Granted, we’re only 16 years into the century, but somebody had to make a list, right? The BBC did. Here’s their top 10:

10. No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)
9. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)
8. Yi Yi: A One and a Two (Edward Yang, 2000)
7. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
5. Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)
4. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
3. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
2. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
1. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)

These lists are always fun because art is, by its very nature, subjective. Looking at their top 10, for example, I thought Mulholland Drive was a dreadful movie. But I thought There Will Be Blood was brilliant.

Two things do stand out from their list. First, the list as a whole is a wasteland with only a handful of truly great movies. Movie making really has taken a dive in the past couple of decades. Second, as usual, critics generally eschew movies that did well at the box office. I wonder how a list of the top 100 movies created by the general public would differ.