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The 21st Century's 100 Greatest Films (BBC Poll, 177 worldwide critics)

W

watershed

Banned
Everyone should go see In The Mood For Love if they haven't already, It's an exquisite film. And I'll stop shilling for it now.
 
R

Ridley327

Member
FWIW, the critical world at large has never been super big on Peter Jackson or the LOTR trilogy, so it's not something that the Hobbit trilogy did to tarnish its reputation. It's not a matter of tastemaking gone awry or anything: it's just not their thing.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Yo that top 10 is sick. Look at those EVENS

8. Yi Yi: A One and a Two (Edward Yang, 2000)
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
4. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
2. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
 
V

Vulcano's assistant

Banned
The Lives of Others and A Separation are well positioned. Sure I would have both on the top 10, but I like the list still.

edit: I do feel that Man on Wire should be there though. Feels like a documentary has to be a social and philosophical tour de force like the Act of Killing to be taken into account, while there are good movies that are just great entertainment in there. Man on Wire is fantastic entertainment.
 
R

Ridley327

Member
And since I can't help it:

Cuarón: one film, inside of top 20
Del Toro: one film, inside of top 20
Iñárritu: zero films

Stay salty, my friends.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Too much Pixar. Inside Out being that high up is a joke.
 
D

Discotheque

Banned
ViewtifulJC said:
Its pretty clear the first two hours are a dream. The first thing we see is us falling down to sleep into a pillow on Diane's bed, and then the dream ends when she unlocks the blue box/Cowboy says "time to wake up pretty girl". She's a failed, possibly drug-addicted actress who's "girlfriend" ditches who for a big-shot movie director and another pretty blond woman. She hires an assassin to kill her, and through a combination of depression, shame, and personal demons she can't escape(personified in that thing in the back of winkies and all those smiling parents who thought she was gonna be a big star), she kills herself.

But in-between the hiring and the killing, she dreams. She dreams of a world where she's a great actress, where everything bad happens to the big-shot director, where her "girlfriend" is hot but kinda dumb and depends on her instead of the other way around, where SINISTER FORCES OF HOLLYWOOD are the reason that pretty talentless blond woman got her roles instead of her, where the assassin she hired is REALLY incompetent in a Coen Bros setpiece kinda way so he couldn't kill the woman she loves, and her entire life is kinda like a 1950s Billy Wilder noir.

Things like the blue key its uh...you seen Inception? Its kinda like a totem of her guilt, that guilt that she killed Camilla Rhodes. She hides it in a box and puts it away in the dream. The dream starts to break down partway through the movie, you got those agents like Inception, the mind fighting back telling her to wake up. You got her ugly dead body at her house. She calls "Diane Selwyn" in the dream("Its strange dialing yourself!") and its actually Naomi Watts' voice on the other side, but its kinda hard to here. It finally breaks down entirely when they go to Club Silencio and its revealed that they're living in a dream world they can't have, and they rush home to open the box.

Lynch uses the dream thing as a really cool method to actually get inside somebody's head and do an intimate character study of Naomi Watts' character of Diane Selwyn. We learn her wants, her dreams, her hopes, her fears, how she views the world and how she views the people in her life. Its also an indictment against all the happy magic bullshit Hollywood feeds you, but at the same time its also a celebration of the power of movies, how they affect our ultimately subjective view of reality, and how they impact our lives with the combination of sound design, editing, acting, lighting, etc. Every single aesthetic choice Lynch uses has been thoroughly picked over and works towards the film's beauty, complexity, and dream logic we look for in movies.

Its also just a really visceral fuckin' experience with dreamlike cinematography and amazing sound design and crazy direction so that if you didn't get it, you can just enjoy it on a sensory level.

