Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 50 Best Films of the 21st Century

i'm sure this is a rehash of many things that have been said but i just can't get over the idea that a film's social/political valence is somehow irrelevant to its quality and to suggest otherwise is simply to dishonestly push an agenda wholly separate from artistic merit.

for example, moonlight is such a profoundly moving film precisely because it's dealing with black queerness in a way that hadn't really been done before in such a mainstream film.

this is from the list itself. nobody is trying to trick you into thinking the film or the list or the listmakers aren't thinking about social issues. all movies have themes and this one's happen to deal with race and sexuality in a progressive way, while also being inarguably an impeccable piece of cinematic craft. if you're someone who isn't moved by those issues then the movie may not interest you, but obviously the listmakers are different. personally i also think moonlight is one of the best movies of the century and i have no reason to lie to you. seeing social issues dealt with so beautifully brings edification in the same way any movie dealing with any theme can.

you could do the same thing for basically every one of these movies. get out isn't one of my favorites, but it spoke to race relations and the black experience in a way that a lot of people hadn't seen on screen before. that's inextricable from the quality of the film, which also happens to be an accomplished piece of genre cinema. far from heaven is a gorgeous film about social taboo. brokeback mountain is moving because it's about forbidden love that indicates a broader commentary on masculinity and repression. black panther is more interesting than most marvel movies because it's exciting to see a film unapologetically celebrate blackness while also still being an effective action film told on a massive scale. etc. etc.

it then stands to reason that someone who is woke enough for you to expect them of including these films for wokeness' sake may indeed just really respond to the way these themes are depicted in the films, enough to merit inclusion on the list. there are notably thousands of black/queer/asian/political/FEMALE movies that did not make the list because presumably the listmakers don't think they're as good. nobody is putting BOY ERASED (2018) on their best of the century lists because it's mid at best.

as with any of these lists, there's an inevitable impulse to shake up the canon a bit. of course i think it's insane to not include no country for old men, but ultimately that movie's gonna be just fine and i'm happy to see recognition for something a bit more overlooked like far from heaven. i'm sure when they're thinking of unorthodox choices, they're gonna lean towards groups that have been underrepresented because they want more people to watch and talk about those films. i don't think anyone who makes these lists would deny that (the intro cites "inclusion" as a consideration), but they're still picking films they truly believe are great and worthy. the only useful purpose of these lists is stimulating conversation about the movies in question, not these weird meta-arguments where we debate the motives of the listmakers. it would be really weird if the hollywood reporter put out an article saying "we sat down to determine the top 50 films of the 21st century and it turns out imdb has it exactly right so we're just gonna copy their list." that list already exists, you can go look at it any time you want if you need to calm yourself down. but everybody already knows that people like the dark knight.

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I'm not sure (m)any people are saying this. But it is indeed quite easy to swat down the idea that politics has no relationship to art, in the same way it's always easy to swat down the worst/most extreme incarnation of any argument. The actual, more challenging argument, is about the motivation behind their inclusion on lists like these, and what they're represented as.

I dunno, I think sometimes they do deny it. Hell, I think sometimes they deny it with the title of the list itself. As Captain Terror pointed out earlier, you could make a list of Underappreciated Films, or Films To Shake Up the Canon. That would perhaps be a more honest label for some of these lists. But we all know that if they say "Greatest" or "Best" instead it will stimulate all that, ahem, "conversation," which is a nice way of saying it gets clicks. A lot of provocative, corrosive culture war provocation and muckraking seems to happen under the guise of "stimulating conversation."

See earlier comments about imprimaturs and the inherent implication of doing film criticism in public. I dunno if you read any of those posts or not, but there's several that explicitly and preemptively address several of the things you're saying.

That's an intentional choice. He's still marginalized and affected by his past, as we see with his visit to his mother (as well as his nightmare of her), but has built a façade around him to mask his anxieties and fears. In the process though, he's completely sacrificed relationships, thus making his hand job at the beach many years ago the only significant romantic interaction he had in his life. It's important to understand why his final conversation with Kevin is as drawn out as it is. His softer side is slowly being reawakened throughout the final 20 or so minutes.

