The New York Times just recently published its list of the best films of the 21st century and while the list itself is solid, it left out dozens of unforgettable films that have defined cinema in the past two decades—bold experiments, overlooked gems, cult classics, and masterpieces that slipped through the cracks of critical consensus. Since it was a collaboration of 500 artists working within Hollywood, only the most prestige titles made the cut, which normally would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that they had a quarter of a century to pull from. It’s impossible to whittle 25 years down to 100 titles; there were bound to be omissions. Some were baffling, others understandable, but all left us wondering: What about the rest?
This list isn’t a rebuttal—it’s a celebration of what got missed. These are the movies that pushed boundaries, built worlds, broke hearts, or simply did something unforgettable. Some were box office flops, others award-season darlings. Some changed genres, while others created their own. All of them, in their own way, helped shape the cinematic language of the 21st century.
These are the 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century (That Didn’t Make The New York Times’ List).
100. Hundreds of Beavers (2022)
A million years ago, Trey Parker and Matt Stone taught a class on storytelling at some college and their biggest piece of advice was their but & therefore rule. Put simply, when you have a set of story beats and you can put the words “and then” in-between each one, you don’t have a story but a series of events. However, if in-between each story beat you can put the words “but” or “therefore” then you have a story in which the events taking place are reacting to each other. The story/plot builds momentum and tension based on everything else that has happened previously. No other movie released last year better exemplifies the but & therefore rule better than Hundreds of Beavers.
Set in the 19th century, the narrative follows a drunken applejack salesman who embarks on a quest to become North America’s greatest fur trapper, aiming to win the heart of a merchant’s daughter. The plot, while simple, serves as a canvas for a series of inventive and often hilarious set pieces that showcase the filmmakers’ flair for physical comedy. Like the best of Chuck Jones, the film is nothing but a series of set ups and payoffs. Literally every 90 seconds, there’s a new joke that builds to another joke that builds to another joke and so on. You would think that 90 minutes of a man getting beat by men in beaver costumes would wear out it’s welcome fast but director Mike Cheslik knows how to keep the joke going without it ever going stale.
The film’s commitment to the aesthetics of early cinema is evident in every frame. Shot in crisp black-and-white, it employs exaggerated physical performances, inter titles, and practical effects reminiscent of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Yet, it never feels derivative; instead, it revitalizes these classic techniques for a modern audience. The film’s production, completed on a modest budget of $150,000, is a marvel of resourcefulness. I don’t know what’s more impressive, the fact that it’s as good as it is or that it even exists in the first place.
99. Your Name (2016)
Spirited Away made so much money, nobody thought it would ever be topped. It didn’t just break Japanese box office records, it demolished them. To put it into context, Spirited Away made more in Japan, than Avatar and Titanic did in America. Combined. It was a monster hit that held onto the record for an astonishing 15 years. The film that eventually beat it: Your Name. Playing like a high school version of Freaky Friday, the film is about two teenagers in Japan — one living in a small rural town, the other in a bustling metropolis — wake up in each other’s bodies. They switch places back and forth, slowly learning more about one another and helping each other’s lives. Obviously they fall in love but without giving away the film’s bigger hook, this isn’t your typical cliched romcom. Even if that was all this film was, it would still probably make this list due to the likability of the characters but that narrative twist at the half way point turns this film into a masterpiece. Just remember, this challenged Miyazaki’s best film and it won.
98. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Tom Cruise has maintained a very successful career out of playing a variation of the Tom Cruise persona he’s developed over the last three decades. He’s the stoic action man who will outrun the baddies and will probably do some crazy stunts along the way or he’s dramatic man who yells a lot. He changes it up occasionally but for the most part, he’s pretty much the same. Which doesn’t mean he’s bad, he just tends to pick projects that play to his strengths. Which makes Edge of Tomorrow all the more surprising.
The trailers made it seem like just another Cruise blockbuster but it’s actually way more entertaining than that. For one thing, Cruise isn’t an action hero in it. He’s a coward who’s forced to fight after unsuccessfully trying to weasel out of service. That by itself separates it from the rest of the pack but that’s not all it has going for it. There’s also its ingenious Groundhog Day meets Independence Day premise, its breakneck pace and strong female lead. It’s a fun puzzle box of a movie that, like all time travel movies, doesn’t make much sense if you think about it too hard but it makes up for it with imagination, spectacle and thrills to spare.
