Greatest Movies of the 21st Century. Did you join in the fun?

by Nathaniel R

The talk this week in US cinephile circles has been the New York Times interactive "10 Best Movies of the 21st Century". 2025 is a good time for it. Here was my ballot, done on a whim, because how else to do it really? We all know that there are more than 10 "Best" movies in any given quarter century!  Sometimes there are more than 10 "Bests" in a single film year. Nevertheless it was fun to watch friends and strangers sound off this week...

For my own list above it might have been different on any given day but my alternate 10 at the moment -- the ones I kept being frustrated I left off -- were probably: Kill Bill Vol 1 (2003), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Volver (2006), Rachel Getting Married (2008), Wall*E (2008), Carol (2015), Mad Max Fury Road (2015), 20th Century Women (2016), The Favourite (2018), and The Worst Person in the World (2021).

I knew the eventual NYT list would lean a certain way (not quite 'film bro' but "elevated film bro" with lots of Coen brothers, Scorsese, Nolan, Tarantino, etcetera) and so it did. Still, there are a lot of great f'in movies on their list. I love all but 3 of the movies in their top 20 for example and I respect those 3 so it's a damn good list all told. 

1. Parasite
2. Mulholland Dr
3. There Will Be Blood
4. In the Mood for Love
5. Moonlight
6. No Country For Old Men
7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
8. Get Out
9. Spirited Away
10. The Social Network
11. Mad Max Fury Road
12. The Zone of Interest
13. Children of Men
14. Inglourious Basterds
15. City of God
16. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
17. Brokeback Mountain
18. Y Tu Mama Tambien
19. Zodiac
20. The Wolf of Wall Street

You can see there whole "top 100" here. There are some obvious omissions of course, some wildly overrated  and some movies that it's easy to sense would be MUCH higher if more people had seen them (talking 'bout you Worst Person in the World at #95) 

What did you make of their whole list and how many have you NOT seen? There were five on the list that I had not seen (Superbad, Yi Yi, The Act of Killing, The Lives of Others, and Anchorman) which surprised me. I thought I'd surely have seen everything on such a list.  

Comments

[Cinemanolis]

My List

1. Before Sunset
2. Almost Famous
3. Oldboy (2005)
4. The Lives of Others
5. Billy Eliot
6. The Tree of Life
7. Amour
8. La La Land
9. Amelie
10. Call me by Your Name
11. A Separation
12. The Worst Person In the World
13. Atonement
14. Requiem for a Dream
15. Shame
16. Y Tu Mama Tambien
17. The Great Beauty
18. Inception
19. The Hours
20. Goodbye Lenin!
21. Capernaum
22. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
23. Dogville
24. In the Mood for Love
25. Toni Erdman
26. The Beat that My Heart Skipped
27. Dunkirk
28. Gosford Park
29. The Hunt
30. Inglorious Basterds

[Tom M]

Wasn't it delicious torture?! My list changed so many times I'm not even sure why I ended up where I did. And they certainly weren't in any order except alpha. (I loved seeing if there was a thread to people's taste; I am clearly a romantic with apocalyptic tendencies.)

Arrival
Before Sunset
Brokeback Mountain
Children of Men
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Mad Max: Fury Road
Moonlight
Moulin Rouge
Phantom Thread
The Florida Project

And then, if the day had been different, any of these could have made it:
Master & Commander (!)
Past Lives
Pride & Prejudice
Roma
The Handmaiden
The Lives of Others
Under the Skin
Wall-E
Weekend
West Side Story

[Amy Camus]

In no particular order, limited to one title per director. I promise to send in the runners up soon enough:

Amelie
Lincoln
In the Mood for Love
The Rider
My Life as a Zucchini
Lust, Caution
The Son
Enter the Void
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
A Separation

[Keith]

Like you, I didn't spend hours poring over the list, and I think I worried even less about "best" than you did. I chose ten movies that spoke to me in strong ways and that I have fond memories of.

Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Hundreds of Beavers
I Saw the TV Glow
Inside Out
Melancholia
Mysterious Skin
Parasite
Tears of the Black Tiger
Up

[Finbar McBride]

1. The Station Agent
2. No Country for Old Men
3. All of Us Strangers
4. The Revenant
5. Brokeback Mountain
6. The Devil Wears Prada
7. Almost Famous
8. Inglourious Basterds
9. Pain and Glory
10. Moonlight

[TomG]

Everything Everywhere All At Once
Godzilla Minus One
I'm Still Here
Inglourious Basterds
Life of Pi
Moulin Rouge
Mudbound
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Up
WALLE

This was so difficult. Ask me tomorrow and I probably have a completely different list.

[Ryan T.]

My ballot in alphabetical order, and limiting myself to one per director

Atonement
Before Sunset
Challengers
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fall
La La Land
Moulin Rouge!
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Weekend

It was a painful list to create, but the most I think on it, the happier I am about it. It's a list that's very me.

Nathaniel, you MUST see The Lives of Others stat. I, myself, haven't seen 6 movies including Borat and Anchorman.