American Film Institute's Top 100 Misses the Mark

No Red River, The Wind, Little Big Man, Mean Streets, The Bank Dick, Sweet Smell of Success...

Listen, I appreciate the exquisitely silly irony of an ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY writer making these criticisms, especially since this magazine has made a cover story out of just about every list shy of The 100 Greatest Films Beginning With the Letter B. But the august, nonprofit AFI should be above populism—or at least it was until Congress decimated the NEA budget and the AFI had to resort to promotional circus shenanigans. And, all right, I admit that anything that gets couch spuds to consider an old movie as something more than a click-through on the TV remote is a wondrous thing. But aren't 100 Greatest Movies lists supposed to remind us of what the medium is capable of in terms of craft, expression, and, yes, entertainment? And doesn't this one just tell us pleasant things about ourselves?