My top 100 movies of the 21st Century
The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and others have published their top 100 movies of the 21st Century. So I made a list of my own. Here's the list and a few observations after.
My top 100 movies of the 21st Century
- There Will Be Blood
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
- Zodiac
- No Country for Old Men
- The Social Network
- Phantom Thread
- Birdman
- Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
- Inglourious Basterds
- The Departed
- Frances Ha
- The Brutalist
- City of God
- Anchorman
- The Handmaiden
- Pan’s Labyrinth
- The Pianist
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Parasite
- Match Point
- Ex Machina
- Superbad
- Godzilla: Minus One
- The Descendants
- Big Fish
- Almost Famous
- Catch Me If You Can
- Toy Story 3
- 10 Cloverfield Lane
- The Dark Knight
- Inside Man
- Ocean’s Eleven
- Oldboy
- The Royal Tenenbaums
- Amelie
- Adaptation
- Drive
- A Serious Man
- Wall-E
- Spider-Man 2
- Before Sunset
- Skyfall
- Minority Report
- Up
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Late Night with the Devil
- Iron Man
- Stardust
- The Big Short
- Best In Show
- Letters from Iwo Jima
- Midnight in Paris
- The Worst Person in the World
- Marriage Story
- Mulholland Drive
- Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
- Thank You For Smoking
- Moneyball
- Hereditary
- Before Midnight
- Gone Girl
- In the Bedroom
- The Square
- Munich
- Spirited Away
- Children of Men
- Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
- Sideways
- Everybody Wants Some!!
- Kill Bill
- The Conjuring
- Black Swan
- Heretic
- Silver Linings Playbook
- A History of Violence
- The Killing of a Sacred Dear
- In Bruges
- Hacksaw Ridge
- Hot Fuzz
- Atonement
- Amores Perros
- Sin City
- Sexy Beast
- Inception
- The Proposition
- Boyhood
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
- Coraline
- Gladiator
- Arrival
- Get Out
- Little Children
- Step Brothers
- The Count of Monte Cristo (2024)
- Her
- Everything Everywhere All at Once
- Knives Out
- The Fabelmans
- Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
- American Psycho
Directors with multiple films on my list
Steven Spielberg - 4 movies
Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report, Munich, The Fabelmans
I would consider Spielberg the GOAT blockbuster movie director. Fabelmans is criminally underrated. There are scenes that I still think about all the time. I could have included AI on the list as well, but I don't love the ending. The NYT list only one Spielberg movie (it ranks Minority Report at #94) which seems like a big miss.
Richard Linklater - 4 movies
Before Sunset, Before Midnight, Everybody Wants Some!!, Boyhood
(I wasn't expecting my list to have so much Linklater. I don't think of myself as an especially big fan of his, but he makes solid movies and the "Before" movies are some of the only romantic movies on my list.)
Quentin Tarantino - 3 movies
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Inglourious Basterds, Kill Bill
I love Quentin's movies. I also included Sin City (he directed one scene) almost included Grindhouse (he directed half of it). I liked Django Unchained a lot, but I didn't love the ending. There would be 4 if I split Kill Bill into two, but Quentin himself calls it one film.
David Fincher - 3 movies
Zodiac, The Social Network, Gone Girl
Fincher has 2 of my top 5 movies of the century. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a solid movie too.
Adam McKay - 3 movies
I'm a little embarrassed that I have more Adam McKay movies than PTA and Coen Brothers films. But only a little. I've watched and rewatched Anchorman so many times. I love Step Brothers as well. The Big Short is surprisingly timeless, even though it covered a current event. Talladega Nights is quotable and Anchorman 2 is underrated.
Directors with two movies include:
Paul Thomas Anderson, The Coen Brothers, Park Chan-wook, Christopher Nolan, Alexander Payne, Woody Allen, Spike Jonze, Alfonso Cuaron, Todd Field, and Noah Baumback
I didn't include documentaries
It's too hard for me to weigh those against traditional narrative movies, although I do include a mockumentary (Best in Show #50).
The NYT included 3 documentaries on their list (#82 The Act of Killing, #88 The Gleaners and I, and #98 Grizzly Man). This is weird. If they're going to include documentaries, include more of them and don't bury them at the bottom of the list.
2007 was my favorite year in movies
It has the most movies on the list, and the best movies on the list. It has 3 of my top 5 (There Will Be Blood, Zodiac, No Country for Old Men) and some excellent other movies Superbad, Stardust, Hot Fuzz, Atonement, and Walk Hard. There are even some great movies that didn't make the top 100 but were part of my painful cuts: Grindhouse, Michael Clayton, Eastern Promises, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Ratatouille.
I was 17 years old this year and it was a formative time of life. The movies I liked, the books I read, the music I listened to played a big part of my identity. I had more time to go to movies. One of my best friends worked at an art house movie theater, so I got to see a lot of free movies. I saw There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men multiple times on the big screen and I never paid for a ticket (but I bought the DVD)!
Movies NYT & Rolling Stone rank highly but didn't click for me
I don't blame the movies. This is on me.
Interstellar - people love it but the tone felt really cold then overly sentimental. It seemed fine, but maybe I need to rewatch it.
The Tree of Life - I don't get it. I regret not walking out of it.
In the Mood for Love - Amazing acting, but it just felt really slow. I understood the plot but maybe there's something deeper to it that I'm not seeing.
There are several I haven't seen and are on my watch list.
Anatomy of a Fall, Zone of Interest, The Lives of Others, Amour, Volver, Memories of a Murder, among others.
Thoughts on making lists
It's very easy to criticize a list when you see it. ("This movie should be higher than that movie... This list is terrible!") But it actually takes more effort than you might think to make a list. The NYT has to make a list, gather feedback from multiple inputs, synthesize their rankings, consider global readership and aim to be inclusive, and anticipate that many people will read and debate their choices. That's a hard job!
My process was:
- Starting off the top of my head and writing them all down in a note
- Checking "20xx year in film" wikipedia pages to see what I may have missed
- Giving the list to Gemini and asking for others that I may have missed
- Checking the Rolling Stone and NYT lists to see if there are any important ones I missed (I did this last because I didn't want mine to be too influenced by theirs)
About 40% of my list also appears on the NYT list. I had more comedies, horror films, and action films. They had more Oscar winners and international films (my international films were mostly from South Korea and Mexico). Mine was more front-loaded towards 2000-2014, likely because I watched more movies then and they've had a bigger impression on me. But I think partly movies from 2015 to present have declined slightly, as more filmmakers work on TV and streaming projects and superhero movies dominated the big screen.