1937-2024: My Ballot for Best Films

 The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Fantasia (1940)

Citizen Kane (1941)

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Casablanca (1943)

Anchors Aweigh (1945)

It's A Wonderful Life (1946)

The Third Man (1950)

Harvey (1950)

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

High Noon (1952)

The Wild One (1953)

On the Waterfront (1954)

White Christmas (1954)

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

The Ten Commandments (1956)

Touch of Evil (1958)

North by Northwest (1959)

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

Becket (1964)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Mary Poppins (1964)

A Shot in the Dark (1964)

The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)

A Man for All Seasons (1966)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)

The Lion in Winter (1968)

The Odd Couple (1968)

The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

True Grit (1969)

M*A*S*H (1970)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971)

THX 1138 (1971)

The Godfather (1972)

Man of La Mancha (1972)

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

American Graffiti (1973)

Serpico (1973)

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Taxi Driver (1976)

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1976)

Rocky (1976)

Star Wars (1977)

Annie Hall (1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Superman (1978)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Raging Bull (1980)

The Blues Brothers (1980)

Superman II (1981)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Blade Runner (1982)

Return of the Jedi (1983)

Zelig (1983)

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)

Ghostbusters (1984)

The Terminator (1984)

Back to the Future (1985)

Brazil (1985)

Return to Oz (1985)

Clue (1985)

Wall Street (1986)

The Princess Bride (1987)

Spaceballs (1987)

Big (1988)

Scrooged (1988)

Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

JFK (1991)

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Hook (1991)

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

Malcolm X (1992)

Schindler's List (1993)

Groundhog Day (1993)

Grumpy Old Men (1993)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

The Shawkshank Redemption (1994)

Forrest Gump (1994)

Star Trek Generations (1994)

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)

Toy Story (1995)

Grumpier Old Men (1995)

The Quick and the Dead (1995)

Don Juan DeMarco (1995)

Higher Learning (1995)

Desperado (1995)

The Usual Suspects (1995)

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Looking for Richard (1996)

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Independence Day (1996)

Amistad (1997)

Out to Sea (1997)

The Fifth Element (1997)

Men in Black (1997)

Liar, Liar (1997)

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

The Truman Show (1998)

American History X (1998)

The Mask of Zorro (1998)

Out of Sight (1998)

What Dreams May Come (1998)

Man on the Moon (1999)

The Matrix (1999)

Office Space (1999)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Galaxy Quest (1999)

Instinct (1999)

The End of the Affair (1999)

The Green Mile (1999)

Cradle Will Rock (1999)

Gladiator (2000)

Tigerland (2000)

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Unbreakable (2000)

Memento (2001)

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Shrek (2001)

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Attack of the Clones (2002)

Star Trek Nemesis (2002)

Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)

Phone Booth (2003)

Finding Nemo (2003)

Alexander (2004)

Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)

Troy (2004)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

The Passion of the Christ (2004)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

Munich (2005)

Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

Batman Begins (2005)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

The New World (2005)

Sin City (2005)

Rent (2005)

Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

The Departed (2006)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Hollywoodland (2006)

Superman Returns (2006)

World Trade Center (2006)

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Children of Men (2006)

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

American Gangster (2007)

Ratatouille (2007)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)

Gone Baby Gone (2007)

Smokin' Aces (2007)

Across the Universe (2007)

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Fall (2008)

In Bruges (2008)

Hancock (2008)

Cassandra's Dream (2008)

Che (2008)

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

(500) Days of Summer (2009)

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

Star Trek (2009)

Watchmen (2009)

The Proposal (2009)

The Hurt Locker (2009)

Moon (2009)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Bronson (2009)

Red Cliff (2009)

Inception (2010)

Robin Hood (2010)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

The Losers (2010)

True Grit (2010)

Warrior (2011)

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

Source Code (2011)

Midnight in Paris (2011)

The Tree of Life (2011)

London Boulevard (2011)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011)

Green Lantern (2011)

Django Unchained (2012)

Seven Psychopaths (2012)

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Killing Them Softly (2012)

Life of Pi (2012)

Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

Man of Steel (2013)

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Prisoners (2013)

Interstellar (2014)

Winter's Tale (2014)

Locke (2014)

Miss Julien (2014)

Birdman (2014)

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2014)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

John Wick (2014)

St. Vincent 92014)

The Force Awakens (2015)

The Hateful Eight (2015)

Arrival (2016)

Silence (2016)

The Lobster (2016)

A Monster Calls (2016)

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Hell or High Water (2016)

Free State of Jones (2016)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Midnight Special (2016)

Snowden (2016)

Collateral Beauty (2016)

Moana (2016)

Logan (2017)

Dunkirk (2017)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

A Ghost Story (2017)

Justice League (2017)

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

The Last Jedi (2017)

Wonder Woman (2017)

Gifted (2017)

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Isle of Dogs (2018)

The Death of Stalin (2018)

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2019)

Yesterday (2019)

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019)

Joker (2019)

Knives Out (2019)

The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)

Hotel Mumbai (2019)

Serenity (2019)

