My top ten five desert island movies from the same five years

That is a very complicated subject for this post. I will need to explain. 

Filmspotting recently (a couple months ago) tasked themselves with finding the answer to a specific question, the kind that my Flickchart puts me in a perfect position to answer:

"If you could take only five films with you to a desert island, and those five films had to come from the same five-year period, which five would they be?"

Now, my Flickchart would give me a very definitive answer to this question, if my ranking on Flickchart were an exact correlation to how much I want to rewatch a movie. If we assume that my #1 movie is the movie I want to rewatch the most, and each after that is a movie I want to watch progressively a little less each time, it's easy to come up with this answer. I just go down the list and cluster movies together until I get five from the same five-year period.

But we all know that this logic does not work perfectly. With this sort of thought experiment -- which the Filmspotting guys talk about in terms of an incinerator, as in, all films not chosen get sent to the incinerator -- it's never as simple as that. 

For one thing, you have moods. You want to feed all your different moods with as much of a diversity of options as possible. I mean, let's face it -- you will get sick of all of these movies long before you die on this desert island, but the idea is to forestall that for as long as possible, and variety helps accomplish that.

And then there are some films that you might like "better" than other films, but those other films are "better quality" films, so you have them ranked higher. We could get off track on a "best vs. favorite" argument here if we wanted to, but it's clear that in this particular thought experiment, "favorite" should win out. But is that how I've been ranking my Flickchart, with any consistency?

So instead of just choosing the first clustering of five that came up, I decided to give myself ten different options of five-year spans. 

Now, some of these clusterings actually cover multiple five-year spans. How is that possible? Well, I'll explain, and my first clustering is a perfect example of it. All five films in that first cluster come from three consecutive years, so that means they are the best five films of three different five-year spans: the one that ends with the last film, the one that starts with the first film, and then of course the one in the middle, where the first film is not the first year and the last film is not the last year. 

And as I was going through, I also came across films that couldn't strengthen any group because all the eligible year bracketings were already filled up with earlier films. 

So my top ten groups of films actually cover 15 different five-year spans, those that begin with 1981, and then begin with every year from 1983 to 1996. Sorry 1982 to 1986, your range got left out in the cold. 

These were expected results. In 1981 I turned eight and in 1996 I turned 23, and that last range would have covered films until the year I turned 27. All parts of my formative years becoming a cinephile. There may be plenty of cinephiles who are in love with periods of cinema long before their birth, but my cinephilia has always had a healthy dose of nostalgia, and I don't apologize for that. 

But how am I going to choose between these? I'll give you each of the options and then tell you what I settled on, with comments on each. I'll list them in order of how quickly they satisfied the five-film requirement on my chart, but I will list the films chronologically within each grouping. 

1. 1992 to 1996 or 1993 to 1997 or 1994 to 1998 - Pulp Fiction (1994) (#3), Toy Story (1995) (#7), Fargo (1996) (#8), The Cable Guy (1996) (#16), Bound (1996) (#19)

Comment: So I can get five movies from three different five-year spans, all within my top 19 films on Flickchart. Obviously I could be happy with this group, but it's a little light on comedy -- though I suppose both Pulp Fiction and Fargo have their lighter moments. Plus the fact that it takes care of three different time spans could potentially give this an edge as a tiebreaker. 

1. 1995 to 1999 - Toy Story (1995) (#7), Fargo (1996) (#8), The Cable Guy (1996) (#16), Bound (1996) (#19), The Iron Giant (1999) (#10)

Comment: You'll see I've listed this as #1 again because Bound at #19 also completes this five-year span, which is just shifted one up from the previous group. So we lose Pulp Fiction but we gain The Iron Giant. Not sure if I need two animated movies though.

3. 1985 to 1989 - Back to the Future (1985) (#2), Raising Arizona (1987) (#1), The Princess Bride (1987) (#11), Say Anything (1989) (#18), Do the Right Thing (1989) (#20)

Comment: This group is hard to resist because it contains my top two movies of all time. We'll see how much a factor that ends up being in the final analysis.  

3. 1986 to 1990 or 1987 to 1991 - Raising Arizona (1987) (#1), The Princess Bride (1987) (#11), Say Anything (1989) (#18) , Do the Right Thing (1989) (#20), Goodfellas (1990) (#13)

Comment: This is a similar thing as my first two, where we're shifting forward one year. In this case the movie we're losing is my #2, Back to the Future, which is not great. But gaining Goodfellas adds a dose of real cinephile credibility and otherwise gives additional variety to the portfolio. 

5. 1996 to 2000 - Fargo (1996) (#8), The Cable Guy (1996) (#16), Bound (1996) (#19), Run Lola Run (1998) (#21), The Iron Giant (1999) (#10)

Comment: Same as 1995 to 1999 except we gain Run Lola Run in the middle of the range and lose Toy Story. I like the addition of the first foreign language film and don't mind losing one of the two animated movies from that group. 

6. 1983 to 1987 or 1984 to 1988 - WarGames (1983) (#22), This Is Spinal Tap (1984) (#9), Back to the Future (1985) (#2), Raising Arizona (1987) (#1), The Princess Bride (1987) (#11)

Comment: New additions are WarGames and This Is Spinal Tap, the latter being my #9 but not having fit into one of these ranges yet. Strong on comedy, and I think the addition of WarGames could quicken my pulse, but maybe I don't need to contemplate the end of the world too much when I'm already on a desert island and have lost 99.99999% of the films ever made. 

7. 1988 to 1992 or 1989 to 1993 - Do the Right Thing (1989) (#20), When Harry Met Sally (1989) (#26), Say Anything (1989) (#18), Goodfellas (1990) (#11), Unforgiven (1992) (#25)

Comment: Welcome to the show, When Harry Met Sally and Unforgiven. A much-needed influx of comedy for this range, offset by Unforgiven being particularly humorless. I might need more comfort and smiles than this group can give me. 

8. 1981 to 1985 - Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) (#4), Time Bandits (1981) (#27), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (#23), This is Spinal Tap (1984) (#10), Back to the Future (1985) (#2)

Comment: Our earliest range of five years gets in a whole host of new titles, plus This Is Spinal Tap and Back to the Future. I love the diversity some of the new titles bring, but this group may be a little laugh deficient as well.

9. 1990 to 1994 - Goodfellas (1990) (#13), Defending Your Life (1991) (#30), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) (#31), Unforgiven (1992) (#25), Pulp Fiction (1994) (#3)

Comment: A few new titles here doing good work, but again this group won't be getting a lot of guffaws from me, and I'm going to need them. (I think we have to assume a neutral emotional state, even though I mentioned earlier the idea of despairing about the end of the world.)

9. 1991 to 1995 - Defending Your Life (1991) (#30), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) (#31), Unforgiven (1992) (#25), Pulp Fiction (1994) (#3) Toy Story (1995) (#7)

Comment: And here's the same as the previous group, only it gains Toy Story and loses Goodfellas.

I might be able to keep going down and eventually come across a perfectly diverse group of five. And I'd be interested to see what my first date range from the 21st century would look like. But I can't sit here and do this all day.

So ... what to choose here? And how to choose it?

I'm tempted to tell you why I'm ruling each one out, but instead I'll just tell you what I decided to rule in and why:

If I had been a guest host on this episode of Filmspotting, I would have chosen 1983 to 1987 or 1984 to 1988.

Although I've said throughout this exercise that humor would be important to me, I've decided that lightness of tone might be even more important, and this span has five movies with light tones: Back to the Future, Raising Arizona, This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride. (Yep, I am down with the comedic sensibilities of 1980s Rob Reiner.) All of those movies will make me laugh, but more importantly, they'll also make me feel good. And then WarGames can jangle my nerves a bit whenever I need a little bit of that.

Plus the fact that this time bracket also includes my #1 and my #2, which is hard to compete with. 

The cherry on top was when I added up their Flickchart rankings -- remember we're going golf scores here, where the lower the score, the better -- and you get a 45 for these two year ranges. The next closest is 52, which is the next group up, 1985 to 1989.

These two groups have three movies in common: Back to the Future, Raising Arizona and The Princess Bride. The group I've gone with gives me WarGames and This Is Spinal Tap on one side, while the group I didn't choose gives me Say Anything and Do the Right Thing on the other. I'm essentially choosing the first two over the second two.

When Adam on Filmspotting was talking about how he chose his date range -- a much harder task when you don't have a Flickchart -- he started out by reviewing their previous episode in which they presented their ten choices for the Sight and Sound list, to see if there was chronological consolidation among his choices. A good way to start the process, and it ended up being the way his co-host, Josh, settled on a range. 

Adam said he ruled out one particular range because the movie he loved so much that might have helped anchor him to that range -- Grave of the Fireflies -- is not a movie he wants to watch over and over on repeat. It's too glum. If you've seen it, you know what he's talking about. 

And that's my problem with Do the Right Thing, I guess. Even though the range I've chosen gives me no real credibility with cinephiles as they are classically defined -- where the selection of Lee's movie would have -- I have to be honest with myself that I don't want to watch on repeat a movie where people spew hatred for an entire movie until it boils over into chaos and death. This probably explains why I've only seen Do the Right Thing once in the past 25 years, whereas all the movies in the group I've chosen have gotten multiple viewings during that period, some as many as four or five. 

Arbitrary? Perhaps. Defensible? Absolutely.

