What Are the Best Movies of the 21st Century?
We've got a poll for you!
Recently both IndieWire and the New York Times have put out lists, the former detailing the “Best Movies of the 2020s (So Far)” and the second dealing with the “Best Movies of the 21st Century”.
Personally, in regard to the first list (which has some questionable choices at best throughout), I just don’t think there have been 100 great- let alone good- movies since 2020. But in regard to the second list, there certainly is a lot to discuss.
Here’s a fun fact- call it collective millennial/zillenial/Gen Z bias on our part- but a pretty sizable chunk of the films from our list of “100 Movies Every Catholic Should See” (a list you may have heard of) are actually from the 21st century.
Now, you may look at this and be appalled- how did we miss so many great films from the Golden Age of Hollywood? Well, we certainly understand that sentiment, but a key part of us launching this list was to not only introduce Catholics to the classics, but also to give meaningful reconsiderations to many popular films. It’s also worth noting that the 2000s and early 2010s were genuinely a great era for filmmaking; with the rise of DVDs/home media, a lot of studios were able to finance riskier, more original fare that could be guaranteed to make back in disc sales what maybe it couldn’t drum up in box office sales. (See below: Matt Damon explaining this while suffering the Wings of Death)
The list from The New York Times is surprisingly…not that bad! For the list, “more than 500 filmmakers, stars and influential film fans” were polled, so there’s a pretty good mix of modern classics and some lesser known gems. I’m not sure I agree with Parasite being No. 1, but a couple of the films (including Children of Men, No Country for Old Men, and Arrival) also match what we have on our list!
This, of course, has made me curious enough to develop my own poll of the “Best Movies of the 21st Century”: feel free to vote down here on your TOP 10 favorite movies that have released since the year 2000. Ideally, we should get enough results from you all to reach 100 films.
(Also, because I feel we’re going to see it a lot on this list, let’s count The Lord of the Rings as one film)
CLICK HERE FOR THE POLL
Please comment if you are having trouble accessing the poll.
After this week, we will post the results! Can’t wait to see them.
A part of me feels like I shouldn't have participated in this poll because I stopped being a fully active movie buff around 2010 and there are a lot of notable films from this century that I haven't seen. A couple of them include Parasite and The Tree of Life, which I am guessing is the film pictured at the top (please correct me if I am wrong). My list isn't very good but at least it's honest.
I predict that The Lord of the Rings will be #1. I also bet that The Dark Knight and The Passion of the Christ will be up there; maybe Avengers: Endgame as well. I will be amazed if my #1 pick evens makes it on the top 100 (it's not a popular film). I hope the list has scores, but that might be asking for too much. I can't wait to see the results!
Just submitted my list. A lot of non-US films in there. An erstwhile film buff since my teen years many decades ago, I lost interest in a lot of cinema since the late 2000s due to personal and familial changes and events, with my reversion to the Faith playing a big role in that. I would grow more and more to dislike Hollywood fare, looking to other shores for better, soul-stirring and humorous films. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few of the good ones now, but those on the list are those I can still recall in the past quarter-century.
(I must be one of five people in the world who never really took to the LOTR franchise.)
Thanks for this poll!