Best Movies of the Century?

Are these the 100 Best since 2000?

The New York Times ran a poll of the best movies of the 21st Century (defined as starting in 2000 rather than 2001) among several hundred people in the film industry (i.e., not film critics):

100. Superbad (Greg Motolla)
99. Memories of A Murder (Bong Joon-ho)
98. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
97. Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron)
96. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler)
95. The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier)
94. Minority Report (Steven Spielberg)
93. Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy)
92. Gladiator (Ridley Scott)
91. Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)
90. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
89. Interstellar (Christopher Nolan)
88. The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda)
87. The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson)
86. Past Lives (Celine Song)
85. Anchorman (Adam McKay)
84. Melancholia (Lars Von Trier)
83. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen)
82. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
81. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)
80. Volver (Pedro Almodovar)
79. Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
78. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
77. Everything Everywhere All At Once (The Daniels)
76. O Brother, Where Art Thou (Joel & Ethan Coen)
75. Amour (Michael Haneke)
74. The Florida Project (Sean Baker)
73. Ratatouille (Brad Bird)
72. Carol (Todd Haynes)
71. Ocean’s Eleven (Steven Soderbergh)
70. Let The Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)
69. Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
68. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
67. TAR (Todd Field)
66. Spotlight (Tom McCarthy)
65. Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)
64. Gone Girl (David Fincher)
63. Little Miss Sunshine (Dayton & Faris)
62. Memento (Christopher Nolan)
61. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino)
60. Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)
59. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
58. Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie)
57. Best in Show (Christopher Guest)
56. Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson)
55. Inception (Christopher Nolan)
54. Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo Del Toro)
53. Borat (Larry Charles)
52. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)
51. 12 Years A Slave (Steve McQueen)
50. Up! (Pete Docter)
49. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
48. The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck)
47. Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)
46. ROMA (Alfonso Cuaron)
45. Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
44. Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
43. Oldboy (Park Chan-wook)
42. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
41. Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
40. Yi Yi (Edward Yang)
39. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
38. Portrait of A Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma)
37. Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino)
36. A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
35. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)
34. WALL-E Andrew Stanton)
33. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
32. Bridesmaids (Paul Feig)
31. The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
30. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
29. Arrival (Denis Villeneuve)
28. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
27. Adaptation (Spike Jonze)
26. Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)
25. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
24. Her (Spike Jonze)
23. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
22. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
21. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
20. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
19. Zodiac (David Fincher)
18. Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Cuaron)
17. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
16. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
15. City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
14. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
13. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
12. The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
11. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
10. The Social Network (David Fincher)
09. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
08. Get Out (Jordan Peele)
07. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
06. No Country For Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen)
05. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
04. In the Mood For Love (Wong Kar Wai)
03. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
02. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
01. Parasite (Bong Joon Ho)

A few comments:

Overall, a pretty good list. I’ve seen most of the movies and I admired almost all the ones I saw.

I won’t link to my movie reviews because I’d like to eventually publish an anthology of my reviews, so I don’t want them to be easy to find.

There are a lot of delightful movies on the list, especially in the lower rankings. Consider #57, Christopher’s Guest’s dog show mockumentary Best in Show:

The list is less annoying without the New York Times’ commentary. For example, here’s how the NYT confidently explain the enigmatic #1 ranked Parasite:

A tale of haves and have-nots, and a ferocious rebuke to the devastations of neoliberalism, Bong Joon Ho’s pleasurably kinked and unsettling shocker follows a destitute family as it insinuates itself into a wealthy household. Bong, a master of genre unbound by convention, fluidly shifts between broad comedy and blistering social satire throughout, then lights it all on fire with a paroxysm of tragic violence that’s as stunning as it is inevitable.

I doubt if anything in Parasite is “inevitable.” I think much of the appeal of the film is that while the film-making is masterful, the plot is … puzzling, to say the least. While the filmmaker clearly knows what he’s doing with cameras, sets, and actors, his socio-political commentary is hard to decipher, and thus viewers think about it a lot. What profound message is this great artist, Maestro Bong Joon Ho, trying to communicate to us?

On the other hand, Bong laid all his cards on the table with this year’s on the nose sci-fi satire Mickey 17, but as a thinker he turned out to be … kinda dumb.

I suspect that American enthusiasm for Parasite tends to be driven by U.S. grown-ups finally noticing that South Korea had become a real pop culture powerhouse, so we grasped for something Korean to feel like we are up to date.

Other notes: The top 25 movies are all by male directors.

From Reddit:

The top directors are:

Martin Scorsese, two films - Wolf Of Wall Street (20), The Departed (31)

Wes Anderson, two films - The Royal Tennenbaums (21), The Grand Budapest Hotel (22)

Ang Lee, two films - Brokeback Mountain (17), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (16)

Spike Jonze, two films - Adaptation (27), Her (24)

Richard Linklater, two films - Before Sunset (49), Boyhood (23)

Jonathan Glazer, two films - The Zone of Interest (12), Under the Skin (69)

Bong Joon Ho, two films - Parasite (1), Memories of Murder (99)

Quentin Tarantino, three films - Inglorious Basterds (14), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (44), Kill Bill Vol. 1 (61)

David Fincher, three films - The Social Network (10), Zodiac (19), Gone Girl (64)

Alfonso Cuarón, four films - Children of Men (13), Y tu mamá también (18), Roma (46), Gravity (97)

Coen Brothers, four films - No Country for Old Men (6), A Serious Man (36), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (76), Inside Llewyn Davis (83)

Paul Thomas Anderson, four films - There Will Be Blood (3), Phantom Thread (25), The Master (42), Punch-Drunk Love (56)

Christopher Nolan, five films - The Dark Knight (28), Inception (55), Memento (62), Oppenheimer (65), Interstellar (89)

The top directors are so good that they might deserve more films on the top 100: e.g., what about Nolan’s Dunkirk?

In general, I’ve seen very few of the movies on the list by women directors. The only ones I’ve seen are good ones by Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation), and Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, although, weirdly, Barbie didn’t make the list). I would note that they all got to the top the old fashioned way (Bigelow married James Cochran, Gerwig married Noah Baumbach [by the way, where’s The Squid and the Whale?], and Coppola is the daughter of the director of The Godfather.

As for the two big movies of 2007, #6 No Country for Old Men and #3 There Will Be Blood, I like to retell an anecdote by a friend who had a small role in There Will Be Blood. The Paul Thomas Anderson movie with Daniel Day-Lewis’s memorable lead role turned out really well. So people who’d seen it before it’s release were talking about how it might win the Best Picture Oscar. Then he went to see a preview of No Country for Old Men. After about 10 or 15 minutes, he said, “Oh, well, no Best Picture Oscar for us.”

In general, the film industry people’s tastes seem to be toward visual rather than verbal movies. For example, no Woody Allen movies make the top 100. Granted, Woody was over the hill in this century, but his 2011 film Midnight in Paris with Owen Wilson as the Woody Allen Character was wonderful.

Conversely, Paul Thomas Anderson is a guy from my neighborhood — he videotaped a friend’s parent’s wedding when he was a kid — who is a huge talent, so I really ought to like him as much as this survey does. But I can’t help thinking the Coen Brothers would have bothered to finish reading the novel his screenplay is adapted from.

So, what are your nominees for best movies of the 2000s?