For the record, Adam chose 1979 to 1983, and he selected one film from each year: All That Jazz (1979), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The World According to Garp (1982) and The Right Stuff (1983). I can get behind this list because three of these films are also in my top 150 and I really like the other two. When I get around to ranking The Right Stuff, which I only just watched in August, it'll do very well on my chart. Adam clearly went for the comfort of nostalgia picks, though he won't be laughing a lot. (The most humor might be in The Right Stuff, actually, which I characterized as a comedy when I wrote about it on The Audient.)

Josh? He went arthouse, or rather, cinephile, as the period he chose reached its completion two decades before he was born. His range of 1951 to 1955 allowed him Ikiru (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Rear Window (1954), Ordet (1954) and Pather Panchali (1955). Rear Window and Ordet are both top 150 movies for me, but I found Gentlemen significantly inferior to the similar Some Like It Hot and I couldn't crack Pather Pachali. I haven't even seen Ikiru, but I've seen its remake, Living. I think he will be starved for films with more entertainment value after a couple watch throughs of these films. 

Anyway, this was a fun exercise, and I hope it was at least sort of fun for you to read. 

The amount of time it takes to fold laundry

In listening to a recent episode of Filmspotting, I became acquainted again with a type of movie co-host Adam Kempenaar has put forth into our taxonomy of movie types: the type of movie he likes to watch while folding laundry.

I totally get the concept, and the movie they were discussing, Rustin, totally fits that description. It's kind of like filler between movies you watch more intentionally. Pleasant, but not a needle mover in terms of movies you will one day consider personal favorites. (Unless, of course, the movie really surprises you, in which case you regret the way you underestimated it.)

I did wonder, though: Exactly how much laundry does Adam Kempenaar's family have?

More than most, to be sure. From having listened to Adam for more than a dozen years now, I've come to learn a fair amount about his family, including the fact that they have (I believe this is correct) four biological children and one adopted child. It could be five biological children. Anyway, it's a lot.

Still, is it enough to spend a whole movie folding laundry?

Even if every piece of clothing every family member had worn during a week's time were washed within a few days of each other and placed in a large pile for folding -- this large pile sits on one of the chairs in our living room in our house -- I still can't envision more than about 25 minutes of laundry folding. Meaning that even in the shortest of movies, you still have to find another mindless activity for the remaining hour.

Plus it's likely less than that, as I am pretty sure his oldest is off at college now. 

I've actually watched a movie while folding laundry before, but in my house, 15 minutes is the most amount of the movie this activity could occupy. Granted, I do have either three or four fewer children than he does.

If I'm really trying to pull off this sort of multi-tasking, the better activity for me is ironing. In my closet at any given time, I have at least ten and probably closer to 15 shirts I never wear because the fabrics that comprise them require ironing for them to be worn for anything more than the most informal occasions. Instead of doing that ironing, I usually just don't wear them.

However, maybe it's time for another good ironing session, which really could take that whole movie, and probably I'd still only have half of those shirts looking good by the end.

Thank goodness for polyester blends, I say. 

The term "bromance" is so 13 years ago

I think of Filmspotting as generally being a pretty shrewd podcast in its attitudes and attempts to stay current. However, it's hosted by two old guys like me -- within two years of my age, in any case. They/we don't always get things right.

But I was still surprised to see them miss by as much as they did this past week.

In reviewing the new Martin McDonagh film The Banshees of Inisherin, which doesn't open here until Boxing Day, Adam and Josh selected a top five tie-in of "best movie bromances."

Is it 2009 all over again?

I say 2009 because that's when I wrote this post about I Love You, Man, which had just come out. The second paragraph of the post starts out with the words "The word 'bromance' has been thrown around so much lately that we're all pretty much sick of it." Even then, when this cutesy term was in its relative infancy, I was already over it. Though I did acknowledge that I Love You, Man was a perfect encapsulation of what they were going for with the term.

As a good sign of society's development and tendency to become more woke, I haven't heard the term "bromance" a lot in the past five to ten years. Teasing men about their level of affection for other men hardly seems like the right comedic target in a time of increasing awareness of the spectrum of sexuality and where any one person falls on it. What if this person you are calling part of a "bromance" is, actually, sexually attracted to the other person? Not so easy to make fun of then, right?

But even if the 2022 usage of the term wasn't tone deaf, they didn't get it right.

Some of the picks they went on to reveal were not too far off. For example, I liked Josh's inclusion of the leads from RRR, who do indeed meet and become quite taken with one another in the course of the narrative, and even have a great Bollywood dance during a moment of heightened mutual regard. 

But then there were the picks like the leads in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who as far as I recall have been partners for years. They do not meet within the course of the narrative, as do the characters in RRR and I Love You, Man. 

I suppose at this point I should define my terms a bit. To the extent that it means anything, the term "bromance" suggests newness, the sort of infatuation you have toward a person of either gender when you first meet them and just think they're really cool. It also implies a bit of a nervousness about potentially screwing it up.

To take the "b" off the front of the word, if you say "We had a romance," you are talking about a specific period of time that either collapsed or blossomed into something long-term. By the time it gets to long term, though, you don't call it a romance anymore. Lovely as she is, I don't say I have a "romance" with my wife. We had a romance in 2005, and then it blossomed into the marriage that it is today.

A "bromance" is not something that lasts a lifetime. My two best friends, whom I have known since the 1970s, are not people I have a "bromance" with. Those are lifelong friendships. "Bromance" cheapens what we have not only by teasing it and making us feel like we should be embarrassed about it, but by suggesting it's based on the same sort of infatuation as love at first sight. If it was indeed based on that sort of infatuation, it happened over 40 years ago and is ancient history at this point. 

So if Filmspotting really wanted to do a top five best male friendships in the movies, they should have just called it that -- but then they'd also have to know the sheer quantity of choices that would present them. "Bromance," even as a dated term, at least does the work of whittling down your field of contenders to only movies where the characters meet within the narrative and develop a fast, potentially vulnerable bond.

If they'd committed just one of these sins -- used the term but used it correctly, or not used the term but had a ridiculous number of resulting choices -- I probably wouldn't be writing this post. But both? Well, I couldn't stay quiet.

The timing, I must say, is also curious. Instead of tying it in with The Banshees of Inisherin, they could have tied it in with Bros, the lexicographical similarity to which could not have escaped them. But of course that wouldn't work because you wouldn't dare belittle an actual romance between two men by calling it a "bromance." The term is heteronormative in the extreme. 

If the faulty tie-in between Bros and the word "bromance" occurred to them at all, which I have to imagine it did, it should have also signalled that it was the wrong time to resurrect a term that never should have achieved such pop culture prominence in the first place. 

The best top ten A24 films

A24 has had a great run in its ten years of existence, passing that landmark for longevity on August 20th. Until Filmspotting did a special episode dedicated to the indie distributor, meaning that more than two dozen of its great films were discussed in one sitting, I didn't have a good notion just how great the run has been. 

Co-hosts Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen acknowledged the anniversary, which coincided with the release of the new horror comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies, by drafting a team of their ten favorite A24 movies a couple weeks back. Naturally, it made me want to determine my own top ten -- as well as see which of the co-hosts drafted a better team. (Now you get the meaning of my subject for this post, which might have seemed grammatically inelegant, to say the least, before now.)

I should point out that neither of their lists represents an actual top ten. Each movie could only be selected by one of the two of them, and there was enough consensus between them on the best movies released by A24 that each would have taken as many as half of the other's picks if they'd had the chance.

I am under no such constraints. So what you'll get from me is a pure top ten.

I thought about making this list organically, since it's usually more fun to do it this way than just to rely on my Flickchart. But when I scrolled through the titles on the Wikipedia page devoted to A24 films, I jotted down a full 26 titles that I thought might be contenders for my top ten. I decided it was easier, in this case, just to let Flickchart do the work for me -- especially since some database person, probably somebody I know, went to the trouble of creating a way to filter your chart to see only your favorite A24 films. (It's one of hundreds of filters available on the site.) Instead of doing the hard work myself, I'll reward his or her hard work instead.

Doing it this way will also make for a more pure comparison with Adam's and Josh's selected teams. Having already listened to the show, I could unconsciously bias a list I made organically. But I can't unconsciously bias the result of more than 130,000 individual duels performed over time.

So, hot off the presses, here are my ten favorite films released by A24:

1. Spring Breakers (2013, Harmony Korine) - Flickchart #79
2. The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015, Oz Perkins) - Flickchart #111
3. Under the Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer) - Flickchart #134
4. A Ghost Story (2017, David Lowery) - Flickchart #160
5. First Reformed (2018, Paul Schrader) - Flickchart #165
6. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022, Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert) - Flickchart #332
7. Climax (2018, Gaspar Noe) - Flickchart #485
8. Swiss Army Man (2016, Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert) - Flickchart #529
9. Enemy (2013, Denis Villeneuve) - Flickchart #552
10. Eighth Grade (2018, Bo Burnham) - Flickchart #560

To get an idea what other films I would have considered for an organic list, these were the other 14 I shortlisted, in order of their release:

The Bling Ring
Tusk
Ex Machina
The End of the Tour
Room
The Witch
Moonlight
The Lovers
The Florida Project
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Lady Bird
The Disaster Artist
The Death of Dick Long
Waves
Saint Maud
The Tragedy of Macbeth

Good run. I told you.

In order to figure out whether Adam did better or Josh did better, we'll need to go deeper into my Flickchart, obviously, since they both picked some films I don't actually love. 

