June 18, 2008 
source: afi.com/10top10
The American Film Institute has today revealed the results of their poll to find the top 10 films from 10 classic genres.
The genres included Animation, Romantic Comedy, Western, Sports, Mystery, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Gangster, Courtroom Drama and Epic.
The #1 Animation was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Modern CG Hits like Toy Story, Shrek and Finding Nemo placed 6th, 8th and 10th respectively.
The best Romantic Comedy was Charlie Chaplin‘s City Lights, just beating my personal favourite, Annie Hall.
The greatest Western was John Wayne’s slow burn morality tale, The Searchers.
The #1 Sports film was the Scorcese/DeNiro boxing flick Raging Bull, which successfully KO’d Rocky into 2nd place.
The #1 Fantasy was The Wizard of Oz – although we’ve got to give a special mention to Groundhog Day which came in at number 7. Nice one, AFI!
The most popular Science Fiction film was 2001: A Space Odyssey, topping the most competitive category, and beating Star Wars, E.T. and Back to the Future.
The most popular Courtroom Drama (and who DOESN’T love a courtroom drama?) was To Kill a Mockingbird.
The most mysterious Mystery was Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo. The legendary auteur also placed on this list with Rear Window at 3, North By Northwest at 6 and Dial M for Murder at 9.
The #1 Gangster film was The Godfather, outranking Goodfellas and The Godfather Part 2.
Finally, the all time greatest Epic (according to whoever voted) is Lawrence of Arabia, proving itself to be bigger than Ben-Hur (which ranked 2nd).
Check out the whole list here:
http://www.afi.com/10top10/
All-in-all, it’s a pretty good roundup of films here. Although there are always a few notable exceptions. For instance, surely Lord of the Rings wasn’t the ONLY worthy live-action film of the last decade.
Was there anything you would have rather seen in here? Let us know – after all, what good are these arbitrary lists if they don’t spark a good old fashioned debate?
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What qualifies Star Wars as sci-fi? It’s more fantasy than science fiction. And I’m deeply disappointed at the omission of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I guess Star Wars is a tricky one – it kind of blurs into a few different genres. I’m definately with you on the Close Encounters snub. Let’s add to the list The Empire Strikes Back and The Matrix!
Most of it I agree with but I think;*Ghost in the Shell deserves to be in Sci-Fi and should take the place of Terminator 2 (even if I was an emotionless robot I couldn’t stop myself wanting to kill Eddie Furlong).* Usual Suspects could have been higher but that’s a great field.* Crouching Tiger should have gotten a nod in Epics but I don’t know which to take out for it.This is the best list I’ve seen in a long time in that I agree with almost all their choices. Possibly War movies deserve their own Genre.P.S. I see that it’s American films now but I’ve already written so much I can’t bear to delete it.
It’s hard to take seriously any list of “Best 10 Films” that ignores anything made outside the US. Let’s see. Animation: Akira, Ghost in the Shell or Spirited Away Mystery: The Crying GameAn epic list with no Kirosawa? (Seven Samurai, RAN) or Das Boat. Let’s not forget that Titanic had a completely shocking script.