#76 Forrest Gump (1994)

I was twelve when this movie came out, and I wasn't allowed to see it. I also wasn't allowed to see Jerry Maguire in 1996 because my parents didn't think I would fully understand either one. Of course my youngest sister Mia was allowed to see anything she wanted by the time she was two. I guess it's a downside of being the oldest child. :)

So since junior high, I've seen this movie a million times, but I've never watched it from the perspective I did the other day, which was to decipher why this movie is on the list. I think possibly the biggest reason is Tom Hanks's acting. He does such an amazing job as Forrest, believably playing a mentally challenged adult and keeping the role light, making Forrest innocently hilarious. It's also very well-written and about every ten minutes of the movie, you'll hear a quote that anyone could identify as a line from Forrest Gump.

I never realized it before, but the special effects in this movie are incredible. Forrest really looks like he met those Presidents and attended basically every historic event of the '60s and '70s. And while it's not a reason to be on the list, soundtracks can very much affect how much I personally enjoy a movie, and The Forrest Gump soundtrack was one of the few tapes my parents had in our car growing up so I knew and loved every song before I even saw the movie. ("Love Her Madly" is still my favorite Doors song.)

Overall, a beautiful, moving story that's so well-acted it certainly earns its spot on the list.

Rating: 10/10

Big Names: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright (Buttercup from The Princess Bride), Sally Field, Haley Joel Osment (this is his second appearance in the list so far... pretty impressive for a little kid)

Big Lines:
Drill Sergeant: Gump! What's your sole purpose in this army?
Forrest: To do whatever you tell me, drill sergeant!

Lieutenant Dan: Have you found Jesus yet, Gump?
Forrest: I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for him, sir.

Forrest: I'm not a smart man... but I know what love is.

Forrest: I'm sorry I had a fight in the middle of your Black Panther party.

Lieutenant Dan: Where are you boys from in the world?
Forrest & Bubba: Alabama, sir!
Lieutenant Dan: You twins?
Forrest: No, sir. We are not relations.

Jenny: Dear God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far away from here.

#77 All the President's Men (1976)

I started The Wild Bunch Saturday night, watched thirty minutes of it, and was so bored that I turned it off. Trav asked me if I'm going to suffer through the whole movie even though it was terrible, and I guess to be able to say I've seen all 100 of AFI's top movies, I will eventually need to watch it. Not today, though!

This morning I watched this film about the Watergate scandal and the two Washington Post reporters responsible for exposing it. The movie had great momentum even though it was tricky to keep up with all the names and dates they throw at you, and since I already knew what was going to happen, I was on edge. About 2 hours and 15 minutes into the movie, I thought, "Oooh, now we're getting to the good stuff," but then, they sum up all the scandal excitement via a man typing newspaper headlines. Sure, this is artsy, but literally none of the excitement is shown so the movie ends up being much more about the grunt work-- finding the story and interrogating people-- and none of the satisfying success is shown at all. Watching it, I thought this was going to be a great one, but the ending ruined the whole movie for me. Great acting, though.

Rating: 4/10

Big Names: Carl Bernstein (writer), Bob Woodword (writer), Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jack Robards (from Parenthood!), a ton of other guys

#78 Modern Times (1936)

The past few weeks I haven't had many weekdays off work, so it's been a while since I watched a movie on my list. Not excited about either of the movies I have at home right now (The Wild Bunch and this one), I picked the shorter one of the two. This was only 1 hour and 27 minutes long.

I definitely knew of Charlie Chaplin, but when I read a blurb about this movie, I had no clue who they were referring to as a Tramp. Chaplin's famous character, with the bowler hat, cane, clown shoes, and goofy walk/waddle, was the Little Tramp. Charlie knew this character wouldn't survive in the non-silent films that were taking over, so Modern Times was done stubbornly as a "silent" film. "Silent" is in quotes because there are some spoken lines, and the Tramp even sings toward the end.

Surprisingly (to me), there are pretty funny moments. I laughed out loud when he followed this girl with the buttons on her coat. It's insanely impressive to me that a 75-year-old movie can make me laugh, but this film also had more serious messages. The idea that progress and industrialization isn't always necessary or better and the the truth of how difficult it is for less fortunate Americans to keep up are just a bit of what Chaplin was trying to say. I like his style of stringing together entertaining skits, but having underlying deeper messages that I didn't even realize until after the movie was over.

One of the main songs in the movie is the original, instrumental version of "Smile Though Your Heart Is Aching." The lyrics weren't added until decades later, but the words are well suited for the last scene of the movie, when the main characters get themselves up off the ground and try again.

Rating: 7/10

Big Names: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard (Chaplin's wife at the time)

#70 A Clockwork Orange (1971)

So I skipped ahead a bit on this one. Of the movies I had already added to my Netflix instant queue, it was the one that Trav wanted to see with me at the time.

I had seen the first third of this movie when I was about 18. (See my "bad habit" in the post about #85: I fell asleep for the rest of the movie but acted like I hadn't.)  This portion of the movie shows the main character Alex, an inherently evil and violent man, breaking into strangers' houses, raping women, and actually getting enjoyment out of torturing people. On one of their "adventures," a woman calls the police and between the time of the call and the arrival of the police, he accidentally kills her. His friends leave him, he's arrested and then of course, has to serve jail time.

