Best movies of the 21st century

Posted on | Posted on Tom Baum

BEST MOVIES OF THE 21st CENTURY 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaeVPdsVkyA

Richard Rushfield’s brilliant inside-Hollywood blog, The Ankler, asked readers to list their favorite movies of the 21st Century.  My Top 25:

  1. SPRING BREAKERS
  2. YOU CAN COUNT ON ME
  3. TALK TO HER
  4. LOVE ACTUALLY
  5. MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
  6. FORCE MAJEURE
  7. KINGS AND QUEEN
  8. A SERIOUS MAN
  9. MICHAEL CLAYTON
  10. BURN AFTER READING
  11. MARGARET
  12. AMERICAN HONEY
  13. THE SALESMAN
  14. INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
  15. BIRDMAN
  16. STEVE JOBS
  17. ABOUT A BOY
  18. ZODIAC
  19. CERTIFIED COPY
  20. RUST AND BONE
  21. THE GREAT BEAUTY
  22. FISH TANK
  23. OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
  24. VINCERE
  25. BELFAST, MAINE

To start (and end) at the top, I loved Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers when I reviewed it in  2013, and it’s only gotten better.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it’s a 67, on the low end for an art-house film, with critics variously dismissing it as “camp,” “pervy nonsense,” “swill,” and “misogynist.”

Misogynist?  The four girls are fairly brainless, true, but in other respects Spring Breakers is, well, empowering—several boys get calf-roped, there’s a femdom scene with imitation gangsta pimp James Franco, where he sucks on a pistol held at crotch-level by one of the girls, and at the finish, in revenge for Franco’s death, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benton, by now full gangsta, get to blow away a whole black posse, without any hint of moral or judicial consequence.  Punk irony:  the movie begins in a lecture hall where a history professor is lecturing on African-Americans’ quest for liberty.  It’s as if Korine is saying, consciously or not, “Lincoln freed the slaves, and this is what we have to show for it.”

That aside, it’s a classic, maybe the sole American art film of the 21st Century, unless you count American Honey.  Korine’s voyeurism, raised to fever pitch with the help of Benoȋt Debie’s camera, is in full, shameless control of itself, as is his willingness (typical of directors—e.g., Antonioni, Godard, Truffaut, Nicholas Roeg) to put the love of his life in compromising positions (though he does spare Mrs. Korzine a swimming-pool threeway with Franco).  There’s a lovely tribute to Britney Spears, the production design is gorgeous, ditto the sound design, the flashbacks and flash-forwards are seamless, the pink space-alien ski masks unforgettable, and the affection among the four girls (who make loving phone calls to parents and grandparents), while as ramped-up as the rest of the movie, feels right and true.

My 2013 review was longer than this.  I’m told it became part of the press kit.  That’s honor enough for me.