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This is one of the reasons I push for criticism that rises above the basic tenants of 'good filmmaking' (satisfying plot resolutions, good photography, convincing acting) since these things don't actually mean that much in and of themselves. You can hide fairly empty critical analysis behind the feigned authority of superficial technical accomplishments. But when the critic is pushed to put there actual personal perspectives and experiences with a film into their review, we can actually begin to see how these superficial elements are resonating with them on a deeper level. Yes, this might make the criticism less concrete in any kind of absolute verdict, but it also forces a critics biases to rise to the surface. We get a better idea of why they actually like or dislike something. How their personal experiences and politics are interacting with the actual qualities of the film.


It's all about how the critic incorporates these elements. Yes, they are technically different biases, and yes, one of these biases is directly about what the film is and the other about who the person watching the film is....but everything about the film experience is about the intersection of these two things. What happens when a person, who has been shaped by certain outside forces, meets a film, which has also been shaped by certain outside forces. I don't know how we reconcile any criticism of art with at least acknowledging both of these things and what happens when they end up in a room together.

And if we are using the example 'I think romcoms are inherently insipid', I'm not sure how that critical posture wasn't something that is also forged by the personal experiences of an individual. If one things such a thing is inherently worthless, that a movie will be unworthy by simply combining two elemental experiences in all of our lives (love and laughter), how did they become so jaded in the first place? Yes, maybe it's because there is a glut of terrible romcoms out there....but there is also a glut of terrible everything out there. I find it hard to believe that someone can think any genre is inherently insipid exclusively by the quality of the films they've seen.


Even if they are pushing back against a liberal agenda, and that may view as a covert attack on my own politics, as long as they are bringing up fair points about the film, or even within the framework of their political biases (at least up to a point), I will likely listen. And even if I ultimately might disagree with their point of view, as long as they have one, which they incorporated into their analysis of the qualities of the film, I don't think they are committing some critical sin.

Armond White is a decent (but obviously also flawed) example of this. I think the overt political lens he applies to his writing has eventually made his reputation as a critic suffer, especially since so much of his politics seems to have taken the shape of basic trolling. And while I think its fair to say this has ultimately damaged the quality of his writing and opinions (because it clearly has), he is still a man with a deep reservoir of knowledge about film, and who is definitely a smart enough man to sometimes say interesting things in spite of himself. And in those instances that he can do that (now fairly infrequently), I can still pick his good points from all the other trash he's shovelling.


It's definitely happening. And I think it is unlikely that anything will stop it. It's almost like all the complaining you get from certain types on the internet about the terrors of diversity are completely ineffective and irrelevant. I guess I should be glad at how terrible these people generally are at arguing their points. Maybe if they ever said anything coherent or intelligent there would be some reason to be concerned.


As both a big fan of both queer cinema and Billy Eichner, I feel fairly confident the movie is probably legitimately horrible. But I am also glad these kinds of movies are being made, even if they are bad, because it is paving the way for the eventuality of one that is actually good. One that might even eventually end up on a best of list, causing more brain aneurysms amongst those sheltering in terror from the scourge of terrible wokeness.


As I think I mentioned up thread, I've got a lot of problems with a lot of this supposed wokeness and cancel culture. There are many good examples of when this stuff is absolutely performative and toxic and dogmatic and irritating and anti-intellectual and, sometimes, completely dishonest. Even someone who is as deeply left wing as I am (and I'm Canadian, where that really means something), and as deeply as I hope for the success of most of these woke causes, it's still pretty easy for me to recognize how far off the rails some have become. How counter productive and stupid so much of this current activism and discourse is.

