The Best Movies of the Century, According to Letterboxd

Determining the best film of a certain historical period is an exercise in futility; an attempt to find an objective answer to an entirely subjective topic.

But let’s do it anyway!

I find there are only two viable ways to approach this sort of thing: Either you pick your own personal favorites — which generates a 100 percent accurate list of an era’s best films according to one individual — or you look to a source where you can compare many different people’s ratings to at least get a good idea of a broad consensus. That’s why I like Letterboxd, where you can sort through their database to see what movies have the highest and lowest average ratings. If you wanted to determine the best films of the 21st century by comparing titles’ average Letterboxd scores, you can do that.

Now you can’t quickly or easily see all the highest and lowest rated movies of the 21st century, but you can see each of the century’s decades’ best and worst movies. If you cross-reference the best movies of the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s, you can then create one master list of the best films. That’s what I did here.

Note that I excluded any TV shows or miniseries, which are included in the raw lists Letterboxd generates but don’t count here, at least as far as i am concerned. Once you take those titles out, here’s what you’re left with, Letterboxd users’ picks for the best movies of the 21st century…

READ MORE: The Worst Movies of the 21st Century, According to Letterboxd