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New York Times: The 25 Best Films of the 21st Century So Far

dealer-

Member
This is a terrible list. No Dark Knight, No Fellowship, no Return and no War for the Planet of the Apes.

Monsters U and Up are way better then Inside Out too.

Lol what, it's only been out a week. Seems a decent list. Not too try hard, which makes a nice change.
 

Sephzilla

Member
No Country For Old Men struck me as pretentious, for lack of a better term. I'm on with it not being on the list. Boyhood making the list and not Hot Fuzz is unacceptable though.

DID YOU KNOW BOYHOOD TOOK TWELVE YEARS TO MAKE!?
 
No Country For Old Men struck me as pretentious, for lack of a better term. I'm on with it not being on the list. Boyhood making the list and not Hot Fuzz is unacceptable though.

DID YOU KNOW BOYHOOD TOOK TWELVE YEARS TO MAKE!?

Boyhood actually used its production gimmick in a positive way, though, both to make the passage of time something perceived via visual information and editing and to allow changes in the lead actor's abilities and screen presence to creep into and heighten/shift the narrative. This was easily one of the worst RLM reviews (esp. positively reviewing fucking Guardians of the Galaxy in the same episode) and memes, up there with the "Prometheus was not that bad, calm down kids" review.

"Hot Fuzz" is an entertaining comedy that is clever in how it incorporates cop movie tropes, but it leaves one with absolutely nothing.
 

Nipo

Member
"Hot Fuzz" is an entertaining comedy that is clever in how it incorporates cop movie tropes, but it leaves one with absolutely nothing.

In an age where 90% of comedy movies are basically people telling jokes on screen for 2 hours Edgar Wright's use of motion, and editing to tell jokes make him him one of the most enjoyable directors working today. He absolutely belongs on on any best of list.
 
Why did you spoiler tag the list

1. There Will Be Blood
2. Spirited Away
3. Million Dollar Baby
4. A Touch of Sin
5. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
6. Yi Yi
7. Inside Out
8. Boyhood
9. Summer Hours
10. The Hurt Locker
11. Inside Llewyn Davis
12. Timbuktu
13. In Jackson Heights
14. L'Enfant
15. White Material
16. Munich
17. Three Times
18. The Gleaners and I
19. Mad Max: Fury Road
20. Moonlight
21. Wendy and Lucy
22. I'm Not There
23. Silent Light
24. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
25. The 40 Year Old Virgin

Fury Road is too low. Boyhood is too high. And wherever Boyhood ends up, Moonlight needs to be like 3 or 4 slots above it.

How do you stick There Will be Blood at #1 and leave No Country for Old Men off the list entirely, while still managing to put THE FORTY YEAR OLD GODDAMNED VIRGIN ON THE FUCKING LIST AT ALL JESUS CHR



This incoherent rant was what I was going to write.

Also Spider-Man 2, The Force Awakens and Batman Begins should be on here.

Aaaand Mad Max should be #1
 
The people asking for Batman and Star Wars movies to be on here: Are you guys serious? Are you really under the impression that those movies are the best that the medium of film has to offer?
 
The people asking for Batman and Star Wars movies to be on here: Are you guys serious? Are you really under the impression that those movies are the best that the medium of film has to offer?
Batman Begins was fucking great and the best cape origin film of all time. Even above Supes 78. I think Wonder Woman might beat them both but I still haven't gotten to see it.

The Force Awakens is my addition :D

The omission of Spider-Man 2, Fellowship or Return is dogshit, too.

Return won like every Oscar they have.
 
Spirited Away as "the respectable anime" still drives me nuts. I haven't seen his newest movie yet but any of Mamoru Hosoda's other movies are way better than anything Miyazaki has put out since Princess Mononoke. Plus like, no Satoshi Kon or Redline.

I realize this isn't an anime list but Spirited Away getting on there but any of the much better and more interesting anime films of this century not drives me nuts.
 
Boyhood shouldn’t be on the list.

Mad Max should be higher, as should Munich. Million Dollar Baby should be damn near the bottom (if not off the list entirely). Same with Hurt Locker.