So I'm not saying there is no there there in regards to these arguments. My beef is mostly to do specifically with those who have completely lost the plot when it comes to their reaction to something like diversity in film. How irrational and logically unsound and clearly unhinged much of this weeping and screaming is. And it really is just as much my distaste for people who have zero grasp of how to construct an argument (because to witness such a thing is so depressing, especially when you realize how deficient at this so many people are now demonstrating themselves to be) than it is to do with a distaste for their actual politics.

I can bear being in the room with someone who has a different political outlook than me, when they are reasonable and informed about what they are saying. I can't bear being in the company of anyone, regardless of what side of the political fence they are standing on, when they keep shouting complete ****ing nonsense.

[quoteI think there's an important distinction here: it is manifestly ridiculous to look at a film on one of these lists and say "I can't believe anyone loves this." It's obviously way less ridiculous to say "a very large number of these films espouse a socially progressive viewpoint, I can't believe all of them are on here on the merits." It's kind of a paradox: you can't reasonably and stringently object to any one film, necessarily, as unloveable, but you can say the tilt in aggregate is implausible.[/quote]

This is clearly not what has been happening with some posters here. When presented with the actual reasons why some have loved a divisive film like Jeanne Dielman, and there were a number of very good responses regarding this, all of this is immediately poo poo'd as bullshit. That those who are saying these positive things about such a boring and overtly feminist movie were performing for the woke crowd. There was never any pushback on the actual critiques or personal experiences with the film, only more conspiratorial horseshit.

It's no surprise why many people wouldn't like such a movie. I have zero issue with those who think it is a dull ass and pointless piece of shit waste of time (well, other than the fact that they are wrong....but we can have discussions about that, if the person is willing to at least listen to those that think otherwise). My issue is with those who are legitimately questioning either the honesty or the gulability of anyone who professes to like the film. And when you do that around me, you better be prepared to get bit, because those are fighting words.


I'm sure you did. And even if I ultimately disagreed with your points (it's hard for me to recall), I feel they were likely at least addressing the issues at hand. You were willing to have a discussion, from whatever position you may have towards such a movie.

So you weren't the problem. We all know who the problem was.


The problem here isn't the criticism of the list. The problem is its terribly thought out criticism. It's bad at such a tremendous level that the only thing that gives the complaints any shape at all is their rabid anger at diversity in film. That's all that is ever made clear. And the only thing worse than listening to a dreadful opinion, is one that seems to be tainted with a hostility towards anything that doesn't speak directly to their demographic. It's paranoid and entitled bullshit.


For me a critics job is to write well about films. To have knowledge of its history and an insight how any particular film as affected them intellectually or emotionally, and maybe, how they suspect a film will play with others who may want to eventually see it (this last part is conditional, I personally don't care about this but I understand why some require it). But other than this they can use any avenue necessary to do these things, as long as they aren't completely neglecting the film at hand. Obviously criticism can't exclusively be about the critic. At some point they do need to reckon with what they've just watched.



Humility isn't a word I'd apply to Kael, but I know what your saying in regards to this instance.

Kael's criticisms were generally very biased and emotionally impulsive at times. But I also don't say this as a negative, because she knew how to articulate this and just put it all on the table. You could tell in her writings where her disdain or love might be coming from, and it wasn't always the movie itself. That these things were coloring her experience. But she always eventually veered back to the film. She always wrote well about the experience. And that, at least to me, is all that matters. I couldn't really care less about her verdict or which way she pointed her thumb.


It's mostly the getting obsessed over a list that I find baffling. I don't like many lists that I read either. They frequently gloss over the stuff that I love, and that I think are absolutely deserving to be uttered in the same breath as the obvious great movies. But, maybe being subjected to millions of lists that don't represent me makes one somewhat immune to the pain of how bad so many of them are. And, maybe, just maybe, the reason some people become so disproportionately distraught over seeing lists that don't agree with them, is because they've been living a life where they've had their tastes and interests and lifestyles constantly reflected back to them. Maybe they think they are entitled to have their own tastes positioned beneath the bold declarations of "Best of" forever. Maybe they got a bit of a big head thinking that "Best of" ever had anything to do with them and they take it as an insult that anything or anyone else dares to get a chance to bask beneath such a distinction.


