Jordan Ruimy recently polled over 100 name-brand critics and columnists (myself included) about the best films of the first half of the 2020s.
And as you might expect, the top five picks were mostly dreary or cerebral or vaguely punishing in a film-dweeb way. Mainly because the critics are status-quo sheep.
Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer, which I respected but didn’t especally enjoy (my legs and my soul groaned in anguish) tallied the most votes. The first runner-up was Todd Field‘s TAR, which I saw four times without ever really tumbling for…it kept pissing me off.
In third, fourth and fifth place were The Daniels’ utterly infuriating Everything Everywhere All at Once (hated it with every fiber of my being), Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s Drive My Car (too many Parliament cigarettes) and Jonathan Glazer‘s The Zone of Interest (an austere one-trick-pony).
The second five (#6 through #10) were Justine Triet‘s Anatomy of A Fall (a good film but kind of a slog to sit through, and I really hated that little cloying kid), Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog (effing despised it), Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things (yes! — the only film among the top ten that I really liked), Celine Song‘s Past Lives (fuck you) and Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Licorice Pizza (HE-approved with sight reservations) came in ninth and tenth.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the films that placed 11th and 12th either — Martin McDonagh‘s The Banshees of Inisherin and Emerald Fennell‘s Promising Young Woman.
HE’s top five films of the 2020-2024 period are Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse (which premiered in Europe in late ’19 but wasn’t pirated for U.S. consumption until early ’20), Sean Baker‘s Anora, Steve McQueen‘s Mangrove, David Fincher‘s The Killer and Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers.
My #6 thru #10 are Steven Zalllian‘s Ripley, Reinaldo Marcus Green‘s King Richard, Edward Berger‘s Conclave, Tran Anh Hung‘s The Taste of Things (The Pot au Feu) and Guy Ritchie‘s The Covenant.
Other HE faves: Maestro, The Holdovers, Happening, Quo Vadis, Aida?, The Pigeon Tunnel, The Apprentice, La Chimera, Riders of Justice, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Worst Person in the World, The Beatles: Get Back, R.M.N., Bardo, The Trial of the Chicago 7, The King of Staten Island, The Trip to Greece, The Wild Goose Lake, Nomadland, In The Heights, West Side Story, Blackberry. (21)