Personally, I think its the absolute best film of the century so far.
Click to expand...

dope post, love how you brought in the inception comparison too to make it a bit more relatable.

anyways I always thought Pan's Labyrinth was hella overrated in the critics circles. for a fantasy inclusion I think it's a damn shame fellowship of the ring gets overlooked in favor of that.

anyways what is everybody's top 10 this century anyways since we got a lot of agreement and disagreements in this thread.

i think definites for me would be:
Mulholland Drive
Fellowship of the Ring
Mad Max Fury Road
A Separation
The New World
Miami Vice
Take Shelter

and then I would have to think pretty hard about the rest. those are just clinched tho for top 10 placement imo.
 
oipic

oipic

Member
Great list, has provoked some terrific (and spirited!) discussion among my work colleagues.

I'm disappointed that The Intouchables didn't feature, but as film lovers we're doing OK if this, and many others mentioned, miss out on lists like this. The medium is alive and well.

watershed said:
Everyone should go see In The Mood For Love if they haven't already, It's an exquisite film. And I'll stop shilling for it now.
Click to expand...

Seconded, warms my heart to see it so high (or to see it all, really). I'd have 2046 pretty high on my own list, too.
 
C

creatchee

Member
The Master.... Uggggh, go away.

Nobody takes the joy out of watching a movie quite like Paul Thomas Anderson. I mean, I find nothing fun about his films or any reason to sit through them past one viewing (Boogie Nights excluded).
 
B

brianjones

Member
haven't seen:

100. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)
100. Carlos (Olivier Assayas, 2010)
99. The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000)
98. Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)
97. White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)
91. The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan José Campanella, 2009)
89. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
85. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, 2009)
80. The Return (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2003)
71. Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012)
70. Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
66. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring (Kim Ki-duk, 2003)
64. The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)
63. The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, 2011)
60. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
58. Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, 2004)
56. Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, director; Ágnes Hranitzky, co-director, 2000)
55. Ida (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2013)
54. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011)
53. Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)
52. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
50. The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015)
49. Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard, 2014)
48. Brooklyn (John Crowley, 2015)
47. Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2014)
42. Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012)
41. Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)
40. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)
36. Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2014)
34. Son of Saul (László Nemes, 2015)
28. Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
14. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)
Click to expand...

anything i should prioritize?

think act of killing is on netflix
 
A

Artdayne

Member
Torokil said:
Boyhood sticks out like a sore thumb. Way too fucking high.
Click to expand...

That's the first thing I thought. It was a gimmicky film with the whole using the same actors over the course of 12 years or whatever it was. The actual story wasn't anything that stood out. I think Tree of Life should have been a bit higher.

No Adaptation, no Cloud Atlas and f'ing Boyhood again, being so high? Ugh.
 
J

jett

D-Member
My favorite movies of the 21st century that are missing (that could be in a list like this) are The Fountain and Master and Commander. Oh well.

brianjones said:
haven't seen:



anything i should prioritize?

think act of killing is on netflix
Click to expand...

The Secret in Their Eyes
A Prophet


Just noticed Moulin Rouge is in this list. I lol'd. I lol'd hard.
 
D

DasPenguin

Member
Discotheque said:
dope post, love how you brought in the inception comparison too to make it a bit more relatable.

anyways I always thought Pan's Labyrinth was hella overrated in the critics circles. for a fantasy inclusion I think it's a damn shame fellowship of the ring gets overlooked in favor of that.

anyways what is everybody's top 10 this century anyways since we got a lot of agreement and disagreements in this thread.

i think definites for me would be:
Mulholland Drive
Fellowship of the Ring
Mad Max Fury Road
A Separation
The New World
Miami Vice
Take Shelter

and then I would have to think pretty hard about the rest. those are just clinched tho for top 10 placement imo.
Click to expand...

Miami Vice? The tv show is one the best shows ever made, but the movie was average at best.

Glad to see Eternal Sunshine that high. That movie should've cleaned the Oscars the year it came out.
 
K

Kevtones

Member
YES.


I agree with #1 and that's the first time I've ever said this in a non-Zelda OOT thread.



