‘100 Films: A Feminist Eyeroll Through the AFI Canon’

An unapologetically feminist takedown of Hollywood’s most hallowed films—where the men get mythologized, the women get sidelined, and greatness always seems to come with a side of misogyny.

The American Film Institute’s Top 100 list has long been held up as cinema’s sacred scroll—a who's-who of "greatness" where celluloid legends are enshrined in amber and no woman is ever more than a plot twist away from disappearing. These films are taught in classrooms, quoted in dorm rooms, and dusted off in retrospectives like holy relics. But greatness, as it turns out, has a type: white, male, hetero, and frequently holding a gun, a cigarette, or a woman by the wrist.

Here’s the thing: many of these films are masterpieces. Technically, narratively, historically. They changed cinema. But they also built a myth—of male heroism, female disposability, and suffering as a masculine virtue. They taught us how to watch movies, yes—but also who gets to be watched, who gets to speak, and who gets to be a symbol while someone else gets an arc.

So what happens when we revisit this canon—not with reverence, but with rage? Not to knock the artistry, but to question the mythology?

What follows are 100 reviews of the so-called greatest American films of all time, through the lens of a justifia jaded film critic who has seen one too many close-ups of male redemption and not nearly enough women allowed to want something other than being loved, left, or sainted. The gaze is shifted. The sacred cows are skewered. The lauded are lanced. And yes, there will be blood (but mostly in slow motion, scored by a string section, and filmed from the male point of view).

Consider this your guided tour through the canon—scratched, dented, and desperately overdue for a feminist restoration. Welcome to the real director’s cut.