No Country for Old Men should be there. As should Children of Men. As should...fuck, I can think of about six dozen films I’d put above the 40 Year Old Virgin.

The people asking for Batman and Star Wars movies to be on here: Are you guys serious? Are you really under the impression that those movies are the best that the medium of film has to offer?

I’d put The Dark Knight above 40 Year Old Virgin in a heartbeat, yes.
 
If a superhero movie were ever to make one of these lists (not going to happen) it should be Spider-Man 2.
Spider-Man 2 and Return are the biggest omissions imo. You'd have to be huffing semi exhaust fumes to think 40 yo virgin, boyhood, or inside out are better than those films.
 

Krev

Unconfirmed Member
Spirited Away as "the respectable anime" still drives me nuts. I haven't seen his newest movie yet but any of Mamoru Hosoda's other movies are way better than anything Miyazaki has put out since Princess Mononoke. Plus like, no Satoshi Kon or Redline.

I realize this isn't an anime list but Spirited Away getting on there but any of the much better and more interesting anime films of this century not drives me nuts.
Nope. Miyazaki is pretty much unquestionably the best filmmaker who consistently put out anime in the 21st century.

And Hosoda? Really? Not one of Hosoda's films is on the same level as anything Miyazaki put out this century. I could grant Wolf Children over Ponyo maybe. A more justifiable alternative pick to Miyazaki would be Millennium Actress or The Tale of Princess Kaguya.
 

Vixdean

Member
I won't even get into what's missing, but Boyhood was fucking terrible and shouldn't even sniff any sort "best of" list.
 

Servbot24

Banned
Spirited Away as "the respectable anime" still drives me nuts. I haven't seen his newest movie yet but any of Mamoru Hosoda's other movies are way better than anything Miyazaki has put out since Princess Mononoke. Plus like, no Satoshi Kon or Redline.

I realize this isn't an anime list but Spirited Away getting on there but any of the much better and more interesting anime films of this century not drives me nuts.
Nah Spirited Away is legit excellent. There are a couple other anime movies that could compete with it, but there's nothing wrong with it being on the list. Just cuz it's popular doesn't make it a bad choice :p
 

Futureman

Member
"I'm Not There" is interesting. I completely forgot about that movie. I think I tried to get some friends to watch it in college but no one was really a Dylan fan so it went off early.

I need to check out some films on this list. Agree with #1.
 

Speevy

Banned
Stop ranking Boyhood on these lists. It's not a good movie.

I have accumulated 12 years of debt. That doesn't mean it needs to be on a list.
 
Stop ranking Boyhood on these lists. It's not a good movie.

I have accumulated 12 years of debt. That doesn't mean it needs to be on a list.

It's an excellent movie that mostly misses out on greatness by being a little too prosaic and not very daring in terms of the visuals. The writing and acting is good throughout, albeit the main kid gets a little stiff in the high school years, and for a nearly 3-hour movie, it is quite breezy and doesn't feel its length one bit.

Edit: lmao at The 40 Year Old Virgin and Boyhood being the controversial entries on the list, and not the many inferior movies, particularly the outright bad ones by Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg that made the cut.
 
Boyhood shouldn't even be on a Top 10 list for its release year. It's a mediocre movie that gets carried by ancillary anecdotes/production stories.

If you didn't know any details of how it was made and just watched it blind, would you actually give even the tiniest rabbit-like shit about the movie?
 
Boyhood shouldn't even be on a Top 10 list for its release year. It's a mediocre movie that gets carried by ancillary anecdotes/production stories.

If you didn't know any details of how it was made and just watched it blind, would you actually give even the tiniest rabbit-like shit about the movie?

Would I give a shit about a well-written movie with two of the finer supporting performances (Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette) of the decade and a lot of subtleties woven into the narrative throughout (such as irony in how the "loser" the mother kicks to the curb at the beginning turns out to be by far the most decent man in her romantic life that we see, or the movie's cultural critiques, such as the college professor and the soldier boyfriends being the two main antagonists, or the ways in which the main character's idiosyncrasies are impinged upon by society)?