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek (2019)

The Lighthouse (2019)

Detective Pikachu (2019)

Crazy Samurai Musashi (2020)

Waiting for the Barbarians (2020)

True History of the Kelly Gang (2020)

Emma. (2020)

WW84 (2020)

Tenet (2020)

The Last Duel (2021)

The French Dispatch (2021)

The Green Knight (2021)

No Time to Die (2021)

Boss Level (2021)

The Batman (2022)

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

Elvis (2022)

Nope (2022)

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Bullet Train (2022)

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

Amsterdam (2022)

Oppenheimer (2023)

Guy Ritchie's The Covenant (2023)

The Creator (2023)

Napoleon (2023)

The Flash (2023)

A Complete Unknown (2024)

Conclave (2024)

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)

The Bikeriders (2024)

Mickey 17 (2025)

New York Times Reader's Ballot Explained

Here's a little of what went into my selections for the New York Times Reader's Ballot for best films of the 21st century (release order):

Gladiator (2000)

Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott rocketed up my list of essential filmmakers upon the release of Gladiator.  Crowe had been a favorite since his supporting role in The Quick and the Dead (1995), but it was his turn as Maximus where everything seemed to click.  Certainly Hollywood took notice, and he became as big a star as there was in the years that followed, which were followed by the equally predictable backlash, both within Hollywood and pop culture, which Crowe has been struggling to overcome ever since.  Scott's career before Gladiator wasn't something that meant overly much to me, although I can pick and choose from it, and that's still what I've done since, but after Gladiator he realized the historical epic was something he was pretty good at, and while critics, and audiences, were muted at best with the results, and I tended to love them, up to and including The Last Duel (2021), which was a leading contender for inclusion in my selections, edged out mostly because Scott was already represented.  In the minds of many Gladiator is still a distant second to Spartacus (1960), but for me it's not even close. 

Alexander (2004)

What Scott and Crowe are for Gladiator, Oliver Stone and Colin Farrell are for Alexander, although moreso, for me.  Except for his earliest films, I've caught up with Stone's whole filmography, and, well, Farrell is my favorite actor.  Popularly and critically considered a laughingstock, I don't care.  I think everything about Alexander works perfectly, from Vangelis' score to the expansive and ridiculously generous supporting cast,: Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Rhy Myers, Rosario Dawson, Jared Leto, Toby Kebbell, Brian Blessed, Christopher Plummer, and certainly Angelina Jolie.  The storytelling is the most complete I have ever seen in film, up to and including Citizen Kane, to my mind its only real competition, the advantage against being Stone having his whole career in the shadow of Orson Welles' cinematic breakthroughs it took decades for anyone to even begin to consider adopting.

Munich (2005)

Steven Spielberg has been considered one of the greatest directors in Hollywood for so long, it's sometimes difficult to parse the results, caught up in his greatest commercial successes and the WWII duology, Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), that came to dominate his legacy.  But for me there's no question at all which is his best film, this century or otherwise, and that's Munich.  Completely free to pursue, at this point, the film and the message and the tone as he wanted them, he swung for the fences.  The results end on a note that baffled audiences (Eric Bana lost in a moment of passion), but are the sole commentary on the post-9/11 world the film was intended to address.  It doesn't hurt that it also captures Daniel Craig in the definitive transition moment to James Bond, the role of his lifetime.  Bana flared briefly but brilliantly in Hollywood, and at the exact right moment for Spielberg to capture what he needed for Munich to work.  Also doesn't hurt to have John Williams in one of his later moody masterpiece scores, perhaps his last great triumph.

The Departed (2006)

I haven't always admired Martin Scorsese, or Leonardo DiCaprio, but for me this is the perfect moment for both, except Scorsese's Silence (2016), which transcends just about anything he's done before or since, an achievement I still have yet to catch up with myself.  DiCaprio wants so desperately to be a classic Hollywood star, and he's remained the last star of the classic Hollywood tradition today, it's nice to be able to say he absolutely nails it here.  If it had been released in any other era, it would've been recognized as the achievement it was, and he would've lapped up the Academy Award for Best Actor.  Add in another amazing supporting cast, including Matt Damon in one of his perfect roles, and even a Saturday Night Live obsession that followed (You're a cawp!  No you're a cawp!), and, just spit-balling here, perhaps a nudge for a fellow New York filmmaker (Woody Allen) to step out of his comfortable trappings, which had begun with Match Point (2005) but led to the superior but overlooked Cassandra's Dream (2008).

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

The best Western I've ever seen, well past the genre's prime, well past the revisionist years that followed, so that we can simply relish a legend past his prime, when he's become ripe for the picking.  Brad Pitt is the only actor working today capable of challenging DiCaprio.  They starred together, appropriately, in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019), and it was Pitt who shined brightest, without seeming to try.  Pitt was the template Robert Pattinson later followed so acutely, a pretty boy who pursued roles that demanded much more than that, and most of the time, he opted for something grandiose (Twelve Monkeys) rather than subtle.  Well, Assassination is subtle.  It's calm, it's meditative.  It's still waiting its due.  Casey Affleck exploded after this, became a whole sensation (Manchester by the Sea).  Andrew Dominik still waits, himself, to be acknowledged, allowed himself to be absorbed by the white noise of Netflix (Blonde), from which he hopefully emerges at some point.  Another great supporting cast, including a pre-MCU Jeremy Renner.

