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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.

#9: Vertigo

I had planned on watching a movie from the '60s or '70s for this week's column, but when my TiVo happened to catch the HD version of Vertigo playing on Cinemax for Alfred Hitchcock Month, I thought that now would be as good a time as any to knock this film off my list. You see, my memory told me that I wasn't all that fond of this thriller, and I wondered if my opinion would be different on a second viewing. After all, tastes change. I recently re-read James Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, a book I hated when I first read it 15 or so years ago, for a second time. Lo and behold, I liked it a great deal better. Would Vertigo have similarly matured, like a fine wine?

Yes and no. Has the film matured? Absolutely. Is this maturation a positive thing? Not so much.

Despite the fact that Vertigo looks absolutely glorious in HD, with bright colors, luscious scenery and striking cinematography, the movie that many consider to be Hitchcock's best just feels extremely dated today. Obviously, the famed director didn't have access to a lot of the effects that make movies look so effortless today, but when you see a guy fall to his death from a roof, it's cheesy. When the main character is suffering from nightmares and the best way to convey that is to overlay the screen with red and purple filter…well, there's a silliness to it that can't be denied.

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