I don't know, just a theory.

i agree it was quite easy, but that's on Siddon for making the worst incarnation of the argument.

the fact remains that it's absurd to argue that these listmakers are "woke" enough to push their evil agenda, but somehow not woke enough to just genuinely really like these incredibly well-made movies that share their values.

i deliberately said "useful purpose" referring to the only use it has for us as cinephiles. ideally we'd talk about the list for a day, maybe add some films to our watchlists and move on with our lives. a few overlooked films get a slight boost in the canon maybe. i'm aware that at the end of the day it's all for clicks, but that ties into a bigger issue of profitability in the digital media landscape and blah blah blah. i don't disagree that a more modest title would be appropriate, but i've always understood words like "best" in these contexts as a sort of kayfabe. nobody actually believes that six writers at the hollywood reporter are capable of objectively determining the 50 best films of the the 21st century. overselling your product is a natural part of capitalism and publications have been doing it forever. but if a misleading title is your issue, i agree that it sometimes nags at me too. i just don't really see it as corrosive, but i suspect we'll have to agree to disagree on that point.

for their part, the writers are remarkably transparent in the introduction about the process and shortcomings of the list. again, they literally cite "inclusion" and reflecting "the breadth of world cinema" as considerations. idk where the obfuscation is supposed to come in. i'm sure on the margins they may have gone with the more interesting film when they could, which is no different from what everyone does when they're making their MoFo lists. hell, those choices themselves are often more reflective of one's taste than what you'd get otherwise, creating an inadvertently more honest list.

there's also the fact that it's only six people, which is certainly too small for one of these things, but again, they lay that out pretty clearly. if you want to argue that THR should hire more film critics then i agree with you, but that's a separate issue. six people allows for individual idiosyncrasies to stand out more, which is further reason to think this list is pretty close to an honest reflection of their tastes. if you picked six random MoFos to make the same list, i bet it'd look pretty weird. i've never seen a single best film/music/tv list that wasn't an object of harsh criticism, so it's fine to quibble with their inclusions or dislike their taste or whatever. it's just weird to go after their motives so strongly like people were doing in this thread when we have no real evidence that this isn't just their real taste in movies.

What someone says is on them. What we choose to respond to and consider is on us. It's on us if we go for the low-hanging fruit, particularly when we do so at the expense of better-formulated ideas that actually challenge our beliefs, rather than ones that give us a counterfeit confidence in whatever we already thought because we've successfully taken them down.

More broadly, it seems like the goal in so many of these threads is just to plant an obligatory ideological flag and leave it at that. I don't really get the point of this, on either side, and the only explanation I can come up with is related to the above, where we get to think "huzzah, we told the forces of evil they were wrong again, we have done our duty and may sleep soundly as our just reward," so long as there's no eye contact with the more nuanced objections.

This is a confusing response, because you seem to be conceding the point: specifically, that people are making no critical distinction between quality and things that flatter their beliefs. "They're so woke they genuinely like these things for being woke!" Well, yes, that's exactly the charge being leveled. That they're failing to even attempt dispassionate criticism and are making a "Best Films" list that's really a "What We Think is Best for Society" list, but not calling it that.

"Useful purpose" was in the second quote, not the first (which is where the "I doubt they deny it" thing came from, which was the primary basis for my response). The clear gap between how these lists are presented and what they actually contain is one of the things people are worked up over, because it's pretty clearly a bait-and-switch designed to stir things up.

Yeah, I suppose we do, because it seems clearly corrosive to me, and I think it would be seen as such if the ideological polarity were flipped, too.

As for "overselling," I think there's an obvious distinction between hype and fundamental misrepresentation, but more to the point, calling out that kind of thing is just as much a part of the market as the thing itself. Running interference for it, on the other hand, is totally optional.

