I’ve read, several times, the New York Times’ list of the Best Films of the 21st Century and, man, does it miss the mark. (You can see the list at IMDB here.) The top choice—Parasite—has been celebrated as a masterpiece but I could barely get through it. The film is violent, yes, but more troublingly, it is relentlessly bleak, unmoored from any real emotional center, and stitched together with the sort of plot mechanics that unravel the moment you stop admiring the cinematography and start thinking through the logic. The film left me with the feeling that its primary goal–like so much of modern art–is to remind us just how little hope we should have in one another.

Much of the rest of the list is either equally grim, violent, and sure that we are our worst impulses. Many are so obscure they border on irrelevant, and those that are more widely known tend to share a similar disdain for joy. This is a list that sh*ts all over flims audiences love and prides itself on being, I dunnno, cool in whatever way media tastemakers think cool is. I imagine a room full of bitter writer, directors, and actors who care terribly about making sure you know they’re not like the rest of us. 

What frustrates me most is the implicit suggestion that films which explore grace, connection, or redemption have little or less to offer. (This impulse is, of course, the same one that dismisses romance.) I often wonder if it’s because art, in general, is dominated by the visions of men. Historically, what gave men their power was strength–from which it’s an easy road to violence–rather than the art of connecting people–the latter has been dismissed as women’s work for millenia. Whatever the reasons, I’m not buying the idea that great art has to be about what we fear, loathe, and destroy. 

So, if I were making that list, I’d include Spirited Away, The Return of the King, Arrival, Casino Royale, Your Name, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Each of these films confronts darkness, but not one of them is swallowed by it. They are ambitious, emotionally rich, and—most importantly—aspirational. They end not in despair but in hard-won hope. But that’s just me. What about you? What would be your number one? What would be high on your list? And why?