Boyhood is one of my favorite films of all-time and #5 is perfect for it. It's a perfectly surreal and mundane 3 hour film you can't help but finish. If only Manhood were possible (too bad the boy is stuck on Giant Bomb message boards).
 
D

Discotheque

Banned
Kevtones said:
Boyhood is one of my favorite films of all-time and #5 is perfect for it. It's a perfectly surreal and mundane 3 hour film you can't help but finish. If only Manhood were possible (too bad the boy is stuck on Giant Bomb message boards).
Click to expand...

Linklater is so good at making people sound real, like I've encountered numerous conversations in boyhood in real life. You would think it's a skill that shouldn't be so hard to master but he's one of the only people right now who is excelling at it.
 
K

Kevtones

Member
Discotheque said:
Linklater is so good at making people sound real, like I've encountered numerous conversations in boyhood in real life. You would think it's a skill that shouldn't be so hard to master but he's one of the only people right now who is exceeding at it.
Click to expand...


I think Linklater nails cadence and tone so well on a scene-by-scene basis. Even with actors' improvisation, his ability to direct through his writing always hits the mark.


Though you can find three acts in Boyhood, it felt more perpetual (like a 15-episode season) in its delivery. Sounds pretentious but there's nothing else like it and there never will be. That doesn't qualify it, but I'll be surprised if Boyhood doesn't continue to place higher and higher on these list as the years go by.
 
E

EVO

Member
Solid list. Missing a few of my favourites but it's good to see Mulholland Drive and Spirited Away in the top 5. Suprised Whiplash and Birdman didn't make the list.
 
S

Socreges

Banned
The fact that this thread is as cordial as it is means it's a decent list. Each person will see their own questionable decisions, but the list seems generally agreeable.

For me....where are Adaptation and The Prestige?
 
V

veloxStrix

Banned
Staccat0 said:
Holy Motors eh? I was underwhelmed.
Click to expand...

I would have put it higher, honestly. Holy Motors is a film about death and mortality, not just of the characters but the demise of the film industry as well. Carax acknowledges the decline of film as the "media of the mass", but fights back by unerringly proving its worth. The way he uses the style of Youtube videos as the vehicle for storytelling is akin to fighting fire with fire; disjointed, messy fire that it is.

I absolutely loved it.

O Canada Our Home and Native Land said:
Boyhood is still getting love, in top five no less, is a joke. Adaptation should be in the top fifty or on the list at least.
Click to expand...

Boyhood is one of the greatest films of all time. Of all time.
 
S

Sir_Crocodile

Member
It's not that bad a list, but there are a LOT of films there that I'd rather watch 13 Assassins, Fellowship of the Rings, Red Cliff or quite a few others instead of.

Inception's existence is pretty baffling to me, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Dark Knight are way too high (I'm not entirely sure they deserve to be there at all, but I'd have to think of 100 films better then them in the last 16 years first).

Finding Nemo and Ratatouille but no Up, which was far superior to them was fairly surprising too, but from the last few Pixar films I noticed I seem to have a minority view on the relative quality of Pixar films.

I dunno about 12 years a Slave either as the film was so upsetting to me I never want to watch it again - but then maybe that was the point.
 
P

Peru

Member
Sir_Crocodile said:
Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Dark Knight are way too high (I'm not entirely sure they deserve to be there at all, but I'd have to think of 100 films better then them in the last 16 years first).
.
Click to expand...

Crouching Tiger more or less created a sub-genre on its own but also, probably, remains the best of its type, so as both an influential and acclaimed movie with wide appeal it's a pretty natural candidate for the top 50.
 
S

Sir_Crocodile

Member
Peru said:
Crouching Tiger more or less created a sub-genre on its own but also, probably, remains the best of its type, so as both an influential and acclaimed movie with wide appeal it's a pretty natural candidate for the top 50.
Click to expand...

Oh? What sub-genre would you call it?
 
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