They each also picked a film I haven't seen, and only one of those is because I've been delinquent on it. I still haven't seen Joanna Hogg's 2019 film The Souvenir, so I certainly haven't seen its 2021 follow-up, The Souvenir Part II. That was Adam's ninth pick. In the case of Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, Josh's seventh pick, I don't believe it's been released in Australia yet. I'm not conscious of it having a release, in any case.

If one of them had picked more films I hadn't seen than the other, I was thinking we'd have to find an average value on my Flickchart of the films I have seen, in order to be fair. Since they each picked one, I can just do a net addition of where their films rank on my Flickchart. Lowest total wins. 

So here's what they picked, followed by my Flickchart ranking:

Adam:

1. Ex Machina (939)
2. Moonlight (676)
3. Under the Skin (134)
4. First Cow (3401)
5. Spring Breakers (79)
6. Uncut Gems (1584)
7. While We're Young (2094)
8. Krisha (2343)
9. The Souvenir Part II (N/A)
10. Locke (1420)

Josh:

1. Lady Bird (1565)
2. After Yang (1373)
3. First Reformed (165)
4. The Florida Project (821)
5. Everything Everywhere All at Once (332)
6. The Green Knight (2262)
7. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (N/A)
8. The Witch (2082)
9. Zola (4859)
10. The Lobster (1999)

You couldn't pick A Ghost Story? How dare you.

Who won seems to be pretty evident at a glance, but let's run the numbers:

Adam's total = 12,670, for an average of 1,407 per movie

Josh's total = 15,458, for an average of 1,718 per movie

Not all that close, but not quite the blowout that the numbers in parenthesis suggested it might be.

Zola drags things down quite a lot for Josh. Zola really didn't work for me. In fact, it may be the only one of the 18 movies they picked that I've seen that I actively dislike. First Cow is my next least favorite, but I don't dislike it, and it's a whole 1,458 spots ahead of Zola. If Josh had taken both, as he wanted to, it would have been a blowout.

On the positive side, Adam picked my #1 (Spring Breakers) and my #3 (Under the Skin) on my personal top ten, and Josh's highest pick on my top ten was my #5 (First Reformed). Interestingly, they only picked four of my top ten in total, two each, leaving The Blackcoat's Daughter, A Ghost Story, Climax, Swiss Army Man, Enemy and Eighth Grade out in the cold.

And these are the guys I go to each week to soak up their opinions on movies?

So in this case I'm an Adam. I've been a Josh on at least one exercise similar to this in the past.

I'll be curious to see which list the Flickchart listeners voted as the winner, which was always the intended outcome of their little game. That information is certainly already available, but I'm still catching up on my podcasts from being gone in America.

Great minds think alike

The coincidences I write about on this blog are usually limited to my own internal film viewing schedule, or sometimes, something external that others might have already observed, but if so, I haven't yet read their take on it.

The topic of today's post is something probably no one but me could have recognized, lest they were both readers of my blog and listeners to a particular podcast I'm going to discuss. (Which describes at least one of my readers.) That makes it internal, but it very much involves something from the external world.

As you would know -- I'm assuming regular rather than first-time readership here -- I have just begun a bi-monthly 2022 series in which I watch the films of Martin Scorsese that I haven't yet seen. It's called Settling the Scorsese. 

So has Filmspotting -- only they announced theirs after mine.

The stalwart podcast, one of the first movie podcasts out there, has recently developed a pandemic-era recurring series called the "oeuvreview," in which they "review" all the films in a director's "oeuvre." A cleverer term I may never have heard, even if it doesn't roll off the tongue.

They started in 2020 with Christopher Nolan, rewatching all ten of his previously exiting feature-length films leading up to the release of Tenet, one of the few tentpoles that did actually come out in that COVID year. They repeated the series last year, in this case also filling in some blind spots, and watched all the Jane Campion they had or had not seen, culminating in the release of The Power of the Dog.

On Sunday as I was taking a morning walk, I caught up with their January 28th episode, in which they announced an oeuvreview with modified rules for 2022. Because they could not possibly watch all the films of Martin Scorsese leading up to the release of Killers of the Flower Moon -- unless they wanted to do little else with the available hours of their weekly podcast -- they selected only the films that one or both of them had not seen, which gave them about that same range of seven to ten films that had been discussed between Nolan and Campion.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

If it were possible to stop further, I would have done so when they announced the titles they were going to be watching -- five of which were five of the six I am watching for Settling the Scorsese. In fact, the only film I'm watching that they're not watching is New York Stories, which is not a proper Scorsese feature, since he only directs one of the three stories, though I was forced to use it because there were only five Scorsese features I hadn't seen. 

So let's review the coincidences as they pile up:

1. Filmspotting decided to watch Martin Scorsese films in 2022, just like I did.

2. Filmspotting had to modify their existing rules for the series in order to do this, making it all the more unlikely.

3. Their goal was expressly to become Scorsese completists, which is also my goal. 

4. Between the two hosts, they also had to have not seen the same films I had not seen.

The only title I remember them mentioning they were going to watch, that I had already watched, was Boxcar Bertha, which I picked off on a random Monday night in July of 2016. There may have been one other but it didn't stand out to me.

So one or both of the hosts shared my conclusion that Who's That Knocking at My Door, New York New York, The Color of Money, The Age of Innocence and Kundun all did not rise to the level of a viewing priority before now.

Adam Kempenaar was especially aghast that Josh Larsen had not yet seen The Color of Money, as Adam said it might have been the Scorsese film he'd seen most. Seems like Adam was probably in a position to watch this when it came out in 1986, and then rewatch it on repeat on cable, but Josh and I were not, and we never made time for it as adults. 

This seems like my best shot to get a third on-air mention on Filmspotting. The previous two came 1) when I emailed them to point out that a phrase they made a game of trying not to say -- "a whole nother" -- actually appears in the dialogue in Star Wars, and 2) when I made a donation to the podcast. I've emailed them one or two other times, but the witty observation of that particular message did not make the cut.

Even though they haven't been reading nearly as much listener feedback on the show recently -- really only during their "Massacre Theatre" segment, in which we have to guess the film scene they're massacring with their bad acting -- I do think I have a chance to get on air with Settling the Scorsese, which I emailed them about less than a half-hour after hearing their announcement of the upcoming oeuvreview. (In fact, the moment I got home from my walk.)

Especially since it is indisputable that I did not steal the idea from them. I posted my first announcement of Settling the Scorsese on my blog on January 12th, and their podcast didn't drop until 16 days later.

I've "stolen" ideas from them in the past. For example, I decided to catch up with, and write about, Krzysztof Kieslowski's colors trilogy -- Red, White and Blue -- after hearing them discuss it. 

But never has this granddaddy of film podcasts stolen from me, and it's a great day.

Of course, they didn't really. But there are enough coincidences with this one to make a person wonder.

If you listen to Filmspotting, keep your ears open. You might soon be hearing my name. 

Ranking Christopher Nolan

Tenet is open in parts of my country right now. Not parts anywhere near me, as the state of Victoria is still under Stage 4 lockdown, and will be for another 12 days. After that, who knows really.

But some people in the world, even elsewhere in Australia, have seen this movie. It even has scores on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. I really never thought the day would come.

In the past, the relase of a new movie from a major director like Christopher Nolan would have been the occasion for me to consider the director's whole career. The distant past, increasingly. According to my records, the last time I ranked a director's whole filmography on this blog was in October of 2014, when I put the films of David Fincher under the lens, tied to the release of Gone Girl. (Which remains Fincher's last feature to date, though Mank will finally end that drought later this year.)

I could have waited until I saw Tenet -- it will happen, eventually -- before writing the post you are currently reading. But there's a couple reasons I didn't do that, as follows:

1) Before Tenet, Nolan directed exactly ten feature films. I love round numbers, something I suspect I have in common with most listmakers. Really, I should have done this when Dunkirk came out in 2017.

2) The Filmspotting podcast has just recently finished their so-called "ouvre-view" of Nolan's films, the end of which was supposed to coincide with the release of Tenet. It did not, but they still continued on as planned, and recently revealed their own rankings of Nolan's ten films to date, having watched them all again. (It was a month ago, but I'm a bit behind.)

So I thought this made a good opportunity for me to do the same.

However, I will take a little bit of a different approach than on my previous times doing this exercise, as when I ranked all the extant films of Pixar, Wes Anderson, Joel and Ethan Coen, Danny Boyle, Star Trek, and the aforementioned Mr. Fincher. (I'm asking myself now how Tarantino has escaped me so far.)

In those instances, I organically chose which movies should occupy which spots on the list, without any input from outside sources. This time, it will be all outside sources.

See, I can tell, at any given time, exactly how I rank the films of any director I choose, simply by doing a filtered search on my Flickchart. But I find that takes all the fun out of it. What fun is making a list if someone else makes it for you?

This time, though, I thought I would consider a different goal. I thought it was time to figure out if I am more of an Adam or more of a Josh.

If you don't know, Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen are the hosts of Filmspotting. Adam has been the host since the begining in 2005, and Josh is his third co-host, having started his own tenure at the beginning of 2012. While previous co-hosts couldn't hang on for more than three years, Josh ain't giving up this gig any time soon.

I've had my suspicions over the years which host was more aligned with my personal tastes, based on individual opinions I wholeheartedly agreed or disagreed with. But there are just so many movies out there that all three of us have seen, and so many exceptions to so many rules, that it's hard to say for certain whether I've more regularly agreed with one than the other. There really has been no perfect litmus test to figure this out.

Until now.

