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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.

#5: Singin' in the Rain

It had been a Very Bad Week, and I needed something uplifting. Walking through the aisles of Blockbuster, I considered It Happened One Night, Annie Hall and Bringing Up Baby before finally deciding that my next update would focus on a film from a genre that always brings me great pleasure - the musical. Somehow, I'd never seen Singin' in the Rain, the movie that is generally considered to be the very best of them all. Sure, I'd seen bits and pieces of it, and as I watched the movie, I realized I knew every single song (though this is partly because only one tune is original to the film). But I needed something to chase my blues away, even if only for a moment, and a lighthearted romp full of singing and dancing seemed just the thing.

Boy, was it ever.

Singin' in the Rain has a high place of regard on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list, sitting as it does at number five (it tops their separate list of musicals). There are plenty of reasons for such significant acclaim. The direction, the dancing, the performances, the set pieces, the music, and the underlying themes all play impacting roles in making Singin' in the Rain a truly special movie experience.

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