they (still) shoot pictures, don't they?

no one asked, so here are (some of) my fave films of the 21st century not on the NYT list of the 100 "best" (whatever that means) movies, which—can we be honest?—is super 20th century in its Euro-American colonial outlook and lack of imagination and adventure. to be fair, i'm more New Yorker in my taste, and the list's design looks nice.

limited to one film per director, in a rough order of faves (lots on my watchlist, still, of course):

- Ten/ده (Abbas Kiarostami)

- Happy as Lazzaro/Lazzaro felice (Alice Rohrwacher)

- Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)

- Fire at Sea/Fuocoammare (Gianfranco Rosi)

- Tropical Malady/สัตว์ประหลาด (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

- Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier)

- All We Imagine as Light/പ്രഭയായ് നിനച്ചതെല്ലാം (Payal Kapadia)

- Great Freedom/Große Freiheit (Sebastian Meise)

- First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)

- A Rifle and a Bag (Arya Rothe, Isabella Rinaldi & Cristina Haneș)

- Black Coal, Thin Ice/白日焰火 (Diao Yi-nan)

- Transit (Christian Petzold)

- Manta Ray/กระเบนราหู (Phuttiphong Aroonpheng)

- Paddington 2 (Paul King)

- Stranger by the Lake/L'Inconnu du lac (Alain Guiraudie)

- An Elephant Sitting Still/大象席地而坐 (Hu Bo)

- Season of the Devil/Ang Panahon ng Halimaw (Lav Diaz)

- Behemoth/悲兮魔兽 (Zhao Liang)

- Distant/Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

- Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes)

- Baran/باران (Majid Majidi)

- Year Without a Summer/Berkelana (Tan Chui Mui)

- Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier)

- Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly/Babi buta yang ingin terbang (Edwin)

- Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell/Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng (Phạm Thiên Ân)

- Werckmeister Harmonies/Werckmeister harmóniák (Béla Tarr)

- Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy/偶然と想像 (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi)

- Flight of the Red Balloon/Le Voyage du ballon rouge (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

- Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir)

- Satan Jawa/꧋ꦱꦺꦠꦤ꧀ꦗꦮ (Garin Nugroho)

- The World/世界 (Jia Zhangke)

- Last Life in the Universe/เรื่องรัก น้อยนิด มหาศาล (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang)

- The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros/Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (Auraeus Solito)

- Ilo Ilo/爸妈不在家 (Anthony Chen)

- To Singapore, with Love/星国恋 (Tan Pin Pin)

- Goodbye, Dragon Inn/不散 (Tsai Ming-liang)

- A Fantastic Woman/Una mujer fantástica (Sebastián Lelio)

- God’s Own Country (Francis Lee)

- Bright Future/アカルイミライ (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

- Nobody Knows/誰も知らない (Hirokazu Kore-eda)

- Osama (Siddiq Barmak)

- The Return/Возвращение (Andrey Zvyagintsev)

- In the Claws of a Century Wanting/Sa Palad ng Dantaong Kulang (Jewel Maranan)

- Clean (Olivier Assayas)

- Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream/Ne croyez surtout pas que je hurle (Frank Beauvais)

- The Image Book/Le Livre d’Images (Jean-Luc Godard)