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We're a list society. From Casey Kasem and the American Top 40 to 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die to BOP's very own Best Horror Films (one of our most popular features ever), people love to talk about lists. They love to debate the merits of the "winners" and bemoan the exclusions, and start the whole process again when a new list captures pop culture fancy.

Perhaps one of the best-known, most widely discussed lists is the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies. A non-profit organization known for its efforts at film restoration and screen education, the AFI list of the 100 best American movies was chosen by 1,500 leaders in the movie industry and announced in its first version in 1998. Since then, the 100 Years... 100 Movies list has proven to be so popular that the AFI came forth with a 10th anniversary edition in 2007, along with other series such as 100 Heroes and Villains, 100 Musicals, 100 Laughs and 100 Thrills.

In addition to talking about which films are deserving of being on the list and bitterly shaking our fists because a beloved film was left out, we also love to brag about the number of movies we've seen. As I was looking over the 100 Years... 100 Movies list recently, I realized that I've seen 47 - less than half. As a lover of film and writer/editor for a movie site, this seemed like a wrong that needed to remedied. And so an idea was born. I would watch all 100 movies on the 2007 10th Anniversary list - some of them for the first time in as much as 20 or more years - and ponder their relevance, worthiness and influence on today's film industry. With luck, I'll even discover a few new favorites along the way.

#13: Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

As I watched Star Wars for what is probably the 15th time in my life, I found myself taking a little nostalgia trip. I truly feel a little sadness for anyone who wasn't alive in 1977, when Star Wars was released into theaters. Sure, summer blockbusters are old hat now. Every studio hangs its hat on some effects-driven monstrosity that is intended to drive revenue into the stratosphere. But back then, it was still quite novel. Jaws had opened the door in 1975, but Star Wars...well, Star Wars was something singular.

Put together on a budget of $11 million, Star Wars (and we called it Star Wars then. No colon or hyphenate names. No episodes. It was Star Wars, plain and simple.) went on over time to amass a stunning $798 million worldwide. That's enough to put it ahead of such modern flicks as Spider-Man 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Transformers.

I'm not even sure how I can properly impress upon people who didn't experience it how much of a phenomenon the film was. Star Wars was everywhere. There were toys galore - and kids really, really wanted them. I had various types of Luke and Leia action figures, from smaller sizes on up to full-size dolls. There were novelizations of the film that filled bookshelves. There were posters, there were lunchboxes, there were T-shirts and there were novelty record albums. There was even a Christmas special, poorly remembered though it may be. I was taking dance lessons at the time, and one of my numbers in the annual dance recital was set to Star Wars music and featured a group with light sabers and a group that was meant to resemble C-3PO (it was a huge hit with the crowd). I'm not sure there's ever been a cultural touchstone like this film.

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