This is certainly true, and I think it's one of the first things I said. Honestly, the fact that it's a list at all, presented as any kind of aggregate anything, is totally ridiculous. The whole thing just feels so cheap and slapped together. I'm not sure it's capable of generating much discussion other than the pointless controversial kind, and I'm not sure it's meant to.

Sorry, meant to reply sooner but, ya' know.

So most of your response, I think, boils down to "yeah that might be reasonable, but the people I'm responding to aren't saying that/aren't arguing in good faith." Which is fair enough and which there's no reason for me to reply to individually, I don't think. I'll just say generally that there's an actual thing happening, and then there's a whole bunch of crap on top of it, exaggerating or making terrible arguments about it, even while perfectly good ones are just sitting there on the wall, pristine and infrequently touched. I just wanted to get my grubby prints on those since they kept glinting at me.

I guess my problem, then, is that I don't think this is happening. Amusingly, I think we're making similar complaints about bad faith and thoughtlessness, but you're making them about forum users and I'm making them about critics. I acknowledge that the above is maybe the best of all possible worlds, I just don't think it's what we're getting with lists like this. I think what we're getting is people stirring things up with provocative and maybe even fundamentally dishonest titles and not really being upfront about what they're doing or why.

I really, really dislike when people pull a bait-and-switch for some perceived greater good. Sometimes that manifests itself as some Noble Lie because we don't trust the public with nuance, sometimes it means expanding the definition of emotionally potent words without being upfront about what their definition is now, and sometimes it's with things like this, where somebody's making a Overlooked Films From Minorities I Feel Are Underrepresented list and decides to call a Best Films of the 21st Century list because, duh, clicks.

We probably do have a fundamentally different posture, regardless, in that I don't think of criticism as having a problem being not idiosyncratic or personal or biased enough. I think there's plenty of that to spare, and it's the "concrete" structural stuff that's pretty much always lacking, so my thumb's always going to be on the scale for that, regardless of all the above. If we disagree there, fair enough; seems like a natural impasse.

It's meant to be an extreme example, but I think it's potentially reasonable to say the romcom is inherently formulaic enough that someone could dislike all (or nearly all) of them on grounds that aren't being ruled by some deep personal bias. I think it's an interesting question.

"I hated this movie because I had a root canal and was grumpy" is never reasonable or arguable, though. It's not even bad criticism, because it's not attempting criticism at all. Similarly, a criticism trying primarily to create or amplify social change, as distinct from a criticism that is moved by the film's attempt to create that change, is also not really criticism. And I see several people in this thread failing to make that distinction when they talk about the ways politics and art are inextricable, or how someone might naturally be moved by the political aims. That's true, but I think it misunderstands the point.

"...as long as they are bringing up fair points about the film." What would those be? If the points are "it's supportive of liberal policies and I think that's bad," is that a fair point about the film? I don't think it is.

I think these caveats you (correctly) add, about how his criticism has suffered, is basically exactly what I'm referring to. Criticism may not be able to perfectly step outside of the individual, but the attempt matters. And while it might be hard to articulate any kind of hard rule for when this happens, I think a lot of individual examples, like this list, make it pretty easy on us.

The annoying thing, from my perspective, is that they make it easier to ignore everyone else. Sometimes people say coherent and intelligent things about powder keg issues, but because it superficially sounds like the other stuff, everyone rolls their eyes. The extremists, as always, give us easy cover to dismiss the less extreme. And to be clear, everybody does this sometimes or struggles with this, because it's so intellectually seductive. Oh, there goes <whoever>, freaking out about woke boogiemen, best not to engage. And then unstated (but still internalized), "and therefore the entire idea is silly because this person is being silly about it." We're all looking for permission to dismiss stuff out of hand and there's a lot of angry or silly people quite happy to give us the excuse, so it's a constant exercise in intellectual discipline to refuse.

No notes. And the Canadian line is funny.

Fair enough (yes, that's my crutch phrase). But I think you might be exceptional in this regard.

Yeah, I'm one of the people who kind of "requires" that it be useful to someone else, but that's partially a me thing and I'll concede it's a tough question.