Christopher Nolan has made enough of a variety of different films, in enough genres and tackling enough varieties of the human experience, that he certainly seems to function in the way we want him to for the current experiment. Given how he's risen to be among the most successful working directors today, someone embraced by Hollywood but with a consummately iconoclastic approach to making movies, he's also the greatest common ground for the modern cinephile. In short, he's probably the director whose films you can be most certain the people you discuss movies with will also see. Some people don't like Tarantino's violence, or Apatow's juvenile humor, or Anderson's arthouse pretensions -- either Anderson, really. But most everyone is okay with seeing the new Christopher Nolan movie.

But the key is, if I'm going to find out whether I'm really an Adam or really a Josh, I can't let my own unconscious biases enter into it. After all, I've listened to that episode of Filmspotting and I know what they've picked. Armed with this knowledge, I could skew my own list one way or another if I picked it organically.

Enter Flickchart.

Using the aformentioned Flickchart filter, I can immediately see how I have judged Nolan's ten films relative to each other -- which best, which worst, and everywhere in between. And while a person's Flickchart may not feel 100% accurate at any given time -- changing its course can feel like turning the Titanic -- it's going to be pretty close when you're considering only the relative positions of ten films out of the 5,000+ on my chart. And because Nolan hasn't made a film since Dunkirk in 2017 -- not one that I can currently see, anyway -- I don't have to worry about the fact that I'm way behind in adding the movies I've seen to my Flickchart. (I'm still stuck somewhere in early 2019.)

So ... before I lose you on endless preamble, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I will reveal my Nolan rankings according to Flickchart, and then I will figure out whether I have a greater absolute difference in my rankings from Adam's chart or from Josh's chart. So that means if, say, I rank Dunkirk #6 and Josh ranks it #3, that's an absolute difference of three. Of course, if he ranks it #9 that's also an absolute difference of three. The least absolute difference is the one who has more similar tastes to mine ... at least, using only this flawed Nolan litmus test.

Shall we begin?

Here's how Josh ranks the films:

10. The Dark Knight Rises
9. Insomnia
8. Following
7. Interstellar
6. Batman Begins
5. The Prestige
4. The Dark Knight
3. Memento
2. Inception
1. Dunkirk

And here are Adam's rankings:

10. Following
9. Batman Begins
8. Insomnia
7. Inception
6. The Dark Knight
5. The Dark Knight Rises
4. Dunkirk
3. The Prestige
2. Memento
1. Interstellar

And here's a bit more, but not too much, on my rankings and their order.

I should say, before I start, that even though I have not very recently rewatched any of these movies -- I saw Memento back when they started the ouvre-review in April, for probably the fourth time -- I've seen six of these movies more than once. That means that percentage-wise, I might have a greater familiarity with this filmography than with any of the others I've considered in this forum previously. Which just means this post has been longer overdue, and my thoughts are, for the most part, still fresh.

According to my Flickchart:

10. Dunkirk (2017). 3613/5249 (31%). Adam #4, Josh #1. The harshness of my response to Dunkirk is a residual of that first viewing, when my former editor said I was crazy to see it after a couple glasses of wine. I talked about that here. But my second viewing last year or the year before did not significantly improve my impression of this movie. It still feels like a frequently confusing experiment with a bombastic score and too little payoff, plus too little character development. The latter was the point, I guess, but not everyone wants the same from Nolan as I do.

9. Interstellar (2014). 2335/5249 (56%). Adam #1, Josh #7. Every time I tell myself I should like Interstellar a little more than I actually do, I remind myself that Matthew McConaughey spends the last 25 minutes of this movie yelling "Murph!! MURPH!!" Or at least it feels that way. However, there are also some totally blow-your-mind moments in this film, like when they lose all that time down on the wave planet. Damn, space-time can be a bitch.

8. The Dark Knight Rises (2012). 2251/5249 (57%). Adam #5, Josh #10. I like The Dark Knight Rises pretty well, but I don't take it very seriously -- certainly not as seriously as Nolan wants me to take it. The thing I like best about it, for example, is how fun it is to do an impersonation of Tom Hardy's ridiculous Grandfather Bane voice with its absurdly comical high pitch combined with muffled incoherence. But it's a decent conclusion to the trilogy. Anne Hathaway is the best part about it.

7. Insomnia (2002). 2209/5249 (58%). Adam #8, Josh #9. The first time the Flickchart rankings are letting me down a little bit. If I were making this list organically, I probably would have put Insomnia at #9, but what are you going to do -- these three movies are all within two percentage points of each other on the chart, so it's not that far off. Yeah nobody really loves Insomnia but it has its moments. I prefer villain Robin Williams in One Hour Photo from the same year.

6. Following (1998). 1582/5249 (70%). Adam #10, Josh #8. That this is this high up on my Flickchart tells me two things: 1) I've been pretty generous in this movie's duels over the years, and 2) I am by no means a diehard Nolan fan. This basically means that a full half of Nolan's films are a bit shrug-worthy to me. I do like Following and I remember thinking it demonstrated some real cleverness on Nolan's part, cleverness that would fully bloom over his coming films, but I have little interest in seeing it again.

5. Inception (2010). 1001/5249 (81%). Adam #7, Josh #2. And here's where we start getting to films I really like. I actually didn't love Inception on the first viewing, but the second and third have increased my appreciation significantly. I always thought it was a narrative mistake to have the movie introduce us to the world on an atypical and ultimately botched version of the core premise -- don't you know you have to demonstrate a successful incarnation before starting to throw curveballs? Of course, this complaint ultimately pales in comparison to Nolan's many ambitious concepts and their execution. It's really good.

4. The Dark Knight (2008). 725/5249 (86%). Adam #6, Josh #4. Taken in comparison to Batman Begins -- which you'll note you haven't yet seen on this list -- I found The Dark Knight to be a mild disappointment. By any other standards, it's a remarkable accomplishment with a truly frightening villain performance at its center and a genuinely dangerous tone of anarchy for such a mainstream film. It's probably telling that this is the only of the three Batman movies I've seen more than once. It gets under your skin.

3. The Prestige (2006). 530/5249 (90%). Adam #3, Josh #5. I've been on the Prestige train since the beginning, as each of the remaining films on this list cracked my top ten of the year they were released. I might even like it better than my #2, but more on that in a moment. This is the most pleasurable type of puzzle box, the one that rewards repeat viewings and isn't afraid to go off the rails a bit in terms of your expectations. Adam and Josh described it in a way as the ultimate Nolan film, and that may still be true nearly 15 years later.

2. Batman Begins (2005). 288/5249 (95%). Adam #9, Josh #6. This ranking may be very problematic as for some reason, I have only seen this film once, the only one in my top five of which this can be said. I guess that first viewing really made an impression on me -- and I don't think it was just the circumstances, seeing it in Paris on a day of rest after a lot of walking. I got on board with Nolan's Batman right from the start and found the ensuing films to be a case of diminishing returns, though not significantly. I'll watch it again sometime to see if it truly deserves to be ahead of The Prestige.

1. Memento (2000). 119/5249 (98%). Adam #2, Josh #3. Nolan has never been better for me than when he first came out of the chute -- and though he actually came out of the chute with Following, I hadn't seen that so it was coming out of the chute for me. Even if Nolan makes another ten films I doubt he will have a chance of eclipsing one of the most ambitiously structured, faithfully adhered to, and philosophically rich narratives I have ever seen. (Just don't ask the premise to stand up to much nitpicking.) This is also the Nolan film I've seen the most, probably four times all the way through.

So I mentioned diminishing returns in terms of the Batman movies. It seems I also have diminishing returns in terms of Nolan on the whole. My top seven films are the first seven films he made, with the last three, chronologically, occupying the eighth, ninth and tenth spots on this list, in that order. I'd blame a reverse recency bias, but I've seen both my #9 and my #10 twice, to give them a chance to move up. They didn't.

Still, I wouldn't say this means I'm down on Nolan. I'm just as eager to see any new movie he makes as when I saw Insomnia after Memento. I know there's the opportunity for my mind to be blown any time out.

Now, the important question -- how do I compare to Adam and Josh?

I won't bore you with a film breakdown, but here were the absolute differences:

Adam = 6 + 8 + 3 + 1 + 4 + 2 + 2 + 0 + 7 + 1 = 34

Josh = 9 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 0 + 2 + 4 + 2 = 28

So I am more of a Josh, I guess!

How do I feel about this?

Well, a friend of mine, the friend who introduced me to the podcast, doesn't like Josh very much as a Filmspotting host, in part because he's never really forgiven him for replacing the host he liked best, Matty Ballgame. Plus, Josh is capable of some very eccentric preferences, the kind that sometimes go so far as to undermine his credibility. Adam, on the other hand, tends to hew slightly more to the critical mainstream in his views on films, though his tastes skew a little more independent as well.

Because of my friend, I've thought I'm not supposed to want to be a Josh, but I don't mind it. I have always liked a critic who will go out on a limb and champion something he loves that others don't, and Josh does that. So I'm okay with it.

Interestingly, though, I did have my biggest difference on any Nolan film with Josh. He worships Dunkirk, having it as his #1, while I've got it entirely on the other end of the spectrum. Outside of that, though, we are very much in sync, having no greater than a four-ranking difference on any film. Whereas with Adam, we've got three different films with a ranking difference of six places or more.

If you'd care to do your own Nolan rankings, I'd love to hear them in the comments. Whether they make you an Adam or a Josh is optional.

