The “Movies of the Century – Year by Year” can be found here.

Happy New Year, maybe. It feels strange that we are entering the 25th year of the 21st century, so I guess there should be 24 movies here, but it’s too late now and it’s my list. Continuing last year’s tradition, this is the list of the century’s best and most significant films, separate from my own list of subjective preferences, but perhaps not entirely so.  This list will live on in perpetuity, and will be re-published and updated every year with one additional film.

If you saw last year’s list, you’ll note some similarities, but no list will ever be identical, and the premises and qualifiers from before remain the same. The Lord of the Rings is the honorable mention, and if decades were in competition, the 00s are still winning by a landslide.  And as before, the films will be represented this time by their posters and in chronological order of their release.

23 films to be listed out in honor of the closing of 2023; here we go.

#1: “Unbreakable” (November 14, 2000) (Dir.: M. Night Shyamalan)

#2: “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (June 29, 2001) (Dir.: Steven Spielberg)

#3: “Minority Report” (June 17, 2002) (Dir.: Steven Spielberg)

#4: “Femme Fatale” (November 6, 2002) (Dir.: Brian de Palma)

#5: “Catch Me If You Can” (December 25, 2002) (Dir.: Steven Spielberg)

#6: “House of Flying Daggers” (July 15, 2004) (Dir.: Zhang Yimou)

#7: “Munich” (December 23, 2005) (Dir.: Steven Spielberg)

#8: “The New World” (December 25, 2005) (Dir.: Terrence Malick)

#9: “Apocalypto” (December 8, 2006) (Dir.: Mel Gibson)

#10: “Hot Fuzz” (March 14, 2007) (Dir.: Edgar Wright)

#11: “Ratatouille” (June 29, 2007) (Dir.: Brad Bird)

#12: “The Dark Knight” (July 18, 2008) (Dir.: Christopher Nolan)

#13: “Changeling” (October 24, 2008) (Dir.: Clint Eastwood)

#14: “Incendies” (September 17, 2010) (Dir.: Denis Villeneuve)

#15: “The LEGO Movie” (February 7, 2014) (Dirs.: Phil Lord & Chris Miller)

#16: “Shin Godzilla” (July 29, 2016) (Dirs.: Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi)

#17: “Sully” (September 2, 2016) (Dir.: Clint Eastwood)

#18: “Dunkirk” (July 21, 2017) (Dir.: Christopher Nolan)

#19: “Brawl in Cell Block 99” (October 6, 2017) (Dir.: S. Craig Zahler)

#20: “Shadow” (September 30, 2018) (Dir.: Zhang Yimou)

#21: “They Shall Not Grow Old” (November 9, 2018) (Dir.: Peter Jackson)

#22: “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” (July 26, 2019) (Dir.: Quentin Tarantino)

#23: “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” (September 3, 2023) (Dir.: William Friedkin)

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If you disagree with any movie on this list, or you have your own markedly different one, that’s okay! Let’s talk about it. Here’s to a new year of movies to come, and the hopes that one or more of them will be worthy of inclusion on a future list like this.

– Vivek