Rating: 
Summary: A disgrace...
Review: A few years ago, the AFI (American Film Institute) paid a tribute to America's 100 "greatest" films. Well, I have some strong opinions about the 100 movies chosen. First off, where's The Exorcist? It's only the greatest horror movie ever made, and also one of the most influencial films of all time, it's almost laughable it didn't make the list. I personally consider The Exorcist to be the greatest movie ever made, period. What is Forrest Gump and Fargo doing on this list? Okay, I can see Fargo, maybe, but Forrest Gump? Please, it's only on the list becuase of it's many "technical acheivements." To make this short, I disagree with almost the entire list of films chosen, and if you like boring, ancient, black & white movies...well, this is for you.
Rating:
Summary: A disgrace...
Review: A few years ago, the AFI (American Film Institute) paid a tribute to America's 100 "greatest" films. Well, I have some strong opinions about the 100 movies chosen. First off, where's The Exorcist? It's only the greatest horror movie ever made, and also one of the most influencial films of all time, it's almost laughable it didn't make the list. I personally consider The Exorcist to be the greatest movie ever made, period. What is Forrest Gump and Fargo doing on this list? Okay, I can see Fargo, maybe, but Forrest Gump? Please, it's only on the list becuase of it's many "technical acheivements." To make this short, I disagree with almost the entire list of films chosen, and if you like boring, ancient, black & white movies...well, this is for you.
Rating: 
Summary: AFI will be selling all 100 videos
Review: AFI is currently offering videos of all 100 movies to members. I assume the set will be available to the general public at some point in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: All Movies are now available from AFI -- for a price
Review: AFI is now offering all 100 of the movies in VHS format in matching cases for $2500 plus shipping, etc. The extra money (they say $1500 may be tax deductible)goes to AFI for film restoration, etc, but if you don't have the extra $$ stick with Amazon. You can get many of them in DVD format for less than the $25 each AFI is charging.
Rating: 
Summary: good talk of america 's film heritage
Review: AFI's 100 Years,100 Movies is an outstanding special. It explains the richness of american cinema talking about epics like Lawrence of Arabia, horror classics like King Kong, sci-fi flicks like Star Wars,fantasy films The Wizard of Oz and powerful dramas like Citizen Kane.This special is to be cherished by those who love movies and love to see movies for all generations.
Rating:
Summary: Very Lacking
Review: First of all, AFI only reconizes English-speaking movies. Classics like "The Grand Illusion", "The Seven Samurai" or "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" are not on this list, even though they are far more superior to movies like "Forrest Gump", "Dances With Wolves" and "2001: A Space Odyssey". Also, some movies were left off this list that I couldn't understand why. Movies such as "The Exorcist", "Rain Man", "Touch Of Evil" and "The Lost Weekend". Still, there are a few movies on the list that truly deserved to be there. I'm not talking about the usual fair such as "The Godfather", "Casablanca" or "Lawrence of Arabia". These movies truly do deserve to be on this list, but movies I wouldn't expect like "The Manchurian Candidate", "Fargo" and "A Clockwork Orange". I hope the AFI puts out another list soon, only with foreign-language pictures and also they take a good long look at what they're selecting.
Rating:
Summary: Burt and Dustin, Seek Therapy, Please
Review: First of all, enough with the attacks on the list. I doubt you could make a list of "100 Movies That Most People Find Basically Tolerable" without stirring up controversy. If you're reading these reviews, you're probably less interested in AFI's decision than the quality of this DVD set.For the record, I looked at this collection for use in teaching a film class. Unfortunately, I found the series does not stand up well to that purpose. Essentially, each film gets about 6 minutes of screen time in which James Woods provides a voice-over synopsis of the plot. Yes, they give away the endings to many much-loved films. Even worse, though, plot summary is *all* this series offers. On average, each segment contains perhaps a quote or two from the director, a glimpse of a film critic with some out-of-context remark, and on to the next movie. Obviously AFI did not set out to create a comprehensive analyses of 100 films, but I cannot understand why anyone would want to buy what amounts to a 4-DVD set of Cliffs Notes. To my mind the whole thing seems pretty cynical. Not only is this clearly just an ad for AFI's film catalog, they are *charging* you [a fee]to view it.
