Murders, Mysteries, and New York Times Top 100 movies of 21st Century
Last week, between June 23-June 27, 2025, New York Times unveiled—twenty each day—how “more than 500 influential directors, actors and other notable names in Hollywood and around the world voted on the best films released since Jan. 1, 2000.” I studied the list each day, marking down how many of these storied films I had already seen. Just shy of half: 49 out of the 100. (Here’s the list if you’re interested in measuring your own movie expertise.)
While I was a wee bit disappointed that I hadn’t seen more on the list, it also made sense that my “score” wasn’t higher since movie-going has really dropped off in our household since the pandemic, and only one film from the list was produced by a streaming service (#46: Roma). Of course, now that I have this list, I will certainly be looking for some of these DVDs at our local public library!
As I was perusing this list, here are some mental notes I made.
Not a lot of “Classic” Mystery Whodunits on this list…
In 1974, the Albert Finney-led Murder on the Orient Express was a huge success and even earned Ingrid Bergman a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. In 2001, Gosford Park, with another very impressive cast, was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (and did get awarded for Best Original Screenplay). So, clearly, classic Agatha Christie-esque mysteries have won not only popular but also critical fans in decades past.
However, films on this NYT survey included very few (perhaps we could even say zero) “classic” mysteries in the vein of those mentioned above. Kenneth Branagh’s own remakes of Christie novels do not rise to the level of these earlier films; and even the very well-received Rian Johnson movies like Knives Out and Glass Onion (admittedly inspired by Christie) haven’t joined this list.
That makes me wonder: Do “classic” murder mysteries not stand the “test of time”?
…But Plenty of Movies which INCLUDE Murder and Mystery
Oddly enough—given the near complete absence of classic mysteries—there are more than a dozen films on the list which revolve around either a murder or another crime that needs to be investigated.
No list of Top 100 movies would be complete without a legal thriller (such as #93: Michael Clayton) or one involving crime syndicates (#31: The Departed).
Many other movies track real life cases. #99: Memories of Murder is based on South Korea’s first recorded serial killer; #66: Spotlight revolved around journalists digging into the Boston archdiocese child sexual abuse scandal; and #19: Zodiac follows both cops and journalists as they investigate the San Francisco serial killer from the still-unsolved murders of 1960s and 70s.
Some of the films on the list are lauded precisely because they do not offer clear-cut solutions to mysteries they are exploring. As NYT writes, #64’s Gone Girl is “A perfect example of the unreliable narrator,” and the film “takes the he said/she said tale to new heights.” And it also notes how in #26: Anatomy of a Fall, Justin Triet’s “taut, stylish dissection of a tumultuous marriage” is “both forensic and thrillingly ambiguous.”
A couple of the entries are movie adaptations of Sci-Fi novels with mystery pedigrees. In Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (#94, adapted from Philip K. Dick’s novel), “crime is stopped before it happens thanks to the foresight of human ‘precogs.’” And while it might not technically occupy the “mystery” genre, it’s worth noting that #13: Children of Men is adapted from a dystopian novel by celebrated (and yes “classic”) mystery writer P. D. James.
Perhaps a theme of today’s newsletter might be: a good mystery comes in so many different forms! It might be fitting then that I conclude with movies which creatively subvert our expectations of form and genre. Since #62: Memento, for instance, tells the story of a man who, as he says, “can’t make new memories,” the movie cleverly tells the story backwards, from the end to the beginning.
Coming in at #2, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is described by the NYT in the following way: “Filled with doubles, this is one of Lynch’s bleakest and most terrifying films, and among his most emotionally devastating.” It also boasts a noir vibe and features a “labyrinthine mystery.”
Wrapping up my overview of the NYT list is a pair of top 10 mystery-infused films with trenchant social commentary. In #8: Get Out, we’re told that Jordan Peele “marshals genre conventions for a movie that’s at once an electrifying thriller about the horrors of white supremacy and an unsparing sendup of a post-racial America.” Similar appraisal goes to #1: Parasite where Bong Joon Ho mixes thriller elements of this “unsettling shocker” into “a tale of haves and have-nots, and a ferocious rebuke to the devastations of neoliberalism.”
These top films suggest that while straight-out “classic” Agatha Christie-inspired mysteries may no longer earn top honors, mysteries will continue to shine in good storytelling.