TSPDT - The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films


	The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films Home
	21st Century Home Rankings: 1-50 51-100 101-150 151-200 201-250 Full Listings: By Title By Director By Year The Top 50 Directors




	January 2008 Update

	° The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films section has once again been updated, and now incorporates hundreds of 2008 end-of-year critics' lists from 'all over the place.'

	° Based on our numbers, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood was 2007's most critically acclaimed film, beating out the Coen's No Country for Old Men and David Fincher's Zodiac.

	° The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films section serves as an ongoing companion to our listing of the 1,000 Greatest Films of all time. The 1,000 Greatest Films list, by nature of the sources used and formulas applied - and we believe quite rightly so - leans towards films that have so far stood the so-called ‘test of time'. Unsurprisingly, it currently only houses 10 films from this century: In the Mood for Love, Yi Yi, Mulholland Dr., Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Punch-Drunk Love, Talk to Her, Russian Ark, The Royal Tenenbaums and Moulin Rouge!. The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films listing therefore attempts to highlight and honour this century's most critically revered films and act as a sort of 'resting bay' for many great films that will, no doubt, eventually find a spot within the 1,000 Greatest Films part of our website.





	° This is our third 21st Century listing, and it once again encompasses 250 films. It is primarily based on critics' year-end lists (from 2000 to 2007), plus it also takes into account mentions given to any films from 2000 onwards that show up in critics' all-time-best-of lists (that are also used for the compilation of our 1,000 Greatest Films list).

	° We will continue to update this 21st Century listing on an annual basis. The next update will be in January 2009 and will, of course, incorporate 2008's most acclaimed films, and so on and so forth. That's about it, in a nutshell.

	° Disclaimer: Please keep in mind, that although we have endeavoured to include critics' lists from all over the globe (and we have done so), we have primarily, due to the ease of accessibility, sourced North American critics' lists for our calculations.

	° Please note that 21st Century films that appear in all-time lists as opposed to end-of-year-lists are weighted much higher within our formulas. Good current examples of this are In the Mood for Love and Punch-Drunk Love whose well-deserved rankings have been considerably boosted by good showings in some all-time lists that we have collated.

	° The following films, made prior to 2000, garnered enough points to make our 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films listing (mainly thanks to many of the 2000 end-of-year lists). However, they have been excluded due to the fact they weren't made this century. They are: Beau travail (Claire Denis; 1998), The Wind Wll Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami; 1999), Army in the Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville; 1969), Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay; 1999), L'Humanite (Bruno Dumont; 1999), Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett; 1977), Jesus' Son (Alison Maclean; 1999), Gohatto (Nagisa Oshima; 1999), Croupier (Mike Hodges; 1997), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch; 1999), Apocalypse Now: Redux (Francis Ford Coppola; 1979), The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola; 1999), Nurse Betty (Neil LaBute; 1999), Human Resources (Laurent Cantet; 1999), Pola X (Leos Carax; 1999), and Not One Less (Zhang Yimou; 1998)

	° 2007 Links Film Comment's end-of-year critics' poll, the 2007 Village Voice/LA Weekly Film Poll, DVD Beaver's DVD's of the Year, indieWIRE's 2007 Critics Poll, and Sight & Sound's films of 2007.
	° TSPDT's own recommendations for this century can be found here.

	Lists of Bests
	You can now simply check-off what movies you've seen on either the 1,000 Greatest Films listing, the 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films listing, or the 250 Quintessential Noir Films listing and this handy website will do the rest for you.
	1,000 Greatest Films Checklist
	21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films Checklist
	250 Quintessential Noir Films Checklist





	21st Century Home Rankings: 1-50 51-100 101-150 151-200 201-250 Full Listings: By Title By Director By Year The Top 50 Directors