Rating: 
Summary: A 10-hour advertisement
Review: First of all, enough with the attacks on the list. I doubt you could make a list of "100 Movies That Most People Find Basically Tolerable" without stirring up controversy. If you're reading these reviews, you're probably less interested in AFI's decision than the quality of this DVD set. For the record, I looked at this collection for use in teaching a film class. Unfortunately, I found the series does not stand up well to that purpose. Essentially, each film gets about 6 minutes of screen time in which James Woods provides a voice-over synopsis of the plot. Yes, they give away the endings to many much-loved films. Even worse, though, plot summary is *all* this series offers. On average, each segment contains perhaps a quote or two from the director, a glimpse of a film critic with some out-of-context remark, and on to the next movie. Obviously AFI did not set out to create a comprehensive analyses of 100 films, but I cannot understand why anyone would want to buy what amounts to a 4-DVD set of Cliffs Notes. To my mind the whole thing seems pretty cynical. Not only is this clearly just an ad for AFI's film catalog, they are *charging* you [a fee]to view it.
Rating:
Summary: Will there be an AFI 2?
Review: Hello, I thought lowly of AFI's 100 best movie list...sure, I guess I would expect Citizen Kane, Casablanca and The Godfather to be in the top slots, but I have to ask: were these movies chosen to be where they are on this list by critics or the movie-going public? I'd have to say critics probably picked most of the film's on the list, because I don't know many people who consider Citizen Kane to be the greatest film ever, and I think Casablanca is mostly considered dull and dated by today's standards. So movie critics I think were the big "movie-pickers", although I might say the public had a say-so as well, becuase I wouldn't expect movies like Star Wars and E.T. to be high on the list...Star Wars was placed 15 and E.T. at 21 I think. I wish that the AFI would've reconsidered a little more, I mean, more than 50% of the movies on the list are 50+ years old and I doubt are really entertaining or really *that* great nowadays. They put in some recent movies, like Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Schindler's List and Fargo - and while those movie (except for maybe Forrest Gump) are worthy of their places, I still see it ridiculous such fine films as The Exorcist, Blade Runner, A Touch of Evil and The Empire Strikes Back weren't on the list. Those films (except for maybe A Touch of Evil) had a strong impact on cinema and are very famous for their many acheivements in filmmaking. So, I'd *love* to see an AFI 100 Years...100 Movies 2 come out! Come on, there are some films that can't be ignored, but were!
Rating:
Summary: I love Great Movies
Review: I was able to watch a portion of the longer version in TV when it was broadcast here, and I can say that the content here is shortened immensely. Each movie has only about 1 minute each on the average. It lacked the personal nature and passion of the AFI 100 stars. But still it's a nice DVD just for the reason that it contains clips of some of the best movies ever made.
I think the rankings here are more controversial compared to AFI's 100 stars because a large majority of those included in the list are pretty much obvious (2 Hepburns, Davis, Fonda, Stewart, Grant etc.), but here there are tons of deserving movies that could've been in the list like The Lady Eve, Thelma and Louise, 12 Angry Men, Nashville, Woman of the Year, Mildred Pierce, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Breakfast at Tiffanys, Ninotchka, Quiet Man etc. Instead there are some really questionable entries like Guess who's coming to dinner (definitely not the movie to epitomize the Tracy-Hepburn tandem), MASH (Nashville or even The Player is a greater representation of Robert Altman), Dances with wolves, Doctor Zhivago, Forrest Gump, Rocky, Giant (East of Eden would've been more acceptable), and other movies. But there's also some wonderful surprises like The Apartment, The Deer Hunter (I love this movie), and Pulp Fiction.
As for the official rankings, here are some of my personal comments. I think Bringing Up Baby at #97 was too low, same for Vertigo at #61. Butch Cassidy was too high at # 50, same for The African Queen at #17. Grapes of Wrath and Chinatown should've been in the Top 10, Midnight Cowboy and Doctor Zhivago at #36 and #39 was too high,
So buy it if you're a fan of the AFI series, if you have money to spend buy the complete version. If you're unfamiliar with the AFI specials, buy instead the AFI 100 stars, that's a better DVD.
Grade: B
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