Sean Means over at the Trib reports that the American Film Institute is sending out ballots to various film-industry and scholar types so it can update its list of the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. Hard to believe it’s already been ten years since the first list came out… refer to yesterday’s post about the future being right around the corner and how did it get here so quickly?

In any event, this repolling is intended to take into consideration the movies made in the ten years since the original AFI list came out. Means included the nominees in his post, which I’ll now reprint here, along with this question for the reader: [Do these] movie[s] belong with the classics?

1. American Beauty
2. As Good As It Gets
3. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
4. The Aviator
5. A Beautiful Mind
6. Being John Malkovich
7. Boogie Nights
8. Brokeback Mountain
9. Chicago
10. Crash
11. Erin Brockovich
12. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
13. Fight Club
14. Finding Nemo
15. Gladiator
16. Good Night, and Good Luck
17. Good Will Hunting
18. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
19. Hotel Rwanda
20. The Hours
21. The Insider
22. L.A. Confidential
23. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
24. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
25. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
26. Lost in Translation
27. The Matrix
28. Memento
29. Million Dollar Baby
30. Moulin Rouge!
31. Mystic River
32. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
33. Ray
34. Requiem for a Dream
35. Rushmore
36. Saving Private Ryan
37. Shakespeare in Love
38. Shrek
39. Sideways
40. The Sixth Sense
41. Spider-Man 2
42. There’s Something About Mary
43. Three Kings
44. Titanic
45. Traffic

Looking over these selections with Means’ question in mind, I see very few titles that qualify for what I personally would consider to be “classic” status. That’s not to say these aren’t good movies, interesting movies, or well-liked movies. They’re just, by and large, not movies that I would call classics, which to my mind are both popular — i.e., they appeal to a wide cross-section of the public — and enduring, which means they retain their appeal long after their initial release and publicity cycle. “Popular” would leave out titles beloved of critics but unseen by much of the public, such as Requiem for a Dream, The Hours, and Crash, while the requirement that a classic endures ought to shake out a lot of the stuff that everyone buzzed about around Oscar seasons past but haven’t discussed or watched since. (I’d put Good Will Hunting, Sideways, Mystic River, Lost in Translation, Boogie Nights, As Good as It Gets, and A Beautiful Mind in this category.) Then there are the titles whose presence here just baffles me. Pirates 2? There’s Something About Mary? Austin Powers? While these films were certainly popular, is there really anyone who would call them classics? Come on… I know that this sort of thing is highly subjective, but… well, come on!

I could dissect this list title by title, but that would no doubt get tedious and I know my three loyal readers have things to do, so I’ll just list my own choices for the Greatest Movies of All Time That Were Produced in the Last Ten Years, were I in a position to actually vote on them. My selections are:

• Brokeback Mountain — I may be flirting with “unseen critical darling” territory on this one, but I believe it was reasonably successful at the box office. I’m also going to go out on a limb and predict that it will stand the test of time. Despite its controversial subject matter, it was the first serious movie about homosexual men that managed to reach a wide audience, and it was a damn good movie to boot, emotionally honest and powerful.
• Fight Club — I wasn’t a big fan of this brutal, grimy-looking, and depressing flick, but I know it has a loyal following among young men of a particular age. Also, I don’t see its critique of American consumer culture becoming irrelevant any time soon, so it qualifies as “popular and enduring.”
• Finding Nemo — Like Disney’s Pinocchio, Nemo is a timeless story that appeals equally to children and adults, a serious treatment of some very grown-up ideas (I would argue, in fact, that it was made more for grown-ups than the kiddies), and a visual spectacle that’s not going to diminish as technology advances.
• L.A. Confidential — Possibly this is one of those titles that gets a lot of Oscar attention and then drops off the pop-cultural radar, but I don’t think so. Movies about the dark underbelly of Los Angeles never seem to go out of style — look at Chinatown and Sunset Blvd. — and this one was a very well-made example of that particular sub-genre.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring/The Two Towers/The Return of the King — The LOTR films are definitely popular, and I think it’s a no-brainer that they will be fondly remembered and perfectly watchable decades from now. My conundrum at the moment is whether they should be treated as three separate movies or one really big whole. I’m inclined to treat them as a single entity, but if you insist, I’d say that Fellowship is actually my favorite in terms of overall viewing experience. (Why? I don’t know — I like beginnings more than endings, maybe?)
• The Matrix — I didn’t much like this movie myself, for many of the same reasons I didn’t groove on Fight Club (I hate the everything’s-filthy-and-moistly-decaying look of so many late-90s films), but it was a huge and hugely influential movie that was both a product of its era and sufficiently timeless that it should stick around.
• The Sixth Sense — The vast majority of horror movies are designed to be disposable; they’re composed of empty calories, quickly digested and just as quickly burned off. The ones that endure, however, have a little something more going on beneath the surface, and I believe that’s the case with this one. It boasts one of Bruce Willis’ finest performances (I think he’s extremely underrated myself), some genuine chills, a nifty catch-phrase, and, of course, that famous twist ending.
• Shakespeare in Love — Yeah, I know there was a big backlash against this one because it took the Best Picture oscar from Saving Private Ryan, but you know what? Ryan wasn’t as good as a lot of people think. I was bowled over by it at first, but liked it less the more I thought about it. The D-Day landing sequence was amazing, but after that the movie was much different from a lot of other war flicks, and the framing device was an outright cheat (see William Goldman’s Which Lie Did I Tell? for more on that assertion.) Shakespeare in Love, on the other hand, delighted me as much on the tenth viewing as it did on the first.
• Titanic — Another victim of post-Oscar backlash, as far as I’m concerned. Yes, it’s basically just a bodice-ripper on a sinking ship, and yes, we all got mightily sick of that damn Celine Dion tune, but I guarantee you there’s an entire generation of young women who will remember this movie as their first truly powerful cinematic experience, and anyway, I liked it, so there.

And there you go. Your mileage may (and probably will) vary from my own, but, as I noted already, these lists are really just exercises in subjective opinion. It’ll be interesting to see which of the nominated movies ends up on the new 100 Greatest List, and perhaps even more interesting to see which get bumped from the previous list to make room for the new upstarts. Feel free to leave your predictions in the comments…