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)

I’d forgotten how effective the finale of To Die For is, and what a collossal dumbass Nicole Kidman‘s Pamela Smart** was depicted as. And especially what a blood-chilling vibe David Cronenberg had. That voice, those executive duds, that smile.

For me the second all-time creepiest movie assassin is that burly, 60ish, working-class Crimes and Misdemeanors guy from New Orleans who knocks on Anjelica Huston‘s Manhattan apartment door and says “flowers!”

Director Gus Van Sant was peaking like a sonuvabtich when TDF opened in October 1995. His greatest ever film, Drugstore Cowboy, which Gus directed at age 36 and cowrote with Daniel Yost, had opened six years earlier. And then came the totally gay My Own Private Idaho (’91). Let’s forget Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (’93), but two years after To Die For Gus directed Good Will Hunting (’97), another major score in terms of box-office and awards.

Let’s forget the misbegotten Psycho remake (’98) and the altogether dreadful Finding Forrester (David Poland loved it!).

But soon after came the brilliant bare-bones trilogy of Gerry, Elephant and Last Days. Paranoid Park was pretty good, I felt, although Gus’s Milk (’08) couldn’t hold a candle to Rob Epstein‘s The Times of Harvey Milk (’84). I never thought Sean Penn was the right guy to play Harvey — he’s way too short for one thing.

So Gus’s peak period lasted just shy of 20 years…commendable.

** The real Pamela Smart wasn’t murdered by a smooth assassin. She’s serving a life sentence inside the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women.

Countless times in my car I’ve listened to Philip Glass‘s score for The Fog of War (2003). It’s techno that haunts, unnerves, and instills a certain creepy, ominous feeling, and yet is oddly soothing and even moving at times. If you really let it in, I mean.

Two decades ago Morris’s landmark doc won the Best Feature Documentary Oscar. (Technically in early ’05.) But Glass’s score wasn’t even nominated.

Without Glass’s existential ennui The Fog of War, which is entirely about and entirely narrated by former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who served between ’61 and ’68, would mostly be an arid thing…analytical, data-ish, egghead-ish. But Glass’s music, operating on its own plane, delivers great, twirling, surging, rumbling currents of emotional anxiety, and is the reason The Fog of War won the gold statuette.

The Fog of War is about a brilliant, analytical guy who passed along orders that brought about tens of thousands of bombing deaths in Vietnam in the mid to late ’60s, and was part of a mechanism that fire-bombed much of Japan in the the mid ’40s, and yet it gets under your skin in a very unusual way. It almost makes you cry here and there.

So that’s what I often do when I’m driving around. I listen to Glass’s score and occasionally taste the welling of stuff that’s been churning inside for decades.

Friendo: “This idea that everyone who voted for Trump is by definition dumb or racist or an ogre is patently crazy. And I’m sure you know that.

“Trump himself may be a lying gasbag — no argument — but lots of Americans saw him as a cudgel against the Woke.

“The ONLY cudgel against the Woke.”

In Robert Wise’s 1961 West Side Story as well as innumerable stage versions performed over the decades, the dance scenes are never acknowledged by passersby, much less performed for them. In fact, passersby barely exist.

With the exception of “I Feel Pretty”, the basic rule is that each dance number happens in the hearts and minds of the Jets or Sharks.

And one other thing: Except for the opening sequence (i.e., ballet-like daytime street fighting), the dancing happens in a restricted space of some kind (dance hall, tenement rooftop, back alley, dress shop, drug store, rumble under a highway), and always among Jets or Sharks and their immediatekin or sympathizers.

The dancing, in short, is restricted to the immediate “family.” Neighborhood civilians never notice or acknowledge that any carefully choreographed activity is going on. The dancing is rigorously intimate — members only.