I guess I'd say that while achieving the above is maybe possible from a very idiosyncratic and exclusively personal place...at best, it's very hard, and overwhelmingly when people write that way it's coming from a place of laziness and/or self-importance, and not really walking the line you're talking about. In other words, it's the kind of thing a really smart, really great writer can maybe do sometimes, but way more often it's just the refuge of bad writers who've heard a bunch of stuff about their "voice" and don't understand that their voice is not just their mood or ideology lightly papered over with cinematic references. And when that stuff comes down like stone tablets from an established media entity, well, it's pretty galling, at least to me.

Yeah, I mean I think of this stuff as junk food, which means most of the agency is on us to consume it or not. But like with junk food (or junk television, or anything of the sort), I portion out a little blame to the creators for trying to hook people with it.

Ultimately it's on us to have thicker skins, but I don't think this stuff is rendered harmless if we ignore it, either, because I think it's largely born of the same kind of solipsism you're describing. And I think this is how all these things tend to go: some imbalance, clumsily and ineffectually countered by the opposite imbalance, by the establishing of yet another frontline in the war. My reaction is more sorrow than anger because I think it neither accomplishes what I think would be best or what I disagree with, which there is at least a chance I am wrong about. It seems to fail from the outset by fighting fire with fire, so to speak, and the rest of us have to breathe that air whether we're part of it or not.

i mean, the fact is that a more intelligent, nuanced argument simply wouldn't aggravate me enough to provoke a response. these are just posts on a message board, not firing line with william f. buckley. if a debate sounds reasonable enough to me then i'm content to just watch it unfold. maybe it ends up challenging my beliefs, maybe it doesn't, but i wouldn't see any reason to stick my pretty little nose in it unless i really felt something was unsaid. if you wanna argue the target was too easy then sure, but it's hardly a fringe perspective these days. there are like entire news networks built around that same lack of nuance on these issues. it's too easy to go after trump supporters too but they literally got a president elected. i'm not saying that makes it important or even worthwhile for me to respond, but sometimes you're goofing around on a message board and get a chance to respond to a version of a dumb argument you've seen a million times before but previously held your tongue.

at least i didn't respond to the part where it was argued that box office performance should be a crucial metric for this sort of thing. even i have my dignity.

if the point is "the reason they like a certain film is because of [x] marginalized group," then yes, i fully concede, in only the most literal sense. what i don't agree with is that this must mean they are pushing some agenda irrespective of the perceived objective quality of the films, which was the initial claim i was responding too.

to return to moonlight as an example, it would undeniably not be as beautiful of a movie if it was not the story of a repressed queer black kid. that's like it's whole thing. it's inseparable from any assessment of the film as a work of art. it's like saying it's dishonest to put citizen kane on a list because it could only be as a prescription for society to be wary of power and not forget the innocence of youth. for moonlight, the politics of identity are baked into the theme, and even supposedly "dispassionate" criticism must surely take into account thematic resonance. i would hope that anybody would be capable of feeling the film's power, but it stands to reason that someone with values that could be classified as "woke" is far more likely to be profoundly moved by it. of course it wouldn't leave a mark if it wasn't impeccably made as well, but even it's technical aspects relate back to its themes of black identity. the performances are technically flawless as well, but they're all the more powerful because of how sensitively they capture certain aspects of the black experience that hadn't been rendered on screen previously in the mainstream. not everybody has to agree with these points, but these writers evidently do, as i'm sure many THR readers do too, and they're not using anything that isn't inherent to the text of the film. it's just an earnest belief in the film's power, potentially influenced by a subjective worldview in a way that's impossible to disentangle. i could make a similar argument for most of the films here, whether or not i personally would have included them.

