Film Rankings in the Streaming Age: Does the New York Times List Still Matter?

In an era where traditional media has thoroughly lost its authority, The New York Times’ recent list of the 100 Best Films of the 21st Century is destined to carry limited influence. Whether it’s the South Korean film Parasite topping the list, or the overall ranking order, the results are bound to be contentious. After all, we’re living in a time of streaming platforms, smartphones, and diverse entertainment and information. Preferences have become increasingly personalized, making consensus harder to achieve than in the past—after all, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

To be fair, the long-established New York Times has done its best to democratize the selection and ranking process. They invited over 500 filmmakers and seasoned cinephiles to vote for their top 10 films released since January 1, 2000, with each participant free to define their own criteria. The voter list included acclaimed directors and stars admired by film lovers such as Pedro Almodóvar, Sofia Coppola and Guillermo del Toro. On the surface, it doesn’t seem overtly “America First.”

While The New York Times is known for its strength in cultural criticism, it’s never been considered a leading outlet for film criticism. In past rankings by industry-specific publications, cinephiles often seemed to prefer France’s Cahiers du Cinéma and the UK’s Sight and Sound. If memory serves, the number one spot for 21st-century films usually sees a three-way tug-of-war among Mulholland Drive, There Will Be Blood, and In the Mood for Love—all of which, incidentally rank second, third and fourth on this new list. Now we know: entering the 2020s, Parasite has joined the mix as a new favorite.

Parasite is, of course, an exceptional film—it’s brilliantly executed and sharply critical of contemporary realities. It can be seen as the pinnacle of Bong Joon-ho’s auteurist expression. But in my view, the story feels too “complete” and the setup appears too exaggerated, with little room for ambiguity or interpretive space. It lacks the nuanced, elliptical pleasures found in the works of 20th-century masters. So crowning it the best? I personally find that hard to accept. Still, as someone who’s merely a seasoned cinephile with a high film count, my dissent doesn’t really matter. One could say that in recent years, critical taste has leaned more toward works with overt ideological messaging.

The New York Times’ top 10 films also include Moonlight, No Country for Old Men, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Get Out, Spirited Away and The Social Network. Clearly, the voters exhibit a wide range of tastes and have become increasingly open to include commercial cinema in the mix.

One can compare this with a previous poll from 2017. Films like Million Dollar Baby, which once ranked third, and the Romanian film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, which came in fifth, have now fallen completely out of the top 100. This doesn’t necessarily mean there’s been a dramatic shift in the tastes of professional viewers—it’s more likely that the new batch of voters simply have little overlap with the previous group.

Whenever I attend a major international film festival, I always reiterate the same idea: a film festival isn’t the Olympics—artistic merit cannot be quantified. Outlets like Variety or Screen Daily may update their media and industry ratings daily, but those scores can never fully represent the jury’s decisions. The final awardees often deviate sharply from critics’ predictions. After all, film festival juries are structured around the president’s authority, and if that president happens to have an eccentric taste or a domineering personality—say, someone like Quentin Tarantino—the eventual winners can be completely unpredictable.

Similarly, film rankings aren’t sporting events where winners can be determined by how fast a film shatters box office records or how high its box office earnings can soar. Even though it’s relatively easy to reach a general consensus on which films are great and which are terrible, the ordering of the greats is another matter entirely.

Consider IMDb’s top 250 movies, a far more participatory, democratic, and populist ranking. Its top spot has seen a long-standing three-way rivalry among The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, and The Dark Knight. Since 2008, The Shawshank Redemption has mostly held the crown, with only a few blockbuster exceptions—like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King or Inception—briefly challenging its reign during their initial releases.

In more professional—even academic—rankings, such as the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound poll, Jeanne Dielman caused a major upset in 2022, overtaking long-time top contenders Vertigo and Citizen Kane. The reason lies in the spirit of the times. This 1975 Belgian art film subverts traditional male-dominated cinematic language through minimalist storytelling and depictions of repetitive domestic labor. In an era of heightened awareness around gender equality, it has come to represent a pioneering work of feminist cinema. Its 197 minutes of static shots and mundane routines reflect an extreme formal aesthetic—turning “plainness” itself into a political statement.

Since film rankings are always about individual tastes, let me share mine. My personal favorite of the 21st century so far happens to be completely absent from The New York Times list: Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty.

That film is 8½ fifty years later. Set in Rome, an intellectual seemingly possessed by the soul of Marcello Mastroianni gives up his ambition and dreams and chooses instead to grow old with the Eternal City in all its splendor and decay. It’s also Roma 41 years on, filled with absurd yet dazzling moments scattered amidst the ruins of the Colosseum and the banks of the Tiber. In The Great Beauty, Sorrentino purifies the decline of Rome into something luminous. It’s not a realistic depiction of Rome, but a conjured illusion—a glittering homage to Federico Fellini wrapped in cinematic sleight of hand.