What film geek can resist the nerdy pleasures of making a list?
The New York Times has embarked on a fun project this week listing the best 100 movies of the last 25 years, which 500 Hollywood actors, directors and others voted on.
All these lists are subjective and should never be taken utterly seriously, but at the same time, they can point you toward movies you’ve never heard of (Patton Oswalt is making me hunt down the obscure to me Coherence, for instance) or make you appreciate those you have seen with a new eye.
One of the cooler features of this project is the NYT allowing you to nominate your own list, which gosh, is almost like being in The New York Times yourself, isn’t it?
Everyone has their own list, and that’s a cool thing. I’m not here for the outrage or the ranty YouTube videos about why that choice or this choice sucks. Art is democratic, whether we like it or not.
After an hour or so of scrambling, debating and pondering, here’s what I came up with for my favourite 10 movies from 2000-2025:
Almost Famous (2000) – Whatever happened to this Cameron Crowe? A movie as sincere and comforting as a bowl of chicken soup that gives us a fan’s view of ‘70s rock stardom through teen journalist William Miller’s wide eyes.
Boy (2012) – Taika Waititi broke through with this deadpan and witty story of a lonely Māori boy growing up on New Zealand’s remote East Cape, and while Taika’s career has gone up and down since, this is one bloody great Kiwi film, you eggs.
The Florida Project (2017) – Sean Baker won all the Oscars for last year’s great Anora, but this utterly heartbreaking story of a young girl and her mother living on the edge of the American dream might just be his masterpiece – realistic and raw, somehow both despairing and impossibly optimistic at the same time.
Godzilla: Minus One (2023) – A movie that finally met the full potential of all Godzilla’s world-breaking metaphors, and made it a deeply compelling human story about trauma too, without skimping on the carnage. A miracle of a movie, really, for us Godzilla nerds.
Hedwig And The Angry Inch (2001) – I am a sucker for a good musical, and John Cameron Mitchell’s gender-twisting odyssey of sexual self-discovery and acceptance only seems to get more relevant with time, especially here from the timeline of the great culture wars.
The Holdovers (2023) – Some movies you just fall in love with, and Alexander Payne’s cozy comedy-drama about a curmudgeon teacher and a misfit student forced to spend winter break together hits all the sweet spots for me. It’s about who you hope to be and who you end up being.
Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) – I sometimes think Quentin Tarantino’s movies won’t age well in the long haul. Yet this one, a fevered homage/rip-off to every sleazy kung fu romp and revenge thriller, really sums up his energy and magpie talent better than almost every other movie he’s made this century.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) – Unexpectedly, George Miller returned to the wastelands without Mel Gibson to make what’s still the best action movie of this century so far – a triumph of sweaty, real life filmmaking before CGI and AI slop rolled over everything.
Parasite (2019) – There’s a reason Bong Joon-Ho’s groundbreaking foreign-language Oscar winner is on so many other best of lists, and that’s because his tense narrative of class struggle and envy speaks to every person, no matter what language the movie is filmed in.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2002) – Wes Anderson has only got more stylised with age, but with this, his third film, he hit an emotional peak that was still full of quirky originality – that, and the late, great Gene Hackman in one of his finest performances.
That top 10 is hardly set firm in time and space, because what’s the fun of doing that?
Ten more that barely missed the top 10 for me and might all end up on it on a different day in a different mood: American Splendor, Anchorman, Captain America: Civil War, Grizzly Man, Mulholland Drive, Oppenheimer, Perfect Days, Spotlight, There Will Be Blood, The Wolf Of Wall Street.
Nik Dirga 