What NYT’s Top 100 Movies Missed: 2 Former Video Store Clerks Get Real

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The New York Times

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Arts

4.8 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Twenty-four years ago, Wesley Morris and the film curator Eric Hynes were just a couple of “cooler-than-you” cinephiles working at Kim’s Video, the beloved New York City video store. They recently got together to dissect the trends, snubs and outliers on the Times’s 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century list and to shed a few tears over their own top 10s, which are shared below. FROM WESLEY MORRIS: 1. Norte, The End of History 2. Mad Max: Fury Road 3. The Piano Teacher 4. O.J.: Made in America 5. Wall-E 6. Moonlight 7. The Holy Girl 8. Inherent Vice 9. Love and Diane 10. Magic Mike XXL FROM ERIC HYNES: 1. In the Mood for Love 2. The Act of Killing; The Look of Silence (tie) 3. A.I. Artificial Intelligence 4. The New World 5. Hale County This Morning, This Evening 6. Synecdoche, New York 7. Cameraperson 8. 35 Shots of Rum 9. Inside Llewyn Davis; A Serious Man (tie) 10. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball.
0:10.5	Last month, I spent a week eating two lunches a day.
0:15.0	One, the New York Times cafeteria made.
0:18.1	That one was actual food and it was good.
0:22.4	The New York Times Culture Department made the other one. That one was a list of the 100 greatest
0:29.0	movies of the 21st century voted on by more than 500 actors, writers, producers, directors,
0:35.3	costume designers, screenwriters, production people, people who
0:38.9	just make the movies. They voted on that list and every day for five days, the paper released
0:45.4	a batch of 20 ranked movies, starting with Superbad at 100 and ending with parasite hoisting the championship
0:53.7	belt.
1:00.2	I devoured both the food and the countdown some days at the same time.
1:03.6	And then next week, the paper did this crazy thing and released a second poll of more than 200,000 readers.
1:09.4	200,000.
1:10.4	That is more people than participate in some elections.
1:16.3	So, what the people do?
1:19.0	They put Avengers Endgame at number 100.
1:22.0	But guess what?
1:23.1	The people also crowned parasite, Miss Movie List Pagent Queen, Sase-Sante-Bong-Junho,
1:31.0	Sashay, Sash, Sash, Sash, Sash.
1:33.8	Like a lot of people, I love a countdown.
1:37.2	It's a shopping list.
1:38.6	It's a suspense novel.
	...

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