Yeah, I would.
 
Would I give a shit about a well-written movie with two of the finer supporting performances (Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette) of the decade and a lot of subtleties woven into the narrative throughout (such as irony in how the "loser" the mother kicks to the curb at the beginning turns out to be by far the most decent man in her romantic life that we see, or the movie's cultural critiques, such as the college professor and the soldier boyfriends being the two main antagonists, or the ways in which the main character's idiosyncrasies are impinged upon by society)?

Yeah, I would.

Then boy, have I got good news for you!

If you start running the collection of Lifetime Original Movies right now, you can probably play them uninterrupted without repetition until the day you die.
 
Then boy, have I got good news for you!

If you start running the collection of Lifetime Original Movies right now, you can probably play them uninterrupted without repetition until the day you die.

UB1eV%255B1%255D.gif


Yeah, Boyhood is pap.

Meanwhile, this poster called Munich “bad.” Even if you don’t think it deserves to be on this list, it’s far from bad.
 
Odd that a lot of those didn't get Oscars, it's like the Academy doesn't know shit

1. There Will Be Blood (Nominated for 8 Academy Awards, won 2 for Best Actor and Best Cinematography)
2. Spirited Away (Won for Best Animated Feature)
3. Million Dollar Baby (Nominated for 7 Academy Awards, won 4 including Best Picture)
4. A Touch of Sin (According to Asia Society, China refused to show the film therefore it could not be submitted even for the Best Foreign Language Film prize, and instead China submitted populist director Feng Xiaogang’s famine epic Back to 1942.)
5. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Snubbed. This film was Romania's submission in the best foreign-language film Oscar race but didn't get nominated.)
6. Yi Yi (from an excerpt from Inside Oscar 2,"...though the warmly humanistic Yi Yi, did have real Academy-type virtues and Edward Yang might have been a dark horse possibility for a Best Director nomination. Unfortunately, even though Yi Yi had a successful run in Los Angeles, it was not included on the Academy's reminder list of eligible pictures and, thus, would not be in the competition. Apparently, the films distributor, Winstar, didn't do the paperwork required to get it on the list...")
7. Inside Out (Nominated for 2 Academy Awards, won for Best Animated Feature)
8. Boyhood (Nominated for 6 Academy Awards, won for Best Supporting Actress)
9. Summer Hours (Snubbed. Excerpt from Variety, "Or what about “Summer Hours,” which earned top 2009 foreign-language honors from both the Los Angeles and New York film critics (coming in second only to “The Hurt Locker” in the Village Voice’s annual pundit poll)?... It’s easy to explain the snubs by saying that these films didn’t have enough exposure, but it’s harder to know what to do about it (assuming the Academy has the will to take on the chore)... But the real reason probably has more to do with the challenging market for foreign films in this country. ... and IFC’s summer run for “Summer Hours” did a mere fraction of the business that propelled Miramax’s “Il postino” into the best picture conversation back in 1996.")
10. The Hurt Locker (Nominated for 9 Academy Awards, won 6 including Best Picture)
11. Inside Llewyn Davis (Nominated for 2 Academy Awards)
12. Timbuktu (Nominated for 1 Academy Award [Best Foreign Language Film])
13. In Jackson Heights (Snubbed for Best Documentary Feature)
14. L'Enfant (Snubbed. It was chosen as Belgium's official entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 78th Academy Awards, but did not secure a nomination.)
15. White Material (Instead of submitting "White Material", France submitted "Of Gods and Men" as their Foreign Language film submission which didn't get nominated )
16. Munich (Nominated for 5 Academy Awards)
17. Three Times ???
18. The Gleaners and I (excerpt from The New York Times article, "..."The Gleaners and I," was cited as one of the best films of 2000 by many of the major American critics' groups, but it was ineligible for an Oscar because it had been broadcast in Italy and France before opening in the United States.)
19. Mad Max: Fury Road (Nominated for 10 Academy Awards, won 6)
20. Moonlight (Nominated for 8 Academy Awards, won 3 including Best Picture)
21. Wendy and Lucy (Snubbed)
22. I'm Not There (Nominated for 1 Academy Award [Best Supporting Actress])
23. Silent Light (Snubbed. Submitted by Mexico as their Foreign Language film submission but didn't get nominated)
24. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Nominated for 2 Academy Awards, won 1 for Best Original Screenplay)
25. The 40 Year Old Virgin (Really?)
 
