Always likely to cause discussion and debate, a major newspaper recently conducted two extensive polls on movies. The New York Times first canvassed over 500 filmmakers, actors, and professionals within the film industry to create a list of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century.
The list contained pretty much what you would expect. The usual suspects were all present. Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite was named the top film of the century so far, followed by David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, then Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.
The rest of the top ten was a curious mix, but makes sense when you consider this was people within the industry voting:
4) Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love
5) Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight
6) The Coen Bros. No Country for Old Men
7) Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
8) Jordan Peele’s Get Out
9) Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away
10) David Fincher’s The Social Network
The rest of the top 50 shook out like this:
11) Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
12) The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
13) Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
14) Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
15) City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
16) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
17) Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
18) Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Cuaron)
19) Zodiac (David Fincher)
20) The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
21) The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
22) The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
23) Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
24) Her (Spike Jonze)
25) Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
26) Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)
27) Adaptation (Spike Jonze)
28) The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
29) Arrival (Denis Villeneuve)
30) Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
31) The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
32) Bridesmaids (Paul Feig)
33) A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
34) WALL-E Andrew Stanton)
35) A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)
36) A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
37) Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino)
38) Portrait of A Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma)
39) Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
40) Yi Yi (Edward Yang)
41) Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
42) The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
43) Oldboy (Park Chan-wook)
44) Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
45) Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
46) ROMA (Alfonso Cuaron)
47) Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)
48) The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck)
49) Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
50) Up! (Pete Docter)
Further down, even movies like Borat and Black Panther made an appearance.
Where this then got interesting was the newspaper doing a follow-up with their readers. They had over 200,000 submissions, and they announced the results this week. When the normies got involved, things took on something of a more populist slant.
In the Mood for Love, Moonlight, and Get Out fell out of the top ten, with Nolan’s Interstellar and The Dark Knight climbing alongside Mad Max: Fury Road to push them out.
Audiences also added in Sinners, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Knives Out, The Prestige, The Lighthouse, Blade Runner 2049, and both Dune movies. Gladiator and The Lord Of The Rings movies also appeared in the top half, further highlighting a gap between audiences and the industry.
The top 50 of the audience vote shaped up like this:
1) Parasite
2) Mulholland Drive
3) No Country for Old Men
4) There Will Be Blood
5) Interstellar
6) The Dark Knight
7) Mad Max: Fury Road
8) Spirited Away
9) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
10) The Social Network
11) Inglourious Basterds
12) In the Mood for Love
13) Everything Everywhere All at Once
14) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
15) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
16) La La Land
17) Get Out
18) Moonlight
19) Whiplash
20) Arrival
21) Children of Men
22) The Grand Budapest Hotel
23) Oppenheimer
24) Inception
25) The Departed
26) Portrait of a Lady on Fire
27) Dune: Part Two
28) The Royal Tenenbaums
29) Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
30) Brokeback Mountain
31) Before Sunset
32) Lost in Translation
33) Gladiator
34) Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
35) Aftersun
36) Lady Bird
37) City of God
38) Call Me by Your Name
39) Pan’s Labyrinth
40) Oldboy
41) Zodiac
42) Little Miss Sunshine
43) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
44) WALL·E
45) Phantom Thread
46) Amélie
47) Past Lives
48) Kill Bill: Vol. 1
49) Memories of Murder
50) Pride & Prejudice
The full list for both readers and industry categories is available at NYTimes.com
