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When a group of Culture editors at The New York Times considered the idea of choosing the best films of the 21st century late last year, it seemed like a daunting task.
There have been more than 200,000 films released since 2000, in hundreds of languages. How could they choose just 100?
So, they had a solution: They wouldn’t. They would ask more than 500 influential directors, actors and other notable names in Hollywood and around the world to make the selections for them.
“A lot of lists are done by critics, and Hollywood often takes issue with them,” said Stephanie Goodman, The Times’s film editor. “We were saying, ‘Look, this is your chance to have your say.’ I think people really appreciated that.”
For seven months, Ms. Goodman and Leah Greenblatt, the project manager, led a team of editors, writers and critics from the Culture desk in collaboration with designers, photo editors and journalists from The Upshot, a Times team that specializes in data-driven journalism, through the production process. In all, more than 75 people helped bring the project to life.
The resulting list was published online last month and appears in the Arts & Leisure section of Sunday’s paper, along with a selection of celebrity ballots and readers’ own top 100 films.
“This was a package only The Times could do,” Ms. Goodman said. “We just had such great resources with The Upshot and contacts in the industry. That was really the thing that set us apart — how deep our bench was.”
Work on the project began in December, when Ms. Goodman met with a dozen Culture editors and reporters to brainstorm ideas about how to execute the project. Among the questions they considered: What criteria, exactly, should voters use to determine the best films?
“Are we asking people for the best films or their favorite films, and what is the difference?” said Aliza Aufrichtig, a designer and editor on the digital news design team who also worked on the 100 best books of the 21st century list the Books desk compiled last year.
There were a number of lessons learned from that list, she said. They added a feature that allowed readers to share their ballots on social media, for instance.
“Since we weren’t starting from zero, we had more time to focus on improving details,” she said.
Then, they got down to business. For five months, they emailed personalized ballots to hundreds of potential voters in the film industry around the world asking them to choose their 10 favorite films of the 21st century; they followed up with publicists, managers and representatives to ensure ballots both reached the stars and that they filled them out.
“Communication was a challenge,” Ms. Greenblatt said. “There’s a lot of gate-keeping in the film industry.”
Not to mention that they were putting in their requests during the busiest stretch of the year for the industry: the weeks leading up to the Oscars, when actors have their heads down campaigning for awards.
“Trying to get a hold of people and find a time when they weren’t busy was almost impossible,” Ms. Greenblatt said.
“This is not something that’s about advertising any of their projects,” she added. “We’re asking them to do it out of a pure love of film and fandom for the art form.”
There were some surprising choices on the ballots, which many of the voters agreed to make public: Mel Brooks, for instance, loves the 2016 space-race drama “Hidden Figures.” Julianne Moore is a fan of the 2007 buddy comedy “Superbad.” Stephen King saved a slot for the 2005 L.G.B.T.Q. cowboy romance “Brokeback Mountain” alongside “Oppenheimer.”
Kyle Buchanan, the awards season columnist for The Times, correctly predicted the top two (just in reverse order): Bong Joon Ho’s South Korean black comedy “Parasite” (2019) and David Lynch’s surreal psychological thriller “Mulholland Drive” (2001), which has experienced a boost since Lynch’s death in January.
“‘Parasite’ was the runaway winner,” said Mr. Buchanan, who has seen all 100 films on the list. “It’s a sign of just how relevant the film feels. It came out before the pandemic, but its despair over class disparity is only more pronounced now.”
They rolled out the list 20 films at a time, beginning with No. 100, over five days in June. They then asked readers to vote for their favorite films, and more than 200,000 did.
The top two films on the lists were identical, and seven of the top 10 finishers were the same on both lists, just in a different order. Other submissions that dominated readers’ lists: “Sinners” (No. 52), “Mean Girls” (No. 82), and “Barbie” (No. 84).
“I love that the top four or five are very similar,” Ms. Goodman said. “We were seeing all these complaints on social media like, ‘That’s not how real people vote’— and, it turns out, it is.”
Despite the rise of streaming services, just one movie distributed by a streamer — Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 historical drama “Roma,” which received a Netflix release after a few weeks in theaters — cracked the top 100 on either list (No. 46 on the industry ballot list).
“It’s a vivid illustration of how the movies that stick with us tend to be those we have a theatrical experience with,” Mr. Buchanan said.
That’s despite the fact that the way a majority of people see a film is from the comfort of their couch, on the back of the seat in front of them on an airplane, or maybe even on their phone.
It was also that audience, Ms. Goodman said, that they had in mind when they decided to embark on the project seven months ago.
“The expectation is not that anyone has seen all, or even most, of these films,” she said. “It’s also a great place to get recommendations.”
Sarah Bahr writes about culture and style for The Times.
The post How We Chose the Best Movies of the 21st Century appeared first on New York Times.
