Movie buffs won’t want to miss tonight’s American Film Institute special, “AFI’s 100 Movies 10th Anniversary Edition”, on CBS. Ten years ago the AFI did a special celebrating the top 100 movies of the 20th century as decided by a panel of industry professionals. The special has spawned an annual series of film retrospectives including last year’s “100 Most Inspirational Movies.“ Now tonight’s latest installment will focus on whether or not some of the most successful and critically-acclaimed movies of the last ten years will make the cut and be added to the new top 100, and which movies should begin the list of the 100 most important movies of the 21st century.
Many of the new additions to the original AFI ballot of over 300 movies have been movies we have debated right here at Idol Chatter, including “Brokeback Mountain,” “Crash,” “Good Night and Good Luck,” and “Million Dollar Baby.” Some blockbuster franchises also made the list, including “Lord of the Rings,” ”Gladiator,” “Spiderman 2,” and “The Sixth Sense.” Conspicuously absent from the list, however, are two of the more significant religious movies of the last few years–“The Passion of the Christ” and “Chronicles of Narnia.”
So what other movies do you think should be added to AFI’s list as the most meaningful and influential movies of the last decade? Does “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” belong on the same list as “The Wizard of Oz”? Is “Hotel Rwanda “ this decade’s “Schindler’s List”?
If I could only pick two films to adds to AFI’s Top 100, they would have to be the bittersweet “Lost in Translation” and the social commentary “Crash.”