if you live in LA, you can work the wry observations in Los Angeles Plays Itself into almost any conversation. I also really enjoyed the youtube short Vancouver Never Plays Itself.
What's interesting about 'best of' lists - and is something that your article gets at but the Times list very much does not - is less the individual movies that get on the list, since that reflects the arbitrariness of personal taste, viewing experience, "whoops-I-forgot-one"-ness and more the logic, either explicit or implicit, behind the selections.
Because it's an understanding of that logic that allows the list to be a useful guide. (Which the Times list very much isn't, except as very fun timekilling clickbait and a window into a vaguely understood and rather culturally archaic notion of prestige, as you note.)
So, while I personally might agree with some of your picks (A Touch of Sin), have seen one at a now-closed drive in and remember it being comically bad (War of the Worlds) and feel annoyed to have forgotten one (Inside Man), the logic behind your choices makes it a really appealing way of learning about some new movies.
(FWIW, I personally ended up with a list of 40 titles, would rank The Century of the Self over Los Angeles Plays Itself, Carlos over Boarding Gate, Wild Goose Lake over Election, and Emilia Perez over Un Prophete, but that's the stuff of actual conversation, not comment posts.)
I assume the threshold for "higher than middlebrow" would be a focus on cinema as an art form not primarily centered on America (aside from Hollywood's golden age, obviously). For any Actual Cinephile it is unserious to include more than a handful of American films (at the very most!) among this millennium's 25 best so far. This blogspot continues to be the best highbrow list resource out there: https://tenbestfilms.blogspot.com/
I wouldn't normally turn this into 'what about this film?' but, its absence from the list it suggests you don't know about it and I think it'd be right up your street: JCVD (2008, dir Mabrouk El Mechri). Apologies for turning this into a 'what about this film?' thread.
middle highbrow: TSPDT
high highbrow: piero scaruffi
if you live in LA, you can work the wry observations in Los Angeles Plays Itself into almost any conversation. I also really enjoyed the youtube short Vancouver Never Plays Itself.
What's interesting about 'best of' lists - and is something that your article gets at but the Times list very much does not - is less the individual movies that get on the list, since that reflects the arbitrariness of personal taste, viewing experience, "whoops-I-forgot-one"-ness and more the logic, either explicit or implicit, behind the selections.
Because it's an understanding of that logic that allows the list to be a useful guide. (Which the Times list very much isn't, except as very fun timekilling clickbait and a window into a vaguely understood and rather culturally archaic notion of prestige, as you note.)
So, while I personally might agree with some of your picks (A Touch of Sin), have seen one at a now-closed drive in and remember it being comically bad (War of the Worlds) and feel annoyed to have forgotten one (Inside Man), the logic behind your choices makes it a really appealing way of learning about some new movies.
(FWIW, I personally ended up with a list of 40 titles, would rank The Century of the Self over Los Angeles Plays Itself, Carlos over Boarding Gate, Wild Goose Lake over Election, and Emilia Perez over Un Prophete, but that's the stuff of actual conversation, not comment posts.)
https://substack.com/@keenmiler/note/c-129342124
I assume the threshold for "higher than middlebrow" would be a focus on cinema as an art form not primarily centered on America (aside from Hollywood's golden age, obviously). For any Actual Cinephile it is unserious to include more than a handful of American films (at the very most!) among this millennium's 25 best so far. This blogspot continues to be the best highbrow list resource out there: https://tenbestfilms.blogspot.com/
AZOR supremacy is real
I wouldn't normally turn this into 'what about this film?' but, its absence from the list it suggests you don't know about it and I think it'd be right up your street: JCVD (2008, dir Mabrouk El Mechri). Apologies for turning this into a 'what about this film?' thread.
Inquiring minds want to know if you’ve seen Caught by the Tides yet…
What's the consensus canon for high highbrow
https://open.substack.com/pub/maxread/p/the-read-max-watch-list?r=53sw&utm_medium=ios
The Slant 100 essential is in the highbrow mix somewhere https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/100-essential-films/