The Fall (2008)

More than a decade on and still waiting for this to become at the very least a cult sensation, but anyway, this is a true work of genius, a labor of love that explodes the artistic potential of Tarsem previously demonstrated by The Cell (2000) to heights seldom seen in Hollywood, an expansive and hugely imaginative film about storytelling itself, and its potential to save a life, even if it's the storyteller himself.  Lee Pace, as a result of The Fall, briefly became a known commodity, which culminated, of all things, in an MCU appearance (Guardians of the Galaxy), but also the thankless task of appearing in the Hobbit trilogy, after Peter Jackson found himself completely abandoned by everyone who adored Lord of the Rings.  As I like to say, The Fall is the grownup version of The Princess Bride.  Tarsem's career since has inexplicably stalled, but I remain hopelessly devoted.

The Dark Knight (2008)

Christopher Nolan is the greatest director of the 21st century, and it's not even remotely arguable.  Although his first film, Following, was released in 1998, his breakthrough, Memento, crashed into 2001 as a complete revelation.  His first attempt at the Dark Knight, Batman Begins (2005) was good, but The Dark Knight was leagues beyond anything even he had done, in part because he captured Heath Ledger at his creative peak.  I'd been a fan of Ledger since Roar, a short-lived TV series, so I thought I knew him pretty well.  Nobody did.  He turned the Joker into a work of art.  Fortunately Nolan had a complete film around the performance.  If any film this century ever had a chance to unseat Alexander in my affections, it was The Dark Knight.  Where Farrell had plenty of other interesting projects to explore, Stone's career stalled after a while.  Nolan kept plugging away at the new heights.  Eventually he reached Oppenheimer (2023), a throwback to old Hollywood that Hollywood itself finally deemed worth acknowledging at the Academy Awards, still operating at levels well beyond anyone else.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Otherwise known as the first time an actor truly stole the movie from Quentin Tarantino, to the point where he was essential to the celebrated director's next two projects (Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight), this is the spectacular Hollywood debut of Christoph Waltz, who plowed his way through the next decade or so until audiences less familiar with how he entered wondered why someone would bother making a fuss over him in a James Bond movie (Specter).  Also helped launch the career of Michael Fassbender, and hey! there's Brad Pitt again.  Difficult for fans beholden to his early classics (Pulp Fiction), this is proof that Tarantino could choose to be ambitious on a different scale.  With all due apologies to Spielberg, it's reasonable to suggest the scene where Waltz interviews the Frenchman does more to underscore the horrors of WWII than anything depicted in Schindler's List.  In this case, tell, don't show.  Because it's Tarantino, of course it works.

Warrior (2011)

With all due apologies to Pattinson, the competition for greatest actor discovered this century after Farrell begins with Tom Hardy, and while he appeared and starred in movies before Warrior, and had his breakthrough in Inception (2010), this should forever be known as his calling card, along with The Departed the closest anyone's come to Brando.  And somehow Joel Edgerton is every bit his match.  How is that even possible?  Gavin O'Connor crafts a masterpiece far beyond the fighting film achievements that preceded it, all the Rockys, all of it, in reaching the most earned cathartic climax ever captured in the movies, at once human and mythic in its dimensions.

Isle of Dogs (2018)

Admittedly, I was very late to Wes Anderson.  Rushmore (2009), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), I knew his films were beloved by critics, and it was absolutely that, just being contrarian, because most of the time, films loved by critics are hard to love by general audiences.  They love art house, they love their agendas being embraced.  But Wes Anderson is a master craftsman.  I started paying attention with The Life Aquatic (2004), but Isle of Dogs is really where it all clicked.  He can absolutely work the same magic with live actors, but his stop-motion animation, first captured in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), is, I don't know, akin to Robin Williams in Aladdin (1992), pure creative id.  It's the latest movie released in the past twenty-five years I obsessed over and feel comfortable placing among the very best ever made, this century or otherwise.

New York Times Best Films of the 21st Century (So Far) Readers Ballot

 

Most of these movies have populated my all-time top ten for a long time. When I was putting it together I was also finishing up the years favorites listings, which made me reconsider how I’ve been compiling that all-time list. So that’s the next step for this blog. First an all-time top ten, and then probably a new attempt at a top hundred, hopefully taking in a more comprehensive look at the history of film than I have in the past. I want to explain all these choices, too. On this blog I’ve picked away so slowly at exploring my perspective on film, most of these have barely come up. For a blog without readers, I guess that’s fine, but the art of film has always been important to me, and I still see no one else out there who sees it the way I do. For me these are obvious choices, that reflect both the best instincts of the past and the way forward, which is also why I can justify the relative clumping to a handful of years. These are filmmakers and actors who continued to dominate the form, many of whom are still taken for granted today.