Face it: Requiem For a Dream's final 20 minutes are totally uplifting

While so much of the movie world cynically sleepwalks through pre-chewed holiday previews and Oscar prognostications, the folks at the American Film Institute shuttled an institutional-size bottle of Prozac around the office in preparing its latest themed list of 100 Best or Most or Insert-P.R.-Ready-Hyperbole-Here Movies:

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers: America’s Most Inspiring Movies will count down America’s 100 most inspiring films, as chosen by experts of the motion picture community, in a three-hour television event on the CBS Television Network in June 2006. ...

"Over the years, the movies have given us something to cheer about," stated Jean Picker Firstenberg, AFI's Director and CEO. "The past few years have not been easy in America--from September 11th to the devastation of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers will celebrate the films that inspire us, encourage us to make a difference and send us from the theatre with a greater sense of possibility and hope for the future." ...

Movies that (qualify) inspire with characters of vision and conviction who face adversity and often make a personal sacrifice for the greater good. Whether these movies end happily or not, they are ultimately triumphant--both filling audiences with hope and empowering them with the spirit of human potential.

So basically, we are talking about the Special Olympics of film. AFI namechecks movies as disparate as Apollo 13, The Sound of Music and even The Passion of the Christ (son of God--a real underdog story there) in helping to define its criteria, into which the organization has lumped 300 movies on a ballot sent out to 1,500 members. However, AFI offers a write-in component in case you want to make an argument for Dr. Strangelove's nuclear holocaust being kind of ironically reassuring.

Which reminds me: This is the kind of abomination that could only happen in Hollywood, but I would be intrigued to hear readers' thoughts on what you think are the most inspiring New York films. Personally, I have always latched onto the heroism in Travis Bickle's rampaging psychosis that concludes Taxi Driver, and not too much beats the open-ended closing shots of Sweet Smell of Success or Manhattan.

But that is just me. I guess maybe they are looking for Miracle on 34th Street or something. Either way, it seems clear enough that they might need your help.