Which is why that “America” scene with Ariana DeBose (Anita) and David Alvarez (Bernardo) in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story…dancing down and around San Juan Hill in the daylight — has been bothering me from the get-go. Because sidewalk neighborhood residents are clearly watching Anita and Bernardo and their friends “cut a Latin rug”, so to speak. And, one presumes, are enjoying the “show.”

That’s a violation of a basic West Side Story rule, and is where the the Spielberg film loses the mojo. Because the singing and dancing are absolutely not for onlookers.

…they’re probably facing an even tougher situation now. Because the pollen from South Korea’s 4B movement — shorthand for bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae and bisekseu, which translate into “no marriage, no childbirth, no dating and no sex with men” — is reportedly floating to receptive American women. Because they really, really want to punish men for voting for Donald Trump.

This sort of thing has happened before, of course — some may have heard of an Aristophanes play called “Lysistrata” — but it’s probably true that liberal-minded women are going to be a lot less interested in any kind of carnal activity, and we all know this was already a low-flame thing, at least as far as lonely, depressed loser dudes were concerned.

@jennyzigrinocomedy Men are about to get way more lonely. #4b #6b #comedy #standupcomedy #election #men #women #dating ♬ original sound – jennyzigrinocomedy

@Toure Hey you effeminate bitch…I'm one of the black men who voted for Trump back in 2020, and you told us to go fuck ourselves, well this time around in 2024 even more of us voted for Trump this time…and I want to be one of the 1st to say Fuck you too! pic.twitter.com/qXCObWFWXi

— GalactusHerald (@AGalactusHerald) November 7, 2024

@skynews Interest in a movement called ‘#4B’ surged #online immediately after news broke that #donaldtrump had won the #USelection. What is it and and why are #women in #America joining it? ♀️ #US #Harris #womenempowerment ♬ original sound – Sky News

Three significant films will open on Wednesday, 12.25 — Christmas Day — minus the sound of jingle bells, joyful carolers and deer hooves on the roof. Which is interesting.

James Mangold‘s A Complete Unknown, first and foremost — Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz, Scoot McNairy.

Nosferatu, a jolting vampire film from Robert Eggers and costarring Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin and Willem Dafoe.

And Hailja Reijn‘s Babygirl, an allegedly worthwhile pervy relationship film with Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde and Antonio Banderas.

That’s a fairly nifty-sounding holiday trio!

Two other noteworthies are opening on 12.25 — Rachel Morrison‘s The Fire Inside, a fact-based female boxing flick with Ryan Destiny and Brian Tyree Henry, and Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz‘s Los Frikis, which no one will flock to.

Bill Maher: “Losers, look in the mirror.”

I’ve been constantly looking in the mirror since last Tuesday night, and I’m feeling a certain consolation amidst the shock and horror. I’ve begun to realize that the woke psychos are finished…they’re gradually realizing that their era is ending….over, in fact. That’s not a bad thing.

Three and a half months ago Bill Maher offered a rundown on Kamala Harris. It runs from 1:35 to 3:10. From the moment that Joe Biden threw in the towel until the night of Tuesday, 11.5, I thought Maher had been wrong….blind to what so many people loved about her. Now I have a different perspective.

Friendo: “Honestly? My first gut impression after glancing at this poster was that Paul Mescal is on crutches. Metallic multiple schlerosis crutches, of course. You can’t say that association isn’t there.”

Put another way, when oh when will Disney and Kathy Kennedy stop beating this irrefutably dead horse?

I’m sorry to report that the junket whores who were recently doing giddy cartwheels and back-flips over Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II…their ecstatic reviews are being disputed by…uhm, people who are not whores.

“Gladiator II is an absolute mediocrity,” a friend writes. “It pains me to say that Scott, at age 87, has lost his mojo. I don’t know how a studio can ever give Scott another big budget after this.

“And the over-rated Paul Mescal is absolutely terrible in the lead role. Denzel Washington’s supporting performance works, but that’s all.”

Friendo #2: “I thought it worked okay, but it’s no Gladiator.”