Critics limited by squeamishness

On a run yesterday morning, I listened to a podcast from 2007 that reminded me of a phenomenon that's been bugging me for a while, that I want to finally write about.

I'm slowly going through the archives of Filmspotting prior to when I became a regular listener in 2011, and I'm now more than two years in from the show's spring 2005 beginnings. On this particular episode, Adam and guest host Scott Tobias were discussing Knocked Up and Bug. But it was brief mentions of an upcoming new release, and feedback on a past top five, that spurred me to write.

I want to start by saying that Adam Kempenaar is basically my personal podcasting godfather. He remains the host of the first podcast I ever listened to, that I've been listening to for nearly eight years, though the man sitting next to him has changed in that time. I don't always agree with his movie opinions, though those opinions are always exceptionally well argued. His voice has been in my ear buds for nearly a decade and I can't imagine my analysis of the world of film without him.

But Adam's got a limitation that really bothers me, and it was on particular display in Filmspotting #163.

First Adam and Scott discussed the fact that Hostel: Part II was opening that weekend. I knew Scott wouldn't have a problem with this movie, because on his own podcast (The Next Picture Show) Scott likes to refer to intense content as "my beloved violence." It also didn't surprise me to hear Adam talk about how he hadn't been able to watch the original Hostel because he's too squeamish to watch torture porn and its brethren.

If this is where it had ended, I probably wouldn't be writing this post. But only a few minutes later, the two were reading listener feedback from a recent episode in which Adam and regular host Sam Van Halgren had talked about their top five movies set on water. The listener had incredulously questioned why Das Boot was missing from their lists, and Adam said he was too claustrophobic to watch a movie set entirely in a submarine, as well as the spelunking horror film The Descent, which he brought into the conversation out of nowhere.

Come on.

I understand that there are viewers genuinely triggered by real events in their lives that make them unable to watch certain types of movies. If you'd ever been kidnapped, I suspect you'd have a hard time watching a movie about kidnapping. But the way Adam always says this with a chuckle just makes it seem like a self-stylized quirk that has no genuine driver behind it. Are you really afraid of something ridiculous like torture porn, or are you using it as an excuse to avoid something you think will suck?

I'm picking on Adam, but among the podcasts I listen to, he's not even the podcaster who's most emblematic of this. The aforementioned The Next Picture Show is usually a foursome, but often one of the four hosts is at a film festival or on vacation and they go with just three. However, they also go with just three when Genevieve Koski -- who, granted, has the additional work of serving as the show's producer -- opts out because a particular subject matter gives her the creeps. She says this with that same kind of nervous giggle that suggests she could get past it if she just toughened up.

Could Adam and Genevieve genuinely be triggered by something that prevents them from watching these films? That's possible, but I suspect if that were the case, they just wouldn't mention it all. They wouldn't mention why they're not watching You Were Never Really Here (I believe this was a real example with Genevieve, though Adam did review it). They would just be "on vacation" or "at a film festival."

I guess I think that if you sign up to be a movie critic, it means you watch all the movies. Film criticism contains a multitude. Sure, there are genres I gravitate toward, and ones I like less. But I make a point of watching films from all genres, aimed at all demographics. It's what we do.

If someone isn't doing that, they're not doing the whole job. Sure, teen vampire movies may not be my favorite movies to watch. But if I'm not watching any of them, I'm doing my audience a disservice. Because even among teen vampire movies, there are some that are good and worth recommending to my audience.

It may seem easier to forgive Adam and Genevieve for not wanting to watch someone being hung off a hook and whipped with a cat o' nine tails. But there are actually a reasonable number of movies where this or something like it happens, and some of them are good. Some of them are worth your time, and the time of your readers. Or in this case, listeners.

I just don't look at you with much credibility if your excuse for not watching certain movies is that nervous giggle. The self-deprecation of calling yourself a wimp is not as cute as you think. Just get over it and watch the damn movie.

So Very Unhappy

Back at the start of 2012, I didn't think I wanted a second film podcast in my podcast lineup -- actually, a second podcast, period. Especially if it was going to be hosted by those two who sometimes substituted for the regular hosts of my first and only podcast, Filmspotting, when they went on vacation. He reminded me of the squeaky voiced "That's against our policy" ticket-taking teen from The Simpsons; she just didn't sound ready for primetime. Together they sounded how I would sound if I made a podcast in my basement, or maybe not even that good.

That was six-and-a-half years ago. Today, I mourn the loss of what may legitimately be my favorite podcast. And I listen to a lot more than two podcasts nowadays.

On my ride to work on Wednesday morning -- yes, I listen to podcasts while I'm riding my bike -- I was hit by the following announcement: the next episode would be the last of Filmspotting: SVU. I remember quite clearly where I was when I heard the news. I was on Exhibition Street right around Lonsdale, just starting the incline up towards Bourke and Collins.

Matt Singer and Alison Wilmore made the announcement with little fanfare, in the spot of the show where they usually do a round-up of recent new releases, as their show's primary focus was movies and TV available from streaming platforms. See, that's what its clever title meant. Not Special Victims Unit, a la Law & Order, but Streaming Video Unit. I always appreciated that joke. I didn't always appreciate Matt and Alison and their senses of humor, not from the start anyway. But I always appreciated that joke.

Over time, I came to appreciate Matt and Alison immensely. The fact that they were kind of like me doing a podcast became endearing, and then it became ... real. I found that their opinions made a lot of sense, sometimes a lot more sense than the hosts of what they referred to as "the mothership," the regular Filmspotting podcast. Matt, who had initially been the one who really bothered me, came to feel like a kindred spirit. I love a person who commits to a joke, as it's something I pride myself on doing. Matt is that guy. He'll follow a joke to its logical conclusion and will fearlessly not stop until he gets there.

As just one example, when trying to come up with a title for the aforementioned new releases segment of their show, Matt either came up with himself, or took from a joking suggestion of a listener, the title "Singer & Wilmore's Completely Concise and Totally Succinct New Release Roundup." What would have, on most podcasts, been floated as a one-time joke of something they were going to use, Matt used for like a year, developing an entire running joke about saying it as quickly as he could, and the fact that Alison either pretended to not know what the segment was called, or was just unwilling to say the title. He was so committed that you got the sense Alison was truly annoyed by his insistence in flogging the joke -- though of course would have just nipped it in the bud entirely if she really didn't think it was working on some level. Or, whether it was actually working or not, she allowed it to continue because it was a pure expression both of who Matt is, and of his commitment to a bit, a commitment I appreciated immensely.

What did shine through was this camaraderie, born of years of podcasting together. Matt and Alison, who have both been critics in print and online media throughout, started together on a podcast for IFC probably more than a decade ago, though I never listened to that. They developed a give-and-take and personal style over the years, one that made them incredibly charming to listen to and gave even their shaggier attempts at humor immense amounts of likeability. They came across as perfect "work spouses," anticipating each other's tendencies and cracking each other up.

One of my favorite things about them, though, was their earnestness and lack of pretension. They could appreciate an arthouse favorite like the best critics, but they weren't afraid to champion low culture. Matt in particular loved Arnold Schwarzenegger (and did a great impression of him), and awful martial arts movies; Alison unabashedly supported horror. I don't listen to critics because I want them to wax rapturous about the undisputed greats of the medium. I like it sometimes when they're just willing to go on and on about Gymkata.

And I also enjoyed how they were unafraid to say that they didn't get the affection for a particular film, especially one where it seemed like the only acceptable public stance on it was to sing its praises. In fact, in their annual year-end show called "The SVUvies," they had segments called "We Didn't Get It," in which they talked about failing to appreciate a critical darling, and "They Didn't Get It," about films that they felt were misunderstood. Last year Matt chose Call Me By Your Name as his "We Didn't Get It" film because he just didn't think it was worthy of all the hype. I agreed, but could not figure out how to articulate that publicly without someone assuming the reaction came from a place of homophobia. Matt and Alison stuck by their guns, which I very much appreciated.

The point I noticed the podcast perhaps eclipsing its forbear, though, was the two podcasts' respective reactions to Star Trek. I can't remember the occasion where it came up on "the mothership," but Filmspotting host Josh Larsen was downright dismissive of all the original Star Trek movies starring William Shatner et al. Now, I don't want to deny Josh the right not to like Star Trek, but it was the terms in which he discussed it that frustrated me, almost as though he thought it was so silly he was just doing the verbal equivalent of brushing it aside. Around that same time, Matt and Alison had the occasion to revisit and discuss my favorite Star Trek film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. They delved in deep discussing the things that made it great, and the contrast with Josh's laughing dismissal of it was palpable.

I don't know if it would truly be fair to say that I liked SVU better than Filmspotting in the end, though the fact that it was even up for discussion shows just how much Matt and Alison grew on me in those six-and-a-half years, how much they became part of my weekly (actually biweekly) listening routine. And how much their absence from it will hurt.

They were just two film nerds like me who liked to crack each other up, while being true to their own tastes and their love of the medium. Sure, I'll be able to find their writing out there, if I look for it. They're both still working critics.

But their voices will be gone from my earbuds, and that's sad. It's like saying goodbye to two friends.

Happy trails, SVU.

My top 64 of the 1990s

Eight years ago I was super excited about my top 25 of the 2000s, posted on this blog about four weeks after the decade ended. (Read here if you're interested.)

I was excited enough that I wanted to go back and retroactively post my top 25 of the 1990s. But just scanning the list of my favorite titles of the decade gave me a headache. How would I ever narrow it down to just 25? The impossibility of the task put my ambitions more or less permanently on ice.

