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The VCR changed everything about the way we watch movies. Instead of rushing to the theater to catch the latest release-or eagerly awaiting the annual broadcast of The Wizard of Oz (No. 88)-video means watching what you please whenever you please. No longer stuck with the movie playing on TV or at the local movie house, now we can browse among classics from Hollywood's Golden Age, last year's theatrical smashes, or shamelessly entertaining exploitation junk with equal ease. Great movies don't always make great video-on the small screen Lawrence of Arabia (1962) looks like an insurrection on an ant farm and it isn't on our list. More often, though, video allows movies overlooked in theatrical release, such as David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (No. 58), to find their true audience. And video gives that audience new ways to look at movies-with remote in hand you can replay a crucial scene, catch an errant line of dialogue, or even skip over the slow spots. To help choose the 100 movies most worth seeing at home, Entertainment Weekly asked some of America's leading movie critics to vote for their video favorites. The envelope, please 1. THE GODFATHER 1902-1959: THE COMPLETE EPIC (1977, Paramount, $99.95), also available as The Godfather (1972, Paramount, $29.95, R) and The Godfather Part II (1974, Paramount, $29.95, R) Nobody expected a film version of Mario Puzo's gangland novel TheeGodfather to be more than a bloody pulp melodrama-except perhaps director Francis Ford Coppola, who created a tragic extended metaphor for the downside of the American Dream. Visually stunning, impeccably acted, and emotionally overwhelming, the two Godfathers are available in one reedited, chronological video version (386 minutes). But in any form, they're exactly what Paramount's ad hype suggested back in '72: ''Everybody's Masterpiece.''
2. CITIZEN KANE (1941, Turner, $19.98, B&W) Orson Welles' tour de force about a newspaper tycoon who does everyone dirt is the ultimate tale of loneliness at the top. It changed the grammar of movies, making the camera as eloquent as any actor. Kane's famous dying word, ''Rosebud,'' isn't actually heard by anyone onscreen, so the reporter's effort to find out what he meant by it (the device that drives the movie) is either a big joke or a glaring oversight. We'll never know.
3. RAGING BULL (1980, MGM/UA, $19.95, R, B&W) Director Martin Scorsese believes video helped keep this movie fresh enough in critics' minds for most of them to name it one of the top 10 films of the '80s. Robert De Niro won an Oscar for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta, the tormented boxing champ who was as prone to violence outside the ring as in.
4. BLUE VELVET (1986, Warner, $19.98, R; laserdisc, $29.98) Before the derivative Twin Peaks, director David Lynch and star Kyle MacLachlan were best known for this rabid oddity, a bizarrely sensational murder mystery that defies easy comprehension. It is both perfect for video-its dense imagery begs for repeat viewings-and poorly suited to it-the edges of Lynch's wide-screen images get hacked off in the tape version. (Warner's new disc version will be ''letterboxed'' to keep the original shape.)