97. Bo Burnham: Inside (2021)
I’ve long maintained that not only is Bo Burnham a comedic genius but that he’s the future of comedy. The subversive pranksters that were born out of Adult Swim and Andy Kaufman might be dominating the landscape now but like Tom Green before them, they have an expiration date. As much as I enjoy the antics of Eric Andre, do I honestly think I’ll be thinking about him in five years? Bo Burnham on the other hand, is subversive in another way. He actually does the exact same thing as the Tim and Erics and the Eric Andres but goes about it in a completely different way. What they’re all trying to do, is blur the line between the act and the “act”. They’re pushing up against the conventional norms of what is and what is not funny. I think that’s what makes Inside genius; I honestly don’t know how much of this to take at face value. Once the pandemic hit (which is never mentioned by name once throughout the special), Burnham decided to self isolate and over the course of a year, decided to create a special. A one man show without an audience.
He says he did this for two reasons: 1) to take his mind off the pandemic and 2) to create a special that required no live show because the live shows were giving him intense anxiety. It’s at this point, that he reveals that he’s deeply depressed and that creating his cathartic but performing is painful. He then lightheartedly jokes about suicide and then sings a song about how climate change is going to kill us all and the futility of jokes during a crisis. Every new bit is tinged with a deep sadness. Or is it? We only know he’s depressed because he says he is. We only know he self isolated because he told us he did. He has no reason to lie but then again, the truth could be part of the act. He could be using his truths to get to a bigger universe truth. Which is that we were all Burnham trapped in a room going crazy for a year.
96. Steve Jobs (2015)
Steve Jobs is not your typical biopic. This is not a cliched origin story or a paint by numbers retelling of the man’s life. It is a work of fiction that will leave history buffs or anyone looking for any amount of truth, utterly disappointed. This is a three act play that’s structured around the unveiling of three different iconic products: the Macintosh, the NeXT computer and the iMac. The characters and events are all real but every moment between or about them, have been heightened to enhance the drama. It’s an Aaron Sorkin written film, which means it’s very theatrical but in a good way. Nobody in real life talks like a Sorkin character because nobody in real life is that clever. The dialogue is so witty, so clever, it’s damn near poetry. It’s one of the best scripts ever written brought to life by an incredible cast at the top of their game.
95. Hell or High Water (2016)
There’s just something about this film that feels like it should exist in the 70s. There’s an alternate universe in which Taylor Sheridan was born way too early and made this film with Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood as the Robin Hood-esque leads and Bruce Dern as the sheriff who’s hot on their trail. It would’ve been hailed as a masterpiece and would be considered one of the great American films of the decade. That’s the reputation this film should have but unfortunately, Sheridan wasn’t born early and those actors didn’t star in it. I say unfortunately not because the film we have is in any way inferior to the imagined one I know would be deemed a classic, but because this one isn’t. The beauty of Hell or High Water is its simplicity. It doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or try to punch above its weight. It’s about morally ambiguous cowboys stealing from evil banks and the good guys who try and stop them. It’s a good old fashioned western and a great one at that.
94. Sunshine (2007)
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are the Lennon and McCartney of sci-fi. They both do interesting work separately but when they combine their powers, they create unforgettable magic. Their 28 Days Later universe has spawned three incredible movies, with two more on the way but as good as they are, they lack the scope and ambition of Sunshine. Set in a future where the sun is dying and Earth is freezing over, the film follows the crew of the spacecraft Icarus II, who are on a desperate mission to reignite the star with a massive nuclear device. The story begins as a straightforward space mission but quickly evolves into something deeper. As the crew encounters the wreck of the first failed mission (Icarus I), their journey is thrown into chaos. Tensions rise, moral dilemmas surface, and the psychological strain of their task begins to fracture the team. The film masterfully shifts between hard science fiction and almost spiritual horror, reflecting on themes like sacrifice, the awe of the universe, and humanity’s place in the cosmos. It may have a lackluster third act but even that can’t detract from its brilliance. Sunshine is more than just a sci-fi thriller. It’s about obsession, purpose, and the thin line between enlightenment and madness when we face the infinite.