Well, maybe less permanently.

I've now got my excuse -- and also an excuse to go more than just 25 deep.

The first podcast I started listening to back in 2011, Filmspotting, is in the final four of their annual Filmspotting Madness tournament, which pits various films or film personalities in a March Madness-style tournament of 64, whittling it down to just one winner over a period of six weeks. Listeners choose a winner in all the duels by voting in polls on their website. Previous installations have focused on actors and actresses (2015), directors (2016) and last year, the films in the Filmspotting pantheon (films that have been deemed ineligible for their weekly top five lists because they're just too great and have been talked about too much).

This year is the first year in a three-year plan. In 2018 they're trying to determine the best movies of the 1990s, and they will follow that in 2019 with the best movies of the 2000s. That'll time out perfectly to be discussing the best movies of the 2010s when everyone else is talking about that in the early part of 2020.

What more excuse did I need?

Now, when I selected my top 25 films of the 2000s back in 2010, I did it completely organically. I narrowed my selections down to maybe 40 candidates, rewatched a good ten films in that January alone, and then produced the top 25 only from my own conclusions about their quality and my affection for them.

"What other way would there be to do it, Vance?"

Well I'm glad you asked. The easiest way to do it would be to just look at my Flickchart. The chart can and would tell me what my top 25 movies of the 2000s were based on the decisions I've made in various duels over time, which have led to an exact ranking for every film I've charted. If I believed it to be 100% accurate, it would arguably be the best way to go.

But I didn't necessarily believe it would be 100% accurate. Plus, making a list is a creative process. Even if my Flickhart list would be evidence of my own thought process on the topic, as recorded over a long period of time, there are enough variables in the decisions I've made that I didn't feel comfortable just having the website spit out my answers for me. I wanted to generate them on my own, if only for the aesthetic value of the exercise, of consciously considering and selecting them with only this context in mind.

And that's what I'll do in two years when it's time to choose my best of the 2010s. But the 1990s? Remember that headache I told you about that they gave me?

So I decided this time, I would just let Flickchart do its job. It'll be a lot easier on me, especially in a post I want to just crank out in a timely manner. Besides, it's a bit more honest, isn't it? I won't be selecting movies I think will gain me credibility but I don't really love, though I hope you know me well enough to know I don't do that anyway. These will be my favorites, pure and simple, a result of having selected them over time in a series of individual decisions governed by honest preferences.

I'm inclined to write a blurb about each one, but you don't need to read 64 blurbs. Twenty-five seems about right, as that's what I also did back in 2010. Twenty-five short blurbs, because many of these titles are ones you likely know, love, and know everything great about already.

So, in time for the championship game between Michigan and Villanova in college basketball's actual March Madness tournament, here's what Flickchart tells me are my top 64 films released between 1990 and 1999:

64. Short Cuts (1993)
63. Groundhog Day (1993)
62. Se7en (1995)
61. The Professional (1994)
60. Ulee's Gold (1997)
59. Smoke Signals (1998)
58. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
57. Misery (1990)
56. Trainspotting (1996)
55. Wayne's World (1992)
54. Total Recall (1990)
53. Kicking and Screaming (1995)
52. Toy Story 2 (1999)
51. Awakenings (1990)
50. A Man of No Importance (1994)
49. The Crow (1994)
48. A Simple Plan (1998)
47. Thelma & Louise (1991)
46. Speed (1994)
45. Before Sunrise (1995)
44. The Crucible (1996)
43. Swingers (1996)
42. Contact (1997)
41. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
40. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
39. Apollo 13 (1995)
38. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
37. Jacob's Ladder (1990)
36. Happiness (1998)
35. The Sixth Sense (1999)
34. Three Kings (1999)
33. My Cousin Vinny (1992)
32. Boogie Nights (1997)
31. Dave (1992)
30. Dances With Wolves (1990)
29. Philadelphia (1993)
28. Malcolm X (1992)
27. The Player (1992)
26. Starship Troopers (1997)

25. The Matrix (1999) - The two most influential films of the decade bookend my top 25, with The Matrix clocking in here. This barely made my top 25 of 1999, landing at #22 on my year-end list, but I couldn't have known at that time how it would change cinema and grow in stature. I don't just love The Matrix because of its reputation, though. I love it because it's almost perfectly realized, and is a total whiz bang of a movie.

24. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - I still remember watching this on a date in 1991 and feeling enthralled by it. And though I haven't revisited it more than twice in the ensuing years, that feeling of being enthralled has never left me. It has one of the most iconic characters/performances of all time, and it set a new standard for serial killer movies that made it almost as influential as my #25 and my #1.

23. Strange Days (1995) - Rarely is technology in a science fiction film used so successfully to find the heart of the story. This is a movie about love, loss and the loss of love in a scuzzy near future that is looking more and more like our own, in the film that showed me Ralph Fiennes could play a hero as well as a monstrous Nazi, and reminded me that Angela Bassett is just awesome.

22. 12 Monkeys (1995) - Another great head trip takes my next spot. Bruce Willis' first comeback (would that be fair to say?) has one of its true highlights in Terry Gilliam's film about a virus and time travel and, well, quite a bit else. It's Gilliam through and through and though that might disappoint us nowadays in light of his recent support of Harvey Weinstein, it was great then, and I won't deduct credit from the movie in retrospect.

21. Galaxy Quest (1999) - A comedy so good I saw it in the theater on consecutive nights. This loving Star Trek lampoon may be in my top ten comedies of all time and gave me a permanent fondness for Tim Allen (who will also appear later on this list). The cast also includes Sigourney Weaver and Sam Rockwell and I could just go on and on in a lovefest about this movie. It's got heart, it's got great production design and it's funny as hell.

20. Titanic (1997) - My heart will go on, and so will my affection for Titanic. I just can't quit it. (Wait, now I'm crossing my movie quotes.) A theatrical viewing of this in 3D a few years ago confirmed that I still love my #1 movie of 1997 and that I'd be happy on almost any occasion to sit down and watch it for three hours and 15 minutes. Some Titanic defenders might swear their appreciation for it is purely technical, but what can I say, I love the love story too.

19. Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) - The movie I would have least expected to appear on this list if you asked me after I first watched the trailer for it. "Who is this Hugh Grant character and why does he think he's so great?" Well, the answer is because he is so great, and this movie is delightful as hell -- even with Andie MacDowell in it. This is like comfort food for me. I own it and come back to it regularly.

18. Dumb and Dumber (1994) - The fact that Dumb and Dumber is only my 18th favorite film of the 1990s shows you how crazy good this decade was for me. I could watch this movie any time of the day or night. I used to say that if this came on TV I would be unable not to watch it until the end, though I'm not sure how many times that actually happened. It makes me shoot milk out of my nose. "Ah lahk it a lot."

17. Flirting With Disaster (1996) - David O. Russell was never better than in the 1990s, and this is his best of three great films from the decade. This is the very definition of the modern screwball comedy and it just flies from one great set piece to the next. I've never liked Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Tea Leoni or Richard Jenkins better -- though Stiller has another reason to be praised in 1996 coming up later on the list.

16. Election (1999) - It's appropriate that Alexander Payne's best film comes right after Russell's, since for a while I thought of them both as personal favorites who couldn't do wrong. For a while. They've both gone comparatively astray for me recently, but Election is prime Payne, when his wicked humor combined perfectly with structural narrative playfulness to produce something utterly rewatchable. Strangely, it's a feel good movie even though most of the characters are bad.

15. Ghost (1990) - As with Titanic, you'll never take the romantic out of me. This was Titanic before Titanic, a film to which I was slavishly devoted on first viewing with its high concept ideas and a romance that made me swoon. But guess what? This one holds up too. I watched it a few years back and I continue to think it has one of the best and tightest scripts of any film I've ever seen. If Ghost told me it loved me, I'd say "Ditto."

14. Schindler's List (1993) - I finally sat down for my second viewing of Schindler's List last year, 24 years after my first -- which confirmed it was not just hanging around the upper end of my Flickchart on reputation alone. This is still an epic accomplishment of almost unbelievable quality and importance, feeling almost like a documentary in spots, yet it's also got a truly cinematic villain that allows it to function, in some respects, like a Spielbergian popular entertainment. The ending still slays me.

13. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - I saw T2 before I saw The Terminator, so the latter never stood a chance. James Cameron's best film will always be one of my most mind-blowing exposures to special effects of all time, but it doesn't get by on the T-1000 alone. It was a brilliant decision to reclaim Arnold Schwarzenegger as the hero of this series, and a whole host of iconic imagery follows from that. It's one of my favorite action movies of all time, and that scene of nuclear apocalypse still gives me the willies.

12. Bound (1996) - Bound has spent time in my top 20 overall on Flickchart; that's how much I love it. I simply love spending time in the company of such interesting characters who make such smart decisions within the context of a tight noir gangster thriller, and the hot lesbian sex doesn't hurt either (yuk yuk). The Wachowskis' debut feature is still their best, and it gets remarkable narrative mileage from just the sets of two adjacent apartments. All scripts should be this intelligent.

11. The Iron Giant (1999) - You've cried in movies before, but how many of them still reduce you to tears after a fifth viewing? That's about how many times I've seen Brad Bird's masterpiece all the way through, and I still get that lump in the throat at the end. It's a simple and wondrous snapshot of a particular time in Cold War America with a message of friendship and non-violence that's the perfect antidote to it. Simply put, one of my favorite children's movies of all time.

