This is a job for the genre police

Since when is 'sports' a proper genre? This and other questions are thrown up by the American Film Institute's recently compiled…

Since when is 'sports' a proper genre? This and other questions are thrown up by the American Film Institute's recently compiled lists of the 10 best US films in 10 genres, as voted on by 1,500 leading members of the film community. Donald Clarkeresponds to each category

Fantasy

This list demonstrates the folly of our current obsession with genre.

What sane person thinks that King Kongbelongs in the same box as Groundhog Day,or that The Lord of the Ringsis playing similar games to Big? The definition offered by the AFI - some gibberish about transcending "the rules of the natural world" - would surely allow in such classics as The Wolfman, The Exorcistand The Shining.

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But, of course, they belong in the horror list. Hang on a moment - horror films are, apparently, not respectable enough to be honoured by the AFI. How pathetic. The Wizard of Oz(left) remains unbeatable, mind you.

1 The Wizard of Oz (1939)

2 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

3 It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

4 King Kong (1933)

5 Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

6 Field of Dreams (1989)

7 Harvey (1950)

8 Groundhog Day (1993)

9 The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

10 Big (1988)

Western

John Ford's The Searchers, a film about race, destiny and self-worth, remains one of the most potently allegorical films in American cinema and deserves its place at the top. The eclectic chart also takes in a liberal homily ( High Noon, with Gary Cooper, below), a brilliant art picture (McCabe and Mrs Miller) and, puzzlingly, Cat Ballou, a comedy that is about a quarter as funny as Blazing Saddles.What else is missing? Well, Sergio Leone's early spaghetti westerns count as Italian films, but Once Upon a Time in the West, his masterpiece, is usually regarded as American. Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks's witty response to High Noon, also cries out for inclusion.

1 The Searchers (1956)

2 High Noon (1952)

3 Shane (1953)

4 Unforgiven (1992)

5 Red River (1948)

6 The Wild Bunch (1969)

7 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

8 McCabe Mrs Miller (1971)

9 Stagecoach (1939)

10 Cat Ballou (1965)

Mystery

The British Film Institute, which recently named The Third Manthe best ever British film, might baulk at its inclusion in the AFI poll. No sane human being could, however, question the worth of the first eight films in this list. Alfred Hitchcock, whose applied sadism helped define the suspense genre, deservedly occupies four of the 10 places, but Strangers on a Train, Psychoand Notoriousare, surely, all superior to Dial M for Murder.

For this critic, The Usual Suspects,though endlessly twisty, has less resonance - and is certainly less influential - than another mystery from 1995, David Fincher's Seven. A fine batch of flicks, nonetheless.

1 Vertigo (1958)

2 Chinatown (1974)

3 Rear Window (1954)

4 Laura (1944)

5 The Third Man (1949)

6 The Maltese Falcon (1941)

7 North By Northwest (1959)

8 Blue Velvet (1986)

9 Dial M for Murder (1954)

10 The Usual Suspects (1995)

Epic

You have to be suspicious of any chart - or, at least, any chart without the word "worst" in its title - that includes films as dull as The Ten Commandmentsor as downright bad as Titanic.

As in other categories, the AFI has offered such a slippery definition of the genre as to be nearly meaningless.

It seems as if all war movies can now be regarded as epics. Really? It might have been as well to tidy away All Quiet on the Western Frontand Saving Private Ryanto their own list to make way for such scandalously ignored silent movies as Intolerance, Greedand (controversy alert) The Birth of a Nation.

1 Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

2 Ben-Hur (1959)

3 Schindler's List (1993)

4 Gone With the Wind (1939)

5 Spartacus (1960)

6 Titanic (1997)

7 All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

8 Saving Private Ryan (1998)

9 Reds (1981)

10 The Ten Commandments (1956)

Science fiction

Even the multitudes that never warmed to Star Wars(count me in) would have to admit that this list manages to tick most of the required boxes. The two Kubrick films - the perennially opaque 2001 and the none-more-1970s Clockwork Orange- fly the flag for speculative sci-fi. ET, Star Warsand Back to the Futurerepresent the 1980s blockbusters. Invasion of the Bodysnatchersand The Day the Earth Stood Stillhandle 1950s paranoia. It might, however, be nice to have something properly squalid, such as Cronenberg's The Fly, or properly old, such as Whale's Bride of Frankenstein. Then again, perhaps both films belong in that conspicuously non-existent horror list. For heaven's sake!

