Last month we ran our list of The Best Movies of 2016 (so far). Were we a tad early? Well, the caveat of ‘so far’ says a lot. We certainly weren’t as presumptuous as the BBC’s Greatest Films of the 20th Century, since we are only one-sixth of the way through said century.
Disagreeing with lists like these is often more fun than agreeing with them, and Rialto Channel programmer Luke Murray found himself making his own such list in response. Have a squiz at Luke’s Top 100 Films of the 21st Century! and then read on to hear him explain, justify, and swear ever so slightly – sometimes even at a cinematic sacred cow.
This post is brought to you by NEON, who have a selection of Rialto films to stream. Click here to get right into it – with a free trial if you like – or see the list at the bottom of this post.
FLICKS: If I recall correctly, this was prompted by that BBC list, right?
LUKE MURRAY: I thought I’d do this in response to the BBC list which was an okay list, I guess but it was fucking pretentious though. I mean, there’s some complete garbage on that list, like really who thinks Goodbye to Language by Godard is any good at all? I mean, fuck off with that shit.
This is a very good start. So, how would you describe your top hundred if it isn’t pretentious and full of shit?
Well, mine’s kind of pretentious but I don’t have any Bela Tarr slogfests or slow cinema about the life of a goat herder in mine. Mine has got The Cabin in the Woods in it so I’ve at least attempted to have an accessible taste.
What elevates a film into this echelon beyond just being a good movie? Is there a common thing you can say? There are obviously some exceptions, but there’s a trend in here of a certain kind of filmmaker.
Well, I definitely enjoy filmmakers that go for extreme emotions, in one way or another. I mean, there’s a bunch of crazy Spanish horrors up in there. There’s some nasty German stuff in there. I think Irreversible is quite high up. That’s very unpleasant. Dancer in the Dark, that’s not particularly nice. Blue Valentine, I find that crushing. I’m a big Denis Villeneuve fanboy and he has a few in there. There Will Be Blood is a hardcore film, as is Mulholland Drive, Incendies, Pan’s Labyrinth… Synecdoche, New York – that made me cry.
Same, actually.
No Country For Old Men is pretty hardcore. Inception – well, Inception was an interesting idea. I haven’t actually watched it for a long time, so I’m not sure that maybe it should be that high. But, I don’t know, I’d have to check.
It might be one you can’t re-bottle.
Yeah, the first experience was great. But, I mean, how I did this was I went back through my stuff on letterboxd, and just went, “Okay. What’s gotten five stars in the 2000s?” And then once I’d gotten rid of all the fives, I was going through the four and a halfs, and there’s nothing below a four and a half in that list.
A Top 100 is a really big list, and I’m guessing it’s not purely mathematical set of criteria for each film like, ‘Mulholland Drive’ getting 1045 points, ‘There Will Be Blood’ 1037 and so on. It doesn’t work like that.
No.
I find myself ranking things against each other, rather than applying hypothetical scores.
Oh yeah, there’s a lot of that.
I imagine you can’t do that for 100 films. The process may be a little different.
No. Well, look, if I was going to be completely honest, they are not in exactly the right places. I didn’t take hours and hours and hours doing it. I, basically, did put them in brackets, so all the five star ones are like that, and then I just switched them around until I felt happy enough about it. As you said, that movie’s better than that one. Just switched them around.
So, some simple sorting exercises, as in “this is a top ten movie, and this isn’t a top ten movie” to start with.
Well, I mean, because it’s 100 films over 16 years, I’d say most of them are top ten movies in each individual year. Maybe in the 90 to 100 range they aren’t, but they’re still outstanding films in their own right.
Speaking of 100, you doubled your New Zealand film quota with the film that’s in the 100th position on the list.
Yeah, there are two of them.
I think that number one’s super important, and the top ten are super important. But number 100 is the first thing you see on your list. And, the bottom of the list is the defining line between the haves and the have-nots, right? So it’s an important decision in its own right.
There were probably eight to ten in consideration for the last couple of spots and I added Out of the Blue when it could easily have been Donnie Darko or The Lobster and, they were all about the same in my mind. I guess I had seen Out of the Blue recently, and it had reminded me what a good film it was, and how much of an indelible mark it makes on you when you watch it. And, I just wanted to actually give New Zealand film an extra spot because there are a lot of good New Zealand films that aren’t Lord of the Rings, and they should be in these lists more.
‘Out of the Blue’ shares a lot in common with ‘In My Father’s Den’, the other Kiwi selection.
Like I said, I do like bleak, dark movies. I’m always being reminded to get happier films at work.
Well, I had a look through and I was like, “Oh, I bet there’s no comedies here,” but that’s not true either.
No, there are a few.
I guess, Up you can view as a tragedy if you want to. But, it’s also a pretty strong comedy.
I guess so. The Royal Tenenbaums is in there, yeah. I mean, there are definitely a couple. I mean, Sexy Beast isn’t a comedy, but it’s pretty funny.
I mean, that opening sequence was pure comedy.
I don’t know what else is in there that’s funny. The Grand Budapest Hotel is funny.
But, you’re looking at funny tinged with quite a bit of sadness across those ones that are arguably comedy still.
You are, yeah. I am pretty bleak. This is not a good advertisement for me at all, is it?
Are you surprised that certain directors or films didn’t actually make your list? Or others over-represented?
No. I definitely didn’t do the over-representation thing, because I’ve no problem with following directors I like until they eventually make a dud. Denis Villeneuve has a few in there. I think both of the earlier Andrea Arnold’s are in there as well. What I found was quite strange, after looking through it, is there’s just one Scorsese film in there. I didn’t realise how bad he’d been since 2000 until I looked at that list. He’s been terrible.