10. Defending Your Life (1991) - Surely the most obscure film to place so high on my list, Albert Brooks' afterlife romantic comedy nails both the romance and the comedy. He and Meryl Streep have never been so laid back and lovely as they navigate an afterlife processing station where they must convince a judge that they deserve to move on to the next plain of existence, or be sentenced to return to Earth to give it another try. It's high concept and marvelously joyous, with a useful message about confronting fear thrown in for good measure.

9. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) - The highest ranked 1990s film on my chart to just miss my top 20, though it's been as high as 12th or 13th in the past. David Mamet annoys me more often than he wins me over, but this is the massive exception to that, a foul-mouthed and dialogue-heavy look at four men trying to sell worthless investment properties in order to stay afloat. "Third place is your fired." Alec Baldwin's monologue would probably be enough, but then there's the rest of the movie. A tour de force of writing and acting.

8. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - Yet another film whose backlash has never been a consideration in my affection for it. Shawshank is a masterpiece, pure and simple. It'll never be my #1 film, but I understand why it's #1 on IMDB, and I would never begrudge someone who called it their own favorite movie. It's a depressing prison movie that sings on the strength of its script, acting, and message of hope in the face of total hopelessness.

7. Unforgiven (1992) - Another exception after Glengarry. I have historically not loved the western, though I've developed an appreciation for it in recent years. Yet I've always loved Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood's best film and one of the most thoughtful examinations of morality, heroism and the consequences of violence that I've ever seen. "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he has, and all he's ever gonna have." "Well I guess they had it coming." "We all got it coming, kid."

6. Goodfellas (1990) - And this is the first of the current Filmspotting final four to make my list, with two more ahead. I guess Filmspotters have good taste. What can a person say about Goodfellas other than that it is an absolute flat-out classic, as confident a display of the mastery of the cinematic medium as exists. We bow before the cinematic god that is Martin Scorsese.

5. Run Lola Run (1998) - I had a sub-par viewing of Run Lola Run a few years ago. And then a few weeks ago I saw it again and remembered why I didn't penalize it on my Flickchart for that sub-par viewing. A symphony of editing, music and cinematic derring do, Tom Tykwer's film is a singular experience that also gets you in and out in only 80 minutes. Its narrative invention is combined with a philosophical, existential approach to fate that is also thought-provoking. Dense and rich.

4. The Cable Guy (1996) - No rational argument will explain why this movie is ranked above some of the other films on this list, but I can tell you that few films that I've ever seen so largely exceeded my expectations for them. The film that made me love Jim Carrey has so much going on that I could never possibly do justice to it in five lines of text. Let's just say that this became a personal cult favorite with friends and has since become a measurable part of my identity as a cinephile. And here's that other Ben Stiller accomplishment I was telling you about. He should get more credit for it.

3. Fargo (1996) - The film up against Goodfellas in Filmspotting's final four. I may not have realized until they made a fantastic TV show version of this movie just how singular of a creation it is, using trademark Coen elements to carve out an absolute distinctive cinematic landscape that ties together comedy, tragedy and melancholy. If it weren't this funny, I probably wouldn't love it as much as I do, but the same is true if it weren't this tragic. Somehow, you aren't depressed as hapless Minnesotans leave a trail of bodies as they just try to make better lives for themselves.

2. Toy Story (1995) - And my #1 children's movie of all time is not one of the classics from Disney's mid-century height, but the first film released by Disney's subsidiary, Pixar. Pixar's first feature arrived fully formed, from the technology used to animate it to the whip-smart dialogue and script. Oh, and the heart -- the tons and tons of heart. Like with Galaxy Quest, I saw this on consecutive days in the theater, and many times since then. Pixar has never bested it.

1. Pulp Fiction (1994) - The other Filmspotting finalist (it goes up against Silence of the Lambs), Pulp Fiction is my #4 film of all time and the highest ranked film that I saw after I became a cinephile. The number four also represents the number of times I saw it in the theater, still a record. A narrative pretzel that simply blew my mind and instantly elevated any number of its scenes to all-time iconic status. This movie showed me what filmmaking could be, could do, and remains one of my most influential viewing experiences of all time. It doesn't take this top spot by accident or by default; it's fully deserved.

To show you just how much I love this decade, all 64 of these films are listed within my top 200 all time on Flickchart. Short Cuts gets in just under the wire at #199, though it's a perfect cut off because my #65 is then #208 overall. That means 32% of my top 200 are films from the 1990s, nearly a third.

Here is a breakdown by years for each:

1990 - 8
1991 - 5
1992 - 9
1993 - 4
1994 - 8
1995 - 7
1996 - 7
1997 - 5
1998 - 4
1999 - 7

I don't consciously think of 1992 as a great year for cinema, but clearly I thought it was. This was also a bit of an important in my maturation as a film fan, as 1992 straddled my freshman and sophomore years in college, when this was all start to mean so much more to me. That was also the year I had my first collegiate film class. Probably no coincidence there.

Oh, and just so they could cheat and add a few more titles, the Filmspotting guys had eight play-in games, allowing them to add eight more titles to the list. In case you're wondering, my next eight are: Truly Madly Deeply, Natural Born Killers, Looking for Richard, Bottle Rocket, Quiz Show, Close-Up, The Blair Witch Project and Carlito's Way. And yeah, I'm sure I could easily make arguments for these over some that came ahead of them. Tough decade.

I should mention that although I had a lot of the big titles in common with the Filmspotting 64, I did diverge from them in a number of other ways. Only 24 of their 64 overlapped on my list. I suppose I'm happy with that, as a cinephile gains his or her personal identity more on the basis of idiosyncratic favorites than the ways he or she conforms to conventional wisdom. Filmspotting themselves even accounted for their own preferences in making this list, as producer Sam van Halgren fought to have The Insider included even though it didn't make any of the major lists they used to figure out the most beloved films of the decade. More power to you, Sam.

I'm a bit alarmed that so few of these films are in a language other than English. As much as I love my 1990s, I know I have big blind spots in that decade, a function of what was available to me at the time I was falling in love with these movies and what I've prioritized going back to see. One of the few films that made the Filmspotting cut that I haven't seen, for example, was Chungking Express, a movie I believe I'd love if I could get my hands on it. I tried to watch it last year for Asian Audient, but could not borrow or rent it from anywhere, and didn't feel it warranted going to the lengths of purchasing it. So I've still got some work cut out for me.

But in early April of 2018, as random a time as any other, this is how I feel about that great decade, and I'm sticking to it.

My top five comedies of the 21st century

Laughing isn't something I've been very eager to do this past week. I missed an unprecedented (as far as I can remember) three days of work with a terrible hacking cough and related symptoms, which included chills, lack of energy, and rivers of phlegm. (Non-consecutive days, at that -- I went in Wednesday before relapsing Thursday.) This is also why you haven't seen a post from me since Tuesday.

You especially don't want to laugh when even small chuckles erupt into rib-bruising episodes that last 15 seconds. Fortunately, I watched plenty of movies not designed to make me laugh -- and one that was designed to make me laugh, but didn't.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about today. Today is project day. See, this week I also listened to Filmspotting's episode devoted to their top five comedies of the 21st century. That episode was inspired by BBC's recent critics poll of the top 100 movies since the year 2000, which is also something I'd like to tackle on my blog. But for now, I'll tackle it in a roundabout way, just as the Filmspotting guys did.

One of the responses to that BBC list was that it was almost totally devoid of pure comedy. Sure, it had films with comedy as one of their genres (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ratatouille), but hardly anything whose sole purpose was to make you laugh from start to finish. The Filmspotting guys decided to do their show as a corrective.

The thing is, their choices really disappointed me. Obviously comedy is pretty subjective, perhaps the most subjective type of film taste. But that doesn't mean you have to abandon objective critical discussion tactics when discussing comedy. And on those grounds I was inspired to come up with my own top five, to balance the injustices I saw on their lists. (Wouldn't you know it, though -- I had failed to listen to their #1 picks until during this very writing, and one of the hosts picked a movie that appears in my top five, removing just a bit of my righteous indignation.)

Before revealing my choices, I'll give you a bit of a sense of what I'm up against:

Josh Larsen:

5. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
4. Mean Girls
3. Songs from the Second Floor
2. Cedar Rapids
1. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazahkstan

Adam Kempenaar:

5. While We're Young
4. The Trip
3. Role Models
2. Shaun of the Dead
1. xxxxxx (I'll hold this one back for now)

Don't get me wrong -- this is not to say I don't like these films (all of which I've seen). Shaun of the Dead is one of my favorites. However, it being funny is not primarily the reason I like Shaun. Then there are those movies they chose that I am tepid to negative on, like Talladega Nights and Role Models.

To come up with my own choices, I went through my 17 individual Microsoft Word documents covering the years 2000 to 2016, which house a complete listing of movies I've seen in each year. To save time, I suppose I could have just reviewed my list of movies seen multiple times, since it's unlikely any of my choices would come from movies I've seen only once. But that might rule out something recent, and it would be interesting to know whether something I'd seen only once could still claim that kind of pull on me. In the end, all my choices were movies I'd seen more than once.

There were some other interesting patterns. For example, no year before 2004 yielded more than a single realistic contender, which means either comedy was going through a bad stretch around the turn of the century, or I just don't remember laughing very hard at the movies I saw back then because it was too long ago. In fact, I didn't shortlist a single film from 2002. The second half of the years in question were much more fruitful, with every year except for 2013 and 2016 yielding at least two contenders, and sometime as many as four. (Oddly, 2013 gave me zero contenders, wedged in between two other years that gave me at least three each. 2016 is still only half over, so its one contender was not such a surprise.)

