The A List: The National Society of Film Critics' 100 Essential Films

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Summary: Many hours of mind challenging fun
Review: As a self professed film fan, I bought this book browsing though a store's shelves. I am so lucky to have picked it because this book (along with a subscription to Netflix) has brought me hours of mind challenging enjoyment. I can't think of a better way to explore the history of film outisde of a classroom setting.

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Summary: Very Happy
Review: Being a major film fan of all styles & an emerging film critic, this "Best Of" book immediately caught my attention. Such an eclectic collection of films, it makes for riveting reading. Any book of essays regarding great films that includes "Happy Together" is, in my opinion definitely worth a look......Film Fans Rejoice!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Very Happy
Review: Being a major film fan of all styles & an emerging film critic, this "Best Of" book immediately caught my attention. Such an eclectic collection of films, it makes for riveting reading. Any book of essays regarding great films that includes "Happy Together" is, in my opinion definitely worth a look......Film Fans Rejoice!!!!!!!!!!!

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Summary: Ho Hum..... Yet Another Middlebrow's Guide to Mediocrity
Review: Here we go again. Yes. One more recycling of the obvious, the trite, the usual rounding up of the usual suspects.Jay Carr is a middlebrow reviewer (a lover of mainstream movies who writes for a mass circulation newspaper) and this book is a display of his middlebrow taste and sensibiliy. All of the films are the predictable choices. Even many of the essays are not new, but decades old reprints of pieces that shouldn't have been published in the first place. This book displays no evidence of orginality, has no discoveries, no passion, nothing new. I guess if you are an 18 year old high school student, there might be something for you in this, but if you know the first thing about the top ten, top fifty, and top one hundred lists that have been issued every year for the past half century, you will learn nothing here that you don't already know ten times over. Even Ebert, never known to be a deep thinker, has more new to say, more new thoughts, more new choices, and more passion than this institutional product of an institutional mind.

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Summary: Great crash-course in world cinema, despite some pretension
Review: I hope to one day become a film scholar, and I approached this book of essays not necessarily to judge the merits of the NSC's selections, but instead to have a convenient resource through which I could learn about world cinema throughout history. I was not disappointed. More than any of the other recent "greatest films" lists, the NSC's 100 Essential Films are extremely diverse and international in scope. Soon after reading just a few of the essays, I noticed a significant improvement in my "cinematic literacy." Before reading these essays, I knew next to nothing about important films from Poland, Czecheslovakia, Iran, or many other nations. Now, I am able to recognize and discuss major actors, directors, and film movements from across the globe.
In addition to titles that always appear on such lists, like Citizen Kane, Rashomon, or Battleship Potemkin, the NSC also includes more obscure but arguably still "essential" films like The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith or Killer of Sheep (some of which aren't available for viewing outside of a few museum archives).
The A List has also helped me determine which film critics I enjoy reading and which ones should be avoided on the basis of their overwhelming pretentiousness. I have begun pulling out Andrew Sarris's writings at gatherings and reading them aloud for laughs (especially his unbelievably pompous review of Blow-Up, rife with bombast like "sub-Pinteresque dialogue," which for me epitomizes all that is film snobbery and elitism). Other essays seem strangely edited, perhaps cut off abruptly, or are scarcely more than blurbs from decades-old publications. Happily, though, most of the essays are thorough, enjoyable, and accessible to anyone interested in getting their feet wet in the basics of world cinema. For film-lovers, The A List can be a wonderful jumping-off point for a lifetime of moviegoing.

Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I love this book. I got it a couple years ago, and it never stays on my shelf. Every few weeks I pull it down to read the essay on a movie I've just seen or to get ideas for another movie to rent. I admire the National Society of Film critics for picking some unusual choices. Some so unusual that it's hard to find the films.
I recommend this book to any film buff, or to anyone that wants to become a film buff. It's a great place to start.

