Wednesday, June 12, 2024

Highest Rated Films of the 21st Century

When it comes to film reviews, Letterboxd is a reprehensible social platform for hive-minded narcissists. Not even worth posting a review there. But it does happen to be a useful site for grading and logging films when compiling miscellaneous lists. Handy for anyone running a film blog.

Here's a list of your humble curator's highest scoring films from the 21st century (minimum of ★★★★½ out of ★★★★★) logged onto Letterboxd:

American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000)
Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000)
Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000)
Shadow of the Vampire (E. Elias Merhige, 2000)
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001)
28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002)
City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)
Ju-on: The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu, 2002) 
Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003)
Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003)
The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2005)
Apocalypto (Mel Gibson, 2006)
Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)
Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
[REC] (Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza, 2007)
Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007)
Love Exposure (Sion Sono, 2008)
Bronson (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2008)
Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008)
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009)
The House of the Devil (Ti West, 2009)
Triangle (Christopher Smith, 2009) 
13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2010)
Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)
I Saw the Devil (Kim Jee-woon, 2010)
Troll Hunter (André Øvredal, 2010)
Toy Story 3 (Lee Unrich, 2010)
Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)
The Raid (Gareth Evans, 2011)
The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodóvar, 2011)
Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland, 2012)
Dredd (Pete Travis & Alex Garland, 2012)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)
Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
It Follows (David Robert Green, 2014)
The Raid 2 (Gareth Evans, 2014)
The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)
Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015)
The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016)
Train to Busan (Yeon Sang-ho, 2016)
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S. Craig Zahler, 2017)
The House That Jack Built (Lars Von Trier, 2018)
Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018)
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos, 2018)
The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019)
The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019)
Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019)
Dinner in America (Adam Rehmeier, 2020)
Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021)
Mad God (Phil Tippett, 2021)
The Northman (Robert Eggers, 2022)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)

Dada Debaser Notes:

  • For the record, I couldn't be arsed to include the ★★★★ movies as originally intended since it would have been 246 entries rather than the 55 above. Ain't nobody got time for that!
  • Worked with release dates according to Letterboxd rather than when they came out in my region to avoid a massive headache.
  • Most of the entries were rated prior to a six year hiatus from Letterboxd (from 2016 to 2022). The cool part is how their ratings are largely unchanged.
  • Unapologetic about the overall horror bias. 
  • Some critically revered films that didn't make the cut were either rated lower than the minimum requirement, or were just shite. Make your own damned list if you don't see picks you expected!

8 comments:

  1. Mad Spart classics. The only one which has me shrieking "NOOOOOOOOO!" is Kill Bill Volume 1 😄

    Bad Lieutenant v2 inclusion has reminded me of the commentary where Cage says "Keitel's performance came from the streets, whereas mine came from the cosmos."

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  2. Never watch the Bad Lieutenant redo with the audio commentary, but that does like the sort of thing Cage would say.

    Ought to add both Dead Set (2008) and And Then There Were None (2015) were also up there, but didn't include them on account of being televised episodic shows and not films.

    Don't know why the format of the list is scrunched up and why I can't change it, but I like it anyway.

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  3. I'd have a buncha these in mine. Would also add:

    Chopper
    Phone Booth
    Birth
    Paid In Full
    Idiocracy
    Wall-E
    The Loved Ones
    Bernie
    Locke
    Brian & Charles
    Talk To Me
    Robot Dreams

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  4. Monthly reminder to watch Birth whenever possible.

    Kicking myself for not having logged a bunch of films on your list. Otherwise, Wall-E and Idiocracy would have undoubtedly made it onto mine too.

    You seen the latest Doctor Who episode yet?

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  5. I have. Sutekh return was truly one 4 the headz. Good episode, hoping they don't fuck it up with part 2.

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  6. A commenter mentioned how Sutekh looks like “Roland on crack” and I can’t unsee it now.

    Very cool to have Gabriel Woolf voicing him again.

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  7. The Raid. Chef’s kiss.

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