Lists, lists, lists.... Any editor will tell you that lists are clickbait -- the stuff that drives web traffic. The 20 best bookstores in the world. The 30 essential jazz albums. The top ten places for American ex-pats to live. Thirty-seven pasta recipes that will change your life -- and your girth.
And just today the arts team and film critics at The Guardian have posted a doozy: The 100 best films of the 21st century. Why now, in 2019, I don't know, but how can you not look at this and think yup, that's right (Capernaum, A Prophet), and yes, good one (Sarah Polley's meta-documentary/family history, Stories We Tell) and the number one movie: Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood-- that might just be it.
But, inevitably, there are serious omissions here, as well as some laughable inclusions. (Comedy is always tricky, but putting Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (no. 70) and Ted (Mark Wahlberg and his potty-mouthed teddy bear-- no. 60) on the list at least allows us to pinpoint where the Guardian crits position themselves on the humor spectrum.
So here are my three biggest cries of "What, no...'s," the how-could-you-forget-about screams of injustice, my top 3 list of where The Guardian went wrong:
3) Into the Wild, the devastatingly sad, beautiful 2007 road movie, directed by Sean Penn, adapting the Jon Krakauer biographical novel.
2) Michael Clayton (also 2007), Tony Gilroy's taut, multi-layered legal thriller/existential drama, starring George Clooney.
and 1), the BIGGEST OMISSION OF ALL: Birdman, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s fierce, funny, breathless dive into the head of a movie star in the throes of mental, spiritual and professional crisis -- with Michael Keaton in a career-defining performance.
Birdman operates on a whole other plane of existence (I'm stealing from my Philadelphia Inquirer review, and here comes a statement right up there on the chutzpah scale akin to posting "The 100 best films of the 21st century" only 19 years into the century... ) Birdman, I wrote, "is exhilarating moviemaking, an out-of-the-blue masterwork that ranks as one of the best films of not just the year, but the decade, the century."
So there.
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