Posts Tagged ‘The Empire Strikes Back’

National Film Registry Adds 25 More Films

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

The National Film Registry has announced this year’s selection of 25 important films worthy of preservation, and there are a lot of gems on the list:

  1. Airplane! (1980)
  2. All the President’s Men (1976)
  3. The Bargain (1914)
  4. Cry of Jazz (1959)
  5. Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967)
  6. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
  7. The Exorcist (1973)
  8. The Front Page (1931)
  9. Grey Gardens (1976)
  10. I Am Joaquin (1969)
  11. It’s a Gift (1934)
  12. Let There Be Light (1946)
  13. Lonesome (1928)
  14. Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
  15. Malcolm X (1992)
  16. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
  17. Newark Athlete (1891)
  18. Our Lady of the Sphere (1969)
  19. The Pink Panther (1964)
  20. Preservation of the Sign Language (1913)
  21. Saturday Night Fever (1977)
  22. Study of a River (1996)
  23. Tarantella (1940)
  24. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)
  25. A Trip Down Market Street (1906)

Airplane!, The Exorcist, The Empire Strikes Back and The Pink Panther are all great films, arguably among the top 100 ever made. I believe it was K. W. Jeter who said that the student version of THX 1138 was much better than the theatrical release, so I’ve always been curious to see that. Strangely enough, I’m also curious about Saturday Night Fever, despite my loathing of disco, as many critics (the late Gene Siskel among them) consider it one of the great films of the 1970s, and National Review‘s John Derbyshire says it’s one of the best films about blue collar American life ever made. I also remember Dwight being impressed with Malcolm X, despite not having seen Malcolm I–IX.

Of course, a lot of these are notable only for being early examples of the form rather than gripping cinema, such as Newark Athlete:

Or A Trip Down Market Street:

Let There Be Light is John Huston’s pioneering documentary on the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following World War II:

And Our Lady of the Sphere is sort of like Terry Gilliam’s work on Monty Python, but not as interesting:

Then again, it was made in San Francisco in 1969, so there’s nothing about it that can’t be explained by the phrase “Dude, I was so high…”

Two More Movie Lists

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Andrew “Armed and Dangerous” Wimsatt sent me a list of Empire’s 500 Greatest Films of All Time. Since that list is broken up into lots of sub-pages, here it is in a more convenient “all on one page” format. (It also avoids the annoying smart quote artifacts that infest every page of the main Empire listings; are these people incapable of downloading a copy of Firefox?)

In many ways this is the mirror image of the Sight and Sound poll I had previously mentioned: Long on crowd-pleasers and cult films and short on European art house fair. While it’s hard to take seriously any “Best of” list that includes Transformers, it was gratifying to see under-rated gems like Hot Fuzz and The Prestige there. And you have to give a list that ranks Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back higher than Citizen Kane props for having the courage of its convictions.

Also, here’s Roger Ebert’s 250 Great Movies, which is sort of in-between the two.