93. 13 Assassins (2010)
There’s been dozens upon dozens of Seven Samurai knock offs but leave it to the insane genius behind Audition and Ichi the Killer to make the best one. Technically a remake of a 1963 film of the same name, Miike’s hyper violent samurai action flick is clearly inspired by Kurosawa’s masterpiece. The first half is a deliberately paced drama that brings all the characters together and sets up the stakes but once all the talky talk is over, it’s a non-stop action thrill ride. The last 45 minutes of this film are about as good as action films get. The scope of the last battle is truly ambitious. The fight scenes are expertly choreographed and the pace is unrelenting. It’s a huge set piece made up of smaller set pieces that are all amazing. The fact that Miike directs at least 2 films a year is insane. For anyone else, this would be their crowning achievement but for Miike, its just another film.
92. Creed (2015)
Rocky V so thoroughly and completely killed this franchise, it’s wanted for murder in about six states. It’s a film so bad, Stallone himself hates it and retired the character because of it. But against all odds, it came back. Just like the underdog that he is, Rocky made a triumphant comeback with the poignant Rocky Balboa. It was a touching ode to a boxer who refuses to go gently into that goodnight and acts as a magnificent send-off to a beloved character. Or it would be if it were not for Ryan Coogler. Taking Rocky out of the ring and into the role originally inhabited by Burgess Meredith is a stroke of genius, as is shifting the focus to the son of his old rival who is fighting to get out of his father’s shadow. It adds a level of emotional complexity the series has lacked since the first one and has the best camera work in the entire series. It may not have a flashy villain or the best training montages but it has heart and as Rocky proved, that’s sometimes all you need. Creed is a knockout.
91. Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
The one thing documentaries have over narrative features is, is that no matter how outlandish a story is, there’s a part of you that will believe it no matter what. There’s something about documentaries that brings with them an air of truth, even though every single one of them is staged to one degree or another. Obviously this doesn’t apply to politically motivated pieces that are trying to push an agenda. I mean docs about a specific subject or topic. A switch in your brain gets flipped and you immediately think “I believe this.” Even if it’s the craziest shit you’ve ever heard, the part of your brain that is still hardwired to believe the old adage “they couldn’t print it if it wasn’t true” will fight against any doubts. And it’s that subconscious belief system Banksy takes advantage of in the film Exit Through the Gift Shop.
Thierry Guetta — an eccentric French shopkeeper turned documentary maker — attempts to locate and befriend the elusive Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. After Banksy takes over his “documentary” (the man filmed everything all the time), he convinces Thierry to become a street artist himself. He then documents Thierry’s evolution into the artist known as Mr. Brainwash and his meteoric rise in popularity. Is Mr. Brainwash real or just another elaborate prank pulled off by Banksy? The answer is: it doesn’t matter. It’s either a legit doc about an insane true story or mockumentary about the ridiculousness of art and the commodification of hype. Either way, it’s ridiculously entertaining.
90. This is the End (2013)
The 2010s were not a great decade for comedies. The early to mid 2000s were dominated by directors such as Apatow, Phillips and McKay but once the Tens rolled around, they were nowhere to be seen. Comedy transitioned from the raunchy and outrageous, to the artful and sophisticated. Directors such as Taika Waititi, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach were the new kings of comedy but there was at least one person trying to keep the old ways alive: Seth Rogen. He had already made a name for himself with his previous hits Superbad and Pineapple Express but This is the End marked his first foray into directing and it might be the craziest debut from any director. Almost every single thing in the film the studio wanted out. They hated the premise, they hated the demon with the erect dick, they hated the devil’s huge flaccid penis, they hated Tatum as a sex slave and I’m guessing they probably hated Michael Cera’s face. Rogen had to fight them every step of the way and thank god he won because without those elements, it would’ve been just another stoner comedy. This is the End is one of those comedies that you either loathe with a passion or consider one of the funniest ever made. I’m the latter.
