Off Topic... but enough complaints that it might be about "Star Wars"

Spoilers ahead...

I love reading the Onion's A.V. Club for reasons I cannot fully fathom (that's not the spoiler). Maybe it fills my inner snark to read someone snarkier, or maybe it's their tell-it-like-it-is approach to movie criticism that I enjoy (a film is never perfect, and they recognize this). I also love reading lists of any kind, ranking the 10 Blankiest Blanks for no reason other than I like to see where people list stuff.

But the A.V. Club's list of the 50 Best Films of the 00's is flat out misguided. Perhaps the result of a group vote you just end up with a weird assortment of films, and their rankings end up more arbitrary than logic would dictate.

For example -- and this is where it gets slightly on topic -- THE DARK KNIGHT is ranked #41 of the decade. #39 is THE PRESTIGE.

This is wrong. I'm not simply sticking up for THE DARK KNIGHT (quite the opposite, actually, as I will probably laboriously deal with in future posts), I'm of the camp that found THE PRESTIGE predictable and out and out lame. I cannot be the only person to see this movie and notice we were seeing an awful lot of the back of one character and never his face. There's a reason -- because seeing his face would reveal that he's played by Christian Bale, too, thereby undoing the "big secret" that he has a twin and that's how he does his magic tricks.

But the other characters could see this dude's face, right? Are they that dense? Apparently.

Other surprises/annoyances of the list:

-MOULIN ROUGE made it. A pretty film that has collected dust in our DVD collection. I think if I watched it now I'd laugh at -- not with -- the musical performances. C'mon... a tango "Roxanne?" We barely need the regular version of that song.

-No room for UP. Maybe they're just playing tough with recent entries, which I can understand. And maybe it'll be all over their "Best of 2009" lists... but it seems like UP was pretty great. I'm glad WALL-E and THE INCREDIBLES made the list (and with INCREDIBLES being ranked higher!), but to leave out UP just feels wrong.

-AMERICAN PSYCHO is #34. Really? It's 2/3's a good movie, and then 1/3 a not-so-hot one. It's not bad, but again... better than UP? Didn't MONSTERS, INC. come out during this decade? (I like Pixar. Back off).

-The only LOTR film that made it was THE TWO TOWERS. This would qualify as "surprising" for this list. If we're talking theatrical cuts, I would tend to agree: the theatrical cuts of "FOTR" and "ROTK" don't belong here.

-KILL BILL, VOL. 1 made it, not VOL. 2. Again: "surprising." And another one I favor. I prefer this one if for no other reason than I never have to deal with endings, one of my personal hurdles.

OK, so it's not all that outrageous. I just like to hate on THE PRESTIGE. But I don't think that's a reason not to dislike this list. Maybe they threw it on there because added with THE DARK KNIGHT and MEMENTO there are three Christopher Nolan movies on the list, the personal leader (PT Anderson had 2 as did the Coen Brothers). And maybe they're going the way of Rolling Stone magazine and angling for a big interview with the guy. Or they like him that much and love the taste of his butt crack. Or maybe they're afraid Bale will scream at them (he's got 3 on the list, too). Whatever the case, it's lackluster to me and I'll prove it in future posts ad naseum where I point out Nolan's directorial flaws for Batman. It's gonna be great.

EDITED TO ADD: Upon re-examining the list, one of the real winners is Alfonso Cuaron. He along with Ang Lee and Richard Linklater each have two movies on the list, and while that's still one below Nolan's 3, Cuaron's 2 are both in the top 15. So... get out the ticker tape, right?