One last bit of explanation. The five I chose were meant to represent a diversity of sensibilities, at least somewhat, though some clearly grew out of each others' sensibilities. I didn't repeat a director, in any case. This mostly occurred organically, anyway.

Okay, I think you've had enough preamble. I'll proceed with my top five, and then some honorable mentions in various categories.

5. What We Do in the Shadows (2014, Taika Waititi) - My #5 movie comes by its spot on this list rather unusually. It's a film I made the mistake of watching for the first time on the plane. Which doesn't mean I didn't find it funny, it just means it was not exactly a laughter-conducive environment. I ended up ranking it only 40th among my 2014 films. But my second viewing last year was with my wife, and it immediately primed me for my third viewing. This is just a delicious setup that consistently realizes its jokes, not to mention producing some actual blood and guts for horror enthusiasts and even some seamless special effects (made to seem all the more "real" by the mockumentary format). And part of why I wanted to get this on here was as a nod to the mockumentary as a form, though the 1980s and 1990s had far better examples of that form than anything worth honoring in the 21st century (other than this movie, that is). Favorite moment: When Waititi's main vampire Viago tiptoes down to the basement to wake up Petyr, the 8,000-year-old vampire who communicates only by bearing his teeth and making that "vampire hiss" that sounds basically like an exhalation of air. "Peeta! Peeeeeta!" he says in a sing-songy voice, as though calling forth a hiding infant.

4. The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005, Judd Apatow) - This was the one Adam chose as his #1. And I have to agree. (Well, not entirely -- it's my #4.) I have lately actually felt a bit of an aversion to this film that I can't really explain, which gives you some indication why I haven't seen it in nine years. But as I was coming up with this list, I just remembered the gales of laughter I unleashed in the theater as I was watching it. (And I also remembered that I ranked it my #3 film for the year.) It's no surprise the comedy pickings got better on my year-by-year lists after 2005, as Apatow's directorial debut put in place a new blueprint for comedy, one that has largely flourished (despite plenty of obvious examples of failures, and a likelihood that we'll totally burn out on it within the next five years). It was a grossout with heart, and it "went there" like few films I'd seen. I owe it a revisit, and at the very least I honor its role in our current comedy climate by including it here. Interestingly, this is the only film on this list I saw in a conventional theater environment. Favorite moment: As it's been nine years since I saw it, I'll just go with the one that came first to mind, that made me recognize I was watching something fresh and exciting: Seth Rogen's delivery of his story about seeing the woman have sex with the horse in Mexico. If the movie as a whole was an introduction of a new comedic voice, then within that, we were introduced to Rogen's distinct voice, which has arguably been nearly as influential as Apatow's.

3. Idiocracy (2006, Mike Judge) - Given the reputation in comedy circles this has built in the past ten years, it's hard to believe it was basically dumped, its studio having no idea how to market it. Tellingly, I was looking up movies to see at local theaters the week it came out, and even in the screening times listed on the website it had a placeholder name: Untitled Mike Judge Comedy. And I wasn't going to be that one person to go see it in the theater -- I had to discover it later on video. Fortunately, Idiocracy has made itself known in the intervening years, especially in our house, where my wife might call it her favorite comedy, period. Judge is underappreciated in terms of not only what he's contributed to the comedy world, but the different types of things -- Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill share more in common with their visual appearance than the actual content of their comedy, and Idiocracy is altogether different from both, though they all serve up satire in endlessly funny ways. Now that Trump is actually competitive in the presidential race, people are thinking of this movie as even more prescient than it already seemed even from the start. Favorite moment: When we see the changes to the outside of a Fuddruckers hamburger restaurant down through the centuries, as the name becomes increasingly more suggestive until finally landing on: Buttfuckers.

2. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007, Jake Kasdan) - If Idiocracy is the best satire of the last 16+ years, Walk Hard is the best spoof. It was another one that caught me by surprise, as I didn't prioritize a theatrical viewing. Once we queued it up at home, though, I couldn't get enough. I've seen it only twice, but only because I haven't had a natural opportunity to buy the movie yet. A sort-of third viewing came when I actually went with a friend to see John C. Reilly perform as Dewey Cox in a small nightclub in Los Angeles -- one of my truly cherished live performance experiences of all time. Kasdan makes by far my unlikeliest director to appear on this list, as even his best other movie (Orange County) is pretty middling as comedies go. This movie pierces the heart of its subject matter, the music biopic (specifically Walk the Line), and finds its comedy in a combination of parodies of the typical tropes of a music biopic, a handful of great impersonations, and some of the funniest songs written for a movie since This is Spinal Tap. I just grin from ear to ear as I watch this movie. Favorite moment: When Tim Meadows, as Dewey's band mate, warns him of the dangers of marijuana via many emphatically stated traits of the drug that should scare him: "It's not habit forming! It makes sex even better! It's the cheapest drug there is!"

1. Step Brothers (2008, Adam McKay) - And John C. Reilly is the star of both of my top picks. Narrowly the funniest of McKay's many collaborations with Will Ferrell (edging out Anchorman and leading the others by a wide margin), Step Brothers had me simply screaming with laughter. As my wife looked over at me while we were at the drive-in, she thought perhaps I was possessed -- she had never seen me laugh like that. And this makes four of five films I watched with my wife for the first time, while the other was one I watched with her the second. If I wanted to come up with a thesis on what makes Step Brothers my #1, as I've done with some of the other movies on my list, I couldn't. It's just the movie that made me laugh the hardest. It's also the comedy I've seen the most since 2000, as our fifth viewing was about a year ago. I also have a Step Brothers t-shirt. It helps that with my curly hair, I also look kind of like both Ferrell and Reilly in this movie. Also, it made my top ten of the year. Favorite moment: There are so many I could choose from, so I will just choose a little one, maybe the one that told me I was in for a wonderful ride: At their first dinner together as a joined family, Reilly's Dale makes some crude remark about Ferrell's Brennan, and Ferrell just gets this pained look on his face for a moment, which is completely unexpected -- it's a combination of disgust and genuine hurt. I don't know why but it may be the funniest look I have ever seen Ferrell produce.

Honorable mentions 

As a liberal, I'm a little displeased that my list couldn't include a female-driven comedy or a minority-driven comedy, but there were these two very strong contenders:

Spy (2015, Paul Feig) - The movie that turned me around on Melissa McCarthy, though I unfortunately must admit that the single funniest moments belong to Jason Statham. Feig deserves a mention given that he's also come through with Bridesmaids and The Heat.

Black Dynamite (2009, Scott Sanders) - Just saw this this year, and was laughing throughout. Reminded me of one of my favorite comedies of last century, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.

There were a couple movies I laughed at incredibly hard the first time, but they didn't hold up as well the second time. They are:

The Dictator (2012, Larry Charles) - Sacha Baron Cohen absolutely needs a mention.

The Interview (2014, Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg) - The controversial film that many people hated the first time. I loved it the first time, but only liked it the second.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008, Kevin Smith) - It took until the third viewing last week for me to turn on this one. Maybe Seth Rogen doesn't age well.

I also highlighted some movies that really surprised me, given what I expected from them. I had no idea these movies would be as funny as they were.

Date Night (2010, Shawn Levy) - I was openly disdainful when I saw the trailers. The opposite after I watched it. One of my favorite lines of the 21st century, delivered by Mila Kunis: "Those nipple clamps hurt me!"

Hot Rod (2007, Akiva Schaffer) - Seen it only once and don't remember the details, but I laughed a lot.

Wanderlust (2012, David Wain) - I had been down on Wain (see my thoughts on Wet Hot American Summer) so this one took me totally by surprise. Paul Rudd practicing and then delivering his dirty talk to Malin Akerman (and her response) is comedy classic material.

Stone Bros. (2009, Richard Frankland) - Comedy featuring Aboriginal actors that we watched mostly because my wife's boss was a producer. We laughed hysterically.

Hall Pass (2011, Peter & Bobby Farrelly) - As this is "late Farrelly" I didn't expect much, but this just missed my top ten for that year. Laughs throughout. Worried about a potential third viewing though.

And finally, funny movies from the period that in many cases I like better overall than the movies I've mentioned, but the reason I love them is not primarily because they are funny.

Tangled (2010, Nathan Greno & Byron Howard) - Has one of my funniest single lines of this century: As the hero, Flynn Rider, engages in a duel with a horse holding a knife in his teeth, while he uses a frying pan, and they move closer to the edge of a cliff, he shouts: "You should know, this is the strangest thing I've ever done!"

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008, Nicholas Stoller) - Hilarious, but the heart is what I really remember about this one.

Elf (2003, Jon Favreau) - Take comment on Forgetting Sarah Marshall and apply here.

Toni Erdmann (2016, Maren Ade) - Perhaps the hardest laughter I've ever experienced in a movie sustained over a ten-minute stretch, but the movie's profundity is what left me sitting in my seat in a pensive fugue state until the credits ended. (Sadly, this is also the only choice in this whole post directed by a woman.)

Okay, I thought I was done but here are just a few more honorable mentions that have no other category:

Team America: World Police
Napoleon Dynamite
21 Jump Street
Klown
Tropic Thunder
Zoolander (thought Ben Stiller deserved some love with these last two)
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (referenced but not actually singled out)

Okay! That was rather exhaustive. Turns out there have been some funny movies this century. Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.