There are exceptions to this rule, but a lot of directors on this list are arguably at the peak of their powers. Whereas, your Scorsese or whoever, they’re still making watchable films, but their acknowledged peak has passed. Are you able to contrast your picks with the equivalent filmmakers from the ’80s and ’90s, say?
Well, I’d say this group is more like a ’70s group in the way that the films that they make are more personal that crowdpleasing and are a bit more bleak, as opposed to maybe a group from the ’80s or the ’90s. Yeah. I mean, if I made one for the ’70s, it would probably have a bunch of really dark stuff in there. And then maybe a Jaws or something like that as well. But, yeah, I mean, that’s what I would say anyway. And, the ’80s, it would just be – I don’t know – it’d be like–
‘Weird Science’?
Yeah. It’d be like Gremlins and stuff like that. A bunch of really funny stuff from when I was a kid, Caddyshack or some shit.
Is there some stuff that you’ve seen this year that you suspect will settle into this sort of list, as you get a little bit more context or watch it again?
Well, there is some stuff that I saw this year. I mean, I saw The Witch this year, I saw Suburra this year. Suburra, in particular, I was impressed with. That’d probably move up, but no, usually the really good films for every year come in right at the end. So, I think maybe in the next – I don’t know – three months, I’d start seeing films that will probably be films that could be added to that list. But, until now, it’s been some good stuff, and then a bunch of Marvel stuff, and nonsense like that.
How do you possibly settle on a number one film?
I almost wanted to do that as a contrarian thing for the BBC list, because Mulholland Drive and There Will be Blood are both amazing. I couldn’t really say that one’s better than the other. I do remember watching Irreversible years ago and just being floored by it. Then I watched it again maybe two years ago, and it was still really good, but I could see flaws in it for the first time, and that’s probably why it’s not a top ten. And, there are definitely other films in there that that will happen to. If I watch Inception again now, that probably wouldn’t be top ten.
Obviously, your channel isn’t a carbon copy of this list, and it’s not intended as such, but do you think people some kind of indication of what your programming entails?
Oh God, I’d say we would have played quite a lot of it. There’s a lot of stuff in there that we didn’t have access to because Sky have got deals with all the major studios. We don’t get access to it at all. So, there’s stuff like Sicario that we couldn’t play, No Country, and Inception as well. But I’d say, I don’t know – 60, 70% probably we would have played. Definitely all the foreign stuff. I mean, Pan’s I think we played. Hunger, Tyrannosaur…
For someone going in cold, that’s not familiar with the film, which one do you think would be the hardest to watch, for any reason, on this list?
I think there are definitely two that I would tell most people to avoid. They would be Irreversible and Martyrs. I’d say that most people wouldn’t want to see that stuff, unless you’re of a particular inclination. I’m not trying to say that I like ultra-violence as such, but both of those films use extreme violence in an interesting way and as a core part of the plot. So, the violence in Martyrs is used to create a martyr, which I found a very interesting concept. Some people hated it. After reading a Gaspar Noé interview about Irreversible, and understanding his reasoning for putting that scene in there, the reasoning behind it was completely correct. The Hollywood films gloss over rape, and he wanted to show how disgusting it actually was. But then he does it in a really clever way, because he’s doing everything backwards, it’s got all the beautiful interactions at the end, and it takes a lot of that really disgusting heavy shit that you see at the start and in the middle away a little bit. See, I really liked that. But, yeah, I would avoid those two.
What about difficult in a non-content related way? What’s a hard film to watch, because its just hard to get into?
I would say something like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is quite hard to watch. I think you have to watch a lot of film to possibly like that one. Maybe Once Upon a Time in Anatolia as well, just because its long and it does take a little while to get going. Yeah, maybe those two. I think most other things would be okay.
Conversely, if we go back to the top of the list, what’s your guaranteed crowd pleaser?
Crowd pleasers, I think you’d probably have to go to Tenenbaums maybe, and that’s what, 20? 19?
That’s one in the top 20, that’s good.
Yeah, yeah. Inception‘s a blockbuster. Crowd pleaser, oh God. I don’t know. Maybe apart from Cabin and the couple of comedies in there, there aren’t a lot of crowd pleasers. What was the other question? What would be easy to watch? Well, I think Wall-E is pretty easy to watch. Grand Budapest‘s pretty easy to watch. The Incredibles is pretty easy too. All the cartoons.
The ones that are cartoons, or as close as Wes Anderson can make humans into cartoons.
So, yeah, basically what it comes down to is I like really hardcore films.
Or cartoons.
Luke’s Top 100 Films of the 21st Century! list
The following Rialto Channel selections are playing on NEON this month:
A Little Chaos – “Pleasantly shies away from being overbearing” Steve Newall, FLICKS
Experimenter – “An ode to critical thinking” Liam Maguren, FLICKS
It Follows – “A hypnotic, utterly terrifying film” Tony Stamp, FLICKS
Listen Up Philip – “Indisputably talented work” HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Mr. Turner – “Sublime” Adam Fresco, FLICKS
Slow West – “Uncompromisingly intelligent” Liam Maguren, FLICKS
Testament of Youth – “Thoughtful and moving” Matt Glasby, FLICKS
That Sugar Film – “A great eye-opener” Giles Hardie, FLICKS
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her
“Intense and engaging performances from Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy bring the well-written screenplay to life.” HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