granted, you also seem to have one of the more radical approaches towards objectivity in film criticism that i've come across, so maybe that's where a lot of the disconnect lies. i have similar views on the topic as crumbsroom, so i'll leave that broader discussion to you guys as he's far more eloquent on the matter. all i'll say is that i think subjectively assessing a film's politics as part of the text is fair game, but within reason. as a leftist, the leftist film criticism of places like jacobin drives me crazy in the way it neglects form for politics, while the right-wing criticism of armond white drives me crazy in the way he asserts that form in service of bad politics is implicitly evil. mainly of course the metric should be how the film is about its politics, not simply whether they're virtuous or not, but i think every controversial choice on this list more than passes that test. i also think it's human nature to lean towards preferring the things you find virtuous, but again only within reason. if you find a list with something like the thoroughly mediocre RBG biopic On the Basis of Sex (2018) on it, then i'd say you had a point. no need to respond to anything in here that you feel is a rehash/too tangential. mainly just letting you know where i'm coming from so we know what we can chalk up to differing philosophies. we may just fundamentally disagree on where "within reason" ends.

i'm trying to imagine what the opposite of this list would look like, were it filled with choices that read as implicitly conservative. it's tough because the nature of hollywood means there just aren't as many great conservative films. i'm quite fond of many films by dudes like eastwood, mamet, s. craig zahler, etc., and the reactionary politics are a feature and not a bug for me because i'm fascinating by the way they express their worldview. idk if they have any 21st century films that belong on a list like this, but you could make an argument for a few i suppose. obviously i would call bullshit on a list with like, dinesh d'souza on it, but if it was within the same bounds as this list i'm sure i would disagree with many choices (as i do on this list), while acknowledging that a group of writers with conservative tendencies probably just tend to like conservative movies more than me. hell, even a list comprised entirely of inspirational christian movies would just make me think "lol what a bunch of dorks, but they probably really do think those are the best movies. good for them i guess."



as for the rest of this, i basically agree with you enough as far as identifying the annoying trappings of these kinds of lists. they just don't bother me to the same degree, and i suspect we could go in circles all day determining just how annoying/harmful they are. to me it would feel like arguing over professional wrestling being fake, but i take your points here.

Sorry, responding way late.

As someone who has repeatedly bothered to argue that point I feel personally attacked by this.

(I don't actually, I know full well how stupid I'm being when I'm responding to that stuff.)

Assessing politics as part of the film is indeed fair game, but amplifying the film more than you otherwise would because you agree with its politics is not. Putting Moonlight higher because the photography is gorgeous and you were moved by the story is criticism. Putting Moonlight higher because "we need to find and amplify more black queer stories" is not criticism, it's activism. And that's a neutral descriptor, because it seems clear it's activism even if you agree with it, and even if the film IS great art.

This is helpful, but also confusing because you clearly seem to see the issue: you're listing films that could be on this list that, to you, would demonstrate that this criticism is legitimate. So it means you agree in principle that there is a line, and that people can go over it, even if this requires a clearly inferior film.

It's easy enough to maybe scan the list and go "nothing totally ridiculous here," but the argument is more that it's ridiculous so many of a particular political bent are so high. Not that any one film is so absurd as to easily demonstrate that the entire thing is a farce.

The kind of bias being discussed here doesn't have to (and usually doesn't) manifest in that kind of overt way. Like most bias it manifests itself by just nudging lots of things up or down around the margins. That's why just looking for glaringly out of place inclusions doesn't really work: it's only when you look at this stuff in aggregate that you realize "yeah, okay, probably not a coincidence, clearly they wanted to make a point with this." It stacks the deck, unrealistically, to expect criticism of these lists to produce absurd inclusions. That's just not how this stuff works. It's not how bias in society works, either: discussions around systemic stuff is almost always in the aggregate, too, because lots of tilts and leans are only visible that way.

I would not think that, even as someone more conservative than you. I'd think "this is a worthless list, primarily driven by non-artistic considerations."

I don't disbelieve you, but I also think it's a lot easier to say "yeah they could do that in reverse, who cares," knowing full well the nature of the industry means nobody's really going to care or talk about it. It feels like the guy who owns the newspaper telling the guy on the street they're both equally free to put their ideas out there.

Fair enough.