I’ve read, several times, the New York Times’ list of the Best Films of the 21st Century and, man, does it miss the mark. (You can see the list at IMDB here.) The top choice—Parasite—has been celebrated as a masterpiece but I could barely get through it. The film is violent, yes, but more troublingly, it is relentlessly bleak, unmoored from any real emotional center, and stitched together with the sort of plot mechanics that unravel the moment you stop admiring the cinematography and start thinking through the logic. The film left me with the feeling that its primary goal–like so much of modern art–is to remind us just how little hope we should have in one another.
Much of the rest of the list is either equally grim, violent, and sure that we are our worst impulses. Many are so obscure they border on irrelevant, and those that are more widely known tend to share a similar disdain for joy. This is a list that sh*ts all over flims audiences love and prides itself on being, I dunnno, cool in whatever way media tastemakers think cool is. I imagine a room full of bitter writer, directors, and actors who care terribly about making sure you know they’re not like the rest of us.
What frustrates me most is the implicit suggestion that films which explore grace, connection, or redemption have little or less to offer. (This impulse is, of course, the same one that dismisses romance.) I often wonder if it’s because art, in general, is dominated by the visions of men. Historically, what gave men their power was strength–from which it’s an easy road to violence–rather than the art of connecting people–the latter has been dismissed as women’s work for millenia. Whatever the reasons, I’m not buying the idea that great art has to be about what we fear, loathe, and destroy.
So, if I were making that list, I’d include Spirited Away, The Return of the King, Arrival, Casino Royale, Your Name, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Each of these films confronts darkness, but not one of them is swallowed by it. They are ambitious, emotionally rich, and—most importantly—aspirational. They end not in despair but in hard-won hope. But that’s just me. What about you? What would be your number one? What would be high on your list? And why?
“Knives Out” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. Yes, they’re at opposite ends of the spectrum, but they were both entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, and visually-appealing. They are also both movies that if I stumbled across while channel-surfing (which, in the age of streaming services, I don’t do much of anymore), I wouldn’t care where we were in the movie, I’d watch until the end.
I am not a Wes Anderson fan–his movies are stylized in a way that just doesn’t do it for me. That said, he is someone who is trying to make art that honors connections with others. I too enjoyed Knives Out–although I did not like Glass Onion. In fact, I’d argue that Glass Onion is a great example of cinema I decry: nihilistic, violent, and full of horrible humans doing horrible things just because.
This makes me realise how few films I’ve watched over the last 20 years. The early 2000s coincided with having young children (born 1999 and 2002) so actually going to the cinema wasn’t something we did and getting to watch a film from beginning to end wasn’t something we often managed to do either!
But I don’t think I’ve seen anything that I’d say is the kind of film that generally makes its way onto lists like these, to be honest, although I agree that Knives Out should perhaps be on the list. (I can’t see the NYT list because it’s paywalled). Maybe The Pianist, too.
And honestly, if you were giving out awards for the best first 10 minutes of movie storytelling ever made, then Pixar’s Up should be on there, although as you say, nobody gives awards to feel-good films, no matter how good they are. (I could probably include Toy Story 3, which devastated me at the end!) Musicals probably wouldn’t get a look-in either, but the first part of Wicked was exceptionally good.
I was with you until you got to Wicked, which I loathed. I love the Broadway show and the redo was just too much and too political for me.
I love the show, too, and I admit I was sceptical about the film, especially as “part one” is pretty much as long as the entire stage show! But I was won over by it (and the political angle – which is present in the show – felt right given the time we’re living in!)
I watched it and A Real Pain on a trans-Atlantic flight. I genuinely hated Wicked but it may have been because A Real Pain was so miraculous.
Here’s the list.
I’ve probably seen about 10 of those in total.
Up is number 50 on the list.
I have seen 53 movies on the list.