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Summary: Discover Great Films
Review: There can never be a definitive list of the 100 greatest movies ever made that satisfies everyone, but this particular list has a lot going for it. Each film is alloted about three pages of commentary that deals with the origins of the film, why critics love it, why it has endeared itself to the general public, what is so significant about it in the context of film history. All the essays are great fun to read before and after watching a particular film. I have made it an ambition to watch as many of these films as are available on VHS and DVD. (I have so far seen about 60+ movies on the list). The list is commendably broad-based, with a fair number of Asian and European films. Yes, the usual suspects are there (Citizen Kane, Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia), but, if for nothing else, I must thank this book for having introduced me, someone who is not a student of film, to films and film-makers I hadn't even heard of before, but who have since established a place in my heart. It was here that I discovered Carl Dreyers' powerful film The Passion of Joan of Arc, and Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, which is the most sublimely beautiful movie I have ever seen. Surprisingly, the critics have steered clear of being too arcane in their choices; there are nods here to B-movies, Hollywood musicals, Hong Kong martial arts flicks, summer blockbusters, westerns, science fiction. Rather than being a list of the GREATEST (Enter the Dragon! Jailhouse Rock!), this is really a list of the most INFLUENTIAL films across a range of genres. So you will find one or two representatives of German expressionism, Italian neo-realism, French New Wave, Russian montage, film-noir, etc., but you can easily think of many films that, aesthetically, are greater than some of the movies on this list but have not been included because they are not considered as influential. How else can you explain the inclusion of ,say, Close Encounters of the Third Kind but not Apocalypse Now? Perhaps the latter was left out because Coppola already has Godfather on the list. (But Federico Fellini has three of his films included, Spielberg and Kurosawa two each.) I would have liked to see a Jacques Tati film represented, and also one from Indian Bollywood. Overall, if you treat this as a guide that leads you to discover more films that are not on the list, then you will open up before you a wonderful world of films not restricted to just Hollywood.

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Summary: Interesting!
Review: This is a very good book that features informative and interesting essays on 100 of the best films ever made. The films were selected by the National Society of Film Critics, a very distinguished organization. You may or may not be surprised to find that some of the most popular films ever made aren't listed, but many popular films are. Some of the films included on the list are "Psycho" (1960), the 1915 French/silent serial film "Les Vampires", "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) and "Sunset Boulevard" (1950). This is a very interesting book that gives detailed information on the 100 best movies ever made and what makes them so important to cinema history. Highly recommended!

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Summary: Another Great "Great Films" Book
Review: This is another book of reviews of 100 great films, this time by 44 members of the National Society of Film Critics under the editorship of Jay Carr, film critic of the Boston Globe. The complete title is the rather Victorian sounding "The A List: the National Society of Film Critics' 100 Essential Films." The lengthy title was designed, I am certain, to weed out the people who lack the attention span to enjoy great films.

This list is not identical to Roger Ebert's "The Great Films" (2002). Though Ebert reviews 102 films (he calls the Apu Trilogy one film) and "The A List" reviews 107 (even more groups), they have only 47 films in common, less than half of either list. Is one of them lying? Can a film be "great" but not "esssential" or vice versa? The answer, dear reader, is that a list of the 100 best films is a very elusive beast, impossible to track down with any certainty. There is yet another list of 100 great films (there is no end to such lists), the Cinema Century Top One Hundred list, compiled by the editors of "Time Out" magazine in 1995, based on questionnaires sent to more than 100 directors, actors, critics, etc., and containing 109 films (due again to group ratings and to many ties in the rankings at the bottom end). That list has only 46 and 40 films in common with the other two. Only 26 films are common to all three lists. If we took ten lists, we might find that they have only "Citizen Kane," "Potemkin," and "The 400 Blows" in common. Seekers of the best 100 films be warned: the situation is hopeless,... but not serious. The 162 distinct films in the combined "The Great Movies" and "The A List" are almost all great. (I have more misgivings about some of the films in the Cinema Century Top One Hundred list, which are due, I believe, to the way that list was constructed.)

"The A List" makes a stronger attempt to be representational than does Roger Ebert's "The Great Movies," which leads, I think, to some less than great choices, no doubt the reason for the adjective "essential" rather than "great." I doubt that I will ever be convinced that "Jailhouse Rock" (1957) (the representative Elvis film) or "Enter the Dragon" (1973) (the representative Kung Fu flick) are great. But these are my ONLY quibbles. That still leaves 105 great films (assuming I can trust the editors on a few of these), a real bargain, since the publisher charges for only 100. These 105 are films that everyone should see. (Good luck, however, trying to find "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" (1978) at your local video store.) There are a few more non-Eurocentric films in this book than in "The Great Movies" and a few titles that you may not recognize. The reviews are all excellent. If you have a strong affection for Roger Ebert's reviews, you can find four of them here, identical, it seems, (apart from the position of paragraph breaks) to the corresponding reviews in "The Great Movies." Should you buy both? I think so, and did!

Another great gift book.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Tool for the Film Fan
Review: Use this book as a buying-guide reference and feel confident that every film listed herein IS a true classic, in every sense of the word!
Once you've selected a handful or so to watch, go back and re-read the A-list review. In no time at all, you'll become a broader-minded individual and will be one step closer to breaking out of the conformist mentality that today's Hollywood mainsteam wish you to remain in in ignorance. Become one of the enlightened - buy (and read) this book today!