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). Cláudio and I both shared personal top 100s (21st century thus far) to compare to the NYT list on Letterboxd if you're inclined to follow us.
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.
- Parasite
- Mulholland Dr
- There Will Be Blood
- In the Mood for Love
- Moonlight
- No Country For Old Men
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Get Out
- Spirited Away
- The Social Network
- Mad Max Fury Road
- The Zone of Interest
- Children of Men
- Inglourious Basterds
- City of God
- Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
- Brokeback Mountain
- Y Tu Mama Tambien
- Zodiac
- 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.