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Critics Pick the 100 Greatest Movies of the 21st Century

Are these the greatest films of the 21st century?

BBC Culture polled 177 critics from around the world (yours truly among them), and the results of all their respective top ten lists were smashed together to produce a list of 100 movies, the top 25 of which you can check out below.

Are all of these films worth a watch? Definitely. That’s the most productive thing you should take away from a list like this, one of many ranked movie lists that populate your favorite online haunts on a weekly basis. The positioning of a certain movie, how many Oscars it won and the reasons behind why one person rated a movie higher than another are all secondary to the more important fact that they’re all pretty darn good movies.

Here’s what my personal top ten looked like:

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
2. Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)
3. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
4. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
5. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
6. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2013)
7. Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton, 2003)
8. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
9. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
10. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)

The only film we were asked to rank was our top choice, and so with the exception of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind being my favorite movie of the 21st century, all of the other movies are in no particular order. How I chose them was pretty simple: which movies meant the most to me? Which ones were most memorable, which ones delivered a unique experience that changed me, engaged me, seduced me, enlightened me and, perhaps most importantly, grabbed me and never let go.

For one, Eternal Sunshine topped my list because of the profound effect it had on me. Its incredibly inventive deconstruction of a relationship — with its ups, downs and upside downs — moved me and shook me, and was unlike any love story I’d ever seen on screen before. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet were flawless and real, and so was everything it said about our insane, often dysfunctional never ending relationship with love itself.

It’s a movie that stuck for many reasons, and the same can be said for the other nine, too. Movies stick with us for reasons that mean something to us, and that’s why none of these lists are definitive or a final statement of anything other than the collective feelings of a group of people who really like movies.

And if you really like movies, here are some more to check out.

Here are the top 25 films on BBC Culture’s list, six of which were also on my list of ten. The full 100 can be seen here.

25. ?Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
24. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)
23. Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005)
22. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
21. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)
20. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008)
19. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
18. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
17. Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo Del Toro, 2006)
16. Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)
15. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2007)
14. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)
13. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)
12. Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)
11. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2013)
10. No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)
9. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)
8. Yi Yi: A One and a Two (Edward Yang, 2000)
7. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
5. Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)
4. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
3. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
2. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
1. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)