11/29/2007 - AFI 100 greatest movie quotes

As one of the American Film Institute's compilations, their top 100 movie quotes is probably the most fun. These are the most repeated quotes from the past century of movies and most with good reason. Some of the ones I really like, though, must be viewed in the context of the movie. Most notably, the quote from Planet of the Apes ("Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!") certainly sounds exclamatory and unique. But if you watched the movie up to the point where Charlton Heston says those words, you'll know that it was all set up to climax at that point, making it a real hurrah moment for the audience. I could easily imagine the movie theater erupting in applause at that time. It's the same thing for when Arnold says "I'll be back" in the first Terminator... it's a great sound bite for sure, given his evil Terminator monotone voice and all. However, if saw what he does next after he says it, you'll know it was a totally badass line (if you haven't watched it, I'm not going to ruin it for you).



I'm glad that a lot of the badass movie quotes made it into this list, especially those by Clint Eastwood. But I'm disappointed that they didn't have the "Yipee Ki-Yay, Motherf***er" line from all the Die Hard movies. I guess they had the censors in mind, which is too bad. It's also the reason why I didn't watch the fourth Die Hard in the theaters. By making it PG-13, they had to cut off John McClane's famous line and toned down the violence, which is pretty much sacrilege in the tradition of the Die Hard movies. I'm happy they at least put it back in for the unrated DVD, though.