After serving a bit of time, he agrees to participate in an experimental "aversion therapy" to shorten his jail sentence. His therapists force him to watch movies of disgusting, violent acts until his body has a Pavlovian response to the sight of violence and he becomes physically ill. Unfortunately, the movies he's forced to watch are accompanied by the classical music he adores, and this is used against him when he again meets the husband of a woman he raped.

I read Roger Ebert's review, and his was incredibly negative, mostly criticizing Kubrick for glorifying Alex and "celebrating his nastiness." I don't think that's what Kubrick was trying to do, though. I think he wants the viewer to see through that and still be able to recognize what is good and evil, and I feel that most viewers would have the same reaction that I did, which was utter disgust.

If an indicator of a good movie is that it affects you somehow, this movie is incredible. It gave me nightmares.

Rating: 8/10

Big Names: Malcolm McDowell

#80 The Apartment (1960)

This movie has made lists of the best comedies of all time. I must be missing something because while this is a great movie and a sweet romance, I don't at all think of it as a comedy.

Jack Lemmon plays a complete pushover who lends his apartment out to executives at his office to spend alone time with their mistresses. He seems to be getting something out of it, though, like a raise and a new office, so it doesn't bother him until he realizes that one of his bosses is fooling around with the girl he loves.

Lemmon and MacLaine are talented actors, the story is very sweet and well-written, and I did enjoy watching this one, but I wonder if I'm watching too many great movies in a row and becoming accustomed to this new level of movies. None I've seen in a while have stood out to me as significantly better than others (besides Titanic... tease me for my taste if you must.)

Rating: 7/10

Big Names: Shirley MacLaine, Jack Lemmon

#81 Spartacus (1960)

I had very high expectations for this movie. I loved Ben-Hur, and this is ranked almost twenty spots higher, so I expected that this would be my new favorite on the list. It was an excellent movie, but there was at least a full hour that was just dull. (I actually fell asleep during that lull last night and had to finish it this morning.) Another reason I just knew I would love this was that it was directed by Stanley Kubrick, and his version of The Shining is fantastic, and even though it's disturbing, A Clockwork Orange was done very well. Only a few moments of the movie looked like his style, though, or at least what I think of as his style, so that was a bit of a letdown.

Set in 70 B.C., Spartacus is the epic story of a slave who is sold to a master who trains men to become Gladiators. When the Gladiator-trained slaves are asked to fight to the death simply for a Roman general's amusement, together they turn on their master. They then add thousands more slaves to their cause and form an army who revolts against the Roman empire.

The last hour of the movie has some very powerful scenes. I especially love the moment when the Roman general demands that Spartacus identifies himself out of the group of prisoners, and promises that if he does, the other imprisoned slaves' lives would be spared. Every single man identifies himself as Spartacus; they all give their lives for him.

Rating: 8/10

Big Names: Kirk Douglas (Michael Douglas's dad who looks just like him), Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons

Big Lines: I'm Spartacus.

#82 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

My first silent film!! I actually was not at all excited about this one. The Netflix cover told me that this was going to be a 3-hour movie, so I was going to allow myself to watch this one in segments so I didn't die of boredom. Luckily, though, Netflix counted the two different versions on the disc when it calculated the runtime, so it was only an hour and a half. This thoroughly confused me about 80 minutes in, when everything was coming together, and I had no idea how they were going to fill in another 90 minutes.

Since I feel very confident that no one who reads this will ever see this movie (except you, Sabrina!), here is the story: A married farmer (btw, none of these characters have any names.... not even on the credits) is seduced by a woman "from the city" who's staying in their little town on vacation. The woman from the city convinces him to drown his wife and move with her to the city. When he attempts the murder on a little rowboat in the middle of a lake, his wife begs for mercy, so he comes to his senses and grants her mercy. Once they get back to land, she runs from him into the city, understandably scared of him, which upsets him and inspires him to win her back. Later in the day, they are back in love and happy as ever (one heck of a day). They decide to take a lovely moonlight cruise back to their home, when a storm comes out of nowhere and flips their boat. He swims to land, but she disappears. Obviously distressed over the apparent loss of his wife, he goes out and attempts to then strangle his mistress since it's definitely her fault. In the middle of the strangling, a neighbor walks up with his (live) wife, and all is well! He loves his wife again, and obviously is done with the woman from the city.

When I told Trav the story, he didn't understand how I got all of that from a silent film. I guess the story is so obvious and direct that I never even questioned it. In fact, this movie only had a few title cards so the story's almost exclusively expressed by actions. When the plot line is clear, and the acting is done well, dialogue can be unnecessary. Think of Tom Hanks in Cast Away. That movie did really well despite the fact that it had hardly any dialogue and only had one main character. Tom Hanks is awesome.

I'm apparently in a rambling mood today. In summary, this movie was not at all painful to watch, it held my attention and evoked some emotions, but I'm glad it wasn't a three-hour silent film.

Rating: 7/10

Big Names: George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor

Big Lines: nope :)