Cinefix is one of my very favorite YouTube channels. If you love movies and haven’t watched any of their videos, you should start today. From their series sharing Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know about various films, to their What’s The Difference videos, which explore the differences between books and their movie adaptations, the content is consistently a cut above the other film-centric channels I’ve found. [If you know of any other great YoutTube movie channels, let me know!]
For my money, of all their lists, nothing beats the Top [Insert Category Here] of All Time lists, where they insightfully heap praise on all their favorite films, scenes, lines, moments, and filmmakers throughout history. The team of writers, whoever they may be, are clearly really smart, adore film, and have a great affinity for coming up with creative ways to organize lists of great movies.
They eschew both pretension and pandering, so they have no problem featuring Tarkovsky and Die Hard on the same list. And while the writers have certainly earned a significant degree of authority in regard to film, they are totally cognizant of the subjectiveness of our experience with film, or any sort of art for that matter. They obviously stand by their lists, but never pretend they are definitive, objective conclusions, closing the conversation for all time. It’s a depressingly uncommon tack to take, especially on a medium like YouTube, where the shitty commenters are legendary, and channels like CinemaSins exist, *gulp* sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
It should come as no surprise that I always look forward to their Top Movies of the Year lists, where they not only praise their official favorite films, but mention a bunch of other worthwhile titles along the way. Like any other year, their 2020 list showed me movies I’d never heard of before, like The Collective, Last and First Men, and The Platform; shamed me by pointing out some films still unforgivingly on my to-watch list, like The Sound of Metal and the Small Axe anthology; and surprised me with praise for films I thought were terrible, like The Old Guard. And if I’m being honest, what I really love is when they pick a bunch of my favorite movies from the year for their list, especially when they are movies that are popular films that don’t get enough credit, like Extraction, or great films that haven’t gotten the attention they deserve, like The Vast of Night.
Long story short, aka tl;dr, Cinefix’s lists are great, and you should watch this one.
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