Of them, I do actually like or love:
No Country for Old Men
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Spirited Away
The Social Network
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Dark Knight
Arrival
Almost Famous
Up
Best in Show
Memento
Little Miss Sunshine
Gone Girl
Spotlight
The Florida Project
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Gladiator
Black Panther
Grizzly Man
I did not enjoy:
Get Out
Zodiac
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Lost in Translation
Wall-E
Lady Bird
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Pan’s Labyrinth
Carol
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Volver
Inside Llewyn Davis
I’m not a fan of Parasite, either. I could barely finish it. From their list, I did like Black Panther, Interstellar, Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Ratatouille, Inception, Up, Almost Famous, Money Ball, The Departed, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Get Out. The Dark Knight was not as good as Batman Begins, imo, and BB is the one I would put on the list. Inglorious Bastards is good, and so is O Brother, Where Art Thou? But I don’t know that either belongs on a best-of list. Movies I would include are Gran Torino, which is a remarkably tender story about an older white man connecting with a teenage Hmong boy. It explores themes of racism, sexism, immigration, and coming of age. I’m no fan of Eastwood’s politics, but that is a remarkable film. Coco is one of the best of the Pixar films, and the animation work in it is incredible. Instructions Not Included about a single father learning to be an adult as he raises his daughter is a tear jerker in the best way. 1917 about a soldier’s really epic day during WWI. Recent but giving Disney a well-deserved butt kicking is K-Pop Demon Hunters. It’s an absolutely lovely story about being shamed for the parts of you others don’t accept, accepting yourself, finding your tribe, the power of love, and it has fabulous music.Tobey Maguire/Kirsten Dunst Spiderman began the whole superhero glut and definitely deserves to be on the list.
Pixar is so interesting to me. Everyone has their favorites. For me, they’ve never topped The Incredibles, Up, or Toy Story 3.
I couldn’t get through Inglorious Bastards but my tolerance for Tarantino films is low.
Toy Story 3 is absolutely outstanding, especially since the Toy Story movies are among the few who actually got better with each new film (till four which I pretend doesn’t exist.) And they had started from such a strong place, too.
Totally agree!
Knives Out. I can’t believe I didn’t include it!
I love lists, so I made one when the list came out. Here it is:
12 Years a Slave
Black Panther
Eighth Grade
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Get Out
Grand Budapest Hotel
In Bruges
O Brother Where Art Thou
Parasite
Up
Movies in my Top 20 would also include Knives Out, Lady Bird, The Martian, and Inglourious Basterds.
It’s quite curious to see how different we are when it’s time to watch movies. The majority of the movies you mention would never be in my list. I didn’t even enjoy them.
And the ones I like most are some that you perhaps have not ever heard of.
I have to say that I usually enjoy war and historical films, and that greatly influences my selection.
As a matter of fact, 2000 does not belong to the 21st century, but it’s the last year of the 20th one. But if we include movies from that year, my favourites would be ‘Gladiator’ (Ridley Scott) and ‘Fa yeung nin wa’ (In the mood for love, Kar-Wai).
In English:
The Lord of the Rings: The fellowship of the ring (2001, Jackson)
The Pianist (2002, Polanski)
The King’s Speech (2010, Hooper)
Oppenheimer (2023, Nolan)
But I would also include three German movies:
Good Bye Lenin! (2003, Wolfgang Becker)
Der Untergang (‘Downfall’, 2004, Hirschbiegel)
Das Leben der Anderen (‘The Lives of Others’, 2006, von Donnersmarck)
And four movies from different countries
Cidade de Deus (‘City of God’, 2002) a Brazilian epic crime film directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund.
Ying Xiong (‘Hero’, 2002) a Chinese wuxia martial arts film that has romance and action and it’s one of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. Directed by Zhang Yimou.
Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (‘A Separation’, 2011), an Iranian drama film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. They investigate a crime that the public has also seen and you are not sure how it happened.
Mandariinid (‘Tangerines’, 2013) a Estonian-Georgian film written, produced, and directed by Zaza Urushadze. It’s quite hard but very human.
All these movies are good films, with a high quality, but I include them because they say something special for me.
Downfall and The King’s Speech are both fabulous movies. I’d add The Queen as well and The Darkest Hour
Yep, those two are very ‘actor’ films, both Gary Oldman and Helen Mirren were fabulous in those movies you mention. I enjoyed them, and I think they are quite good. But I’m not sure if I would include them in a ‘best of’ list.
Both Gladiator and In the Mood For Love are on the NYT list!
Thank you for pointing it, I saw it afterwards. But the year 2000 still belongs to the 20th century.
I’m happy to see that three of my favourites were included as well — ‘City of Gods’, ‘A Separation’ and ‘The lives of others’. I’m not alone in my enjoyment.
