Great American Movies

Last night, Z and I were watching Scarface with Al Pacino. It’s supposed to be some great movie, and Z seemed genuinely shocked I had never seen it. So, we watched it. I was not impressed much. Maybe it’s just that a movie about the Miami underworld just doesn’t interest me, maybe it’s because the was no real plot aside from Montana (Pacino) was a Cuban immigrant who came up through the ranks and with guns blazing took over the drug empire. Just an excuse for a lot of gun fights, bloodshed and nonsense. As I said, I was not impressed.

But apparently, somebody somewhere was impressed because they’ve now released Scarface again, in a special anniversary edition. Yea! Big deal.

After the movie, we were discussing other ‘Great American Movies’ and Z all but fell over himself from shock, when I told him I have never seen the Godfather movies either.
Are you kidding me?
Nope, never seen them
How old are you again?
Older than you
How long have you been in this country?
All my life
How long have you been speaking English? (I don’t know what that has to do with The Godfather, but that’s what he asked)
The only language I’ve ever spoken.
And you’ve never seen The Godfather?
Nope.

But it got me to thinking, if Scarface was this incredible movie, and The Godfather (parts I and II) are supposed to be Great American Movies, what other movies qualify for that title? And how many of them have I seen?

The internet produced several list options, Time Magazine offers ‘Time All-Time 100 Movies” (Scarface did not make that list). Yahoo! produced “Yahoo Top Rated Movies of All Time”. The American Film Institute (AFI) offered their list of the “100 Greatest Movies” (Scarface did not make that list either). Since the Time magazine list was compiled by two movie critics, Yahoo!’s list came with the following disclaimer: The votes of our most active users are used in generating these rankings, each movie must have a minimum of 500 votes to be included, and the AFI list was compiled by a panel of over 1500, I chose to go with AFI’s list.

I won’t bore you with the complete list of all 100 movies. You can check it out for yourself here: AFI 100 years 100 movies. I have seen all of 24 of the movies on the list. Almost a full quarter of the movies. Not too bad, actually. I’ve seen parts of 14 probably. There is only a small handful on the list that I have never heard of, or know anything about. Most of the list is familiar titles, and I could probably name one of the actors in each.

I’ve seen 3 of the top 5, and exactly half of the top 10, and isn’t it those that really count for something? The latest movie on the list ‘Fargo’ was made in 1996, which is 10 years ago. It’s possible this is an old list, or it’s possible there just haven’t been any really good movies in the past 10 years. Although I find it hard to believe that in the past 10 years there hasn’t been a movie better than “Fargo”. After all, Titanic is not on this list, and box-office sales say it was a blockbuster. There are no James Bond movies on this list, none of the Star Wars movies (minus the first one, Star Wars) and none of the Lord of the Rings movies. I’m thinking this list might be a bit incomplete.

So, I’m beginning to think that even though I have not yet seen The Godfather (parts l and ll) my soul may not be doomed to eternal damnation if I never see them. Nevertheless, Z and I are going to cuddle up on the couch with a couple of snuggly blankets, a bucket of popcorn, and have a Godfather movie fest this weekend, just in case.