Then boy, have I got good news for you!

If you start running the collection of Lifetime Original Movies right now, you can probably play them uninterrupted without repetition until the day you die.

So instead of watching a good movie that captures reality fairly accurately in terms of the dialogue, plot progression, and acting, all while avoiding using cheap melodrama, and watch a series of movies that do none of those things?

Like, "Lifetime Original Movie" is the opposite of what Boyhood is, on every level, except that the mother marries guys who are drunken assholes, even though she has a well-motivated, psychologically verisimilitudinous reason for doing so within the context of the film and that that fact is a major part of her character arc in the movie, which is shown as requiring over a decade of experience and introspection to unfurl. Which is also realistic.

You either watched a different movie or did not watch the movie very closely, if this is your take.
 
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Yeah, Boyhood is pap.

Meanwhile, this poster called Munich ”bad." Even if you don't think it deserves to be on this list, it's far from bad.

It's bad in the way that Spielberg dramas are always, always, always bad. The man simply has never met a cliche or a cheap piece of emotional manipulation that he didn't immediately fall in love with, and Kaminski's cinematography is not even particularly memorable, which is the only virtue of previous dramatic films he lensed for Mr. Spielberg (who does, of course, have an eye, just not a brain for storytelling that doesn't play to the lowest common denominator). Its script is, perhaps, ever-so-slightly better due to the overrated but experienced Tony Kushner having some ability to structure a story to have quiet moments of bullshitting and connection between the characters, but that's about the nicest thing one can say about it.
 

Budi

Member
Obviously this isn't a list I would make. But I can't really argue against movies I haven't seen, only seen about half of those on the list. But Munich and definitely 40 year old virgin wouldn't fit on my personal list. Not sure if Inside Llewyn Davis would either, but it's still really good film so not going to complain about it.
 
No, not at all. Academy Awards is still way more respected then Grammys. Still the only award show that means anything.

The Academy Awards are more culturally respected, I guess, but the number of times the right film has won is utterly dwarfed by the number of undeserving cultural curios that the Academy has chosen to award over the years. Their track record simply is not particularly better than any other awards show.
 

Will F

Member
I don't get how you can make a list of the best 21st century films which does not include In the Mood for Love and expect to be taken seriously.

I suppose you could argue that since I was released in 2000 it's technically a 20th century movie, but that list has Yi Yi on it which came out in 2000, so there is no excuse.
 
How much of this Boyhood shit really is just a list of RLM talking points?

What's going on here.

It's a good Richard Linklater movie. Granted, I wouldn't put it above any entry in the Before Trilogy, but the idea that it's sub Lifetime movie pap that only gets attention because "DID YOU KNOW IT TOOK TWELVE YEARS HARF HARF" doesn't carry much weight, really.
 
1. There Will Be Blood
2. Spirited Away
3. Million Dollar Baby
4. A Touch of Sin
5. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
6. Yi Yi
7. Inside Out
8. Boyhood
9. Summer Hours
10. The Hurt Locker
11. Inside Llewyn Davis
12. Timbuktu
13. In Jackson Heights
14. L'Enfant
15. White Material
16. Munich
17. Three Times
18. The Gleaners and I
19. Mad Max: Fury Road
20. Moonlight
21. Wendy and Lucy
22. I'm Not There
23. Silent Light
24. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
25. The 40 Year Old Virgin
.


my firefox is not coping well with the gifs on that site.

some good movies. A lot of curious omissions. No. 25 is...


21st century means films from the 2000 up? I'd put The Hours in there. Never let you go. etc. plenty of great movies in the last 10 years. Atonement. Its a subjective list anyhow.
 
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