I saw that they included two other films that I really liked and didn’t mention before: The Hurt Locker (2009, Bigelow) and Lat den rätte komma in (‘Let the right one in’, 2008), a Swedish movie directed by Tomas Alfredson, which was amazing, considering I don’t like horror movies. But that one had something special, the Wikipedia calls it a ‘romantic horror film’.
Yes, definitely on the bleak side. Of course, there’s Amelie….
Interesting that Oppenheimer is on there but not Barbie which made a huge cultural impact and a boatload of money. Definitely bigger than Oppenheimer.
Speaking of movies based on historical events, no Hidden Figures? I guess it’s hidden again.
I’ve forgotten that most of these films were even made, let alone in this century. Coda was very good, heartwarming, and ended on a positive message. I guess it was too uplifting for this list.
Black Panther is on the list but not Wonder Woman.
None of the remakes that were targeted more to women, like Bridget Jones’ Diary, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, etc. I guess I can understand not singling out the latter three as considering that they are stories which are constantly being updated, but Bridget Jones? That was different and made an impact.
I liked the biopic Walk the Line.
Best in Show is a goofy, fun movie. And speaking of smallish movies, Once.
Crazy Rich Asians was a huge hit, but I guess not artistic enough.
Hidden Figures should have made the list. Also, The Help for the performances of Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis.
I had forgotten about Coda. I adore that film.
Everyone’s taste is unique, so one person’s top films will be another person’s meh. I loved Parasite, but I absolutely hated #3, There Will Be Blood (even though Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano are both favorite actors). I don’t know if I’d put Parasite in the top 10, but it would be at least in the top 25. I have not seen at least 1/3 of the films on the list so I may have missed viewing some films that might have blown me away. I think my top films would be films that still enchant me on repeated viewing. Certainly, Amelie would be one of them as well as Get Out, Michael Clayton, The Departed, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Some of my favorite files from the past 25 years did not even make the list. If you have the chance, watch Blow the Man Down. Great story and good acting, plus June Squibb is in it and I adored her in Thelma.
I had seen many of the movies on the list but they were not best of anything. For me there were only two that were truly outstanding: The Florida Project and Spotlight. I watched Spotlight at the theater and the Florida Project at home, but both movies left me in tears when they ended.
The most boring movie on that list is Phantom Thread.
I so agree with you that Phantom Thread is dull. I think DDL and Manville are astonishing actors but that film is a snooze.
In recent times, I have become quite skeptical of the lists that NYT produces. It has cut down significantly on movie, television, book, theater and art reviews. It does not have full-time reviewers and its well-known reviewers like Manohla Dargis (movies) do only occasional reviews and that too only stupid franchise movies like Superman and Naked Gun. The same with book reviews—lots of vacuous lists which it then shoves down your throat repeatedly. I am this close to canceling my subscription to the paper.
The Guardian lists are much more fun—when it produces a list like “Ten Best Movies of Marilyn Monroe Ranked!”, or the ‘Best of Julia Roberts” I actually read them. I did not read the NYT list, till you actually mentioned it here.
It often feels to me that the NYT, rightly or wrongly, believes its audience wants to be the coolest kids in the room.
Spotlight was great, but I’m a big sucker for a good newspaper drama!
After watching Spotlight, I was thinking what a contrast it was to All the President’s Men. Both movies were about the downfall of powerful American institutions. But the contrast in the way the stories were told was also the contrast in the way the reporting was done. Boston Globe’s expose of the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church was a team effort—everybody did their shoe leather reporting while some of them also wrestling with their faith or the absence of it and at the end, the movie made it clear that the heroes of the story were not the reporters but the damaged victims who came forward to tell the stories of their abuse. I watched it in theater and sat through till the credit roll ended with tears streaming down my face.
All the President’s Men is a great movie too and one of my all time favorite. But the movie never made me cry :). The movie was presented as two cub reporters’ ‘Woodstein’ bravura work that toppled a presidency and, Bob Woodward himself became a powerful and feared figure in investigative reporting and cashed in on the success of All the President’s Men greatly.
Recently rewatched The Paper (with Michael Keaton and Marisa Tomei, among many others, 1994) and The Post (with Meryl Streep – made in 2017). Both excellent newspaper room stories, if you haven’t already seen them.
My favorite newspaper movie is The Paper (Michael Keaton, Marisa Tomei, Glenn Close).
