It’s a good list, well written, well defended, and they made room for genre pictures that don’t usually score high. Of course, we all have opinions that would alter the selections. Here are some of my barely-formed initial thoughts.
- I was happy to see Eternal Sunshine so high on the list (#7). It deserves that spot, even though it was not nominated for Best Picture in its own year – one of the most egregious snubs in history. It’s a mad, funny, touching masterpiece. Memento, kind of a similar movie without the humor, is also on the list, and deserves to be. Another Charlie Kaufman masterpiece, Adaptation, is also on the list – perhaps too high at #27, but deservedly included.
- I was also happy to see that they allowed an action film, Mad Max Fury Road, to finish so high on the list (#11)
- Superbad, Anchorman and Borat certainly deserved their spots, although Borat probably should have earned even a higher place than #53. You could make a good argument to place that in the top ten.
- I agree that Gone Girl is a great, if largely forgotten, thriller. I don’t know about “Top 100,” but I’m glad they brought it up to the front burner.
- I’m glad they remembered Pan’s Labyrinth and Amelie, brilliant oddball films that often get ignored by lists like this. I might have added Jo Jo Rabbit and In Bruges to the list as well.
On the negative side, as usual the voters are trying to show they are serious people by overrating arty crap and ignoring funny movies. I can think of about 20 films to kick off the list to free up some spots.
- Moonlight is way overrated at #5.
- Call Me By Your Name is nothing special, certainly not a top 40, probably not even deserving of the list at all.
- Tree of Life is pretentious bullshit rated in the 6s at IMDb. I don’t know what they were thinking by putting this one on the list.
- There absolutely could be more comedies. The Hangover, Shaun of the Dead, Kick Ass, Deadpool, Tropic Thunder, The Forty-Year-Old Virgin, Hot Fuzz, Wedding Crashers and others could be considered. I expected Tropic Thunder to make the list, and any one from that list could have the spots they awarded to Inside Llewyn Davis or The Florida Project.
- No room for any Richard Curtis, Giuseppe Tornatore or Woody Allen films? Is gentle, romantic sentiment unworthy? Love, Actually and Midnight in Paris are not the sorts of films I normally like, but I like those two films much better than … well … many on the list. As for Malena, that absolutely should be on the list.
- I might have placed Last King of Scotland and Argo above some of these arty films.
- I’d have to give it more thought, but off the top, I think I might have included Remember the Titans.
- No room for any of the Toy Story films or Paddington 2 in the top 100? Somebody wasn’t paying attention to this genre. Toy Story 3 absolutely should be on the list, arguably near the top.
Did I miss Nightcrawler on the list? I can’t believe they’d leave that off. It’s brilliant and can be seen as any number of genres from dark comedy to thriller to psychological drama.
I was pleased to see Almost Famous. It’s a long movie, but as I think Roger Ebert said “a good movie is always too short and a bad movie is always too long.”
Finally, I don’t think I’d have them in the top 100, but, if Little Miss Sunshine is there, then Nebraska, the film that seems to accurately portray the general stoic nature of rural midwesterners deserves consideration, and maybe Can You Ever Forgive Me? The biopic of forger Lee Israel.
Nightcrawler is not on the list, but the Times recommends it “if you like Zodiac.”
To me, Nightcrawer is a much more interesting, original film than Zodiac. I would happily give it Zodiac’s place
But what do I know?
I was a little surprised to see The Wolf of Wall Street in the Top 20, I didn’t expect it. Of course, I always thought it was Scorsese’s best film of the 21st century, and it’s easily in the top 5 of the best films he’s made in history. But I didn’t expect the critics to put this film there, I expected it to be in the top 50 etc… Because it’s Scorsese’s craziest film lol, even though it’s one of the best he’s made in his entire cinematography. And Moonlight is a very overrated film, in my opinion… Even though it’s a good film.
I agree with all of that. I like both films, but they are rated much too high.
I love the Wolf of Wall Street, that movie is brilliant and it’s more relevant today than it was when it was released lol (it’s more relevant than ever). For me, it could be in the top 10 or top 5 even… I just didn’t expect it to be so high in that ranking. I think it’s because it was a list made by directors, screenwriters and people in the industry in general, it wasn’t just made by specialized critics.
Parasite no. 1? What were they smoking?
I agree that Parasite was a quirky choice.
I didn’t think it was unfair that Parasite was number one. It’s debatable, but it’s not unfair. Overall, they tried to balance the list between popular films that are considered good and “art” films. I understand why they did it
Yeah, people are not going to agree about something subjective which involves comparing unlike elements. As I’ve mentioned many times before, how is one supposed to compare Blazing Saddles and The Big Lebowski to Schindler’s List and The Seventh Seal? Are serious movies automatically better? I’ve never accepted that.
Let’s face it, not that many people would agree with my choices. (I’d place Eternal Sunshine #1, I would have lumped the Lord of the Rings films together and placed it (them) in the top ten as a joint entry. I’d also have Amelie and Borat in the top ten, and and it’s impossible for me to conceive of a world where Call Me By Your Name, The Florida Project and Tree of Life are in the Top 100 while Toy Store 3 is not.)
As I mentioned, I did appreciate their recognition of some great genre films that normally get ignored by critics when they make their usual honor rolls pandering to the arty set.
I agree with you, that’s exactly what I think about this list. And let’s be honest, the big popular genre films are what have always sustained cinema, production companies, streaming services and the whole business, and today there are also popular series that also sustain it. So, it’s only fair to include these films on these lists, since it’s such a subjective evaluation, right
It’s a very mediocre list aka safe aka not-so-challenging (and somehow predictacle within cinephile-circles), extremely American-centric (who gives a fluff about Almost Famous and Boyhood???), made for people/cinegoers who don’t really explore cinema and feel Lost in Translation or The Lives of Others are the pinnacles of Western filmmaking, or a similar, bullshit argument.
Argo, by the way, is easily a top 10 bottom Oscar Best Pic winner, a travesty compared to some of its then nominees or films which didn’t make the nominations cut.
These lists are almost always bullshit. So many films are of such a different type that it makes little sense to try to rank them together. It’s like trying to decide whether a point guard is better than a center in basketball. They have such different roles that comparing them makes no sense at all. Things that have well known directors or are related to the right topic or got a lot of hype from critics usually top these lists. Many critics have come out and admitted that most of the time they just rate the movies the way they think they are expected to rate them. They feel they need to go along with the other critics, they can’t be wrong.
Too much Wes Anderson. He seems to be pandering to the arty crowd.
Fellowship of the Ring near the bottom tells me all I need to know
I thought that it was a pretty good list, for the most part, even if I disagreed with many of the particular rankings within the list. I would definitely have added some Woody Allen to the list though. And subtracted Moonlight from anywhere on the list. And added The Big Short somewhere in the rankings.
Also, although it is probably too recent to be added, I thought that Ryan Coogler’s Sinners was probably the best thing that I have seen in about 10 years and thus certainly would be in the top 100 of movies in this century thus far, and likely vey high in the list.
The 21st century is 25 years old now. Having they been doing this top 100 list annually since it began? If so, I would like to see the lists for 2000 and 2001.
Can you imagine such a list made in 1925? Motion picture technology became feasible in the late 1890’s, so they could have. I think now we would regard it as a premature effort, to say the least.