My List of The 21st Century’s Greatest Films

So here’s my individual list of the 21st Century’s Greatest Films of BBC’s Culture. In fact, it is if I was asked to do it when they asked many film critics to do this time consuming, hair splitting, gut wrenching exercise.

It is fucking hard to try to pick only ten films out of sixteen years of cinema. The worst thing in this is that I have so many films to catch up that I don’t know how full time film critics who watch many films a day can pick ten. This is beyond me.

At first I looked back at my list of the best films of the decade 2000-2009 as a starter,  then I got back to my ratings of five and four stars and a half.

Finally, I let my judgment and my cinematic memory decide which film has to be on the list and in which position. Sometimes, my tastes got over my judgment and other times it was the overall quality of the film that won it all.

Final words : are haters are gonna hate.

(Click on the links to read my full reviews)

Frances Ha

Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)

A story that follows a New York woman (Greta Gerwig) (who doesn't really have an apartment), apprentices for a dance company (though she's not really a dancer), and throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as their possible reality dwindles.

Greenberg

Greenberg (Noah Baumbach, 2010)

Since The Squid and the Whale I always been an admirator of Baumbach's offbeat comedies. The story of his film of 2005 was so close to what my family was living that I immediately put it in my all-time bests.

Greenberg is an unpretentious little breezy film about a man trying to get out of his depressive antisocial patterns. Once again, a character I easily can get associated with. Sadly, I'm a little antisocial and I have a facility to fell into a depressive state... But in the case of Greenberg, the "propos" doesn't get annoying at all.

The rythm of the story is right and it never gets over dramatic. The plot and the chjaracters evolves in a good way and little redemption is at the end. Meanwhile, it doesn't get over cheezy or too melodramatic.

Ben Stiller as Greenberg gives a fine performance and he lets his character get all the subtilities it needs. The other actors that populate the film are very good in this well constructed play.

Baumbach's film isn't as flamboyant or exhilarating as the next indie comedy but it brings something new to a subject that has recently populated many films.