Prologue

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

and by that I mean last week, I decided after reading the TIME 100 Best Movies List that I was far too ignorant in the category of classic movies. However, after a suggestion from a friend, I decided AFI's list was better, and that I wanted to focus my self-motivated film education on American films (the TIME list also had foreign films). My original estimate of how many of the movies I had seen was seven, and fortunately it is more like sixteen. That being said, however, I still wanted to have seen all 100. One might ask why? The short answer is that it is just good to have seen all the classic movies that have created our modern movie culture. A more lofty answer (and possibly a more pretentious one) would be that movies are so telling of the culture at the time and are more often than not zeitgeists. So, this movie education could also serve as a cultural education, for I don't really feel I have a comprehensive understanding of many decades I probably should know more about.

A more personal reason for pushing myself to do this is that I have recently taken an interest to screenwriting, and if I at all plan to go into that field later in life, I feel these movies are mandatory in order to begin to call myself an aspiring screenwriter.

The school year, however, is starting up quite soon, so my goal might be a little too ambitious. We'll see.

I was originally going to watch them in order, starting with 100 and ending with 1, but in order to accelerate the process, I decided to watch what is available on Netflix Instant Play while I wait for the movies that are only available on DVDs.

So, without further adieu, I will start with the first movie I watched, Bonnie and Clyde.