That's because Together just became the 30th #1 I've ever given out.
That's right, I started out with Al Pacino's Looking for Richard way back in 1996, and that brings us a full three decades later to my #1 of 2025.
I already did a celebration of this milestone with this gargantuan project undertaken last year. I said in that post that I maybe should have waited until around now to do this, but that the idea had lit a fire under me and I couldn't wait.
I got this current idea a few months later, and I did wait until now on this one, because I needed that 30th to make it work.
So the idea here is to reflect on the choices I've made with past #1s, and see what the world has thought of those choices with the benefit of hindsight.
When you are selecting a #1 movie, you only know what people think of it in that exact moment, the first year of its existence as a piece of art. And in some cases, you choose something obscure, so you don't even really know what most people think of it because they haven't seen it yet -- and without your recommendation, may never see it.
But it occurred to me that any time any person chooses a #1 movie, you can later look back on it as one of the following three things:
1) A stone-cold classic that everyone thinks is one of the greats of its era;
2) A weird personal favorite that may not be for everybody but that you still staunchly defend, or
3) A movie that you may still like well enough, but that has not aged particularly well in the sphere of public opinion.
After 30 years of doing this, I decided that I'm going to trisect my past #1s so that I have ten from each category.
Obviously this will be imperfect. There are some movies that will be between two categories. I may feel like I have 17 or 18 stone-cold classics in my past #1s, but there's only room for ten. (I don't; this is just hypothetical.) A movie I classify as "weird" may not be weird in any traditional sense of its narrative or execution.
But I do think these three categories more or less encapsulate the range of potential outcomes for a movie to settle in over time, assuming you don't turn on a previous #1 so much that you actually dislike it. They can all be abbreviated to a three-word phrase: "stone-cold classics," "weird defensible favorites" and "haven't aged well." When I was jotting them down on the back of a piece of paper on the train, I listed these as SCC, WDF and HAW.
This is a necessarily reductive exercise, but let me state a few more caveats just to address a few other considerations:
1) Some of these movies haven't had a chance to age at all, especially the one I crowned my favorite only a week ago. So in some cases I will have to be projecting their eventual reputation based on what I believe it is now.
2) This is not listed in order of my own favorites. I already did that a few years ago in this post. This is an imagined order based on the opinion of a disinterested outsider, who is only analyzing the films on their reputation and not on their own personal opinions.
3) I'm going to list them in an order that reflects the extent to which they conform to the tier they are in, and how close they are to the tier above or below them. So my top-ranked "stone-cold classic" will be the one that the most people think is the stoniest, coldest classic. And so on.
Hey, and unlike some of my other posts where I wax poetic about these movies for hundreds of words, I'm going to keep it brief on each. You've got stuff to do today.
Also there are a few films whose release year is ambiguous -- released in its country of origin a different year from when it was my #1 -- but to keep things less confusing here, I'm list the year it was my #1.
Let's not waste any more time on rules. I think you understand what this post is. So let's get into it.
The "stone-cold classic" tier
1) There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson) - We may have near universal consensus that Anderson's One Battle After Another is the best film of 2025, but TWBB is usually considered one of the best movies, if not the best movie, of the entire 21st century. It's hard to compete with that.
2) Parasite (2019, Bong Joon-ho) - If you wanted a consensus runner-up for that same time period, you'd have a hard time beating Parasite, which also unifies cinephiles in their affection -- and, like One Battle After Another, is also incredibly fun.
3) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry) - Even if my own last viewing of this underwhelmed me just a little bit, this is consistently a crazy performer in all the "best of the century" lists, and basically you never hear anybody who says it didn't work for them.
4) Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuaron) - I felt a bit out on the limb in my affection for this at the time, but everyone -- and I mean everyone -- has since joined me on that limb, such that we had to convert it from a limb, which was breaking under our collective weight, into a steel fortress.
5) Lost in Translation (2003, Sofia Coppola) - Most people acknowledge that Coppola tapped into a magical vibe of unsurpassed staying power in this movie about two jet-lagged strangers connecting in Tokyo, proving that romance was not dead and did not have to be sappy either.
6) Inside Out (2015, Pete Docter) - Consistently appears at or near the top of Pixar's best lists, although it usually has to fight films I like a lot less, like Wall-E and Ratatouille.
7) A Separation (2011, Asgar Farhadi) - It may not be a huge performer in the zeitgeist, because your average cinephile doesn't always see Iranian films, but the film's impeccable critical reputation easily earns it a spot in this tier.
8) Run Lola Run (1999, Tom Tykwer) - Again, maybe a German-language film isn't getting constantly rewatched, but the general respect for this film is quite high. (Plus I actually listed as my #1 when I ranked all 26 a few years ago, though I'm not sure if I would still do that today.)
9) Adaptation (2002, Spike Jonze) - I know there is a contingent out there who isn't as sold on this film, but its sheer structural complexity and the breadth of its ambition easily earn it a spot in the top tier -- or maybe not easily since it's only #9.
10) Toni Erdmann (2016, Maren Ade) - Probably the least seen film in the top tier, in part because of its great length, Erdmann has huge respect in cinephile circles and was also included at #59 in the recent New York Times list that circulated about the best 100 movies of the 21st century.
The "weird defensible favorites" tier
11) First Reformed (2018, Paul Schrader) - This film has some detractors, but those who love it really love it, such that it has nearly graduated to the "stone-cold classic" tier. I've also seen it four times in the only 7+ years of its existence, which isn't actually relevant to this discussion.
