Best Movies

My consideration of the best Christmas songs led me to other bests, naturally best movies and books. I’m good with movies, having seen damn near every film ever made. Lots of critics think Citizen Kane is the best ever, but I have to confess I’ve never seen it, so I can’t really rank it. Others say Casablanca, and again I must confess I’ve never seen it. How can that be for a rabid film viewer to have never seen either of these films? I don’t know. Maybe I’d better Netflix them. Aside from those two, here’s my list for straight drama in descending order: On the Waterfront, Gone with the Wind, From Here to Eternity, The African Queen, Picnic, and The Graduate. You’ll notice that none of them are from the last thirty years. I know there have been some great movies in that period, but they’re still too close to me. Best musicals? An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain. That’s it, no more. Best horror—what else but Psycho, followed by The Innocents and The Uninvited. The many many horror flicks in the last thirty or forty years are based too much on buckets and buckets of gore. That much blood and too many masked villains leaping out of closets don’t make for great films, sometimes not even very good films. War movies—Saving Private Ryan, The Bridge over the River Kwai, The Great Escape, Schindler’s List, Mash, and Stalag 17. Again, All Quiet on the Western Front is always mentioned, but again, I’ve never seen it. Science fiction—2001, a Space Odyssey and Star Wars. What about a genre that’s almost forgotten, the western? Okay, Shane, Stagecoach, Red River, and The Searchers. You’ll notice I’m leaving out High Noon. That’s because when I saw it a year or so ago, I realized just how hokie it was, despite Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. Now I’m at the bottom of my categories, prison flicks. The best of these has to be The Shawshank Redemption, The Bird Man of Alcatraz, and The Green Mile.

I know I must have left out a bunch that I simply didn’t think of. Let me know if you think of any that should be included. Let me know if you agree or disagree with my assessment. And tomorrow I’ll move on to actors and actresses and books.