Greatest Movies of the 21st Century. Did you join in the fun?
Friday, June 27, 2025 at 6:32PM 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.
Reader Comments (25)
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
@Tom M - this was delicious torture, indeed!
My ballot (today) would be:
1) Brokeback Mountain
2) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3) The Favourite
4) Moonlight
5) A History of Violence
6) Talk to Her
7) Before Sunset
8) Mean Girls
9) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
10) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
I’ve seen all but 8 (4 of these misses overlap with Nathaniel’s).
Such a laughable list. Too many american movies, the 70s were fifty years ago dear New York Times
Gallavich: I dont know, the fact that about half that top 20 is non-american titles is pretty good for a surveyed list in an American newspaper, all things considered.
I've seen all but 7 titles from the full list. So now I have a summer project.
Nathaniel: see Yi Yi - it's the movie im happiest to see on the list.
I could not do a Top 10 so i'll just do the films i've seen more than 3 times for each year since the end of the 20th centrury,some could be labelled bad films so I expect lots of side eye,my list leans very horror heavy.
2000 What Lies Beneath
2001 In The Bedroom
2002 Far From Heaven
2003 The Core
2004 Million Dollar Baby
2005 Memoirs Of A Geisha
2006 The Devil Wears Prada
2007 Atonement
2008 Rachel Getting Married
2009 Orphan
2010 Black Swan
2011 Super 8
2012 Cabin In The Woods
2013 World War Z
2014 Foxcatcher
2015 Carol
2016 Star Wars Rogue One
2017 Phantom Thread
2018 Hereditary
2019 Midsommar
2020 Nomadland
2021 Antlers
2022 Pearl
2023 Megan
2024 Alien Romulus
Ten random films in random order:
Queer
Parasite
I'm Not There
12 Years a Slave
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Brokeback Mountain
Rust and Bone
Moonlight
Shame
Did I say random?
(2x Fassy, 2x McQueen, 2x Blanchett, 2x Pitt, 2x Michelle Williams, 2x Heath...)
Moulin Rouge
Black Swan
There Will Be Blood
Talk to Her
Spirited Away
Ratatouille
Y Tu Mama Tambien
The Hours (doesn't really technically qualify as "best" but time and place specific favorite for whatever reason)
Far From Heaven
All of Us Strangers (same as The Hours)
From their list, I still need to see SUPERBAD and THE GLEANERS AND I.
Right now, if asked to provide my own top ten, I think I'd go with...
IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000) Wong Kar-Wai
MOULIN ROUGE! (2001) Baz Luhrmann
RUSSIAN ARK (2002) Aleksandr Sokurov
HOLY MOTORS (2012) Leos Carax
THIS IS NOT A FILM (2012) Jafar Panahi
SILVERED WATER (2014) Wiam Bedirxan & Ossama Mohammed
ARABIAN NIGHTS (2015) Miguel Gomes
CAMERAPERSON (2016) Kirsten Johnson
LABYRINTH OF CINEMA (2019) Nobuhiko Obayashi
SAMSARA (2023) Lois Patiño
I've seen some people include Claire Denis' BEAU TRAVAIL, which I would have included here if not for the fact that I consider it a 1999 film due to its world premiere.
Anyway, because making a top ten was so difficult, I decided to try making a top 100, with only one film per director. It's on my Letterboxd if any of you are interested:
https://boxd.it/IblNM
I've got 4 overlaps with you, and I love the rest of your picks - just rewatched Marie Antoinette a few weeks ago and swooned over the filmmaking and actressing on display. Alphabetically:
Brokeback Mountain
The Brutalist
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Inside Llewyn Davis
In the Mood for Love
Lady Bird
Mulholland Drive
Past Lives
Roma
WALL-E
When I looked at the list there were about 20 I hadn't seen, although most like Tree of Life, Amour, and even.. The Lives of Others is on my DVR just waiting.
My list today:
All of Us Strangers
Drive my Car
Hugo
Inception
Letters from Iwo Jima
Pariah
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Superbad
United 93
Y Tu Mama Tambien
What a fun poll idea from the NYT. And I'm not mad at the results, either.
My own list, created entirely on a whim:
May
Get Out
I Saw the TV Glow
Parasite
Marie Antoinette
Vera Drake
Shaun of the Dead
American Mary
Saint Maud
Pan's Labyrinth
Good Manners
Children of Men
No Country for Old Men
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
The Lobster
Hard Candy
Young Adult
Battle Royale
Noriko's Dinner Table
Ask me in 20 minutes and the list would be wildly different.
What is crazy for me is that TWO of the most relevant films of this century weren't in the list:
A.I. and Munich.
Feels insane to me that in 2025, with all that is happening in the middle east, with all the advances in artificial inteligence and the ethical discussions around, those 2 Spielberg masterpieces - with capital M - were not even in the list.
My top 10:
A.I.
The Social Network
The Tree of Life
City of God
Munich
Wall-E
Zero Dark Thirty
Amour
Memories of Murder
There Will Be Blood
I don't get America's love for lists and wars,
Peggy Sue -- i relate to half of that sentence.
SBP -- I know what you mean about THE HOURS. I have some issues with it but i love it so dearly that it's weird it's not in my top 100 of the century thus far. I guess it's why Nick Davis years ago had two separate lists 100 favourites of all time and 100 bests of all time. ;)
These are films that I remember having very fond memories. Some needs re-watching.
Museum Hours (2012)
Old Joy (2006)
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (2020)
L'Avenir (2016)
Tony Takitani (2004)
The Return (2003)
American Splendor (2003)
Sleep Dealer (2008)
Moolaade (2003)
Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
Burning (2018)
What Time Is It There? (2001)
First Cow (2021)
Children of Men (2006)
Apparition (2012)
Silent Light (2007)
Ain't Dem Bodies Saints (2013)
Faces Places (2017)
Gavagai (2016)
I'm loving reading everyone else's lists, which collectively are way more interesting than the NYT's (though I agree with Nathaniel it's a solid list - I've seen 91).
Tom M, right there with you on all counts. This ballot could look very different tomorrow, or yesterday, or a year from now, but here's what it is as of this moment:
Master and Commander
You Can Count on Me
In the Mood for Love
Before Sunset
A.I.
The Prestige
Drive My Car
Lady Bird
Compartment No. 6
Idiocracy
And to your delightful point on trends, I seem to be drawn to movies about two people connecting intensely, though not necessarily romantically, over a comparatively short time period. (This is also borne out by my longlist.) A.I. and Idiocracy I guess are the outliers here, but they spoke to me for their prescience and clear-eyed understanding of the uglier side of humanity.
What the hell happened to Dogville's reputation? Is it about Lars's n@z! comments in Cannes? I can't justify it not being on the top 3. Or Dancer in the Dark?
@ cal roth
Considering how divisive von Trier's films are, I'm surprised Melancholia made it into the top 90 of the Times list.
We have one in common, the beloved Brokeback Mountain, and I still need to see 5 of yours: In the Mood for Love, Marie, A Separation, Under the Skin, I Am Love.
My Top 10, in no order:
Sideways
Chicago
La La Land
Brokeback Mountain
Call Me By Your Name
Mean Girls
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Before Sunset
Zodiac