89. It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
Don Hertzfeldt is a fucking genius. That word gets thrown around a lot but in this case, it actually might be an understatement. He’s been producing hand-drawn masterpieces for over 20 years and has gotten better with each new project. Starting off as three stand-alone shorts: Everything Will Be Ok, I Am So Proud Of You and It’s Such A Beautiful Day, Hertzfeldt wisely decided to put them together to form one long story. And what a story it is. The story is about Bill. Bill is just a normal, run-of-the-mill guy. Nothing spectacular or extraordinary about him. He gets up, does his morning ritual, and then goes to work. Wash, rinse, repeat. That is until Bill starts hearing things. And then he starts seeing things. The film is about mental illness. How the mind can turn on us and how we can fight back. The film is about Bill’s fight against his own mind. Does he win? Does he lose? I can’t say but what I can say is, regardless of the outcome, everything will be ok.
88. The Substance (2024)
The Substance is a grotesque, thrilling, and deeply unsettling experience that takes the body horror genre and injects it with a potent dose of feminist rage. It’s a film that doesn’t just shock, it provokes, dissecting society’s obsession with youth, beauty, and self-worth with the precision of a scalpel. At its core, The Substance is about control: the control we exert over our bodies, the control others impose upon us, and the terrifying consequences of losing it altogether. Demi Moore, in one of the most fearless performances of her career, plays a fading Hollywood star desperate to reclaim her youth. When she discovers a mysterious new treatment—a serum promising a literal fresh start—she takes it without hesitation. What follows is a descent into something far more horrific than she could have imagined.
Fargeat, whose Revenge redefined the rape-revenge subgenre with raw brutality, isn’t interested in subtlety. Her vision is bold, unrelenting, and soaked in blood. But beneath the film’s grotesque transformations lies something even more disturbing: a scathing commentary on an industry (and a world) that discards women the moment they begin to show signs of aging. The Substance makes this metaphor horrifyingly literal, turning self-improvement into a battle for survival. The film is as stunning as it is repulsive. Fargeat blends neon-drenched beauty with gut-churning body horror, making every frame feel like a grotesque high-fashion nightmare. While I wish the third act resolved its themes instead of turning into a blood bath, I have to respect the go for broke, Grand Guignol levels of spectacle on display.
87. Black Dynamite (2009)
Black Dynamite is a love letter, a punch in the face, and a smooth-ass strut down 1970s memory lane all rolled into one. It’s the rare spoof that doesn’t just mock its source material—it becomes it. Michael Jai White is Black Dynamite. Not “acts as.” Not “portrays.” Is. The man channels the soul of every blaxploitation legend (Jim Brown’s fists, Fred Williamson’s mustache, Ron O’Neal’s sideburns, and Pam Grier’s righteous fury) into a performance so locked-in and committed, it deserves a retroactive Oscar… or at least a solid gold medallion. But this ain’t just a showcase for White’s martial arts mastery and voice deeper than Isaac Hayes reading a bedtime story. It’s a masterclass in genre mimicry.
The film nails the era’s look so well that if you told me it was a long-lost AIP classic buried beneath a stack of VHS tapes in Rudy Ray Moore’s basement, I’d believe you. Black Dynamite is like Airplane! meets Enter the Dragon filtered through a polyester-wrapped fever dream. It’s not content with sight gags or cheap parody—no, it goes full Send-Up Samurai. Boom mic in frame? That’s intentional. Continuity errors? They’re part of the joke. Obvious stunt doubles in the fight scenes? Hilarious. This isn’t just a spoof. It’s a genre resurrection. Black Dynamite does for blaxploitation what Shaun of the Dead did for zombie flicks: it roasts the tropes while paying sincere homage to the soul of the style. It’s smart enough to get every detail right, dumb enough to be hilarious, and badass enough to leave you wanting a sequel (which the animated series kinda was, and yes, it ruled).
86. Watchmen (2009)
Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ unfilmable comic is a miracle of contradiction—a faithful recreation and a hollow echo, a deconstruction dressed in the costume of the very thing it despises. But beneath the film’s digital sheen, its slow-motion swagger, and emphasis on style over substance, there’s a real masterpiece hiding underneath the gloss. Snyder is clearly only interested in the surfaces but in focusing on the wrong things, he accidentally created a perfect adaptation that works in spite of itself. By making a “cool” action movie, he missed the point entirely. He turned a satire into a self parody but did so in a way, that turns back around and actually works. The violence is indulgent, stylized, and operatic. Limbs crack like wood, blood arcs like ballet. It’s beautiful, and that’s the problem. Watchmen was never supposed to be beautiful.
