Posts by Kerri Smith
Kerri Battles the AFI’s Top 100 — #85: A Night at the Opera
Each week, I check the AFI list to see what’s on deck. Each week, I’d see A Night at the Opera and cringe. I wasn’t familiar with the title, and, judging by that alone, I figured it had to be some crusty, black and white “classic” romance where some poor Cinderella type gets her one fairy…
Read MoreKerri Battles the AFI’s Top 100 — #86: Platoon
I’ve been dreading this one since last week, when I first realized it was on deck. Platoon came out in 1986 and had earned a place in our home VHS library when I was a kid, so I’ve already seen it more times than a person really needs to. There’s no doubt that it’s a well…
Read MoreKerri Battles the AFI’s Top 100 — #87: 12 Angry Men
In the early days of cable television, AMC used to stand for American Movie Classics and they used to air classic American movies around the clock, broken up only by short Masterpiece-Theater-style commentary by the likes of people like James Lipton. Sometime during those days when networks were overtly named based on their content, when…
Read MoreKerri Battles the AFI’s Top 100 — #88: Bringing Up Baby
I really thought we were in for a winner this week, folks. I figured I knew all I needed to know of the plot based on the movie poster: two immensely talented actors get mixed up in some crazy hijinks involving a big cat. It sounded like a recipe for some classic laughs. I’d been…
Read MoreKerri Battles the AFI’S Top 100 — #89: The Sixth Sense
I saw The Sixth Sense once, sometime around when it came out. I remember being quite surprised by the ending, too, so I must have seen it in the theaters on opening weekend because god knows that shit wasn’t a surprise for much longer after that. I think The Sixth Sense might be why the internet invented…
Read MoreKerri Battles the AFI’s Top 100 — #90: Swing Time
GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I was this week. After years of only seeing clips here and there of their awesome talent, I was finally going to sit down and watch an honest to goodness, feature length Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers classic! There was no doubt…
Read MoreKerri Battles The AFI’s Top 100: #91 – Sophie’s Choice
I have been referencing Sophie’s Choice for jokes for years — probably more than a decade. It amuses me to no end to compare having to choose just one ice cream topping out of 100 delicious ones to Nazis forcing a mother to choose which of her 2 children will live. What can I say?…
Read MoreKerri Battles the AFI’s Top 100 – #92: Goodfellas
I’ve always had a mild obsession with the idea of the Mafia. When I was 13 and we took a family vacation to San Francisco, I couldn’t wait to see Al Cap0ne’s cell at Alcatraz. In 10th grade English, when my class was assigned a research paper on a topic of our choosing, I wrote about…
Read MoreKerri Battles the AFI’s Top 100 – #93: The French Connection
This week’s selection was The French Connection, starring young Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider and ostensibly about some kind of crime involving France. At least, that’s about the extent of what I knew going in to my premier viewing. This is actually another film that I’d like to officially add to the list of Mythical…
Read MoreKerri Battles the AFI’s Top 100 – #94: Pulp Fiction
1994 was a pretty big year in Hollywood. That was the year that all of your all-time favorite movies were released. It was the year that Andy Dufresne taught us all that hope will set us free. It was the year we all learned that life is like a box of chocolates. Brandon Lee came…
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