The American Film Institute updated their ten-year-old list of the 100 "greatest" American films of all time this past Wednesday night. While this apparently wasn't enough time to recognize some excellent movies of a recent vintage (really, no Brokeback? No Fight Club? No Spider-Man?), several films benefited from a re-evaluation.Rocky jumped up an astonishing 21 slots to #57, just one spot behind Jaws. It's hard to invest a lot of credibility in a list that ranks Tootsie ahead of A Clockwork Orange, but this is quite an upset for the Italian Stallion. Stallone's feel-good masterpiece is often cited as one of the "worst" Oscar winners for Best Picture, the film's critical memory stuck in a perpetual 1976 of long gas lines, political malaise, and bicentennial ephemera.
But its popular memory? That's a completely different story. Perseverance never goes out of style. They can make an uber-depressing movie about Tom Hanks getting fired and dying because he has AIDS, call the damn thing Philadelphia, and they still can't remove the image of Rocky flattening Apollo Creed with a big left hook from people's minds. The city and the fictional fighter are inextricably linked forever. And with a list like this, that's all that matters. Rocky still goes the distance today.
(Bonus: The Sixth Sense appears at #89, complete with a wistful M. Night Shyamalan soundbite, and The Philadelphia Story clocks in at #44. Ask your grandpa about that one.)
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