Nothing But The Best For Me

Or, If Not The Best, Only One Of The 23 Greatest Of All Time Will Do

You may have seen that The New York Times recently published an elaborate content package called, “The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century.” Being a person who very much loves movies and very much hates the 21st Century, I had no escape. I was destined to scan the list again and again, although the more time I spent with The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century, the more I felt like I’d been walking around with a big-time loser mentality for most of my life. I’ve got a tendency to hand over my heart to any old thing that happens to flicker across a screen.

I’ve always felt natural meeting a picture where it wants to be met. I don’t bristle at corny gags in Andy Hardy movies, I don’t ask an Italian neorealism film to deliver a great laugh line, and I never go looking for the zipper on the monster costume. In other words, I’ve got a low bar. I go in on the movie’s side, and it’s got to be a real dog to lose me.

You see, until that Times list came out, I never in a million years would have realized that Best in Show is exactly one percent a better 21st century movie than Uncut Gems but three percent a lesser 21st century movie than Pan’s Labyrinth. It simply never would have occurred to me that it would be possible—let alone important—to determine which of these movies (seeing as they have nothing whatsoever to do with one another and in no way suggest comparison to one another) is relatively more or less Best than the others. That kind of revelation makes a guy ask questions.

After all, what does it say about a man if he can neither support nor form a strong argument against the contention that Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is the No. 38 Best Movie Of The 21st Century? What kind of personal identity have I carved out for myself if I’ve never considered whether Ratatouille or Volver is closer to being the No. 1 Best Movie Of The 21st Century? I can’t even definitively say which of those two films has the Best Use Of A Chef’s Knife In A Movie From the 21st Century. I can tell you that I like Volver more than I like Ratatouille. Unless I’m more in the mood for Ratatouille, in which case I suppose I like Ratatouille more than Volver. But which is best? I simply don’t know! Except I do now, because the New York Times told me. Ratatouille is the best of the two, and it’s not particularly close, as there are six 21st century movies that are not as good as Ratatouille (No. 73) but are better than Volver (No. 80). There you have it.

A couple weeks later, just as I was accepting the cold hard reality that Pelican Dreams and The Last Black Man In San Francisco and This Is Not A Film and Paddington 2 and Blue Ruin and Wonder Boys and Shaun of the Dead and City of Life and Death and Elf and Chico & Rita and Gone Baby Gone and Hundreds of Beavers and Gomorrah and Crazy Love and Dancer In the Dark and My Winnipeg and Bamboozled and Waltz With Bashir and The Triplets of Belleville and Man Push Cart are each at least 73 percent worse 21st century movies than The Dark Knight, I opened my email to find in my inbox a message from the New York Times’ Cooking section with the subject line, “The 23 Best Salads Of All Time.”

Well! If the discovery of the flaw in my manner of appreciating movies was jarring, the shock I experienced in the salad department was nothing short of life-altering. Never in all my salad-eating days had I once paused to ask myself where the specific salad before me at that particular moment would rank among the Best Salads Of All Time.

So, I eagerly opened the email, worried that I’d find entries about unattainable dishes—an olive-fig-dove salad eaten by an Etruscan overlooking a valley and thinking about the upcoming wedding of his daughter in 873 B.C.E., or the seafood salad recipe authored by a Chinese fisherman during the Han Dynasty and involving several species of fish no longer known on Earth. Coincidentally—and I hope this fact brings you as much gratitude as it did me—every single one of the ingredients for every single one of the 23 Best Salads Of All Time is commonly available today throughout these United States.

That’s a tremendous blessing but also a curse, which became apparent when it was time to make my lunch that day. I was one or two ingredients short of being able to make one of the 23 Best Salads Of All Time, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to settle for a salad with an absolute ceiling of being the 24th Best Salad Of All Time. I have my self-respect to consider.

But peering into the refrigerator, I wondered if I had all of the ingredients to make any of the 23 Best Anything Of All Time, and if my only possibility for lunch was going to amount to eating something that was not one of the 23 Best Things Of Its Type Of All Time, then what was I doing eating in the first place? I opted to skip the meal. Having figured out no better solution by the time the dinner bell rang, I went without my supper as well.

I tried to drown out the rumble in my tummy with a movie, but after one scene, although it was funny and a bit intriguing, I could tell this movie was not as good as Superbad, which is the No. 100 Best Movie Of The 21st Century. Already having enough trouble determining on my own what No. 101 is, I turned that one off and went to bed hungry and bored. It was for The Best.