The eighty or so best films of the 21st century and some others.

Film Best films of a thing listicles aren't usually something to become enraged by. People have opinions, I have opinions those opinions don't usually match.

Yesterday NowTV set me up with a month's subscription to reality TV streaming service Hayu and even if just scrolling through the content turns me straight into Max von Sydow in Hannah and Her Sisters, I know there are people who find great comfort in watching rich people being silly and who am I to argue?  Who cares what a snob like me thinks?

But, friends, The Guardian's 100 best films of the 21st century is bullshit.

Oh no, hold on, I can't argue with the film in the top slot, even if Peter Bradshaw's longer analysis misses what makes it truly great, that as David Bordwell's analysis shows, it changes the language of cinema in a way which we're still seeing the effects of.

Plus it finds room for Stories We Tell and Gravity and 13th and Margaret (although it doesn't specify the three hour version, which is the true masterpiece).

The rest of the list, though, is filled with some absolute howlers.

Topper most: 

Inception isn't included.

The Guardianistas have The Dark Knight as their Christopher Nolan choice which is fine even if having it as the only one comic book movie when that is the prevailing and most prominent film genre of the past twenty years is not.  Take you pick of Marvel films.  They'll all do.

Except this list also includes Borat, which hasn't aged well and now looks like a "borderline" racist folly, the existentialist bore Anomalisa as the Charlie Kaufmann choice when Synecdoche, New York exists (as does everything Ardmann's released) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (which admittedly I haven't seen but can't be a better Tarantino than any of the others he's released in the past two decades).

But not including Inception here, is like ignoring The Matrix when listing 90s films.

As I proposed back in my original feverish review (nine years ago) (I'm old and so is this blog), Inception is "a film that has all the excitement of a typical summer action blockbuster but with all the intelligence and weight and beauty of a Tarkovsky film". 

It demonstrates that the audience is crying out for films which ask weighty questions and has great thematic heft as well as spectacle, not mention its visionary mix of practical and digital set design notably in the corridor sequence.

There are other howlers.  Ted rather than Bridesmaids, no Chalet Girl, a preponderance of miserablist films in general (is Nebraska really better than Hail Caesar?) but leaving out Inception shows a certain lack of appreciation for film history.  Fools.