1 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2 Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)

3 ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

4 A Clockwork Orange (1971)

5 The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

6 Blade Runner (1982)

7 Alien (1979)

8 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

9 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

10 Back to the Future (1985)

Animation

It is hard to work up much fury at the decision to include only one film - Dreamworks' passable Shrek- from outside the Disney-Pixar axis. Though Warner Brothers redefined the medium with their hilarious shorts, the "Mouse House" and its digital partner have remained the major players in American animated features for 70 years. Indeed, Pixar's recent Wall-Ealready seems conspicuous by its absence from the list. What else? The Iron Giant, Warners' under-rated 1999 epic, deserves to edge out Shrek. Toy Story 2is even better than it predecessor. And, though the animation is ho-hum, The Jungle Bookis funnier than Cinderellaand less pompous than the meretricious Fantasia.

1 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

2 Pinocchio (1940)

3 Bambi (1942)

4 The Lion King (1994)

5 Fantasia (1940)

6 Toy Story (1995)

7 Beauty and the Beast (1991)

8 Shrek (2001)

9 Cinderella (1950)

10 Finding Nemo (right, 2003)

Courtroom drama

How much time does a film have to spend in court to qualify? To Kill a Mockingbird(starring Gregoy Peck, left), a movie more adored in its home nation than abroad, certainly revolves around a legal case, but Harper Lee, author of the timeless source book, might raise an eyebrow if anyone described that work as a courtroom novel. Anyway, Kramer vs Krameris soapy, A Few Good Menis overheated and A Cry in the Darkis really a TV movie.

Given the limiting definition, it is astonishing that Inherit the Wind, Stanley Kramer's great retelling of the Scopes Monkey Trial, doesn't make it in. Oh well. At least there's no John bleeding Grisham.

1 To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

2 12 Angry Men (1957)

3 Kramer vs Kramer (1979)

4 The Verdict (1982)

5 A Few Good Men (1992)

6 Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

7 Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

8 In Cold Blood (1967)

9 A Cry in the Dark (1988)

10 Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Romantic comedy

Now we come to the most shamefully debased genre in contemporary American movies. In recent years, the romantic comedy, once the sharpest and juiciest of cinematic forms, has been transformed into the gelded, sweetened chick-flick. The AFI has managed to crowbar in one film from the past 15 years, the so-so Sleepless in Seattle, but it would be easy enough to name 20 - heck, 30 - comedies from the 1940s alone that are more deserving of mention. What about The Lady Eve, The Shop Around the Corner, His Girl Fridayor The Ghostand Mrs Muir? Also, Moonstruck is pretty pedestrian and Harold and Maudethough superb, is not really a romantic comedy.

1 City Lights (1931)

2 Annie Hall (1977)

3 It Happened One Night (1934)

4 Roman Holiday (1953)

5 The Philadelphia Story (1940)

6 When Harry Met Sally . . . (1989)

7 Adam's Rib (1949)

8 Moonstruck (1987)

9 Harold and Maude (1971)

10 Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

Gangster

The only bad film in this fine list, Brian De Palma's Scarface,is bad in ways that still prove impossible to resist, but it should, nonetheless, be ousted to make way for Michael Mann's mighty Heat. Elsewhere, the thinking fan could find a few things with which to tinker. Part II of The Godfatheris slightly better than Part I.

Reservoir Dogsis more coherent than Pulp Fiction.But what this chart really misses is a few bloody roundhouses from genuine mavericks. Where is Pickup on South Streetby Sam Fuller? What about Joseph H Lewis's Gun Crazy? Does Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly count as a gangster flick or is it a mystery? There's never a genre policeman around when you need one.

1 The Godfather (1972)

2 Goodfellas (1990)

3 The Godfather Part II (1974)

4 White Heat (1949)

5 Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

6 Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932)

7 Pulp Fiction (1994)

8 The Public Enemy (1931)

9 Little Caesar (1930)

10 Scarface (1983)

Sports

Oh, fiddlesticks! Since when has "sports" been a type of movie? You may as well regard "office" or "dentist" as a genre.

Anyway, this strange classification has provided us with the weakest list in the series. Raging Bullis, of course, an undisputed masterpiece, and it's nice to see Peter Yates's Breaking Awayremembered, but Hoosiersand Caddyshackare fairly unremarkable and National Velvet surely only qualifies as a guilty pleasure. If we must laud American sports movies then why not John Sayles's politically astute Eight Men Outor Robert Wise's dark The Set-Up?Admit documentaries and Hoop Dreamsand When We Were Kingsannihilate the opposition.

1 Raging Bull (1980)

2 Rocky (1976)

3 The Pride of the Yankees (1942)

4 Hoosiers (1986)

5 Bull Durham (1988)

6 The Hustler (1961)

7 Caddyshack (1980)

8 Breaking Away (1979)

9 National Velvet (1944)

10 Jerry Maguire (1996)