I Got Your Cinema Right Here

The Ballsiest Picks for This Century’s 100 Best Movies

“How could I forget about you?” asks the lead in one of Mel Brooks’s favorite  movies,  “You’re the only person I know.”

Right you are, it’s memory-wiped Jason Bourne, the film is “The Bourne Identity,” and it’s a Brooks pick as one of the ten best movies of the current century.

You couldn’t call it a frenzy, but the interweb does seem to be funneling many of us into that odd zone of self-revelation  spawned by the New York Times culture desk, choosing the ten best films of the 21^stCentury. (Listicles tried to kill journalism; are they now praying to save it?)

For a number of reasons, one can hardly take it all seriously—the more deeply artsy kinds of films that fill most lists now sit in the Hollywood dunce chair, sidleined even as the American democratic experiment deteriorates due to a rampaging oligarchy—but why not have some fun with it?

This chronicler is not going to post a personal choice of ten, lest an uncontrollable grappling for prestige leads me to pick certain obscure French dramas to name as the apogee of serious cinephilia.

But how about a list derived from the top ten's of better-known folks, and see what piquancy may be found in their choices and in the recollections those picks stir up?

Mind you, the array of expert voters is not as daunting as it might—should?– have been. If you look at the likeliest voting bloc,  directors, there’s no representation by several key, steadily- working ones I  would most want to hear from. Thus no "whither cinema?" messaging from, say, David Fincher, Michael Mann, Ridley Scott, or Steven Spielberg. Nor from  Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu…etc. (Several of those names, of course, are recognized in the picks by the Times’ anointed 500 voters.) So given an arbitrary criterion of looking for choices that fit the bill of “Really? That’s an offbeat/cool choice,” let’s proceed in our quest for piquancy:

John Waters leads the “wait—what?”  sweepstakes with  “United 23” (2006). That unexpected pick, I say without for a second trying to diminish the seriousness of the event's historic moment, summoned a vision. The thought caused me to hallucinate, in the spirit of Quentin Tarantino cheerily undoing the Manson murders, a TikTok of the great  Divine busting a move down the aisle to take out the terrorists with a fiercely welded hairpin. (“Divine was not one bit transgender,” Waters stated in 2016, “ He wanted to pass as Godzilla.”)

Mel Brooks gave the comedy wheel a very hearty spin to land on…a little balls-out spy thriller called “The Bourne Identity.” That 2002 franchise kick-off was a surprise success, akin to “Casablanca” in that the finished project emerged very well not so much despite production squabbles, but thanks to them. (The controlling passion of director Doug Liman and star Matt Damon well served the script that Tony Gilroy mostly wrote.) Pulling Franka Potente from indie stardom and  teaming with Damon to shoot some deliriously savage fights and chase scenes, the filmmakers made a pocket classic suffused with convincing but always motivated action set pieces set against Chris Cooper’s powerful irritability.

Less surprising may be that Brooks also chose 2016’s “Hidden Figures,” the truth-based account of at-first underappreciated math whizzes (mostly women of color) solving telemetry problems under the stewardship of boss man Kevin Costner. Herewith my story (forgive the paywall) in the Los Angeles Times: 

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-en-mn-1117-kevin-costner-20161109-story.html

Additionally, I will take this occasion to thank Mr. Brooks for the inspiration he lent when  I briefly interviewed him to hear his fond comments about John Calley at the late producer’s  2011 memorial gathering, and received his benediction: “Have a nice blog.”

 Sofia Coppola, the returning  “wait--what?” champ of the much less sprawling voters' pool that essayed a similar 2017 Times clickbait exercise, still has game. This time, she unauteuristically (pretty sure that’s a real word) wins respect by pinning a  sash on Pixar’s 2004  “The Incredibles.”  Of course we will always defer to  her 2017 Gold Medal Mic Drop for elevating to her top rank the 2015 Will Ferrell-Mark Wahlberg comedy, “Daddy’s Home."

Still, the Brad Bird-directed Pixar animation epic is not just a speedily-paced entertainment for kids but a light-footed marriage story in which the ever-spunky Holly Hunter as Helen (Elastigirl!) is the goad and go-getter to Craig Nelson’s slightly dim Bob Parr. Add in Edna Mode (as voiced by Bird), the Lotte  Lenya-like costumer,  and this was a picture I was happy to watch multiple times with my son. (Or was he indulging me?) As it sits alongside such brooding Coppola picks as “The Zone of Interest” and “Aftersun,” the CG-crafted toon, er, animates the entire Times array. 

That said, the “huh?” queen needs only a quick new engraving to be etched on the 2017 trophy she got for lauding  that 2015 Ferrell/Wahlberg comedy “Daddy’s Home”  with no concession to its 30% Rotten Tomatoes face plant. It takes a gracious cineaste to leave room for director Sean Anders’   unblinging embrace of  Ferrell’s milquetoasty stepfather matching macho with Wahlberg’s studly, deadbeat ex.

For someone whose cinematic gestures are so well-tempered (I interviewed her and Bill Murray for Premiere magazine when “Lost in Translation” came out) she has a lively enthusiasm for things sardonic, as made evident also by her 2017 pick of Alex Garland’s  2015 “Ex Machina.”  (“Worth it,” she noted, “ just for Oscar Isaac’s dancing scene!”)

Naomie Harris has had my affection ever since she fully emerged with a tightly controlled performance in “28 Days Later,” which I re-watched this week in posting on the second sequel. Her Oscar and SAG nominations for Best Actress for “Moonlight” were well-earned; but reminding us of the at times joyous, at times jolting  ride that is 2024’s “Emilia Perez” makes her a half-hidden star of this latest Times balloting.

 Just to keep this thing in its measured bounds, let’s close out with a lightning round of other meritorious picks:

Mikey Madison, Oscar winner for “Anora” (it’s another Naomie Harris selection) likely felt some affinity for the striving heroine Kate Hudson portrayed in 2000's “Almost Famous." Hudson earned a Best Actress nom (which award Madison won in her arrival film), alongside fellow Supporting Actress nominee Frances McDormand, for scoring with Cameron Crowe’s Oscar-winning screenplay. 

 Stephen King  places among the honorable mentions. He resisted any temptation to put his own books’ filmed adaptations in the tally,  and cited not just “No Country for Old Men” (as many did) but the also-name-checked  “Children of Men” (possibly underrrated even at #22 in the Times poll) and, in another justifiable if unexpected pick, Ridley Scott’s relentlessly gritty “Black Hawk Down.”  (Here must be cited is an interesting outlier from Bong Joon Ho,  whose “Parasite” won the industry derby and whose “Memories of Murder” snuck in at No. 99 on the same Times slate, is the championing of what some would call a mid-range  Spielberg effort, a 2005 remake of “War of the Worlds.”)

The chosen pictures from that first decade of the millennium are enough to make one miss the `aughts--but enough for now. This weekend brings Brad Pitt in “F1” and we may as well, submit to the Bradness and vroom of it all. After all, Edna Mode of Sofia Coppola’s beloved “The Incredibles” probably had it right: “I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now.”