It was a scream against the romanticism of power, and Snyder, perhaps inevitably, couldn’t resist making the scream look cool. The satire gets lost in the fog of slo-mo punches and perfectly choreographed death. But try as he might to suffocate it with style, the scream persists. Alan Moore’s text is so rich, so compelling, so prescient, it can’t help but consume everything else. The year is 1985, but not the one you remember. Nixon’s still in the White House, America won Vietnam, and superheroes are outlawed relics of a past nobody mourns. The world teeters on the edge of nuclear annihilation and the only person with the power to stop it is a glowing blue god who abandoned humanity the moment he saw it for what it truly was: cosmetically insignificant.
This is not your father’s superhero story. The heroes are all deeply flawed, with some being worse than the villains they fight. And all are brought to life through exceptional casting. Jackie Earle Haley is a perfect Rorschach, Patrick Wilson’s Nite Owl is impotent masculinity personified, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian gets the joke and Billy Crudup nails Doctor Manhattan’s disconnect from humanity. Snyder has many faults as a filmmaker but casting isn’t one of them. The movie wouldn’t work with a subpar cast and they deserve the lion’s share of its success. It also gets points for daring to change the infamous ending. The target shifts, but the core is intact. Sacrifice, manipulation, the lie we agree to live with because the truth would burn the world down. It’s not uplifting. It’s not inspiring. But it’s honest. And that honesty, buried beneath layers of digital grime and operatic nihilism, is what gives Watchmen its lasting power.
85. Juno (2007)
If she had as big a career as Wes Anderson or even M. Night Shyamalan, I truly believe Diablo Cody would be the most divisive writer in Hollywood. It’s like she sits in a coffee shop all day, listens to as many hipsters talk about whatever shit they talk about as she can, and then goes home and turns it into dialogue. It’s a specific type of quirky (for lack of a better word) that you’ll either love or hate. And if you hate it, you most likely despise it. Some viewers feel like every line and every other scene is accompanied by a giant neon sign that says, “Look at how unique and clever I am,” while others enjoy the fact that nobody talks like this.
It’s artificial but so was Shakespeare. Wherever you land on it and the quality of the film itself, I can’t imagine anyone who thinks negatively about Juno can’t at least appreciate how well-written it is, especially when it comes to the movie’s title character, Juno MacGaff. The combination of Reitman’s creative decisions, Cody’s characterization, and Page’s performance make Juno — a pregnant 16-year-old who enjoys sitting on a recliner in the front yard of her house pretending to smoke out of a Sherlock Holmes pipe while drinking Sunny D as the high school track team runs by in their tight, little shorts — one of the all-time greatest characters and Juno one of the best movies to come out of the aughts.
84. Django Unchained (2012)
Considering he’s listed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly among his top favorite films, everyone knew it was only a matter of time before Tarantino directed a western. Him tackling a genre he holds in high regard wasn’t a surprise to anyone; it was a damn near an inevitability but few could’ve predicted he would make this kind of western. Instead of drawing upon the John Ford model or diving into the Spaghetti Western subgenre like everyone predicted, he instead set Django Unchained in the antebellum South, where films like Mandingo, Drum and The Legend of Nigger Charley were set.
Mashing together Spaghetti Western tropes, German folklore and modern rap music while simultaneously depicting the horrors of slavery, is such Tarantino thing, it’s the only type of western Tarantino could make. Blending the real with the outlandish and the hyper violent with the cartoonishly over the top is his stock in trade and it’s never never suited him better as it does in this film. This is the first time he gets to be as nasty as he wants to be without any repercussions due to the fact that A) slavery truly was that horrific and B) nobody is going to complain that some slave owners are getting massacred. Putting all of his stylistic mastery into good use, QT made an exploitation film that has real targets, a blaxploitation film with great characters and a history lesson that doesn’t sugar coat the past. It’s a revenge story, a love story, an ultra bloody fable and a great western tale all rolled up into one.
83. Sing Sing (2023)
There is something undeniably powerful about a film that strips away the artifice of Hollywood and finds truth in lived experience. Sing Sing is such a film. An intimate, deeply human story that reminds us of cinema’s ability to reveal the dignity within forgotten lives. The film follows the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, where inmates come together to stage theatrical productions. But this is not a prison-break thriller or a sentimentalized redemption tale. Instead, it is a film about men who, despite the brutal reality of incarceration, discover meaning, community, and freedom within the walls that confine them.
