The New York Times' top 100 list is a bad idea...
Just an excuse to put Saoirse Ronan on the cover photo
Just over a week ago the New York Times released an interactive article on their website titled The 100 best movies of the 21st century… and it sucks. Despite what you may think, the list itself is not the problem - yes it’s a little bit predictable here and there with a large portion of it being films that were featured on various modules of my first year at university but it’s useful to remember those films are academically significant for a reason! Additionally I do not have too much of an issue with how the list was conceived, being created by polling 500 creatives in the industry. Despite being rather American centric in its pollsters, the list does a great job at featuring creatives who are crucially not men. So what is my issue with this seemingly harmless list? Well it comes down to two things: one being that with the bonkers levels of access this list had to talent, I’m annoyed that we didn’t just get 500 intimate interviews about what films stars like. Second is that the interactive parts of the list has worryingly created what i’m calling a 'cultural capital hunger games’…
So first of all, this idea that maybe The New York Times should have used their mind boggling resources to create something smaller and potentially more wonderful. The article does dabble in the realm of celebrity film recommendations, including the ballots (or film selections) of over 100 voters but also including testimonials for a select few of the winning films in the list. These are great, it is super interesting to see why for example Ari Aster voted for Under The Skin (2014). However for me, as we will explore later in this post, these personal ‘testimony’s’ are the only part I care about! Being opened up to countless films I most likely would have never heard of is such a special feeling and what film is all about. My favourite moments in life is when someone recommends me a film I’ve never heard of and then watching said film and falling in love with it! This is why interviews like the Criterion Closet & Letterboxd Top 4 videos are so special - they are intimate, special looks into the minds of filmmakers, actors and more!
Instead we get a limiting list of 100 films that a news outlet is telling you are the best films to watch… which is just kind of stupid. Yes this list has come from somewhere of note but the way it is formatted leaves it faceless and drained of all personality. What I would have loved however would have been a series of short form interviews with hundreds of creatives delving into their personal favourite films or films that inspired their work, maybe even a small shout out to their favourite under-appreciated movies. So instead of a list that is somewhat pointless telling you that The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) or Parasite (2019) are the best movies in recent years, which no real surprises there, we would get never seen before insights and recommendations into the world of film.
Lastly my rather out there claim of this being a ‘cultural capital hunger games’… which is maybe the most film studies thing I could say and I completely understand your distaste for me after saying that :( Joking aside, I do think there is a problem with the interactive aspect to the article. As you scroll through the list you can tick whether you have seen the movie or if you want to - this then compiles your own list and creates a graphic which you can then share on social media.
This ability to share your results has become a sort of micro-trend on film twitter and TikTok and in true internet fashion, of course they cannot be normal about it. Instead of this being a celebration of the films of the last 25 years, it instead has become a competition of who has watched the most films on the list - the winner’s award seemingly being worth more as person or movie fan than anyone else. It’s so silly. This list is teaching people that if they haven’t seen a certain amount of movies that they are worse than everyone else and even more worryingly, creating this sense that film fandom is a pretentious, hard to penetrate community… which is absolutely the worst thing that could happen to the industry… apart from maybe an Emilia Pérez sequel. Not only is it just blatantly not true and you are a fan of films no matter how many acclaimed movies you have seen, but there are a mountain of uncontrollable factors that viewers need to take into account for why someone might not have seen many of these films that we have put on a pedestal.
Enter Cultural Capital. Referring to someone's worth based on their tastes in anything in the world, from movies to wine or clothes, cultural capital is absolutely on display here. If someone has watched more of these prestigious films then they would generally be classed as having a higher, richer cultural capital than someone else. Which is overall very stinky but we all fall into the stereotypes at times. What’s more important however is how that cultural capital is acquired? Why haven’t those people watched those prestigious films when others have? It can come down to so many things: A lot of historically important films are hard to access and only available to watch on niche streaming services like BFI Player or Mubi - both of which are really expensive and in Mubi’s case is currently supporting the genocide in Gaza… so you are better off without it. Sticking with money, due to that prestigious reputation some of these films hold in the industry, viewers may not even know about them if they come from a class background or family who are not aimed at, marketing wise. Coming from a lower, middle class family all I knew about movies were the big budget summer blockbusters until I worked at a Cinema chain that caters to a higher class customer base. Some viewers have more responsibilities than others leading to them having less time to watch films than others. Some viewers may also have issues with concentration and not have the same experience when it comes to watching movies. Some viewers may not even have a cinema near them (god forbid).
The moral of this story is that film as an experience is a personal one - it is all about how it impacts you personally and then getting to bond over them with your friends and find out how it impacted them as well. We all have different tastes and live different lives. It’s not about creating strict, hard and fast rules on which movies you need to watch and ones you don’t. It’s about experiencing film for the sake of experiencing film and not just ticking off some boxes an America periodical told you, you needed to. And as we upsettingly become more and more of an industry over taken by a.i, clearly human & intimate recommendations are needed more than ever!
And if you were ever looking for recommendations from myself, then why not take a glance at my favourites of 2024 :)