I don’t see many films but I loved Three Billboards… and also Nomadland. I’d love to be able to vote for just the first half hour of Wall-E, and Up.
The Incredibles was also fun.
Yes it was!
Casino Royale is my favourite movie.
The Avengers is in my top ten list.
Focus, Mr and Mrs Smith and Edge of Tomorrow are excellent
LoTR gets me back across the Pacific (despite what they did to Faramir).
It has mainly been a terribly disappointing 25 years compared to the previous quarter century especially for romance movies.
So true!
True story: we didn’t let our youngest daughter see the first two movies in the theater because we thought she would be scared, but we eventually let her watch them on video. (She was 4 when the first one came out, and 7 when the last one released.) She was so mad about not gettng to see them in the theater, that after the second movie she told me that she was going to listen to all the books on audio and then I HAD to let her go see the last one. Well, she listened to all three books, and I let her go to the movie. When we left the theater her first comment was, “Faramir did NOT do that!”
“Faramir did NOT do that!” Damn straight. Got fucked over almost as much as Gimli did, but I never adored Gimli.
I’m so glad that you wrote this column, Dabney.
Never in the history of the world has life been so easy, so luxurious for so many people in the US and elsewhere, but never has the art been so ugly, so violent, and so despairing. Do we really believe that even one of these “best” movies will be watched 50, let alone 100 years from now?
I used to go to the movies at least once a week, but in the past five years or so, there is almost nothing that I want to see. And when I have left the theater, I can’t remember what I saw a week later. I am tired of loud special effects. I am tired of violence. I am tired of being asked to identify with psychopaths. Movie theaters across the US are dying because Hollywood has forgotten how to make a touching, fun, and great movies.
So much this. <3
Boy, you said it! Usually, these days there is nothing I want to see at the theater; and when there is something I”m curious about, it plays 30 miles from my house (with 6-8 theaters much closer) and it only runs for a week which means I usually miss it.
And this list from the NYT? I’m not sure I’ve seen even half of it and you couldn’t pay me to watch that half. Pretty sad, considering we also used to be at least weekly movie goers.
I’d agree with many of others’ choices below as lovely and/or memorable films:
Coda, Spotlight, Hidden Figures, The Help, The Queen, The King’s Speech, Three Billboards, Nomadland, Up, Thelma, Once, Walk The Line, LOTR, The Darkest Hour, O Brother Where Art Thou, Eighth Grade, Almost Famous, and Little Miss Sunshine. Two films I haven’t seen mentioned but that I adore are Easy A and Sing Street.
I wouldn’t put them on a best of list per se, but we enjoyed Knives Out, Money Ball, and The Grand Budapest Hotel as well. I did enjoy Black Panther (as a superhero movie, which I generally don’t watch. My SO and/or son have to really pitch me to get me to see one.). Another guilty pleasure is RED (with Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Karl Urban and Mary Louise Parker, among others) and Night At The Museum (with Ben Stiller, et. al).
I was most disappointed in Oppenheimer. I’ve read the history of this project and was quite looking forward to the film. I thought Robert Downey Jr. was fabulous but was underwhelmed with most of the rest of it and offended by the gratuitous nudity of Pugh’s character (although – like Hidden Figures and The Help – it did reflect how demeaning society was of women of the time).
All in all, a pretty short list for 25 years of movie watching.
Sing Street is so great.
“I am tired of violence. I am tired of being asked to identify with psychopaths. Movie theaters across the US are dying because Hollywood has forgotten how to make a touching, fun, and great movies.”
I really have to recommend the new Superman movie. David Corenswet is a great successor to Christopher Reeve’s Superman. His Superman is such a sweetie-pie, and Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor is not relatable at all.
And I just realized I should have included Perfect Days, dir by Wim Wenders, in my list of Best Movies of the 2000s. What a perfect little jewel of a film. Wings of Desire (which Wenders made in 1987) is also one of my all-time favorites. Both films are so full of humanity.
One movie that I rarely see mentioned but which is one of my all time favorites is Brooklyn, which came out in 2015 and stars Saoirse Ronan as an Irish girl who emigrates to Brooklyn in the 1950s. It has a strong romance storyline and was Oscar nominated for Best Picture. I highly recommend it!
And put me down as another who adored CODA. The ending makes me cry every time!
I love both of those films!!
Loved Brooklyn! I bought the book after the movie…. Haven’t read it yet.
I liked Boyhood.