Post-2010s list, what should the next countdown be?

...I like Crime/Noir, Musicals and War as the poll options as all three have their supporters and have been mooted more than once in the past, adding a 4th option would probably just dilute the votes. Whatever would have been the 4th option this time can become the 3rd option on the poll next time a date-independent countdown is due...

...if we did Noir, for example, then it could be split into two lists of 50 of the periods most seem to see those films as (classic and neo) and either run concurrently or simultaneously, depending on what worked/was wanted/the host felt worked best for them....

...we at least need to start thinking about getting creative sooner rather than later so we have a contingency plan when we run out of genres that people are interested in.

I don't fully understand the 'simultaneous countdowns' idea...

I suspect I may end up not voting in the poll, unless the fourth option is something that sounds appealing. My preference between Noir, War, and Musicals would be entirely dependent on the eligibility requirements, which wouldn't be decided until later.

Strict noir? Pass. Noir + Neo-Noir or just Crime? I could come up with at least ten of those. Strictly Musicals? Pass. Musicals + Movies about musicians/movies that heavily feature music? I could come up with at least ten of those. War movies actually about the soldiers fighting? Pass. Movies about the soldiers and/or the effects the war has on ciivilians? I could come up with at least ten of those.

I'm surprised musicals would be a pass with all the animated ones eligible, including Charlotte's Web

Why not just do a countdown with Noir but add Crime to it, never mind neo noir that just restricts things to movies only made 1940 and 1959...

Yes, the big problem with Film Noir is defining what we mean by that. The actual period is from the '40s until the early '50s or so. Which is a very rich, interesting movement and has hundreds of titles even though it is only twelvish or so years. For those of us who are Film Noir nuts that is more than enough to make a Top 50 for absolute sure but probably even a Top 100. However, getting more than thirty or so MoFos to make super deep dives into the Classic Noir period is basically not gonna happen.

Which means opening it up to Neo Noir so that we could get participation into the sixty-or-so mark that we had for say the Westerns list. But the problem there is while there is plenty of bickering among Noir enthusiasts and scholars about what is and isn't part of the classic canon, when it comes to Neo Noir it is open to much wider interpretation. So wide that it would be difficult to argue too much with somebody about what should or shouldn't count. If somebody says Chinatown and Night Moves (1975), obviously the answer is yes. If somebody else says Body Heat and Blade Runner, yeah, you can see it. But then when it becomes every thriller ever made and somebody wants to include three of the Fast and the Furious flicks on their ballot and The Human Centipede and Donnie Darko and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse it will so dilute the group list that to call it "Noir" of any kind is just ridiculous. And if voters can completely make up their own definition that means all of the cooler, obscure actual Film Noir from the '40s and '50s has absolutely zero chance of making it and being discovered - which to me would be the point of such an exercise. Even the acknowledged classics of the genre would fall well behind David Fincher and Christopher Nolan movies so that something that by all rights and by any objective metric should be obvious Top Ten material on a Film Noir list - Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, In a Lonely Place, The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing - would be well down the list if there at all.

So instead of Noir you could call it "Thrillers" or "Crime Films" or something else, but again, it becomes so broad that all of the usual suspects from the decade lists rise to the top and maybe you get a handful of actual, classic Film Noir. Maybe.

Please No...adding all crime movies to a noir countdown would dilute the countdown into the most popular crime films, burying any noir films. That would upset us noir fans. Holden Pike said it better below:



The solution is for Holden to host a Noir Countdown. He's about the only person I can think of who could do it right and have the flare needed to follow SpelingError who set the bar really high...Holden could set the bar even higher!

Here's my last out of the box pitch for a creative solution to a noir countdown.

First Holden host.

Second We have two voting ballots, one ballot is for noirs from the 1940s-1950s. The second ballot is for neo noirs from 1960 to current. IMDB movie page is used to qualify the movies, if the tag 'noir' or 'neo-noir' occurs anywhere on the movie page then that movie qualifies. People can send both ballots or just one of them.

Third The two ballots are combined into one Noir countdown consisting of 50 classic era noirs and 50 neo noirs. However there's only one countdown presentation and each day a movie is revealed from each of the two ballot tabulations (one classic noir movie per day and one neo noir movie per day).

Fourth When the time comes for Yoda to add the countdown list to MoFo there would be a Top 50 Classic Noir list and a Top 50 Neo Noir list.

This allows classic noir fans to have a focused list and allows fans of newer neo noir to have a list as well. It doesn't take any more time to do this and there's still only one countdown being done.....Hey, at least I'm trying to be creative!