker-ish, following Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends down the street. On the night of the killings, we watch the characters, waiting for them to be killed off, but Carpenter draws it out. Each time we think Michael Myers going to pop out and attack, he doesn’t. Until, of course, he does, and the mayhem starts.
I’d like to shout out the opening and closing scenes of this movie. I’ve written about the opening before, it’s an eerie POV shot from the killer’s detached perspective. Not something that’s done often enough in movies. And the ending, I mean, I don’t want to spoil it, but forget about creating sequel potential, what could be a better ending to a horror movie about a suburban murder than the fact that he’s still out there…
14). Jaws (1975, Steven Spielberg) – AFI Ranking: 2nd
This might be something of an upset, only ranking it at spot 14. I like Jaws very much, though it may not be as seminal in my life as it is for many people. I didn’t see it until I was in my mid-20’s, which I’m sure dampened its impact slightly.
The impact of Jaws can’t be overstated. It came out in the summer and was so successful that Hollywood restructured their annual schedules to start releasing summer blockbusters. It’s the movie that launched 29-year old Steven Spielberg as this new Hollywood wunderkind. And most importantly for our purposes, people saw this movie and were afraid to go in the water. Even in swimming pools. No one wanted any part of the water in July and August. Few movies have an immediately cultural imprint of that magnitude.
The musical score is one of the 5 most iconic movie scores of all time. There’s some really memorable music in a lot of movies, but I don’t see how it could fall out of the top 5. Outside of, maybe, Star Wars and Indiana Jones, I don’t think there’s a more easily recognizable movie score. Thank you John Williams.
The opening scene sets a great stage for the type of movie we’re watching. The young woman shows how vulnerable we are in the water. It’s not a loud or visible attack where a giant shark jumps out of the water. Everything happens below the surface and she has no shot.
Jaws left an indelible mark on society and will remain a classic as long as we’re watching movies. This is also the second Spielberg movie of this post, and though he was definitely a working director beforehand, Jaws is arguably the most historically important movie from the most important director of the last fifty years.
13). The Thing (1982, John Carpenter) – AFI Ranking: N/A
The AFI chose instead to honor the original movie, The Thing From Another World (1951), at #87. I still haven’t seen the original, but I gotta give it up to the remake. This is the second John Carpenter movie in this post, and with good reason; he’s made two movies that are on my horror movie Mount Rushmore.
While the setting of Jaws might be more (scarily) relatable to the everyday person, the Antarctic isolation in The Thing makes for an environment that is both brutally unlivable, and also, completely cut off from civilization. Both of these aspects, combined with the destructive power of “the thing”, makes it feel entirely possible that any and all of them could die. This movie has a sense of danger that most movies cannot compete with.
The original movie from 1951 has “the thing” as a large frankenstein-esque monster that many men have to fight off. The ’82 version stays closer to the novella, in which the titular thing is a shapeshifting alien. Shapeshifting has been done numerous times since then, most notably in Terminator 2, but the idea that anyone could be infected creates an atmosphere of paranoia.
The practical effects from this movie were ground-breaking, and likely part of the reason this movie wasn’t well-received by critics. There’s a lot of disgusting body deformities shown on screen that may have led to a displeasurable viewing experience and/or the diagnosis that the movie was a low-brow shock fest. I’m sure the ending didn’t help either. But it’s so perfect for this movie and has aged like the finest of wines.
12). Fatal Attraction (1987, Adrian Lyne) – AFI Ranking: 28th
I only saw Fatal Attraction a few years ago. I knew everything about this movie ahead of time. I knew the general direction that this woman was crazy and would come after his family. I knew the most culturally resonant part of the movie (the boiled rabbit). It didn’t make it any easier.
The early scene where she (Glenn Close) walks up to him (Michael Douglas) and is kind of calm, with her hands behind her back, is probably the most uneasy I can recall being during a movie in the last 10+ years.
11). Zodiac (2007, David Fincher) – AFI Ranking: N/A
Zodiac is in my holy triumvirate of serial killer movies (with two other movies to be named later). In a grand sense of irony, it replaces Dirty Harry (AFI #41), the movie it takes a shot at for being a Hollywood response to the real life Zodiac killer.
It was not very popular at the time, which is somewhat understandable given that it’s a slower-paced, nearly 3-hour procedural with SPOILER ALERT no real resolution. However, it has since developed a cult following, particularly as Fincher’s career has continued to blossom.
The basement scene is probably the most thrilling. Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) just has to go into the creepy guy’s basement. The actual murder scenes in the movie are very unsettling and tense before they turn violent.
Fincher is a directorial master, particularly in the thriller genre. I have season tickets to whatever he’s selling for the rest of time.
Movie Opinions 
Leave a comment