What makes this film special is the supporting cast, many of whom are formerly incarcerated men playing versions of themselves. There is an authenticity to their performances that no amount of traditional acting training could replicate. The film does not ask us to pity them, nor does it excuse their pasts—it simply allows them to exist as complex, feeling human beings. As good as Colman Domingo is in the lead, he never upstages them but instead, feels just as real as they do. If you told me he was a former inmate, I’d believe you. Just like I’d believe you if you said Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin was a professional actor.
The fact that Maclin wasn’t nominated for his performance is proof positive that the Academy cares more about stuffing their award show with stars to boost ratings than they do about rewarding actual artists. He gives a magnificent and soulful performance that will blow you away with its authenticity. Sing Sing is not just a film about prison, it is a film about the resilience of the human spirit. It reminds us that the people we so often write off as statistics or cautionary tales are, in fact, capable of profound beauty and transformation.
82. Embrace of the Serpent (2015)
The Amazon is not the cartoon wildness sold in pulp adventure stories or the romanticized green inferno painted on postcards, but something ancient. Man was never meant to intrude upon it, much less live there. Embrace of the Serpent is about the last remnants of a nearly dead civilization that’s no more than a tiny tribe now. Living ghosts who haunt the jungle that are victims of colonial violence, religious madness and cultural extinction. Shot in stark, stunning black-and-white, the film drifts between two timelines, two dying men, and one guide—the shaman Karamakate, played by two actors across decades, both haunted by the weight of memory and the erosion of meaning.
In one timeline, he’s young and furious, the last of his tribe, guiding a sick German ethnobotanist through a decimated Amazon in search of the sacred yakruna plant. In the other, he’s old and hollow, a shell of his former self, leading an American through the same jungle, chasing the same dream. Time folds in on itself. The river never forgets. Ciro Guerra structures the film like a tone poem, a fever dream whispered in dying tongues. It’s the type of film the impatient would call pretentious and cinephiles call brilliant. Where you land depends entirely on your connection to methodically paced art. Embrace of the Serpent is not easy. It’s not meant to be. It’s a funeral for memory and a warning for the future. It asks what it means to survive when the world you come from no longer exists. And whether survival, in that sense, is even worth it.
81. District 9 (2009)
Science fiction is supposed to imagine futures. District 9 does something harder—it reflects a present most people would rather ignore. It’s a film about apartheid without ever using the word. A film about xenophobia, power, and decay wrapped in a mech suit and dipped in body horror. Neill Blomkamp doesn’t ease you in. He shoves your face into the dirt of Johannesburg, 20 years after a massive alien ship stalls over the city. The creatures inside are humanoid, crustacean-like beings that are dumped into a slum called District 9. The government wants them gone. The people want them invisible. They are not guests. They are not refugees. They are pests. And the film never lets you forget it.
Enter Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley). He’s not a hero. He’s not even interesting at first. He’s a company man. A paper pusher sent in to evict the aliens under the guise of legality, spewing bureaucracy like it’s holy scripture. But when he’s exposed to an alien fluid, he begins to change. Slowly. Horrifically. Bone by bone, fingernail by fingernail. It’s Kafka by way of Cronenberg. Copley, in his film debut, makes you feel every bit of his transformation. At first, you laugh at him for being a powerless corporate stooge, then you pity him for what comes next. The film is brutal. Not just in its violence, which is sudden and grotesque and soaked in gore, but in its honesty.
Blomkamp shoots it like a documentary until it no longer can be, the cinema vérité unraveling as the scope of the story expands. The aliens, derogatorily called “prawns,” are never romanticized. They’re confused, scared, desperate. And yet even in their worst moments, they’re never as monstrous as the humans around them. Christopher Johnson, one of the few aliens given a name and a voice, becomes the film’s beating heart—a father, a scientist, a survivor. He doesn’t want revenge. He just wants to go home. The genius of District 9 is that it never lets you forget the stakes. Even when it turns into an action movie, it never feels satisfying. The film doesn’t offer closure. It leaves you in the mud, staring at a flower made from scrap metal, wondering what it means to actually be human.
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Were you surprised by which movies made (or didn’t make) The New York Times’ list? Do you agree with my selection of picks so far? Let us know in the comments below!
