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.