My Slice of the 21st Century
Mercifully brief reflections on The New York Times' "100 Best Movies of the 21st Century" list, plus The Official MTWZ Ballot.
Last week, The New York Times convened 500+ Hollywood insiders to vote on “The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century.” Everybody read it. It’s old news today, but that hasn’t stopped MTWZ from weighing in before.
I don’t have any strong reactions to this list itself, on account of it being boring. As always, more interesting are the individual ballots.
See John Waters, who, inspiringly and unsurprisingly, voted for ten films that ended up nowhere near the final list:
By my count, only Ali Siddiq, who submitted a nine-film ballot that included A Man Called Otto, accomplished the same. Art film boys Sean Baker, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Mohammad Rasoulof, and Luca Guadagnino (whose vote for John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars made headlines) all selected only one consensus favorite, as well.
I don’t know what to do with the knowledge that, of all the ballots publicly viewable, the following seven individuals most closely predicted consensus: Bryce Dallas Howard, Bill Mechanic, Phoebe Robinson, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Darius Khondji, Dennis Lehane, and Amy Pascal. Each voted for 10 films, nine of which made the Top 100. No one film was on all seven of these ballots. The closest was—you guessed it—Parasite (#1), which was on four of the seven ballots (the latter four listed above). Children of Men (#13), Get Out (#8), The Dark Knight (#28), and There Will Be Blood (#3) also received three votes each from The Consensus Seven.
I could go on, but I don’t predict this line of inquiry will yield anything pathbreaking.
The MTWZ Ballot
I submitted to the Gray Lady the ballot below. What she plans to do with this document, I do not know.
I assembled this list quickly—only two versions precede this one. In fact, the list materialized so fast that, after sharing the above photo on Instagram, I wondered: Why did I pick these 10?
The Day He Arrives (dir. Hong Sang-soo, 2012)
The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (dir. Cristi Puiu, 2006)
The Fabelmans (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2022)
The Gleaners & I (dir. Agnès Varda, 2001)
The Headless Woman (dir. Lucrecia Martel, 2009)
I Didn’t See You There (dir. Reid Davenport, 2022)
Leviathan (dir. Lucien Castaing Taylor and Véréna Paravel, 2012)
Miami Vice (dir. Michael Mann, 2006)
No Country for Old Men (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)
Notre Musique (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 2004)
I realized I have seen each of these films within the past five years. The same cannot be said for the 2000s-2010s output of some filmmakers I have long cherished, like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Abbas Kiarostami. I similarly have not revisited so many films, like Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), Jauja (2014), and A History of Violence (2005), that spellbound me a decade-plus ago. All exciting projects for the present.1
Given the relative recency of their viewings, most of the ten films selected above have some association with my time in graduate school. I taught (in clips or in full) Leviathan, The Gleaners & I, and No Country for Old Men. I wrote papers on The Day He Arrives and The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu. I viewed Godard’s Notre Musique as part of a Dante symposium held at UW-Madison.
My fondest related academic memory concerns The Headless Woman, assigned by David Bordwell in his last seminar. It is one of the most rigorously composed and narratively withholding films ever made—so, a film especially illuminated through David. As with The Day He Arrives and The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu, I appreciated The Headless Woman on first viewing but did not love it until the second. All three films straddle the line between reality and metaphor to thrilling ends. I love how they activate all the nooks and crannies of my brain.
There are some films most MTWZ readers have actually seen. I have already made my renewed enthusiasm for No Country for Old Men (#6 on the NYT list) known in this newsletter. Trust me that The Fabelmans rewards another viewing since 2022 Oscar season; I think it is Spielberg’s Vertigo. Most irresistible of all is Michael Mann’s Miami Vice, which somehow reveals itself to be more emotional, beautiful, and fun each time I give it a go. Nothing else looks like it in motion.
The “hidden gem” on this list is undoubtedly Reid Davenport’s experimental documentary I Didn’t See You There. Few of the cinephiles I follow on Letterboxd have watched it, though at this point this POV selection is easy to screen. Davenport’s expressionistic and impassioned memoir on disability astonished me when I saw it at the Wisconsin Film Festival in 2022—I wrote about it at the time. I realize now that the film occupies a middle ground between the overpowering style of Leviathan and the lyrical, confessional register of Gleaners. Like any great documentary, it spurns convention at every turn. Like the rest of the films on this list, it has contributed, meaningfully and lastingly, to my quality of life.
Ten More Films, in Increasing Order of How Much I Thought About Including Them in the List Above
Michael Clayton (dir. Tony Gilroy, 2007)
First Man (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2018)
The Matrix Reloaded (dir. Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 2003)
The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs (dir. Pushpendra Singh, 2020)
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (dir. Frederick Wiseman, 2017)
The Royal Tenenbaums (dir. Wes Anderson, 2001)
Spirited Away (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
The Sleeping Beauty (dir. Catherine Breillat, 2010)
Rat Race (dir. Jerry Zucker, 2001)
Glistening Thrills (dir. Jodie Mack, 2013) (Embedded in full below)
Nor did I vote for Mulholland Dr. (2001), which throughout college was my stock answer when asked for my favorite film. I look forward to revisiting it next month at the UW-Cinematheque, after a strangely dispassionate home viewing a few years back. Lynch spoiled me with Season 3 of Twin Peaks—FWIW, my vote for the 21st century’s greatest moving image art.
Great lists! Nice to see John Waters' picks lol. I couldn't go through all the ballots, they depressed me too much. Luckily all my real friends have better taste!