12) The Substance (2024, Coralie Fargeat) - This ranking is based on the fact that I can see this movie aging into a classic. I think The Substance, already liked quite a bit by some, will gain in popularity -- at least as a cult film if nothing more -- when some people give it a second viewing.
13) A Ghost Story (2017, David Lowery) - I don't know if Lowery's film has really seen its profile rise since it first came out, but the movie continues to earn points, and I would assume ardent fans, based on its truly individual concept seen out to unexpectedly poignant ends.
14) Beyond the Hills (2013, Cristian Mungiu) - Probably among the least seen in this whole list, Beyond the Hills is certainly beloved by those who have seen it -- but its low profile will always keep it out of the top tier.
15) 127 Hours (2010, Danny Boyle) - If some of the shine has been lost from this, it's because James Franco is the star, not because it's anything less than unimpeachable as a movie, that shows off all of Boyle's strengths and none of his weaknesses.
16) Moon (2009, Duncan Jones) - Again another film that does not necessarily come up a lot in cinephile discussions, but one that remains an engaging noodle fryer, even after there were a lot more movies that came out and tried to do what Moon does so effortlessly.
17) The Wrestler (2008, Darren Aronofsky) - Is it just me or is there a bit of Aronofsky backlash out there? If so, I suspect this one gets caught up in it, a movie that people might only remember so much now because of Mickey Rourke's great comeback performance. But I can still strongly defend this one, so it goes in the middle of this tier.
18) Happiness (1998, Todd Solondz) - This one might divide people by the ick factor of, well, several things about it, but this used to be a really highly thought of film in a different era of independent cinema, and seems easily to be Solondz' best. Can't drop down to the low tier because of that lingering respect.
19) I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman) - The dislike for this one is strong in some quarters, and in other quarters it is the recipient of very high praise. That puts it near the bottom of this tier, but still a movie that I think is doing incredibly thoughtful and provocative things. In any case, you're never going to be embarrassed to say you love it.
20) Our Friend (2021, Gabriela Cowperthwaite) - The critical community is never going to come together to embrace, or even see, this little-seen and unassuming movie about a family going through cancer and their friend who helps get them through it. And I'm never going to not cry during it, so it will remain always at the end of this tier in my heart.
The "hasn't aged well" tier
21) Titanic (1997, James Cameron) - I like Titanic better than several of the films in each of the above two groups, as it remains one of my top ten #1 movies overall. But I understand this is not a serious critical opinion, and the most common way to think of this movie, critically, is to be embarrassed that we showered such praise on it. So it is, regrettably, in this tier, but at least it is the captain of the tier. (I may have also kept it out of the "weird favorite" tier because it seems funny to call Titanic "weird." The only other option is a stone-cold classic, and though I may see it that way, I don't think others do.)
22) Skinamarink (2023, Kyle Edward Ball) - Although this would certainly qualify as a "weird favorite," it's landing just outside that tier due to the fact that some people are so bored that they can't even get through it when they try to watch it. They just didn't watch it long enough to discover it's one of the most chilling movies they've seen this century.
23) Hamlet (2000, Michael Almereyda) - For the first of two films involving Shakespeare in this tier, I don't think anyone who has seen this adaptation thinks ill of it, unless they object to the cheekiness of the Blockbuster video "to be or not to be" speech. But when I most recently rewatched it, I definitely did not feel the original draw at the same strength.
24) Together (2025, Michael Shanks) - I wanted to rank this a little closer to the next tier, but based only on the reactions I got to this being my #1 of 2025 -- almost no one even gave it mid-level praise -- I suspect that I am going to stay out on the limb on this one far into the future.
25) Hustle & Flow (2005, Craig Brewer) - This was a very cool pick in 2005, but it has lost a lot of its luster since then. It's not just that subsequent viewings haven't been as good for me, it's that they've revealed there are some actually bad moments of acting in the film -- and also that people aren't really talking about this movie anymore.
26) Ruby Sparks (2012, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris) - I remember how much my head was spun by this the first two times I saw it, and how surprised everyone was that I had selected it as my #1. My opinion gradually started to gravitate toward theirs, but this is still a movie I will enjoy quite a lot if I am in the right mood for it.
27) Gosford Park (2001, Robert Altman) - This is a very solid predecessor to Downton Abbey and an engaging whodunnit, and it was a best picture nominee, but I just don't think it stands out within Altman's career, and I did actually rank this last when I ranked them all a few years back.
28) Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) - That this beat out Boyhood for best picture has become a conversation piece among cinephiles, who all too easily roll their eyes at the one shot gimmick and other of the film's indulgences. I still like it, but I feel fairly lonely in that opinion.
29) Looking for Richard (1996, Al Pacino) - My very long-delayed second viewing of this convinced me that it might not be a whole lot more than an above-average documentary, but I still have fond feelings toward it -- especially as my first #1 ever.
30) The Whale (2022, Darren Aronofsky) - I have blubbering uncontrollably to blame for this #1 ranking, which I do still stand by. I've tried to argue that this movie is so much more than what some perceive as fatphobia, but I'm afraid that the perceived fatphobia is the only thing that really lingers in the court of public opinion. (But don't forget, Brendan Fraser actually won the Oscar, so I wasn't totally crazy.)
Do these tiers have the ring of truth to them?
On to the next 30.
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