Sunday Showdown: AFI vs IMDb (#81)

#81: Spartacus (AFI) vs. All About Eve (IMDb) 

I never would’ve known that Kubrick directed Spartacus based on the film. After all, it made sense, had a coherent story, and reasonable characters.

Sadly, I still didn’t like Spartacus. Not because of Kubrick, but because of history. Like Titanic, history had already told me how this story ended – with a lot of dead people.  Knowing everybody dies horribly does not endear a movie to me.  Buzz kill. Seriously.

And while I didn’t have any real problem with the movie (besides the serious buzz kill) I did not see anything about it that suggested top 100 to me, either. It was just okay. I liked Ben Hur better.

Bette Davis - not afraid to fight growing old.

But All About Eve… Well, All About Eve I loved. Truly, this film epitomizes why I’m doing this challenge in the first place.  A movie I had never seen, might never have seen apart from this challenge. I’m so glad I did. Witty. Fabulous.  Bette Davis. What’s not to love?

Some of the more superb quotes from All About Eve:

Heaven help me. I love a psychotic!

Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster? You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman.

Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!

So it’s no contest for me: All About Eve over Spartacus. All About Eve shows up again as AFI’s #28 against… wait for it… Se7en – David Fincher’s mindf… er, bender. 

	AFI’s Top 100	IMDB’s Top 100 (as of 1/1/12)
#81	Spartacus (1960)	All About Eve (1950)
#82	Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)	Amadeus (1984)
#83	Titanic (1997)	Once Upon A Time in America (1984)
#84	Easy Rider (1969)	The Green Mile (1999)
#85	A Night at the Opera (1935)	Full Metal Jacket (1987)
#86	Platoon (1986)	2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
#87	12 Angry Men (1957)	Inglorious Basterds (2009)
#88	Bringing Up Baby (1938)	The Great Dictator (1940)
#89	Sixth Sense (1999)	Braveheart (1995)
#90	Swing Time (1936)	The Bicycle Thief (1948)
#91	Sophie’s Choice (1982)	The Apartment (1960)
#92	Up (2009)	Goodfellas (1990)
#93	The French Connection (1971)	Downfall (2004)
#94	Pulp Fiction (1994)	Gran Torino (2008)
#95	The Last Picture Show (1971)	Metropolis (1927)
#96	Do The Right Thing (1989)	The Sting (1973)
#97	Blade Runner (1982)	Gladiator (2000)
#98	Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)	The Maltese Falcon (1941)
#99	Toy Story (1995)	Unforgiven (1992)
#100	Ben Hur (1959)	The Elephant Man (1980)

Next week my first of many repeats on the list: Billy Wilder’s The Apartment vs. the first truly foreign film on IMDb’s list: Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon.