AFI: Citizen Kane Apparently Quite A Good Movie

Everyone knows that the first thing you're taught at film school is how to endlessly blather on about what a masterpiece of cinema Citizen Kane is, even though you either haven't seen Citizen Kane or have seen it but generally prefer Face/Off.

That's because - even though it's a bit too long, somewhat dull and full of annoyingly shallow metaphors that don't really stand up to much scrutiny - the AFI has decided once again that Citizen Kane is the best film ever made. Film experts, historians and critics all recently put their minds together to come up with a list of the 100 greatest American films for the AFI 100 Years, 100 Movies, 10th Anniversary Edition TV show, and - possibly in an attempt to look clever and deep in front of girls - they picked Citizen Kane for the top spot. Which is fair enough, but where's Universal Soldier: The Return in the list? Nowhere, that's where. Wankers.

For entire generations, Orson Welles will always be known as the cinematic mastermind behind the voice of evil robot Unicron in the Transformers movie or as Robin Masters in two particularly thrilling episodes of Magnum PI, but apparently Orson Welles also once made a film called Citizen Kane that's supposed to be pretty OK. And that's not just our opinion - an official AFI poll has confirmed that Citizen Kane is the most pretty OK American film ever made, just like it did ten years ago.

Every time we've ever had the chance to watch Citizen Kane we've found something else to do instead, like watching Pocoyo or eating a delicious sandwich, so we can only guess at what Citizen Kane is about. And we guess that Citizen Kane is about profession wrestler Kane's hilarious attempts to become a legal citizen of Papua New Guinea. And we have every reason to believe that we're probably right. Reuters reports:

"Citizen Kane," Orson Welles' powerful portrait of an unscrupulous media baron, beat back an assault from "The Godfather," on Wednesday to retain its title as the greatest American film. Film critics, historians and experts voted "Kane" as the top U.S. film for the second time in a decade in a poll conducted by the American Film Institute. The results were revealed in a three-hour CBS special "100 Years, 100 Movies, 10th Anniversary Edition."

Oh, OK - we have seen Citizen Kane. And so have you at one point or another, probably out of a sense of misjudged duty like we did. Citizen Kane was picked as the AFI's best film ever for its innovative use of deep focus, radio-honed soundtrack, ambitious subject matter and brave artistic vision, and probably not for its relentlessly downbeat tone and weak characterisation. Also Citizen Kane, as with any film, could have probably benefited from a scene where the lead character dresses as a bear, runs up a hill and punches a woman in the face.

Still, congratulations to Citizen Kane for winning the AFI Best Movie title yet again - in addition to being called good by Time magazine two years ago - and for beating movies like The Godfather, Casablanca, Raging Bull, Singin' in the Rain, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler's List, Vertigo and The Wizard of Oz in the process. And our deepest commiserations go to Little Man, which sadly didn't feature in the top 100. May your scenes of a midget dressed as a baby trying to put his penis inside his adopted mother's mouth win the AFI's affections next time around.

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Citizen Kane Leads Godfather In Movie Poll - Reuters