The Best Lists are Selfish
Reviewing the NYTimes Top 100 Films Poll
The New York Times released another list of the top films of the 21st century (so far).
I’m sick of lists, but I am starved for engagement. So I’ve decided for every hoity-toity Romanian New Wave review, I could stand to write at least one piece about the Oscars, a new A24 movie, or some other buzzy topic in the film world. This week it’s a list. Which is fine. Lists create engagement. And in this economy, I can’t afford to not hustle for your attention, (especially after John Oliver told me pre-built instagram shell accounts are out here overloading your feed with AI slop as fast as the data warehouses can generate it).
So here we are! Talking about a list of films that covers a century of filmmaking we are barely a quarter of a century into! A list that grows more-and-more outdated by the day. We might as well up the stakes and call it the top films of the 2nd millenium (so far). Who cares! It’s fun!
This time the count is 100 titles based on a poll of more than 500 actors, directors, and “other notable names” instead of the paper’s own movie critics. Unlike the list composed by Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott eight years ago, it seems unlikely that anyone who keeps up with contemporary cinema will be surprised by more than a handful of the titles listed here.
The problem is that a handful of filmmakers take up far too much space. The filmographies of Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers, Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, and Martin Scorsese take up nearly a quarter of the list alone.1 Add in the lowest common denominator awards season favorites from the past twenty-five years and you get a list that doesn’t surprise so much as represent a banal average of many overlapping tastes and viewing habits in a specific subcommunity: a portrait of Hollywood’s high-brow echo chamber. Which is not to say that the films are undeserving of praise but that the list itself doesn’t really bring much news.
This sort of surprised me given the impressive work embodied by many of the filmmakers polled for the list. I assume all the “other notable names” not listed on the page are more insular in their consumption habits. If I polled five hundred alt publishing folks on the top books of the 21st century thus far, I imagine I would get similarly cloistered results—more titles published by people within that segment of book publishing than by publishers outside of it.
Still, it is surprising that certain performers have been totally excluded from this list. No Juliet Binoche? No Isabelle Huppert? No Adam Driver? No Steven Yeun? No Frances McDormand? No Carey Mulligan? No Denzel Washington? No Meryl Streep? I could go on!
There are dozens of films in this list that wouldn't have cracked my top 100, but there are many omissions that I feel ought to have at least cracked the top 25 over yet another Coen brothers joint. What is more surprising though is how many world renowned filmmakers are not represented by this list. The following immediately came to mind:
Ari Aster
Lee Chang Dong
David Cronenberg
Claire Denis
Julia Ducournau
Ava DuVernay
Bi Gan
Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Mia Hansen-Løve
Eliza Hittman
Joanna Hogg
Radu Jude
Abbas Kiarostami
Hirokazu Koreeda
Spike Lee
Mike Leigh
Lucretia Martel
Cristian Mungiu
Jafar Panahi
Alexander Payne
Lynne Ramsay
Kelly Reichardt
Ramell Ross
David O. Russell
Paul Schrader
Béla Tarr
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Wim Wenders
…
Etc.
At least the readers' poll accounts for some of these omissions. I too would sub out any picks in the back 50 for Perfect Days, Hereditary, Drive My Car, Fantastic Mr. Fox, or The Holdovers.
The individual polls (those published in the Times, anyway) are in themselves far more fun to peruse than the list itself. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s list is a great mix of titles. Also see: Ava Duvernay, Barry Jenkins, John Waters. Lists are more fun when they reflect the personality and interests of the individuals composing them.
When my friend Jake (an Art Director who’s worked on at least one of the movies on this NYTimes list…) shared his personal list with me, I was far more excited by his personal curation than anything in the Top 100.
When I look at this list I am reminded of the dinner party host who is as concerned with the precise execution of a small plate dish as he is with who can keep pace with his tequila consumption. A leveling of all the brows into one dazzling cocktail.
Another friend (name: Joe, profession: public transit, dog: Roman) composed his list primarily of prestige action franchise movies. When I gravitated to an outlier pick on his list, he assured me it wasn’t such a departure: “Isn’t mad max fury road pretty similar to y tu mamá también already? They drive to one place…and then they drive back to where they came from…Same movie.” Touché.
For my own task here, I suppose the best way to respond to the relatively staid NYTimes list is with another list. Besides, I can’t resist sharing my picks, so here you go:2
I could probably sub-out any one of these picks for another without feeling too many qualms about leaving someone out (although Yi Yi might actually be too painful to exclude, even if it has received enough accolades at this point for everyone to move on to other titles).
I suppose I appreciate the consensus that forms around certain movies, sure. But the amount of consensus on the generic top 100 list is so mind numbing, it makes me wonder to what extent these individual polls are actually swayed by popularity vs. prestige vs. personal taste vs. groupthink.
There are so many conflicting notions of what a list should be. One would expect a bit more chaos in the results because of that. I mean what criteria is everyone using anyway? When composing a list, should you think about the movies you want to hang out with, or the movies that altered your soul over the course of one viewing (or a bit of both)? Is it about signaling savvy or correcting the record of prevailing tastes? Or should the process be more measurable, like sitting at a judge panel and holding up numbers that average out into an overall rating? Cinematography: 6.0! Production design: 5.8! Performances: 6.0! Directing: 5.9! We have a winner! Sounds about as fun as memorizing Rotten Tomatoes scores…
And how much does our collective conception of “good” begin with the lists themselves – the desire to affirm one’s in-group status by adapting the tastes embodied in the list as one’s own? Is it even legal to exclude There Will Be Blood at this point?3
I don’t know, but I’ll take one critic’s erudite taste over stifling aggregation anyday. Now that’s enough about lists. Send me yours. In the meantime, I’ll be watching Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
Given the number of viable top 100 picks (see the other 400 titles that made it into the readers’ poll), why not restrict each director to a single title in the top 100? Perhaps it would spark a little more debate and introduce more peripheral movies to readers.
As you might have noticed, I had to manually enter one name on this list anyway because the NYTimes didn’t even include it as an option. Nor did it include Both Sides of the Blade (2022) or several other films I figured were more than worthy of consideration!
I kept it on mine just to be safe. Also, as perverse as this might sound, no performance has ever brought me more joy than Daniel Day Lewis wrestling in the mud with Paul Dano. It’s a comedy. I needed at least one on the list.